omen_, now
in course of publication in Berlin, is to be reproduced here, with
suitable additions. We need, while discussions of the sphere and
capacities of women are so common among us, a work of real learning and
authority, in which the part which the sex has borne and is capable of
bearing in the business of civilizing, shall be carefully and honestly
exhibited. There are fifteen or twenty volumes of short biographies of
women now in print in this country, with prospects of others--all
worthless except this extensive German work, which is considerably
advanced, and for its literary merit as well as for the interest of its
materials, will command an unusual degree of attention.

* * * * *

Countess Ida Hahn Hahn is writing a work to be called _My Way from
Darkness to Light, from Error to Truth_. She has became a Catholic, and
this book is intended to tell why. A cheap edition of her works is
publishing at Berlin. We presume they are no longer in her control, but
belong to her publishers, as she could scarcely consent to reprint some
of them.

* * * * *

A new work bearing as its title the single word _Italia_, is about to be
published at Frankfort on the Main. It is a complete artistic, historic
and poetic manual for travellers in that lovely peninsula.

* * * * *

The Cologne Musical Society lately offered a prize for the best
symphony. Eighty-three have been offered, of which one only seems to be
a pure plagiarism.

* * * * *

A book just published in Germany under the title of _Berlin und die
Berliner_ contains some exceedingly interesting details concerning the
great naturalist ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, from which the _International_
translates the following: "When, in the years 1834-5, we young students
thronged into lecture room No. VIII., at eight o'clock on winter
mornings, to hear Boeckh on Greek literature and antiquities, we used to
see in the crowd of students in the dark corridor a small, white-haired,
old, and happy-looking man, dressed in a long brown coat. This man was
the _studiosus philologiae_, Alexander von Humboldt, who came, as he
said, to go through again what he had neglected in his youth. When we
met him in the lecture-room we respectfully made way for him; for though
we had no respect for any body, especially professors, Humboldt was an
exception, for he knew 'a