Paul Ivanovich Ogorodnikof, who died last month at the age of fifty-eight, was destined for the army, but, being accused of participation in political disturbances, was confined in the fortress of Modlin. After his release he obtained employment in the Railway Administration, whereby he was enabled to amass a sum sufficient to cover the cost of a journey through Russia, Germany, France, England, and North America, of which he published an account. He was subsequently appointed correspondent of the Imperial Geographical Society in North-East Persia, and on his return home he devoted his exclusive attention to literature. His most interesting works, perhaps, are “Travels in Persia and her Caspian Provinces,” 1868, “Sketches in Persia,” 1868, and “The Land of the Sun,” 1881. But he was the author of various other works and numerous contributions to periodical literature, and in 1882 his “Diary of a Captive” was published in the Istorichesky Vyestnik.

The opening of the new college at Poona, India, which took place recently under the most favorable auspices, is noteworthy as marking the first important attempt of educated natives in the Bombay presidency to take the management of higher education into their own hands. The college has been appropriately named after Sir James Fergusson, who has always taken a great interest in the measures for its establishment, and during whose tenure of office as Governor of Bombay (now drawing to a close) such marked progress has been made in education in that presidency.

The first part of the second series of the PalÆographical Society’s facsimiles, now ready for distribution to subscribers, contains two plates of Greek ostraka from Egypt, on which are written tax-gatherers’ receipts for imposts levied under the Roman dominion, A.D. 39-163; and specimens of the Curetonian palimpsest Homer of the sixth century; the Bodleian Greek Psalter of about A.D. 950; the Greek Gospels, Codex T, of the tenth century; and other Greek MSS. There are also plates from the ancient Latin Psalter of the fifth century and other early MSS. of Lord Ashburnham’s library; Pope Gregory’s “Moralia,” in Merovingian writing of the seventh century; the Berne Virgil, with Tironian glosses of the ninth century; the earliest Pipe Roll, A.D. 1130; English charters of the twelfth century; and drawings and illuminations in the Bodleian CÆdmon, the Hyde Register, the Ashburnham Life of Christ, and the Medici HorÆ lately purchased by the Italian Government.

Prince B. Giustiniani has placed in the hands of the Pope, in the name of his friend Lord Ashburnham, a precious manuscript from the library of Ashburnham House. It contains letters by Innocent III. written during the years 1207 and 1209, and taken from the archives of the Holy See when at Avignon at the beginning of the fifteenth century. The letters are fully described in the BibliothÈque de l’École des Chartes.

One of the late General Gordon’s minor contributions to literature is a brief memoir of Zebehr Pasha, which he drew up for the information of the Soudanese. General Gordon caused the memoir to be translated into Arabic, and we believe that copies of it are still in existence. It was written during the General’s first administration of the Soudan.

The memoirs of the late Rector of Lincoln will appear shortly, Mrs. Mark Pattison having finished correcting the proofs. Much difficulty has been experienced in verifying quotations, frequently made without reference or clue to authorship. In one or two instances only the attempt has been reluctantly abandoned in order not indefinitely to delay publication. Mrs. Mark Pattison leaves England in February for Madras, where she will spend next summer as the guest of the Governor and Mrs. Grant Duff at Ootacamund. Her work on industry and the arts in France under Colbert is now far advanced towards completion.

A “national” edition of Victor Hugo’s works is about to be brought out in Paris by M. Lemonnyer as publisher, and M. Georges Richard as printer. The plan of this new edition has been submitted by these gentlemen to M. Victor Hugo, who has given them the exclusive right to bring out, in quarto shape, the whole of his works. The publication will consist of about forty volumes, which are each to contain five parts, of from eighty to a hundred pages. One part will appear every fortnight, or about five volumes a year, and the first part of the first volume, which will contain the Odes and Ballads, is to appear on February 26, which is the eighty-third anniversary of the poet’s birth. The price will be 6 frs. per part, or 30 frs. per volume, so that the total cost of the forty volumes will be close upon £50. There will be also a few copies upon Japan and China paper of special manufacture, while the series will be illustrated with four portraits of the poet, 250 large etchings, and 2,500 line engravings. The 250 large etchings will be by such artists as Paul Baudry, Bonnat, Cabanel, Carrier-Belleuse, FalguiÈre, LÉon, Glaize, Henner, J.-P. Laurens, Puvis de Chavannes, Robert Fleury, etc., while the line engravings will be by L. Flameng, Champollion, Maxime Lalanne, and others.

The festival at Capua in commemoration of the bi-centenary of the birth of the distinguished antiquary and philologist, Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi, which should have been held last autumn, but was postponed on account of the cholera, was celebrated on January 25. The meeting in the Museo Campano was attended by a large number of visitors from the neighboring towns and from Naples, and speeches were delivered by the Prefect (Commendatore Winspeare), Prof. F. Barnabei, and several others.

