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THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE.

by George Borrow, Esq.; and, by the same au-
thor, a sequel to " Lavengro," entitled "The
Romany Rye;" "The Life of Dr. Thomas
Young," the inventor of hieroglyphics, by the
Dean of Ely; and the miscellaneous works of
Dr. Young, by the Dean of Ely and John Leitch,
Esq. Of contributions to Eastern Literature,
Mr. Murray has in the press, "A Journey through
Albama," by Lord Broughton; "A Journey and
Residence in the Crimea," by H. Danby Sey-
mour, M. P.; "A Bird's-eye View of India," by
Sir Erskine Perry, M. P.; "The Crimea and
Odessa," by Professor Koch; "Turkey and its
Inhabitants," by M. A. Ubicini; and "Sinai and
Palestine," by the Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.

The honor was reserved to an American to

present the first complete work on the principles of the law of nations in the English language. This was the book entitled "Elements of International Law, with a History of the Science," first published in 1836, by Henry Wheaton, then resident minister from the

United States to the court of Berlin. Three

editions of this work have been published in this country, at Philadelphia, in 1836, 1844, and in 1846; one edition was printed in London in 1836; and two editions in the French language were published in Leipsic in 1848 and 1852-the latter under Mr. Wheaton's eye. We believe, also, that German and Swedish translations have been published. The French is the language of European diplomacy, and this work is an authority in the cabinets of Europe. The American work is nearly if not quite out of print, and many will be glad to learn that a new edition, edited by Hon. William B. Lawrence, of Rhode Island, and to be issued by Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., of Boston, is nearly ready. It will be accompanied by a memoir of the author.

English Religious Papers.-An English correspondent of the Boston Congregationalist says:

"There is only one paper that possesses the confldence and patronage of the large body of Methodists in this country-the Watchman. Its subscribers number about four thousand; its chief editor is J. C. Rigg, Esq., and its business and office editor is Mr. W. Gawtress. This paper has rapidly advanced in public estimation since it was intrusted to the editorial management of Mr. Rigg. lishman, and an earnest Methodist, Mr. Rigg regards Although a thorough Engwith enthusiasm all that is good in other communions and in other lands; and, especially, he is far ahead of the denomination to which he belongs, in having shaken off all foolish prejudices against the religion and the people of your vast republic. Mr. Rigg has also done much for the Watchman by enlisting some most able pens to write in its columns. The Rev. W. Arthur, author of the "Successful Merchant," George Osborn, John Scott, and the editor's brother, J. H. Rigg, are some of the individuals engaged.

"The Wesleyan Times, projected by the Wesleyan Reformers, still lives; but since the strange disorganization of the Reformers themselves their paper has fallen off in its circulation. The first editor, Mr. Harrison, in some mysterious way was compelled to leave the country; his successor, the Rev. W. L. Horton, abandoned his post after occupying it only a few months, when the Reform Committee took the paper into their own hands, engaging the sub-editor of the Patriot, Mr. Hare, to write the leaders; and in this way the paper has been conducted to the present time. It cannot, therefore, long survive the absence of a competent editor, and the anarchy spreading among its own supporters.

"There are three papers connected with the Church of England, but so miserably strait-laced and bigoted, that they scarcely merit a record. Of these the Church

and State Gazette, and the English Churchman, have a losing circulation; while the Record, supported by the Evangelicals in the Church, has a list of 3,500 subscribers."

Errors of Campbell.-Thomas Campbell, the poet, is said to have rejected Miss Mitford's papers when he was Monthly Magazine." They found a place in the editor of the "New "Lady's Monthly Magazine," and were subsequently brought together in a volume under the title of "Our Village.”

