NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
Now that the season is arriving for the sportsman, angler, yachtsman, and lover of nature to visit the wild and solitary beauties of Gamle Norge, nothing could be better timed than the pleasant gossiping Month in Norway, by J. G. Holloway, which forms this month's issue of Murray's Railway Library; or the splendidly illustrated Norway and its Scenery, comprising the Journal of a Tour by Edward Price, Esq., and a Road Book for Tourists, with Hints to Anglers and Sportsmen, edited by T. Forster, Esq., which forms the new number of Bohn's Illustrated Library, and
which is embellished with a series of admirable views by Mr. Price, from plates formerly published at a very costly price, but which, in this new form, are now to be procured for a few shillings.
As the Americans have been among the most successful photographic manipulators, we have looked with considerable interest at a work devoted to the subject which has just been imported from that country, The History and Practice of the Art of Photography, &c., by Henry H. Snelling, Fourth Edition; and though we are bound to admit that it contains many hints and notes which may render it a useful addition to the library of the photographer, we still must pronounce it as a work put together in a loose, unsatisfactory manner, and as being for the most part a compilation from the best writers in the Old World.
When Dr. Pauli's Life of Alfred made its appearance it received, as it deserved, our hearty commendation. We have now to welcome a translation of it, which has just been published in Bohn's Antiquarian Library,—The Life of Alfred the Great, translated from the German of Dr. Pauli; to which is appended Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, with a literal English Translation, and an Anglo-Saxon Alphabet and Glossary by Benjamin Thorpe; and it speaks favourably for the spread of the love of real learning, that it should answer the publisher's purpose to put forth such a valuable book in so cheap and popular a form. Mr. Thorpe's scholarship is too well known to require recognition at our hands.
Books Received.—Remains of Pagan Saxondom, principally from Tumuli in England, by J. Y. Akerman. The present number contains coloured engravings of the Umbo of Shield and Weapons found at Driffield, and of a Bronze Patera from a Cemetery at Wingham, Kent.—Gervinus' Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century. Apparently a carefully executed translation of Dr. Gervinus' now celebrated brochure issued by Mr. Bohn; who has, in his Standard Library, given us a new edition of De Lolme on the Constitution, with notes by J. Macgregor, M.P.; and in his Classical Library a translation by C. D. Yonge of Diogenes Laertius' Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers.