Ir is reported from Guatemala that a manuscript, by Francisco Ximenes, a celebrated Dominican, entitled "Historia de la Provincia de San Vicente de Chiappas y Goathmala," has just been discovered in a convent of that city, and that it contains most valuable materials for the ancient history of Mexico and Central America. Father Ximenes was a great traveler, and was remarkably well versed in the Indian languages. His writings are highly esteemed, and the manuscript just found, and which was known to exist, has long been sought after by Mexican

savans.

The circular of the Wyoming Conference Seminary (late the University of Northern Pennsylvania) shows an excellent programme for

the future career of the institution. Rev. Dr. Nelson Rounds is principal; he has a strong corps of teachers under him. The seminary includes a Biblical department for the gratuitous instruction of such as may wish systematic aid in the critical study of the Scriptures.

The "Memoirs and Letters of Sydney Smith" are at last out in England. They are edited by his daughter and Mrs. Austin. The book is to be printed for private circulation only. A volume likely to take a high place among the scientific books of England is a translation of the "Works of Arago," the French mathematician and politician. Lieutenant Sabine, translator of "Kossuth," and Rear-Admiral W. H. Smyth, author of the large astronomical book bearing his name, and published by Parker & Son, are the chief translators. Mr. David Laing, of the Signet Library, Edinburgh, is collecting and editing the works of Knox, which are soon to be reprinted. A new Quarterly Journal of Theological Literature is about to be issued in Glasgow, designed to expound and defend the distinctive view maintained by the Churches in connection with the Evangelical Union. It is to be under the editorial supervision of Rev. James Morrison, assisted by able theological writers. Southey's son-in-law, the Rev. J. W. Warter, is preparing for the press a collection of the poet's correspondence. A translation of Kugler's work on "The History of Art," will shortly appear from the pen of Mr. W. Ross, the translator of Lessing's "Laocoon." New editions of "Caleb Stukely," and "We are all Low People There," which originally appeared in "Blackwood," are now advertised. The author, Mr. Samuel Phillips, literary critic of the Times, died recently. Professor Creasy announces a "History of the Ottoman Turks," chiefly based upon Von Hammer. Mr. John Timbs, who has been collecting materials illustrative of the Antiquities of London, for the last twenty-five years, is about to issue his long-expected and important volume under the title of "Curiosities of London." "The Melbourne (Australia) Booksellers' Intelligencer" mentions that the newspaper press at that place is progressing so successfully that "a few literary men of business habits" might obtain lucrative engagements there. Messrs. Longmans announce Rev. R. J. Wilberforce's "Inquiry into the Principles

of Church Authority," second edition; "Light and Heat Simplified," by Thomas Tate; Mag netism, Voltaic Electricity," &c., by the same author; and "Life of Nicholas I.," by F. Mayne; 'Philosophy at the Foot of the Cross," by J. A. St. John. Messrs. Blackwood announce an Index to the first half-century of volumes of their Magazine, and a collection of the Miscellaneous Writings of Samuel Warren. A. Hall Virtue & Co. have in preparation "Lyrics of the Heart and Mind," by F. Tupper; also, "A Peep into the Canadian Forest," by Mrs. Traill, with illustrations; "The Old Chelsea Bunhouse," by the author of "Mary Powell." Mr. Murray has a long list of new works, among which are the

following, viz.: "The Russians at Home," by an Englishwoman; "Letters on Turkey," by N. A. Ubicini, 2 vols.; "Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New-Zealand Race," by Sir George Gray; "Hand-Book for Young Painters," by C. R. Leslie, R. A.: "A Biographical Dictionary of Italian Painters;"

