NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
One of the most beautifully got up cheap publications which we have seen for a long time, is the new edition of Byron's Poems, just issued by Mr. Murray. It consists of eight half-crown volumes, which may be separately purchased, viz. Childe Harold, one volume; Tales and Poems, one volume; and the Dramas, Miscellanies, and Don Juan, &c., severally in two volumes. Mr. Murray has also made another important contribution to the cheap literature of the day in the republication, in a cheap and compendious form, of the various Journals of Sir Charles Fellows, during those visits to the East to which we owe the acquisition of the Xanthian Marbles. The present edition of his Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, and more particularly in the Province of Lycia, as it embraces the substance of all Sir Charles's various journals and pamphlets, and only omits the Greek and Lycian inscriptions, and lists of plants and coins, and such plates as were not capable of being introduced into the present volume, will, we have no doubt, be acceptable to a very numerous class of readers, and takes its place among the most interesting of the various popular narratives of Eastern travel.
Most of our readers will probably remember the memorable remark of Lord Chancellor King, that "if the ancient discipline of the Church were lost, it might be found in all its purity in the Isle of Man." Yet notwithstanding this high eulogium on the character of the saintly Bishop Wilson, it is painful to find that his celebrated work, Sacra Privata, has hitherto been most unjustifiably treated and mutilated, as was noticed in our last volume, p. 414. But here we have before us, in a beautifully printed edition of this valuable work, the good bishop himself, what he thought, and
what he wrote, in his Private Meditations, Devotions, and Prayers, now for the first time printed from his original manuscripts preserved in the library of Sion College, London. Much praise is due to the editor for bringing this manuscript before the public, as well as for the careful superintendence of the press; and we sincerely hope he will continue his labours of research in Sion College as well as in other libraries.
There are doubtless many of our readers who echo Ben Jonson's wish that Shakspeare had blotted many a line, referring of course to those characteristic of the age, not of the man, which cannot be read aloud. To all such, the announcement that Messrs. Longman have commenced the publication in monthly volumes of a new edition of Bowdler's Family Shakspeare, in which nothing is added to the original text, but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read in a family, will be welcome intelligence. The work is handsomely printed in Five-Shilling Volumes, of which the first three are already published.
Books Received.—Memoirs of James Logan, a distinguished Scholar and Christian Legislator, &c., by Wilson Armistead. An interesting biography of a friend of William Penn, and one of the most learned of the early emigrants to the American Continent.—Yule-Tide Stories, a Collection of Scandinavian and North German Popular Tales and Traditions. The name of the editor, Mr. Benjamin Thorpe, is a sufficient guarantee for the value of this new volume of Bohn's Antiquarian Library. In his Philological Library, Mr. Bohn has published a new and enlarged edition of Mr. Dawson W. Turner's Notes on Herodotus: while in his Classical Library he has given The Pharsalia of Lucan literally translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes, by H. T. Riley, B.A.; and has enriched his Scientific Library by the publication of Dr. Chalmers's Bridgewater Treatise on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Adaption of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man, with the author's last corrections, and a Biographical Preface by Dr. Cumming.
Photographic Manipulation. The Wax-paper Process of Gustave Le Gray, translated from the French, published by Knight & Sons; and Hennah's Directions for obtaining both Positive and Negative Pictures upon Glass by means of the Collodion Process, &c., published by Delatouche & Co., are two little pamphlets which will repay the photographer for perusal, but are deficient in that simplicity of process which is so much to be desired if Photography is to be made more popular.