Chambers's Edinburgh Journal says of "Barludicrous in the pretence of morality Mr. Barnum's Life," that there is something almost num puts forth in the midst of his confessions. Self-convicted as a most extensive dealer in

humbug, he claims to be regarded as a pattern of virtue and a saint, and seems to think his readers will believe him. Those readers may well afford a smile at the credulity of a man who has played so unmercifully with the credulity of others. But the book, in its general aspect, is anything but calculated to leave a pleasurable impression upon the mind. It is as much an evidence in its way of popular weakness and ignorance, as the records of the witchsuperstitions of two centuries ago,-of weakness and ignorance too, not only among the humbler classes, but among those which, if not representing the intelligence, may at least be supposed to represent the refinement of the age. Who can read, without something akin to a feeling of shame, of the manner in which a miserable dwarf was received in the halls of

royalty, or of the eagerness with which the eccentric taste displayed by the highest personage in the land was imitated by the whole of the world of fashion? Mr. Barnum has unconsciously read us a lesson which we ought to ponder on; but it is humiliating, although instructive."

A Good Suggestion.-Norton's Literary Gazette says that a distinguished professor in one of our colleges, suggests the great want of a general catalogue of all the graduates of all our colleges, either chronological or alphabetical, or both. The attempts already made have been deficient They have not contained all the colleges; but in one respect, and superfluous in another. the honorary degrees, which are of little consequence, have been given. We need some means of determining where our public men have been educated. Who will undertake this work?

The last Annual Report of the New-York Mercantile Library Association shows that the present number of members is 4,603; the total accessions for the year 1854 being 1,216, only 411 having withdrawn during the same period. The expenditures for 1854 amounted to $10,214 09; of which $2,074 17 was spent for books, $944 90 for periodicals, and $381 22 for binding, besides $212 from the Demilt legacy. The number of volumes added by donation 142, and by purchase 2,267; of which 90 are folios and quartos, 767 octavos, and 1,552 duodecimos. No institution of the country has more spirit or

more success.

Lord Brougham is at his country seat at Cannes, in the south of France, preparing his works for publication in some ten or twelve volumes, post 8vo., by a Glasgow firm.

Arts and Sciences.

MECHANIC improvements, in the fine arts, seem to be an aptitude of our own artists. Powers has made several very important ones, which facilitate much the manual drudgery of the artist's work. Hart, another of our artists, now at Florence, has also hit upon something of value in the same line. A correspondent of an "he has been engaged English Journal says upon it for nine or ten years, and has only recently succeeded in bringing it into its present working state. It aims at reducing labor, and at giving unerringly the outline of the figure. As it works on mathematical calculations, its measurements of course must be infallible. Another great advantage of it is, that it enables the artist to fix his ideas on the instant, an advantage which particularly affects drapery. Let it be ever so well arranged, on your cast it droops, a fold loses its fullness, and it is excessively difficult to work out the original arrangement; whereas this instrument obtains such immediate and accurate measurements as not to be deviated from. 'Once that I have made them,' said Mr. Hart, my man can work them out as well as myself; and I am free to pursue other objects.' As the patents are not yet all completed, I am not at liberty to give a description of the instrument, which I saw, as well as some busts which had been worked by it. I may say generally, however, that it transfers from the life to clay, plaster, or any other substance, all human forms in their mathematical proportions and relations to one another with a dispatch and accuracy unattainable by the eye in harmony and expression. It will also transfer with mathematical precision all forms in sculpture already produced to marble or any other material, without in the slightest degree injuring them. In this respect it is to statuary what photography is to painting. Among other objects, in its wide application, it will transfer draperies to the clay models from the figures before they become rigid."

A Paris paper informs us that the library attached to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris comprises upward of forty thousand volumes and ten thousand smaller publications on natural history, together with a vast number of manuscripts on the same subject, some of them illuminated. Among the manuscripts containing designs are those of the monk Plumier, on the plants of the West India Islands; those of Tournefort, on the plants of the Levant; those of the Spanish naturalist, Norona, on the plants and animals of Java and the Philippines; those of the Abbé Manesse and De Sonnerat, on European ornithology; and those of Commerson, on the zoology and botany of the numerous countries he visited. The last-mentioned, which contain upward of one thousand two hundred designs, were frequently consulted by Lacépède for his "History of Fish and Reptiles," and by Cuvier for his "Tableau du Règne Animal." As to the illuminated manuscripts, a great many are of extraordinary value, and not a few really remarkable for the excellence of their execution and the freshness with which their

colors are preserved. There are likewise in the library some very singular Chinese manuscripts, representing fish, and a Chinese treatise on anatomy, with figures.