Kugler's Hand-Book to the Italian Schools of Painting," third edition; Dr. Smith's "LatinEnglish Dictionary," two sizes; Stanley's "Notes on Corinthians;" The Works of Dr. Thomas Young," 4 vols.; "The Origin and Progress of the Inventions of James Watt," by J. P. Muirhead. Mr. Murray is also preparing to publish in his "British Classics," a carefully annotated edition of Hume's History of England. Mr. Newby announces "The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington," edited by Madden. Mr. Bentley will publish "A History of Christian Churches and Sects from the Earliest Ages of Christianity," by Rev. J. B. Marsden, to be issued in monthly parts. Chapman & Hall announce "Studies from Nature," by Dr. Hermann Masius. The subscription list for the assistance of Dr. Kitto, editor of the "Biblical Cyclopædia," two volumes, and other books, author of the "Lost Senses," &c., is enlarging very satisfactorily. The author of "Pelham" gave ten pounds; Longman & Co. and Simpkin & Co. gave ten pounds each. Kitto's books sold at auction. Lord John Russell, at a literary soiree in Bristol, asserted that there is an important branch in English literature yet to be filled up,-that void being the want of a good history of their own country. He spoke depreciatingly of Hume, for his notices of the character of Shakspeare and others; and denounced him, in a religious aspect, as the skeptic of skeptics. A Prospectus for the formation of a "Society for the Compilation of a General Literary Index," has been issued. It is to be hoped that the plan may be put in successful operation.

Dr.

From an official return, recently published in Paris, it appears that the number of public libraries in France, excluding those of Paris, and those of certain semi-public institutions, is 338, and that they possess 3,689,369 volumes and 44,070 manuscripts. It appears, moreover, that they are frequented on an average by 3,649 readers daily, (a very small number for so large a population as that of France,) and that they

cost annually, for employés and new purchases, not more than £16,000. Forty-one of these are, it is added, open to the public every evening.

The Cooperstown (New-York) Seminary and Female Collegiate Institute has a faculty of fifteen members under the principalship of Rev. J. L. G. M'Kowen. It includes a normal de

partment, with free tuition. The whole plan

and terms of the institution are of the most effective and liberal character.

M. Guizot is busily engaged in preparing for publication a new and important work on the English Revolution. M. Victor Cousin is progressing with a most important work on the Encyclopedists; he is also writing a book to be called "The Philosophy of the People." The Compte Alfred de Vigny is writing an historical novel. M. Villemain is engaged on the second volume of his "Souvenirs." M. Thiers has sent to press his long-promised pamphlet. M. St. Mark Girardin has also a work in hand, and M. Jules Janin contemplates re-editing "Diderot." The Catalogue of the Books, MSS., Autobiographies, &c., left by the great bookaeller, Renouard, comprises thirty-seven hundred numbers, including some rare and valued articles. The public sale of these continued thirty days. The "Academia della Crusca" in Italy is now engaged in printing a fifth edition

of its celebrated Dictionary of the Italian Language, which, as the product of eleven years, has reached the word "affitto." At this rate of procedure it will require five hundred and thirteen years and eleven months to complete the work. An interesting discovery of MSS. has been made at Tryes, viz.: the archives of the Abbey of Villeneuve, better known as the

Abbey of Neslo, which goes back to the ninth

century, and numbers over seven thousand pieces. The Rev. Dr. Th. Kliefoth, whose previous works have gained him a wide celebrity as a theological writer, has commenced an extensive work on Church matters. He calls it Acht Bücher von der Kirche. The same author has issued the first volume of Lithurgische Abhandlungen, in which the rituals of the wedding, ordination, and burial services are treated. The German edition of Francis Arago's works, edited by the most celebrated natural philosophers, Ranke, Fechner, d'Arrest, Schreibe, Dippe, and with the assistance of Baron Alexander von Humboldt, will be completed in 12 vols., viz., I-III, Biographical Sketches and Speeches; IV-VII, Scientific papers; VIIIIX, Scientific Treatises; X, Reports and Miscellanea; XI-XII, Popular Astronomy. To be finished by next spring, and each volume to be sold separately: vols. I, II, IV, are, we learn now ready.

Ir is said that a German sculptor, residing in Athens, has discovered the quarries of those celebrated marbles, the red and green antique, which have been sought after in vain from time immemorial. He found the red antique on the southern part of the chain of the Taygetus, and the green on the northern side of the Island of Tenos.

