on dark; and, in years about
eight and thirty. His physiognomy would be clownish in expression, if
his eyes did not redeem his other features. He spoke of 'Festus,' and of
its fame in America, of which he seemed very proud. In England, it has
only reached the third edition, while eight or nine have been published
in the States. You know my opinion of the work. It is as far from being
a great poem as the Thames, compared with the Mississippi or the Ohio,
is from being a great river. Anxiously, anxiously have I sought one
striking original idea in the whole poem (appalling in its length), but
to no purpose. The transcendental literature of Germany absorbs all
that, at first glance, arrests the attention. Without learning,
imagination, or the attraction of a beautiful metre (like that of
Tennyson's 'Princess'), I am at a loss to know what has given this poem
its notoriety. Not its daring speculation, surely, for it is but a timid
compromise between Orthodoxy and Universalism."

* * * * *

H. F. CLINTON has published in London the concluding volume of his
_Fasti Romani_: the civil and literary chronology of Rome and
Constantinople from the death of Augustus to the death of Heraclius. The
first volume, containing the chronological tables, was published in
1845, and formed a continuation of the _Fasti Hellenici_, by the same
author. It came down to the death of Justin II., A. D. 578. The present
volume continues the tables from the latter date to the death of
Heraclius, A. D. 641; but the greater part of it consists of a series of
learned dissertations on various points connected with the civil and
literary history of the Roman and Byzantine empires.

* * * * *

CAPTAIN J. D. CUNNINGHAM, author of the "History of the Sikhs," who was
dismissed from his political situation at Bhopal, by orders of the Court
of Directors, for having published an official correspondence, without
the permission of his immediate superiors, has been recalled to public
employment by the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie having just
appointed him general superintending engineer in the north-western
provinces.

* * * * *

MR. HEPWORTH DIXON, author of "Howard and the Prison-World of Europe,"
has published in London a Life of William Penn, which will be
republished immediately by Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia.

* * * *