for the variety and comprehensiveness of his treatment
of these earliest and greatest productions of the human
intellect would have interested all classes of readers.
He leaves nothing untouched—the origin of the poems,
the purpose and unity of the action, the divine
mechanism employed, the style and its various elements,
the concordance, discordance, and interpolations of the
text, and the biography and influence of the writer—
fifteen chapters are occupied with these various
discussions; and it is almost needless to add, that Mr. Mure
strongly opposes the Wolfian theory, arguing for the
individuality of Homer's authorship, and for the
personality of Homer himself. Apart from this great theme,
and that of the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod, we have
an outline of the history of lyric poetry, in its connexion
with the arts of music and dancing, a review of the
more remarkable occasions or objects of lyric celebration,
and biographical notices of the more distinguished
lyric poets. To the extracts given from the latter, Mr.
Mure has appended careful translations by himself; and
in a series of appendices to each volume he has dealt
with the leading matters of dispute and controversy
connected with his subject.

Mr. Coleridge's daughter has collected such of her
father's supposed writings in the Watchman, Morning
Post, and Courier, ranging between the years 1795 and
1817, as could with any certainty be identified for his,
and, with such as he avowed by his signature, has
published them in three duodecimo volumes, as
Essays on his own Times, or a second series of
The Friend. They are dedicated to Archdeacon
Hare, and embody not a little of that system of thought,
or method of regarding public affairs from the point
of view of a liberal and enlarged Christianity,
which is now ordinarily associated with what is called
the German party in the English Church. Mr. Coleridge's
daughter thinks that these essays establish her
father's virtual consistency, and in one sense they do.
His habits of thinking were always the same; but in
proportion as his perceptive or imaginative powers
predominated, their respective influences may be curiously
traced in the results to which they brought him. The
volumes are, in any case, not only a valuable contribution
to the history of a very remarkable man's mind, but also
to the history of the most powerful influence now
existing in the world—the Newspaper Press. But to the
latter the past month has also contributed a more regular
and direct illustration in the shape of two post octavo
volumes by Mr. F. Knight Hunt, entitled The Fourth
Estate. Mr. Hunt describes his book very fairly as
contributions towards a history of newspapers, and of the
liberty of the press, rather than as a complete historical
view of either; but he has had a proper feeling for the
literature of his subject, and has varied his entertaining
anecdotes of the present race of newspaper men, with
extremely curious and valuable notices of the past.

Of books on mixed social and political questions the
most prominent has been a new volume of Mr. Laing's
Observations on the Social and Political State of the
European People, devoted to the last two years (from
the momentous incidents of which Mr. Laing derives
sundry warnings as to the instability of the future, the
necessity of changes in education and political arrangements,
and the certain ultimate predominance of material
over imaginative influences in the progress of civilisation,
which his readers will very variously estimate, according
to their habits of thinking); and Mr. Kay's collections of
evidence as to the present Social Condition and Education
of the People in England and Europe, which he
has published in two thick post octavo volumes, and the
object of which is to show that the results of the primary
schools, and of the system of dividing landed property,
existing on the continent, has been to produce a certain
amount of mental cultivation and social comfort among
the lower classes of the people abroad, to which the same
classes in England can advance no claim whatever. The
book contains a great deal of curious evidence in support
of this opinion.

Of works strictly relating to modern history the first
volume of General Klapka's memoirs of the War in
Hungary, and a military treatise by Colonel Cathcart on the
Russian and German Campaigns of 1812 and 1813, may
be mentioned as having authority. Klapka was a
distinguished actor in the war he now illustrates by his
narrative, and Colonel Cathcart saw eight general actions
lost and won in which Napoleon commanded in person.

In the department of biography the principal
publications have been a greatly improved edition of Mr.
Charles Knight's illustrations of the Life of
Shakespeare, with the erasure of many fanciful, and the
addition of many authentic, details; a narrative of
the Life of the Duke of Kent, by Mr. Erskine Neale,
in which the somewhat troubled career of that very
amiable prince is described with an evident desire to
do justice to his character and virtues; and a Life
of Dr. Andrew Combe, of Edinburgh, an active and
benevolent physician, who led the way in that application
of the truths and teachings of physiology to health and
education, which has of late occupied so largely the
attention of the best thinkers of the time, and whose
career is described with affectionate enthusiasm by his
brother Mr. George Combe.—Not as a regular biography,
but as a delightful assistance, not only to our better
knowledge of the wittiest and one of the wisest of
modern men, but to our temperate and just judgments
of all men, we may mention the publication of the
posthumous fragments of Sydney Smith's Elementary
Sketches of Moral Philosophy.

To the department of poetry, Mr. Browning's Christmas
Eve and Easter Day has been the most prominent
addition. But we have also to mention a second and final
volume of More Verse and Prose by the late Corn-law
Rhymer; a new poetical translation of Dante's Divine
Comedy, by Mr. Patrick Bannerman; and a dramatic
poem, called the Roman, by a writer who adopts the fictitious
name of Sydney Yendys, on the recent revolutionary
movements in Italy. In prose fiction the leading
productions have been a novel on social life in America, by
Mr. Cooper, called the Ways of the Hour; one entitled
the Initials, depicting German social life, by a new
writer; and an historical romance, called Reginald
Hastings, of which the subject is taken from the English
civil wars, by Mr. Eliot Warburton.

The FINE ARTS have taken an unusually wide field
lately, and art progresses, like railways, by the mile.
The Moving Panorama mania with which English
artists were bitten by Mr. Banvard, showed itself very
strongly at Easter. Several canvas locomotives were set
a going on Easter Monday, but for an account of them
we cannot do better than refer our readers to Mr.
Booley's experiences, as set forth in No. IV. of
"Household Words."

Another instalment has been paid towards the
completion of the Nelson Column; the second of the
four bas-reliefs was put up at the commencement of the
month in the base of the column, immediately facing the
National Gallery. It is the work of Mr. Woodington.
The subject is the Nile, and the incident that in which
the surgeon of the ship is quitting a disabled sailor, that
he might attend to the wounded Admiral. "No," said
Nelson, "I will take my turn with my brave fellows."
The subdued suffering and settled composure of the
hero are well represented. The action is good, and the
story well made out. Two other bas-reliefs, together
with whatever else is necessary for the completion of
the column, are left to posterity.

The National Institution, a society of artists who
formerly exhibited their works under the name of "The
Free Exhibition of Modern Art," opened on the 14th
in Regent Street, a gallery of 373 pictures: those most
admired are Mr. R. Scott Lauder, the President of the
Association, "Galeotti, the Astrologer, showing Louis
XI. the First Specimen of Printing," "Christ appearing
to two of his Disciples, on the way to Emmaus." One
novel feature of interest is found in the landscapes of the
Williams family. Three brothers exhibit with their
names; but others of the family have adopted assumed
names, in order to prevent confusion. Most praise has
been bestowed upon "Noon," by one brother; "A
Scene in Sussex," by a second; and a "Woodland
River," by a third. The other pictures are so well
selected, that the gallery is full of interest. At the end
of the season it is to be thrown open gratis, for a
fortnight.