and Roman
Antiquities, announces a dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, the
articles to be written by the principal contributors to his previous
works.

THE CHRISTMAS BOOKS of the present season in England have not been very
remarkable. Mr. DICKENS, in an extra number of his Household Words,
printed _What Christmas is to Everybody_; and we have from WILKIE COLLINS,
_A New Christmas Story_; by the author of "The Ogilvies," _Alice Learmont,
a Fairy Tale of Love_; by the author of "The Maiden Aunt," a pleasant
little book entitled _The Use of Sunshine_.

Under the title of _Excerpta de P. Ovidii Nastonis_, Blanchard & Lea of
Philadelphia have published a series of selections from a poet whose
works, for obvious reasons, are not read entire in the schools. The
extracts present some of the most beautiful parts of this graceful and
versatile poet.

THE FINE ARTS

The American Art Unions have not been successful in the last year, unless
an exception may be made in regard to that of New England, at Boston. The
American, at New-York, deferred indefinitely its annual distribution of
pictures, on account of the small number of its subscriptions; and the
Pennsylvanian, at Philadelphia, by a recent fire in that city has lost its
admirably-engraved plates of Huntington's pictures from the _Pilgrim's
Progress_, the last of which was just completed and placed in the hands of
the printer. It will make no distribution.

A Sicilian artist, residing at Naples, has amused himself, and probably
pleased his sovereign, by composing a life-sized group, representing
Religion supporting King Ferdinand, and guarded by an angel, who places
his foot on an evil spirit. On the other side of this group is a child
bearing the scales of justice. "How much," writes a correspondent of the
_Athenaeum_, "the artist is to get for this plaster blasphemy, I know not;
but a more impudent caricature (at the present moment) it would be
difficult to imagine." Another artist has, however, beaten the Sicilian
sculptor quite out. A small bronze group represents Religion triumphing
over Impiety and Anarchy. Impiety is represented by a female figure, under
whose arm are two books inscribed Voltaire and Luther! Anarchy has taken
off her mask, and let fall two scrolls, on which are written _Communismo_
and _Constituto_.

PROFESSOR ZAHN, who has been engaged during a period of more than twenty
years in examining the rui