Pompeii.-A new work has appeared in France on Pompeii. It says the edifices are generally small, but nothing is forgotten to render them convenient. The decoration is in so uniform a taste, that Mazois was at first inclined to think that it was the work of the same artists, directed by one and the same man. Marbles are found rarely, except in the temples and theaters; the chief decorations being mural paintings, either mosaic or stucco arabesques. The most striking feature of the city is the profusion of ornamental detail even in the meanest house. The walls are painted in fresco, black, red, yellow, blue, or green. The arabesques were painted on dry ground, and are not encaustic. Mosaic pavements were universal in this little city of artists and art-lovers. The simplest are white, with black borders; others are labyrinths of white and black cubes, and a few are richly colored.

There is every reason to believe, says Norton's Gazette, that, at least, Benjamin Franklin will receive the needless, yet just compliment, of a monumental statue. In January, 1854, a committee of Bostonians was appointed to select a model and to report upon the subject, with a view to the immediate execution of the work. On the last anniversary of Franklin's birth-day, the committee made a full and satisfactory report, stating that $15,600 had been collected, and a contract entered into with Richard J. Greenough, Esq., for the completion of the work, according to the following design: A granite base, with the full length figure of Franklin standing, with a cane in his right hand, and his hat under On the base there will be four his left arm. bass-reliefs representing different scenes in the life of Franklin.

A telescopic comet has been announced as discovered at the Paris Observatory. At 174 hours on Sunday, the 14th of January, one was seen at 24 to the south-west of y in the constellation of the Scorpion. As well as could be made out, from the state of the sky, its right tion 27°. The comet was again seen on Thursascension was 22510, and its austral declinaday, the 18th. It has, it is stated, no tail. It is to M. Dien that the honor of its discovery belongs.

Value of the Willow. The importance of the willow to man has been recognized from the earliest ages, and ropes and twigs were probably among the very first of human manufactures in countries where these trees abound. The Romans used the twigs for binding their vines, and tying their reeds in bundles, and made all sorts of baskets of them. A crop of willows was considered so valuable in the time of Cato, that he ranks the salictum or willow-field next in value to the vineyard and the garden. In France, the leaves, whether in a green or dried state, are considered the very best food for cows

and goats; and horses in some places are fed entirely upon them from the end of August till November. Horses so fed, it is stated, will travel twenty leagues a day without being fatigued. In the north of Sweden and Norway, as also in Lapland, the inner bark is kiln-dried and ground, for the purpose of mixing with oatmeal in time of scarcity. The bark of the willow and the leaves are astringent. The former is much used in tanning.

Capacity of the great European edifices.-St. Peter's at Rome will hold 54,000 persons; the Cathedral at Milan, 37,000; St. Paul's, at Rome, 32,000; St. Paul's, at London, 25,000; St. Petronia, Bologna, 24,000; St. Sophia's, Constantinople, 23,000; Cathedral at Florence, 24,000; Cathedral at Antwerp, 24,000; St. John Lateran, 22,000; Notre Dame, Paris, 21,000; Cathedral at Pisa, 13,000; St. Stephen's, Vienna, 12,000; Cathedral at Vienna, 11,100; St. Peter's, Bologna, 11,400; St. Dominic's, Bologna, 11,000; St. Mark's, Venice, 7,000.

