NOTES ON BOOKS, ETC.
The attempt to establish a Surrey Archæological Society has at length proved successful. Upwards of one hundred and seventy Members have already joined the Society. The Duke of Norfolk has accepted its Presidency, and the Earl of Ellesmere, the Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Viscount Downe, are among the number of its Vice-Presidents. The Society has good work before it, and we trust will set about it in a way to
secure the success which we wish it. The Honorary Secretary and Treasurer is George Bish Webb, Esq., of 46. Addison Road North, Notting Hill; from whom gentlemen desirous of enrolling themselves as Members may obtain copies of the Prospectus, Rules, &c. of the Society.
The mention of one county Society seems to call attention to another, namely, the Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society, the volume of whose Proceedings for 1852 is now before us, and affords satisfactory proof that the zeal and energy of its members, of which it numbers nearly five hundred, are by no means diminished. The papers and the illustrations of the volume are highly creditable to all concerned.
The want of a collection of the early antiquities of this country has long been the greatest reproach which foreigners have been able to make against the British Museum. An opportunity of removing this has lately presented itself by an offer to the trustees of the well-known and probably unique collection, The Faussett Museum. Strange to say, that offer was declined: but, as a communication from the Society of Antiquaries strongly urging the propriety of a reconsideration of this decision—so that an opportunity which may never recur may not be lost—has been addressed to the trustees, we still hope that the Faussett Museum will yet fill the empty cases at Great Russell Street, and form, as it is well calculated to do, the nucleus of a national collection of our own national antiquities. We understand Mr. Wylie has most liberally offered to present his valuable Fairford Collections to the Museum, if the Faussett Collection is secured for it.
Books Received.—The Life and Works of William Cowper, by Robert Southey, Vol. I. This, the first volume of a new edition, which will be comprised in eight instead of fifteen volumes—cost twenty-eight instead of seventy-five shillings, and yet contain additional plates and matter,—is the new issue of Bohn's Standard Library.—The Laws of Artistic Copyright and their Defects, by D. R. Blaine, Esq. A little volume well calculated to instruct artists, sculptors, engravers, printsellers, &c., so that they may clearly understand their rights, their remedies for the infringement of those rights, and the proper mode of transferring their property.—The Attic Philosopher in Paris, being the Journal of a Happy Man, forms No. LI. of Longman's Traveller's Library, and is a fit companion to the Confessions of a Working Man, by the same author, Emile Souvestre, published in the same series a few months since.—Apuleius: Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass, and other Works. A new translation, to which are added a metrical version of Cupid and Psyche, and Mrs. Tighe's Psyche, is the new volume of Bohn's Classical Library.—Handbook to the Library of the British Museum, &c., by Richard Sims. After the notice of this useful little volume taken by Mr. Bolton Corney in our last Number, we may content ourselves with expressing our hope that the trustees, whose desire it must be to facilitate in every way the use of the Museum library, will avail themselves of the earliest opportunity of marking their approval of this able attempt on the part of one of their officers—a junior though he be—to promote so important an object.