One of the most welcome reprints of the season is Harper and Brothers' edition of the Life and Works of Robert Burns, edited by Robert Chambers, in four handsome duodecimos. This is a tribute of exceeding value to the memory of the great Peasant Bard, disclosing many new facts in his history, and enhancing the interest of his writings by the admirable order of their arrangement. These are interwoven with the biography in chronological succession, and thus made to illustrate the poetical experience and mental development of Burns, while they receive a fresh and more striking significance from their connection with the circumstances and impressions that led to their production. The present editor was induced to undertake the grateful task of preparing the works of his gifted countryman for the press by his profound interest in the subject, and by his perceptions of the short-comings of previous laborers in the same field. Dr. Currie, who was the pioneer of subsequent biographical attempts, entered upon his task with too great deference to public opinion, which at that time visited the errors of Bums with excessive severity of retribution. Hence the caution and timidity which characterized his memoir, converting it into a feeble apology for its subject, instead of a frank and manly narration of his life. Lockhart's biography of Burns is a spirited and graceful production, inspired with a genuine Scottish feeling, written in a tone of impartial kindness, and containing many just, and forcible criticisms. It is, however, disfigured with numerous inaccuracies, and brings forward few details to increase our previous knowledge of the subject. Nor can the genial labors of Allan Cunningham be regarded as making further biographical efforts superfluous.

Mr. Chambers has availed himself in this edition of ample materials for a life of the poet, including the reminiscences of his youngest sister, who was still living at the date of the composition of these volumes. Devoted to the memory of Burns with the enthusiasm of national pride, a zealous student of his glorious poetry, and a warm admirer of the originality and nobleness of his character, in spite of its glaring and painful defects, he has erected a beautiful and permanent monument to his fame, which will survive the recollections of his errors and infirmities. We think this edition must speedily take the place of all others now extant. The notes in illustration of the biography, are copious and valuable. No one can read the poems, in connection with the lucid [pg 570] memoir, without feeling a new glow of admiration for the immortal bard, “whose life was one long hardship, relieved by little besides an ungainful excitement—who during his singularly hapless career, did, on the whole, well maintain the grand battle of Will against Circumstances—who, strange to say, in the midst of his own poverty conferred an imperishable gift on mankind—an Undying Voice for their finest sympathies—stamping, at the same time, more deeply, the divine doctrine of the fundamental equality of consideration due to all men.”

A new edition of The Corner Stone, by Jacob Abbott, with large additions and improvements, is issued in a very neat and convenient volume by Harper and Brothers. The series of works devoted to practical religion, of which this volume is a part, have been received with such general favor by the Christian public, as to make quite unnecessary any elaborate comments on their merits. Their peculiar power consists in their freedom from speculative subtleties, their luminous exhibition of the essential evangelical doctrines, their spirit of fervent and elevated piety, their wise adaptation to the workings of the human heart, and their affluence, aptness, and beauty of illustration. Mr. Abbott is eminently a writer for the masses. His practical common sense never forsakes him. He is never enticed from his firm footing amidst substantial realities. The gay regions of cloud-land present no temptations to his well disciplined imagination. He must always be a favorite with the people; and his moral influence is as salutary as it is extensive.

Blanchard and Lea have issued a reprint of Browne's History of Classical Literature. The present volume is devoted to the literature of Greece, and comprises an historical notice of her intellectual development, with a complete survey of the writers who have made her history immortal. Without any offensive parade of erudition, it betrays the signs of extensive research, accurate learning, and a polished taste. As a popular work on ancient literature, adapted no less to the general reader than to the profound student, it possesses an unmistakable merit, and will challenge a wide circulation in this country.

We have also from the same publishers a collection of original Essays on Life, Sleep, Pain, and other similar subjects, by Samuel H. Dixon, M.D. They present a variety of curious facts in the natural history of man, which are not only full of suggestion to the scientific student, but are adapted to popular comprehension, and form a pleasant and readable volume.

George P. Putnam has republished Sir Francis Head's lively volume entitled A Faggot of French Sticks, describing what he saw in Paris in 1851. The talkative baronet discourses in this work with his usual sparkling volubility. Superficial, shallow, good-natured; often commonplace though seldom tedious; brisk and effervescent as ginger-beer, it rattles cheerfully over the Paris pavements, and leaves quite a vivid impression of the gayeties and gravities of the French metropolis.