Mr. Finney, a dentist, late of Alexandria, Egypt, is reported to have found a stuffed tooth in a mummy, and several teeth in other mummies which bore marks of filling. If true, this is certainly one of the most remarkable facts which modern perseverance has yet brought to light concerning the arts of the ancients.

The paper used by the Japanese is of a remarkable kind. It is described as being very fine and light, something between the finest banknote paper and gossamer. It appears to be made from a pulp of the rice plant, and is very cohesive. The paper is watered in a very curious, complicated manner, with tracery and flowers, so that some of it looks like lace-work. These Japanese know how to make nice paper, and a knowledge of their materials and mode might be of some service to paper-manufacturers at this time.

A late scientific writer says: "Science has thrown even a poetry around the blue mold of a cheese-crust; and in the bloom of the peach the microscope has shown forth a treasury of flowers and gigantic forests, in the depths of which the roving animalcule finds as secure an

ambush as the lion within the gloomy jungles of Hindostan. In a drop of liquid crystal the water-wolf chases his wounded victim till it is changed to crimson with its blood. Ehrenberg has seen monads in fluid the twenty-four thousandth part of an inch in size, and in one drop of water five hundred million creatures.

A portrait of S. T. Coleridge, painted by Washington Allston, in 1814, has been engraved by S. Cousins. The artist, in a letter to Professor Reed of Philadelphia, thus described his production:-"It is Coleridge in repose; and, though not unstirred by the perpetual groundswell of his ever-working intellect, and shadowing forth something of the deep philosopher, it is not Coleridge in his highest mood-the When in that state, no face I poetic state. ever saw was like his; it seemed almost spirit made visible, without a shadow of the earthly about it. Could I then have fixed it on canvass! but it was beyond the reach of my art." This is said to be an admirable likeness and an excellent engraving.

The Palestine Archæological Association has held its first annual general meeting. It comprises one hundred and thirty members, possesses nucleus of a museum, and is sanguine of important results.

Two or three communications made to the Academy of Sciences of Paris, in recent sittings, are worthy of notice. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire gave an account of some portions of an egg of the Epyornis, the gigantic and very rare bird

of Madagascar, which have recently been conveyed to France. These portions show, he stated, the egg to have been of such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts. This egg was considerably larger than that which now exists in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, and which can only contain about eight and three quarters quarts. The learned naturalist also gave an account of his examination of some bones of the bird, which had been presented to him; but some of them he was obliged to reject as doubtful, and the others were not sufficiently numerous to enable him to state precisely the conformation of the bird they, however, showed that it differs considerably from that of the ostrich. M. de Saint Hilaire's paper gave rise to some interesting speculations about the Epyornis, which is but little known; and M. Valenciennes, in the course of them, expressed the opinion that it is a sea bird, that it ranks between the penguins and the aptenodytes, and that it lays its eggs in clefts of rocks and in sand. He, however, stated that the large size of its egg affords no certain indication of its own size. M. Schlegel reported that he has ascertained, beyond all doubt, that the famous fossil saurian of the quarries of Maestricht, described as a wonderful curiosity by Cuvier, is nothing more than an impudent fraud! Some bold impostor, it seems, in order to make money, placed a quantity of bones in the quarries, in such a way as to give them the appearance of having been recently dug up, and then passed them off as specimens of antediluvian creation. Being successful in this, he went the length of arranging a number of bones so as to represent an entire skeleton, and had thus deceived the learned Cuvier. In extenuation of Cuvier's credulity, it was stated that the bones were so skillfully colored as to make them look of immense antiquity, and he was not allowed to touch them lest they should crumble to pieces. But when M. Schlegel subjected them to rude handling, he found that they were comparatively modern, and that they were placed one by the other without that profound knowledge of anatomy which was to have been expected from the man bold enough to execute such an audacious fraud.

