Japanese newspaper enterprise is making rapid progress. It is stated that no less than three vernacular newspapers published at Tokio and one at Kobe have sent special correspondents to report the events of the war in China.

From various quarters of the world reports are received of the operations of the Society for Propagating the French Language, which receives the full support of the Government and officials of the Republic. It is doing its work in some places where English would be expected to be maintained. For the promotion of our language no effort is made, as an attempt of the Society of St. George met with no practical result. It is true that the growth of population is adding to the hundred millions of the English-speaking races, but there are many regions where the language is neglected.

The event in literary circles in Constantinople is the appearance of the second volume of the history of Turkey by Ahmed Jevdet Pasha. How many years he has been engaged on this work we do not know, but at all events a quarter of a century, and as he has been busy in high office throughout the time his perseverance is the more remarkable. He was among the first of the Ulema to acquire European languages, which he did for the express purpose of this work. He has also co-operated actively in promoting the local school of history.

At the last meeting but one of the New Shakspeare Society, Mr. Ewald FlÜgel, of Leipsic, read some early eighteenth-century German opinions on Shakspere which amused his hearers. They were from the works of his great-grandfather Mencke, a celebrated professor of his day, who was also the ancestor of Prince Bismarck’s wife. In 1700 Mencke declared that “Certainly Dryden was the most excellent of English poets; in every kind of poetry, but especially as a writer of tragedies. In tragedy he was neither inferior to the French Corneille nor the English Shakspere; and the latter he the more excelled inasmuch as he (Dryden) was more versed in literature.” In 1702, Mencke reported Dryden’s opinion that Shakspere was inferior to Ben Jonson, if not in genius, yet certainly in art and finish, though Hales thought Shakspere superior to every poet, then living or dead. In 1725, Mencke quoted Richard Carew’s opinion (in Camden’s Remaines, 1614) that Catullus had found his equal in Shakspere and Marlowe [Barlovius; Carew’s “Barlow”]; and in his dictionary, 1733, Mencke gave the following notice of Shakspere, “William Shakspere, an English dramatist, was born at Stratford in 1654, was badly educated, and did not understand Latin; nevertheless, he became a great poet. His genius was comical, but he could be very serious, too; was excellent in tragedies, and had many subtle and interesting controversies with Ben Jonson; but no one was any the better for all these. He died at Stratford in 1616, April 23, 53 years old. His comedies and tragedies—and many did he write—have been printed together in six parts in 1709 at London, and are very much appreciated.”

There are now in London two societies for philosophical discussion—the Aristotelian and the Philosophical. The latter society was founded last winter under the chairmanship of Mr. J. S. Stuart-Glennie. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics having been the general subject of discussion during the year, the chairman brought the first year to a close last month with a valedictory address on “The Criteria of Truth.” It is proposed to continue the discussion of this subject in taking up Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Psychology, and beginning with Part VII., “General Analysis.” The society meets at Dr. Williams’s Library at eight o’clock on the fourth Thursday of every month from October to July.

Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte is now so far advanced with the history of the University of Oxford, upon which he has been engaged for some years, that an instalment of it, tracing the growth of the University from the earliest times to the revival of learning, is likely to be published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. early in the coming year. This volume will be complete in itself, and accordingly provided with an index of its own.

The Cercle de la Librairie at Paris intends to open an exhibition of the designs of Gustave DorÉ for the illustration of books. Many noted French firms—Hachette, Mame, Jouvet, Hetzel, and Calmann LÉvy—will contribute, and so will Le Journal pour Rire, the Monde IllustrÉ, &c. Foreign publishers are also invited to take part.

At the opening of the winter season of the Arts Club in Manchester, Mr. J. H. Nodal stated that more books were written and published in Manchester than anywhere else in the kingdom, with the exception of London and Edinburgh, and that he believed that Manchester as a music-publishing centre came next to London.