James Munroe and Co., Boston, have issued the third volume of Shakspeare, edited by Rev. H. N. Hudson, whose racy introductions and notes are far superior to the common run of critical commentaries—acute, profound, imbued with the spirit of the Shakspearian age, and expressed in a style of quaint, though vigorous antiqueness.

The same publishers have issued a Poem, called the Greek Girl, by James Wright Simmons, thickly sprinkled with affectation on a ground-work of originality;—a charming story, by the author of the “Dream-Chintz,” entitled The House on the Rock;—and a reprint of Companions of My Solitude, one of the series of chaste, refined, and quiet meditative essays by the author of “Friends in Council.”

Sorcery and Magic is the title of a collection of narratives by Thomas Wright, showing the influence which superstition once exercised on the history of the world. The work is compiled with good judgment from authentic sources, and without attempting to give any philosophical explanation of the marvelous facts which it describes, leaves them to the reflection and common sense of the reader. It is issued by Redfield in the elegant and tasteful style by which his recent publications may be identified.

Ravenscliffe, by Mrs. Marsh, and The Head of the Family, by the author of “Olive,” and “The Oglevies,” have attained a brilliant popularity among the leading English novels of the season, and will be welcome to the American public in Harper's “Library of Select Novels,” in which they are just reprinted.

Miss Mitford's Recollections of a Literary Life (republished by Harper and Brothers) will be found to possess peculiar interest for the American reader. In addition to a rich store of delightful personal reminiscences, genial and graceful criticisms on old English authors, as well as on contemporary celebrities, and copious selections from their choicest productions, Miss Mitford presents several agreeable sketches of American authors and other distinguished men, including Daniel Webster, Halleck, Hawthorne, Whittier, Wendell Holmes, and so forth. She shows a sincere love for this country, and a cordial appreciation of its institutions and its literature. The whole book is remarkable for its frank simplicity of narrative, its enthusiasm for good letters, its fine characterizations of eminent people, and its careless beauties of style. A more truly delightful volume has not been on our table for many a day.

Mr. T. Hudson Turner, one of the ablest of British archÆologists, and a contributor to the AthenÆum, died of consumption, on the 14th of January, at the age of thirty-seven.

The Westminster Review has been excluded from the Select Subscription Library of Edinburgh, on the special ground of its heresy!

Among the new works in the press the following are announced by Mr. Bentley: “History of the American Revolution,” by George Bancroft; the “Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham,” by the Earl of Albemarle; “Letters of Gray the Poet,” edited from original MSS., with Notes by the Rev. J. Mitford; “Memoirs of the Court of George III.,” by J. Heneage Jesse; “Memoirs of Sarah Margaret Fuller, the Marchioness of Ossola,” edited by R. W. Emerson and W. H. Channing; “History of the Governors-General of India,” by Mr. Kaye, author of “The History of the Affghan War,” and various other works of general interest.

Jules Benedict, the companion of the Swedish Nightingale in America, has entered into an arrangement with a London publisher to issue his complete account of Jenny Lind's tour in America.

It is said that Mr. Macaulay has delayed the publication of the third and fourth volumes of his History of England in consequence of his having [pg 571] obtained some new information relating to King William the Third. King William, it is asserted, figures as the chief personage in the narrative—and the greatest stress is laid on his conduct subsequently to the Revolution.

Robert Browning, in his Italian sojourn, has been interesting himself biographically in Percy Bysshe Shelley; and the result of this inquiry we are to have shortly in some unpublished letters of Shelley's, with a preface by Browning himself.

Mr. W. Cramp is preparing a critical analysis of the Private Letters of Junius to Woodfall, to be added to his new edition of Junius. The private correspondence with Woodfall is a field of inquiry that hitherto has not been sufficiently explored. Mr. Cramp is pursuing his investigation on the plan of the essays on the letters of “Atticus Lucius,” and those in defense of the Duke of Portland. This inquiry promises to reveal many additional facts in proof of Mr. Cramp's hypothesis that Lord Chesterfield was Junius.

Major Cunningham has completed his work on The Bhilsa Topes, or Budhist Monuments of Central India—and the Governor General of India has sent the manuscript home to the Court of Directors, strongly recommending the court to publish it at their own expense.

Dr. William Freund, the philologist, is engaged in constructing a German-English and English-German Dictionary on his new system. He hopes to complete the work in the course of next year.