In 1851, Professor Pettenkofer and Ruland, of Bavaria, invented and patented a process for the manufacture of illuminative gas from wood. Since that time the new gas has been introduced and brought into general use in the cities of Basle, Ulm, Dramstadt, Cobourg, Bairenth,

Altenburg, and Heilbronn. Mr. Emil Breisach, chemist, of Bavaria, has recently introduced the process into the United States, and has demonstrated its utility and practicability by extensive and successful experiments at the gas-works in Philadelphia, and also at the Manhattan gasworks in New-York city.

If we look to electricity, says Faraday, it has, in the hands of the careful investigator, advanced to the most extraordinary results: it approaches at the motion of his hand; bursts from the metal; descends from the atmosphere; surrounds the globe: it talks, it writes, it records, it appears to him (cautious as he has learned to become) as a universal spirit in nature. If we look to photography, whose origin

is of our own day, and see what it has become in the hands of its discoverers and their successors, how wonderful are the results! The light is made to yield impressions upon the dead silver or coarse paper, beautiful as those it produced upon the living and sentient retina; its most transient impression is rendered durable for years; it is made to leave a visible or an invisible trace; to give a result to be seen now or a year hence; made to paint all natural forms and even colors; it serves the offices of war, of peace, of art, of science, and economy.

The Electric Telegraph in Italy.-The construction of telegraphic lines is making great progress in Italy at present. A direct line be tween Piedmont and Switzerland, by Brissago, was opened on the 1st. Another line was opened, some time ago, between the two countries by St. Julien. Caserta, and the towns of Cancello, Santa Maria, Capua, Mola, Terracina,

Nola, Salerno, and Avellino, are now connected with Naples by telegraphic lines, which are open to the public.

The inventive faculty of the age promises to familiarize us with another projectile of terrific power, which will cast into the shade all the shells now in use. There is before the Ordnance Committee, England, a shell charged with a liquid, which, after its release by the concussion of the ball, will instantaneously become a sheet of fire, burning to a cinder anything it may touch, and suffocating by its smoke any one brought within its radius. A column of infantry, a row of tents, a ship, storehouses and barracks, a forest, anything which acknowledges the terrible influence of fire, could be consumed in a few minutes by the visitation of a shell charged with this noxious fluid. It will require very careful handling by the artillery, for it is of so subtile a nature that the escape of any slight quantity would carry with it direful consequences. Like the boulet asphyxia, it is calculated to be formidable alike to friends

and foes if it be not watched with vigilance.

Herr Kaulbach, the famous German artist, is to paint two of the hundred High-Art pictures that King Maximilian has ordered for Munich. He has chosen "Alexander and Roxana" and the "Battle of Salamis." Herr Kreling, of Nuremberg, is painting the "Coronation of King Ludwig, of Bavaria,"-Herr Brauer, of Breslau, is painting for the Count de Reichenbach a great

picture of "Savonarola brought before the Sig

nory at Florence."

M. Le Verrier announced at a late sitting of the French Institute, that two more new planets had been discovered, making thirty-three now known. One was observed on the night of October 26th, by M. Goldschmidt, and the other on the night of the 28th of October by M. Chareniac. They have been named respectively Pomona and Polyhymnia.

In reference to the moon, Professor Phillips remarked, at a meeting of the British Association, at Liverpool: "At one time he believed that there was no trace of water to be seen; but he confessed that more recent observations, particularly those made with Lord Rosse's telescope, shook his belief in that opinion."

myth of Jupiter and Io, and the promontory of Scutari is imagined to have been the landing-place of these famous personages. It is also said, by some writers, to have been the burial-place of the wife of Chares, the Athenian general, who aided the Byzantines when attacked by Philip of Macedon, and some relationship has been attempted between these celebrated waters and the figure of a heifer which surmounted the monument erected to her memory. I have somewhere seen what purports to be the inscription which was carved upon the column of her tomb. If it is authentic, it is a disclaimer of this immortality, for the epitaph ran thus:

"I am not the image of the cow, daughter of Inachus, and I have not given my name to the Bosphorus which extends before me. Her the cruel resentment of Juno drove beyond the sea; but I who occupy this tomb, I am one of the dead-a daughter of Cecrops. I was the wife of Chares, and I sailed with that hero when he came to combat the ships of Philip. Until then I had been called Boidion, the young heifer; now, the wife of Chares, I enjoy two continents."

