practical effect to this denunciation by selecting one of the most distinguished scholars of Germany for a
public and gross insult, which he was permitted to administer unrebuked in the highest assembly of gentlemen
known in England. This eccentric Ex-Chancellor, it need hardly be added, is also a Chancellor, being
the head of a University specially called into existence twenty years ago, by himself, as a practical
contrast and defiance to the older educational institutions which he had then been all his life denouncing
as obsolete, but in which he now sees nothing to remove, nothing to inquire into, no exclusiveness, no
sinecurism, nothing to impede the extension of knowledge , and nothing that does not tend to widen
the circle of educated, thoughtful, large-minded men.

The class of literature to which the largest additions
have been made during the past month, is that of biography.
Mr. Edmund Phipps has published extracts from
the diaries and literary remains of the author of
Tremaine, with biographical and critical comment, under
the title of Memoirs of the Political and Literary Life
of Robert Plumer Ward; and the book has been
made more interesting than the subject would have
seemed to promise, by the fact of Mr. Ward's intimate
connexion, both in private and public life, with
the leading tory statesmen of the administrations of
Addington, Perceval, and Liverpool. The political
and administrative characteristics of the Duke of
Wellington have probably never had such vivid illustration.
Mr. Leigh Hunt has published his Autobiography, with
Reminiscences of Friends and Contemporaries, some of
it the republication of a former work, but the greater
part original, or at least so changed by interpolations,
recantations, or additions, as to produce the effect of
novelty. The Reverend Mr. Field, an enthusiast for
the separate and silent system, has published a new
Life of Howard, dedicated to Prince Albert, of which
the design appears to be to counteract the evil tendency of
a recent memoir of the philanthropist, remarkable for
what the reverend enthusiast calls "the advocacy of
democratic principles, and the aspersion of a godly
prince." Each in a goodly-sized volume, we have had
a sort of general biographical notice of Celebrated
Etonians, and of Speakers of the House of Commons , the
first by an able man, quite competent to the subject.
Miss Pardoe has edited the first volume of a series of
Memoirs of the Queens of Spain, of which the author is
a Spanish lady, resident in America. An ingenious
northern antiquary has published memorials of one of
the old border mansions, called Dilston Hall, which
amounts in effect to an interesting Memoir of the Earl
of Derwentwater, who suffered in the Jacobite rebellion.
And, finally, Mr. Andrew Bisset has done good service
to both history and biography by a very careful publication
of the Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell,
Lord Chatham's ambassador at the court of Frederic the
Great, and one of the very ablest of English diplomatists.

To the department of philosophy a somewhat remarkable
contribution is to be noticed under the title of The
Progress of the Intellect as exemplified in the religious
development of the Greeks and Hebrews. The writer is
Mr. Robert William Mackay, a name not likely to remain
uncelebrated (whether for good or ill) after the publication
of such a work. Its design is to explain by a
rationalistic process all the religious faiths and beliefs
which have exerted the greatest influence over man, and
to refer them exclusively to moral and intellectual
development. ln this design the writer may, or may
not, have succeeded; but it is certain, making all
drawbacks on the score of what has probably been borrowed
from German investigation, that the book has high
pretensions to eloquence and research, and reminds us
of a time when publication was less frequent than now,
and a single book might embody the labour of a life.
For its antidote in respect of opinion and purpose there
has been published not inopportunely, after a peaceful
slumber of nearly two centuries in the library at Wotton,
A Rational Account of the True Religion, by our good
old gentlemanly John Evelyn. Here the design is, by
all possible arguments and authorities, to confirm our
faith in Christianity.

We must speak very summarily and briefly of
the publications in general literature. Of books
of travel and adventure the most attractive and
interesting in point of subject is Five Years of a
Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa,
by Mr. Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, a kinsman of
the Chief of Argyll, in whom a love of deer-
stalking seems to have gradually expanded into
dimensions too gigantic to be satisfied with anything
less than the stalking of the lion, the elephant, the
hippopotamus, the giraffe, or the rhinoceros. The book is
filled with astonishing incidents and anecdotes, and
keeps the reader very nearly as breathless with excitement
as the elephant and lion-hunter himself must have been.
Mr. Aubrey de Vere has published some very graceful
Picturesque Sketches of Greece and Turkey; and the
brave and high-minded old General Pepe has given the
world A Narrative of Scenes and Events in Italy from
1847 to 1849. Mr. Johnston, the distinguished geographer
of Edinburgh, has issued the most complete
General Gazetteer of the World that has yet been
comprised in a single volume; and as part of the republication
of the treatises of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana,
in separate and portable volumes, we have to mention
an interesting volume on Greek Literature by Mr.
Justice Talfourd, the Bishop of London, and other
accomplished scholars. In poetical translation, we have
had a new version of Æschylus by Professor Blackie, of
Aberdeen; and in poetry, with the title of In Memoriam,
a noble and affecting series of elegies to the memory of
a friend from the pen of Mr. Alfred Tennyson.

The thirty-seventh annual Exhibition of the British
Institution was opened to the public on the 8th. There
are 171 pictures, lent by a variety of owners. Among
them are works by Guercino, Velasquez, Rubens,
Rembrandt, Titian, Guido, Vandyck, Tintoretto,
Domenichino, Holbein, and some of the painters of the
Dutch School. Of the English School there are specimens
by Reynolds, Wilkie, Wilson, Gainsborough,
Beechey, Liversedge, Stuart, Newton, Callcott, and
others: the whole forming a very interesting collection.

Verdi's "Nabucodonosar," produced a few years
since at Her Majesty's Theatre under the title of "Nino,"
was brought out at the rival house on the 4th, with
another change of name, being now called "Anato."
It proved a failure, as might have been expected.

"La Tempesta," an opera founded on Shakespeare's
"Tempest," the libretto written by Scribe and translated
into Italian, and the music composed by Hálevy, was
performed for the first time at Her Majesty's Theatre
(for which house it was written and composed) on the
8th, with the most triumphant success. The character
of Miranda is sustained by Madame Sontag, Prospero by
Coletti, Ferdinand by Baucarde, Caliban by Lablache,
and Ariel is danced by Carlotta Grisi.

"Le Prophete" of Meyerbeer was re-produced at the
Royal Italian Opera on the 20th, and was performed in
the same manner as last season, the only change of any
moment being the substitution of Madame Castellan for
Miss Hayes in the part of Bertha, and of Formes for
Marini in Zacharias. The opera was received with
undiminished enthusiasm.

A three-act play, called "Power and Principle," by
Mr. Morris Barnett, was produced at the Strand Theatre
on the 10th, and favourably received. It is an abridged
and simplified version of the "Kabal und Liebe," of
Schiller.

The eighth Philharmonic Concert took place on the
17th, closing a remarkably successful season.

Jenny Lind has just given six concerts at Stockholm,
in aid of the pension fund for the widows and orphans
of the performers at the Theatre Royal of that city.
The clear profit has amounted to upwards of £2400
sterling.