The first volume has appeared of a collected edition of the Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, containing “The New Timon,” “Constance,” “Milton,” “The Narrative Lyrics,” and other pieces. Of the poems in this volume public opinion has already expressed its estimate, and it is sufficient for us to notice their republication in convenient and elegant form. In a note to the passage in “The New Timon” referring to the late Sir Robert Peel, the author says “he will find another occasion to attempt, so far as his opinions on the one hand, and his reverence on the other, will permit—to convey a juster idea of Sir Robert Peel's defects or merits, perhaps as a statesman, at least as an orator.” Very singular are the lines in the poem, written before the fatal accident:

The generous and graceful turn given to this in the foot-note, is such as one might expect from Sir E. Bulwer Lytton. In another series we have the second part of Ernest Maltravers, or, as the other title bears, Alice, or The Mysteries. In this work of allegorical fiction, with the author's usual power and felicity of narrative, there is mingled a philosophical purpose; and in a new preface Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton ascribes to it, above all his other works, “such merit as may be thought to belong to harmony between a premeditated conception, and the various incidents and agencies employed in the development of plot.” “Ernest Maltravers,” the type of Genius or intellectual ambition, is after long and erring alienation happily united to “Alice,” the type of Nature, nature now elevated and idealized.

A new novel, by the gifted author of “Olive,” and the “Ogilvies,” entitled “The Head of the Family,” is spoken of in terms of warm admiration by the London press. The Weekly News remarks, “The charm of idyllic simplicity will be found in every page of the book, imparting an interest to it which rises very far above the ordinary feeling evoked by novel reading. So much truthfulness, so much force, combined with so much delicacy of characterization, we have rarely met with; and on these grounds alone, irrespective of literary merit, we are inclined to credit the work with a lasting popularity.”

The same journal has a highly favorable notice of Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, from which we take the following passage: “In reviewing the recent volumes of Lord Mahon's History that treat of the American war, we expressed an opinion that the subject was one to which no American writer had done justice. The work now before us appears (so far as we may judge from its first moiety), to be the best contribution that any citizen of the United States has yet made to a correct knowledge of the circumstances of their war of independence. It is not a regular history; and the blank in transatlantic literature, to which we have referred, remains yet to be supplied. But Mr. Lossing has given us a volume full of valuable information respecting the great scenes and the leading men of the war. And the profuseness with which he has illustrated his narrative with military plans, with portraits of statesmen and commanders, and with sketches of celebrated localities, gives great interest and value to these pages.”

With all its stubborn John Bullism, the London AthenÆum is compelled to pay a flattering tribute to the literary merits of our distinguished countryman, Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Among the sterling pleasures which, though few, make rich amends for the many grievances and misconstructions that await honest critics, there is none so great as the discovery and support of distant and unknown genius. Such pleasure the AthenÆum may fairly claim in the case of Mr. Hawthorne. Like all men so richly and specially gifted, he has at last found his public—he is at last looked to, and listened for: but it is fifteen years since we began to follow him in the American periodicals, and to give him credit for the power and the originality which have since borne such ripe fruit in 'The Scarlet Letter' and 'The House of the Seven Gables.' Little less agreeable is it to see that acceptance, after long years of waiting, seems not to have soured the temper of the writer—not to have encouraged him into conceit—not to have discouraged him into slovenliness. Like a real artist Mr. Hawthorne gives out no slightly planned nor carelessly finished literary handiwork.”

Among the list of passengers who perished by fire on board the Amazon steamer, we find the name of Mr. Eliot Warburton, the author of “The Crescent and the Cross,” a book of Eastern travel—“Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers”—and the novels “Reginald Hastings” and “Darien.” Mr. Warburton, says a correspondent of the Times, had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien: it was also his intention to make himself perfectly acquainted [pg 572] with every part of those districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources. “To Darien, with the date of 1852 upon its title-page,” says the London Examiner, “the fate of its author will communicate a melancholy interest. The theme of the book is a fine one. Its fault consists chiefly in the fact that the writer was not born to be a novelist. Yet, full as it is of eloquent writing, and enlivened as it is with that light of true genius, which raises even the waste work of a good writer above the common twaddle of a circulating library, Darien may, for its own sake, and apart from all external interest, claim many readers. External interest, however, attaches to the book in a most peculiar manner. Superstitious men—perhaps also some men not superstitious—might say that there was a strange shadow of the future cast upon its writer's mind. It did not fall strictly within the limits of a tale of the Scotch colonization of Darien, to relate perils by sea; yet again and again are such perils recurred to in these volumes, and the terrible imagination of a ship on fire is twice repeated in them.”

