A PORTION of a work, published some years ago "by Mr. Joseph Kay, in England, has recently been republished in America, under the title, " Social Condition and Education of the People of England," containing the results of the official inquiries made by Mr. Kay as royal commissioner. The book, as issued here, forms a duodecimal volume of some three hundred pages, and ought to be in the hands of every thinking American at the present period of our heaving struggle. It does not only deserve the reflecting attention of the statesman, the law-maker, and the philosophical student of history, but it seems that its pages ought to be carefully read by every earnest and conscious participator in our great institutions, especially now, when the time approaches nearer and nearer, which will demand of us the gravest task— the reconstruction of the Union : a task which cannot be performed by the repetition of some stereotyped phrase or other, such as " The Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is." No great task in history has ever been performed—no serious difficulty, even in the individual lives of men, can ever be solved—by the repetition of verbal formulas, stale or new. Revolving repetition imparts no efficacy to the Buddhist prayer ; and those whom Cicero called the " centiliters of formulas" are not the saviors of their countries. Integrity, resolution, and wisdom, are the elements of great acts in grave times, and wisdom may he learned on some points from the work just mentioned.