The belles of the present day would not be flattered with the appellation "the young heifer," but it was a complimentary expression among the Greeks, and Homer sings of "ox-eyed Juno."

The Golden Horn undoubtedly receives its name from its resemblance to the cornucopia, and from the wealth which the city derived from the advantages of its position upon its shores. The narrow passage which separates Europe and Asia is called the Thracian Bosphorus, to distinguish it from the strait which connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Azof, formerly called the Cimmerian Bosphorus, and now known as the Straits of Caffa. Mount Hermes, a peak of the Balkan chain, borders the European shore, while the Asiatic boundary is terminated by the mountains of Bithynia, which descend to the Black Sea. The best views of these winding waters, which narrow and widen in various places, are from some of the hills which overlook their course. The most central and picturesque view is in Asia, from the summit of Kandili, at the foot of the Sultan's kiosque. Your readers can hardly gain an idea of the beautiful port of Constantinople as it spread out before me, from the imperfect and contracted accompanying sketch. How then can I give even a glimpse of the magnificent view which was spread before me from the heights of Kandili! No artist's pencil, though dipped in the colors of morning, could give it. Notwithstanding all the glowing descriptions I had read, I was ready to confess that language had been unable to exaggerate the marvelous beauty of this oriental panorama. I shall therefore attempt no pen-and-ink picture of what is perfectly indescribable, but endeavor to present some of the more prominent points of the tableau, which you can amuse yourself by grouping in imagination, with the perfect certainty that all your efforts will never surpass the reality. To the left, as you face Constantinople, are the Dardanelles in the distance, the

Sea of Marmora, the Mountains of Olympus, the point of the Seraglio, and all the city of Stamboul, with its swelling domes and the elegant minarets of its mosques. A little in advance are Galata, Pera, Top-Khana and the European shore, with its ports, villages and kiosques. Stamboul, Galata, and Scutari, the three cities which are comprised in Constantinople, are thus visible at a single glance. The right view from the same point, though facing the Black Sea, presents all the windings of these beautiful waters, their basins and defiles. In the foreground is the castle of Europe; beyond it are Therapia and Buïuk Déré, the residence of most of the foreign ambassadors to the Ottoman government; while upon the opposite shore are seen the Castle and Sweet Waters of Asia, the valley of Sultanich and Unkiar-Iskilicy, and finally the giant mountain behind which the Black Sea is concealed.

Lamartine said the Bay of Naples faded from his imagination when he gazed upon the enchanted picture of the Golden Horn. He adds that the glowing sky and transparent waters can alone mirror the marvelous beauty of this scenery, which changes and increases with every glance. I recollect laughing heartily over the story of one of my countrymen who was thrown into such ecstasies by this gorgeous panorama that it produced a violent fever. The poor fellow recovered, as he deserved; but true to his enthusiasm, notwithstanding the penalty which it had cost him, he persisted in declaring that if but one look upon earth was vouchsafed to his eyes, that look should be spent upon the Golden Horn. The story recurred to my memory many times as I wandered amid this unrivaled scenery, and though it failed not to call up a smile, it no longer seemed as laughably incredible as before.

The sentiments awakened by these charming scenes are all glad, joyful—ecstatic, I was about to add in the spirit, perhaps, of my spasmodic countryman. You may have experienced similar emotions on some beautiful spring morning while wandering in flowery vales, which glittered with dewy perfume and echoed to rural melodies. Nature smiles and laughs upon the shores of the Bosphorus; she does not awe and silence you with grandeur or solemnity. Some of the elevations which form a verdurous amphitheater