ears 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 any thing 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. Copious extracts from the work will be found in the preceding
pages of this number.--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. Johnson, 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 Encyclopaedia
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, a new version of _AEschylus_ by Professor Blackie, of
Aberdeen, has been issued; and in poetry, with the title of _In
Memoriam_, a noble and affecting series of elegies to the memory of a
friend (son of the historian Hallam), from the pen of Mr. Alfred
Tennyson.

Considerable interest was excited by the unswathing of an Egyptian mummy
at the residence of Lord Londesborough, at which Mr. Birch of the
British Museum, describing the embalming process, and following in this
the narrative of Herodotus, said the subject had evidently suffered from
the use of bitumen and the application of heat, as the bones were
charred and the muscles calcined. DR. CORMACK has published a letter in
the _Athenaeum_ expressing and sustaining the opinion that all mummies
were prepared in this way.--A recent number of Galignani contains an
interesting item of intelligence. It may be remembered that GOETHE in
1827 delivered over to the keeping of the Government of Weimar a
quantity of his papers, contained in a sealed casket, with an injunction
not to open it until 1850. The 17th of May being fixed for breaking the
seals, the authorities gave formal notice to the family of