"The Heart of Oak Books."

Professor Charles Eliot Norton has for some time been at work with Miss Kate Stephens on a compilation of English prose and poetry for young folks. This compilation is now ready, and is soon to be published by D. C. Heath and Co., Boston, under the title of "The Heart of Oak Books." These books are five in number, and are carefully graded. The first contains childish rhymes and melodies old as Ben Jonson and Shakspeare and Goldsmith, and some of the best-known fables and stories in our tongue. The second includes children's poems and nursery tales, "old as Hengist and Horsa." In the the three remaining volumes are shorter poems universally accepted as treasures of the language-many from the Elizabethan singers-and prose pieces from the best writers of the last three centuries. In the third book are, for example, many fine, strong ballads; in the fourth Sir Philip Sidney's beautiful story of Argalus and Parthenia is a part; while in the fifth one finds the better parts of such things as Walton's "Herbert," and Carlyle's "Burns."