NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

THE two leading publishers of the day have brought a question of some importance before the public in a
correspondence with the premier on the subject of the manufacture and sale of school books, under
Government sanction, and with the help of Government money, by the Irish Education Commission. These
books, Messrs. Longman and Murray assert, are sold in England at prices below those for which books can
be sold by booksellers in this country; and several of them, by which the English bookseller has been thus
undersold, have proved to be flagrant piracies from the property of the very men so injured. It is further
asserted that the agents of the Irish Commissioners are now in the habit of supplying, by means of their
publications, as much as one-fourth of the whole English demand for school-books; and the complaint not
only is that a monopoly is by this means established, to the injury of the private trader, but that the public
are deprived of all security against inferior and dishonest compilations. There can be no doubt that this
complaint is justly founded, and that a remedy will have to be applied. Government has not a jot more
right to set up as book-makers and booksellers with the public money, and undersell the men of Albemarle-
street or the Row, than they would have (in the language of the remonstrance to Lord John) "to take
possession of the Isle of Wight, or some other district, to grow corn upon it, to construct bakehouses, and to
supply the people with bread at less than its cost price, making up the deficit by taxes levied on those very
agriculturists whom they had thus done their best to destroy." It is pleasant to find such sound
principles as pervade these letters of the magnates of the "trade," signed by the publisher of the
Quarterly Review.

The past has not been a busy month in publications
of any importance, and our summary is necessarily brief.

The Memoirs of William Wordsworth, by his nephew,
the Canon of Westminster, turns out to be no more
than a lengthened and not very brilliant illustrative
commentary, chiefly by the poet himself, of his various
poetical writings. It has nothing of the variety, animation,
or life of a real biography. The Memoirs of
Horace Walpole and his contemporaries, though not
deficient in either amusement or information, prefers
almost as few claims to rank as a regular biography.
It would be more correctly described as a series of
papers on the principal incidents of Walpole's life, and
the most notable of his acquaintances and friends. An
ably executed Life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish, by
Doctor George Wilson, issued as one of the volumes of
the Cavendish Society, comes more within the formal
biographical conditions; the nature of Cavendish's
labours and discoveries justifying what might otherwise
have been the too strictly scientific object subserved
by Doctor Wilson. The volume contains abstracts of
his more important scientific papers, and a very
elaborate examination of the claims of the various
discoverers of the composition of water.

The Rev. Mr. Shepherd's first volume of a proposed
History of the Church of Rome may be described as a
not unsuccessful attempt to adapt the method of Bayle
to the purpose and form of modern publication. The
text of the history is exceedingly brief and succinct,
occupying perhaps not more than a fifth of the volume;
but this is followed by illustrations and proofs at great
length (in Bayle they would have been notes) of the
various statements in the narrative. The plan is
excellently adapted to the purpose of the writer, which
is to subject to a searching and separate examination
the authorities which alone exist for the pretences and
impostures of the early Roman church. The period
occupied by the volume is to nearly the close of the
fourth century.—Two other publications connected with
religion may also be mentioned in this place. Mr.
Hamilton Thom and Mr. John James Tayler, two
ministers of the Unitarian communion, in high and
just esteem with all the members of that persuasion,
have issued, the first a volume of discourses designed
to convey the spirit and significance of St. Paul's
Epistles to the Corinthians, and the second a volume of
similar discourses meant to illustrate the Christian
Aspects of Faith and Duty, both eloquently written,
and in a very exalted religious tone.

Hartley Coleridge's Essays and Marginalia are full of
interest and originality. So (with the additional
element of moral courage and fearless inquiry of no
ordinary Kind) are Doctor William Gregory's Letters to
a Candid Inquirer on Animal Magnetism. Other
noticeable works of a miscellaneous kind are An
Excursion to California over the Prairie, the Rocky
Mountains, and the Great Sierra Nevada, by a very
lively and unaffected Irish writer; London Exhibited
in 1851, by Mr. Weale, the architectural publisher,
with the advantage of good scientific assistance; some
Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the last Half
Century, in the sensible if not very original style of
what is called the old school, by Mr. D. M. Moir; a
clever Journal of a Landscape Painter in Albania, by
Mr. Lear; and two stories by lady writers, entitled
Caleb Field and Catherine Erlof of which both the
subjects are historical, and treated with considerable skill.

The Theatrical productions of the month have been
of an ephemeral kind, consisting only of extravaganzas,
and burlesques for the Easter holidays. No novelty has
been brought forward at either of the Italian Opera
Houses.

The sixth annual dinner of the friends of the General
Theatrical Fund took place on the 14th, at the London
Tavern. Mr. Charles Dickens occupied the chair, and
the company consisted of nearly 200 gentlemen, among
whom were many persons of literary distinction. The
galleries were crowded with ladies, many of them being
eminent actresses. The toast of the evening,
"Prosperity to the Institution," was given by the chairman,
and responded to by Mr. Buckstone, in his capacity of
treasurer. As an evidence of the popularity and recognised
utility of an institution that undertook to provide
for the decayed and helpless of the whole theatrical
calling, no matter to what particular theatre they
belonged, or whether in the metropolis or the provinces,
Mr. Buckstone mentioned that the assets at present in
hand considerably exceeded £6,000; whereas the Drury-
Lane Fund, when established, for the same number of
years, only reached two-thirds of that amount. After
some references to legislative interference with the
bestowal of theatrical annuities over £30, owing to the
operation of the act relative to burial societies, he said
that a charter was being applied for to obviate this
difficulty, and he had no doubt the committee would be
able to allow annuities to the utmost limits the generosity
of the public would justify.—Mr. John Forster proposed
the health of the chairman, who briefly returned thanks;
and gave in succession, as the representatives of two
most important branches of the dramatic art—the
managerial and the acting—the healths of Mr. Webster
and. Mr. James Wallack, both gentlemen making their
acknowledgments.