M. Thiers, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, several newspaper editors, and other literary men of France, are now at Brussels. Thiers is said to be working hard at his History of the Consulate and of the Empire, and Hugo is represented to entertain the intention of again seriously returning to literary pursuits, in which, one would think, he must find more pleasure, as well as more fame and profit, than in the stormy arena of politics. Dumas, who works like a cart-horse, and who, as ever, is in want of money, has, in addition to his numerous pending engagements at Paris, undertaken to revise, for a Belgian publishing firm, the Memoirs of his Life, now in course of publication in the Paris Presse; and he is to add to them all the passages suppressed by Louis Bonaparte's censors. Another new work is announced by Dumas, called Byron, in which we are promised the biography, love adventures, journeys, and anecdotic history of the great poet.

M. de Lamartine has resigned the editorship, or, as he called it, the directorship, of the daily newspaper on which he was engaged at a large salary, and in which he published his opinions on political events. He has also put an end to his monthly literary periodical, called Les Foyers du Peuple; no great loss, by the way, seeing that it was only a jumble of quotations from his unpublished works, placed together without rhyme or reason; and, finally, he has dropped the bi-monthly magazine, in which he figured as the Counsellor of the People. But he promises, notwithstanding the sickness under which he is laboring, to bring out a serious literary periodical, as soon as the laws on the press shall be promulgated.

Among the novelties that are forthcoming, there is one which promises to be very important, called Lord Palmerston—L'Angleterre et le Continent, by Count Ficquelmont, formerly Austrian Ambassador at Constantinople and St. Petersburg, where he had occasion to experience something of Lord Palmerston's diplomacy. It is, we are told, a vigorous attack on English policy.

La VÉritÉ, a pamphlet containing the true history of the coup d'État, is announced in London, with the production of authentic documents which could not get printed in France. This coup d'État has set all servile pens at work. Mayer announces a Histoire du 2 Decembre; Cesena, a Histoire d'un Coup d'État; and Romieu, the famous trumpeter of the CÆsars—Romieu, who in his Spectre Rouge exclaimed, “I shall not regret having lived in these wretched times if I can only see a good castigation inflicted on the mob, that stupid and corrupt beast which I have always held in horror.” Romieu has had his prediction fulfilled, and he, too, announces a History of the event.

No ruler of France, in modern times, has shown such disregard to literary men as Louis Napoleon. King Louis XVIII. patronized them royally; Charles X. pensioned them liberally; Louis Philippe gave them titles and decorations freely, and was glad to have them at his receptions; the princes, his sons, showed them all possible attention; but during the whole time Louis Bonaparte has been in power he has not only taken no official notice of them, but has not even had the decent civility to send them invitations to his soirÉes. By this conduct, as much, perhaps, as by his political proceedings, he has made nearly the whole literary body hostile to him: and, singular to state, the most eminent writers of the country—Lamartine, Lamennais, Beranger, Hugo, Janin, Sue, Dumas, Thiers—are personally and politically among his bitterest adversaries.

Madame George Sand is in retirement in the province of Berry, and is at present engaged in preparing “Memoirs of her Life,” for publication.

The second division of the third volume of Alexander Von Humboldt's Cosmos has just issued from the German press. The new chapters treat of the circuits of the sun, planets, and comets, of the zodiacal lights, meteors, and meteoric stones. The uranological portion of the physical description of the universe is now completed. The veteran philosopher has already made good way into the fourth volume of his great work.

Herr Stargardt, a bookseller at Stuttgardt, has lately made a valuable acquisition by purchasing the whole of Schiller's library, with his autograph notes to the various books.

The Icelandic-English Dictionary of the late distinguished philologist, Mr. Cleasby, is now nearly ready for the press; Mr. Cleasby's MS. collections having been arranged and copied for this purpose by another distinguished Icelandic scholar, Hector Konrad Gislason, author of the “Danish-Icelandic Lexicon.”

The Swedish Academy has elected Professor Hagberg, the translator of Shakspeare, in place of the deceased Bishop Kullberg. The great prize of the academy has this year been conferred on a poem entitled “Regnar Lodbrok,” written by Thekla KnÖs, a daughter of the late Professor KnÖs.

Attention is beginning to be paid in Spain to the popular literature of England, and it is not improbable that it may get into as high favor as that of France. Already Dickens's “David Copperfield” and Lady Fullerton's “Grantley Manor” have been translated, and are being published in the folletinos of two of the newspapers.

At home—

“In the serene regions
Where dwell the pure forms.”