Dr. Martineau’s new book, “Types of Ethical Theory,” will be issued in a week or two by the Clarendon Press. The author seeks the ultimate basis of morals in the internal constitution of the human mind. He first vindicates the psychological method, then develops it, and finally guards it against partial applications, injurious to the autonomy of the conscience. He is thus led to pass under review at the outset some representative of each chief theory in which ethics emerge from metaphysical or physical assumptions, and at the close the several doctrines which psychologically deduce the moral sentiments from self-love, the sense of congruity, the perception of beauty, or other unmoral source. The part of the book intermediate between these two bodies of critical exposition is constructive.

The Spelling Reform Association of England have adopted, as a means of encouraging the progress of their cause, a new plan specially calculated to secure the adhesion of printers and publishers. They offer to supply experienced proof-readers free of cost, who are prepared to assist in producing books and pamphlets “in any degree of amended or fonetic spelling.”

Some interesting materials towards a memoir of the late Bishop Colenso have been derived from an unexpected source. A gentleman in Cornwall heard that a bookseller in Staffordshire had for sale a collection of the bishop’s letters. This coming to the knowledge of Mr. F. E. Colenso, the latter purchased them at once, and found that they consisted of letters ranging from 1830 to the middle of the bishop’s university career. The collection also includes two letters from the bishop’s college tutor which show the high estimation in which the young man was held by those who were brought into contact with him at Oxford.

It is understood that the late Henry G. Bohn’s collection of Art books, though comparatively few in number—said to be less than 800—forms a perfectly unique library of reference, and in many languages. We hear that it includes splendidly bound folio editions of engravings from the great masters in almost every known European gallery. Mr. Bohn’s general private library—a substantial but by no means extensive one considering his colossal dealings with books—is not likely to be sold. It may not be generally known that he lent nearly 1,400 volumes to the Crystal Palace Exhibition some years ago, and lost them all in the fire there.

Messrs. Tillotson and Son, of the Bolton Journal, who are the originators of the practice of publishing novels by eminent writers simultaneously in a number of newspapers in England, the United States, and in the colonies, announce that they intend shortly to publish, instead of a serial novel of the usual three-volume size, what they call an “Octave of Short Stories.” The first of these tales, “A Rainy June,” by “Ouida,” will appear on February 28th. The other seven writers of the “Octave” are Mr. William Black, Miss Braddon, Miss Rhoda Broughton, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Joseph Hatton, and Mrs. Oliphant.

Dr. C. Casati, who has just published a work in two volumes entitled Nuovo rivelazioni sui fatti in Milano nel 1847-48, is preparing for the press an edition of the unpublished letters of Pietro Borsieri, the prisoner of the Spielberg, together with letters addressed to him by several of his friends, among whom were Arrivabene, Berchet, Arconati, and Della Cisterna. The correspondence contains many particulars relating to the sufferings of these patriots in the Austrian prisons, and to the privations suffered by Borsieri and his companions in America. Dr. Casati will contribute a biographical sketch of Borsieri and notes in illustration of the letters.

At the meeting of the Florence Academia dei Lincei (department of historical sciences) on January 18, it was announced that no competitors having presented themselves for the prize offered by the Minister of Public Instruction for an essay on the Latin poetry published in Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the competition will remain open until April 30, 1888.

Edward Odyniec, the Polish poet and journalist, and friend of Mickiewicz, died in Warsaw on January 15. He was born in 1804, and was educated at the University of Wilna, where he was a member of the celebrated society of the Philareti. His period of poetic activity falls chiefly in the time of the romantic movement in Poland. His odes and occasional poems were printed in 1825-28, and many of them have been translated into German and Bohemian. His translations from Byron, Moore, and Walter Scott are greatly admired in Poland. He also published several dramas on historical subjects. Odyniec was editor, first of the Kuryer Wilanski, and afterwards of the Kuryer Warszawski, and was highly esteemed as a political writer. He was personally very popular in Warsaw, and his funeral was attended by many thousands of people.

Dr. A. Emanuel Biedermann, Professor of Theology in the University of ZÜrich, died in that city on January 26. He was born at Winterthur in 1819, studied theology at Basel and Berlin 1837-41, and in 1843 was elected Pfarrer of MÜnchenstein in the Canton of Basel-land. In 1850 he was made Professor Extraordinarius of Theology in the University of ZÜrich, and in 1864 Professor Ordinarius of “Dogmatik.” His Christliche Dogmatic (ZÜrich, 1864) is the best known of his theological writings. In connection with Dr. Fries he founded in 1845 the Liberal ecclesiastical monthly, Die Kirche der Gegenwart, out of which the still extant Zeitstimmen was developed.