In 1851 Professors Peftenkofer 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, Darmstadt, Cobourg, Baireuth, 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 gas works in this city. The process is exceedingly simple, differing from the method employed in the manufacture of coal gas, only in the means used for the disintegration of the gas from the other properties of the vapor evolved from the wood. By this process a single retort produces from eight to nine thousand cubic feet of gas per twenty-four hours, at an expenditure of no more fuel than is required for the same time in the production of coal gas, while the product of the latter is only three thousand two hundred cubic feet. This new gas burns freely, with a clear, sharp, steady flame, brighter than coal gas, and produces but little if any soot. Its smell resembles ether, or old and mellow cider, is by no means unpleasant, and possesses not a particle of affinity to that of coal gas. With gas from coal it readily assimilates, and is said to improve the light of the latter.

A statue of Goethe has just been completed by Steinhauser, the sculptor, who is now living in Rome, for the Grand Duchess Sophia of Saxe Weimar. The figure is represented seated, the upper part of the body uncovered, the drapery having fallen down on the knees of the statue: it is full of power and dignity. Goethe holds in one hand a lyre, which rests on the knees; the other, with a laurel wreath, hangs down. The harmony of the figure is, however, considerably marred by the introduction of a diminutive full-length statue of Psyche, which is out of all proportion with the size of the principal figure. The Psyche stands in front of the poet, grasping the lyre, but with her back turned to him.

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The group is partly taken from a drawing of Bettina von Arnheim, who executed it for the title-page of her "Letters;" but, like many other ideas of this brilliant but erratic genius, it is thoroughly unpractical.

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Book Illuminations. - Mr. Ruskin says:"Great good might be done in our age if we had one book well illuminated-he did not say the Bible, but some great book of poetry which might be susceptible from its comparative brevity of being beautifully illuminated. should like men to have large libraries, but he should also like to see them value and love their books more, and to feel in the manufacture of a book what the people of the middle ages felt-that they were employed on a holy thing. He did not know at what cost illuminators might now be able to produce a finely illuminated page, but if they could give him some data on that subject he would try to bring it before the public. For his part he would infinitely rather have a finely illuminated book than he would have a picture. He would like to have a book of which every page was a picture. If the thing once became fashionable, it would go on as a matter of course. The result would be that the eye would be disciplined. People did not know what a true Titian was. his works were so famous; and by disciplining It was his perfect harmony of color for which the eye with fine harmonies, all that would be felt which was now a dead letter. He could not imagine a happier life than that of a person devoting himself to the art of which he had been talking, with something of the disposition of a monk of old. If people would cultivate it, a totally new impulse would be given to art in every direction, and probably to literature, for people would think it better to have a monument in the shape of an illuminated book than in that of windows. He thought a man engaged in writing a book would take more care in its composition, if he knew that it was afterward to be beautifully illuminated, than if it was printed in the ordinary way, and scattered all over the world, with all the errors committed in it by printer's devils."

It is stated that an enterprising German is about to secure a patent for his discovery of flax, or its equivalent, in fifteen different kinds of common weeds. The discovery is to be turned to account in the manufacture of numerous articles of which flax is the principal, but especially in the manufacture of paper, which is a matter of deep interest just now to the publishing world, the scarcity of rags being a great embarrassment to business.

Last year the applications for patents numbered 2,673, the caveats filed were 901, and the patents issued 958. The extent of the field and the variety of productions to which this species of skill is applied, are shown in the number, nature and character of the productions. In the last ten years 18,440 applications for patents have been made, 5,674 caveats have been filed, and 7,673 patents have been granted. These may be said to include improvements in every branch and division of labor that human skill is applied to, or that human necessities require.

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IRVING'S LAST VOLUME.

IEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER ised to return to the volume, and to give

D'ED another bow to the public. our readers some samples of its dainty

The old man looks as fresh and as quaintly
In our notice of
good-humored as ever.
"Wolfert's Roost," last month, we prom-
VOL. VI.-29

pages. It is a fragmentary book, mostly composed of articles which have been floating about for years, but which have never

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