LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
Mrs. Lorimer Stackworthy is busy with a new life of one of our earliest Queens, Boadicea, based on contemporary documents and family papers, many of which are in cipher. The publishers, (Sporle and Mussitt) will be glad to hear of an authentic portrait of the subject of Mrs. Stackworthy's interesting monograph.
The article, in the Pedantic Review, on "Pies and Puddings," which has caused such a stir in literary and culinary circles, bears strong internal evidence of the practised pen of Professor Porringer. That on "Extraordinary Ebullitions," in the Impartialist, is understood to emanate from Dr. Julius Teezer.
Jewini's great classic Opera—La Vecchia Madre Ubardio—will be revived next season at La Scala.
A new weekly periodical is announced. It will be printed, published, edited, written, illustrated, stitched, and sold exclusively by women, and the type, ink, and paper, will be supplied by manufacturers who employ none but female artificers. Men will not be allowed to interfere with this journal in any way, except as purchasers. The title is Superior Wisdom.
Signor Zafferano-Collina has resumed his (open air) Organ performances on Campden Hill. The Signor's répertoire has not received any accession during the recess.
In the course of the ensuing season, Messrs. Brane and Booker will bring to the hammer the valuable Library formed by the late Jonathan Bell Diver, M.A., F.A.S., F.E.L.S. It is remarkably rich in nursery rhymes, cookery books, gipsyana, and treatises on dentistry and fireworks, and includes a unique series of privately printed publications relating to the County of Rutland.
The result of more extended investigations goes to prove that the Octopus will not attack man, except in defence of its religion.
Mr. Granby Fussforth has completed his arrangements for the delivery of a course of Six Lectures on "Winds and Windfalls," in the North of London. He will afterwards make a tour through Lambeth, Surrey, Southwark, and the Tower Hamlets, and will probably conclude his labours in the Old Kent Road.
Telegrams from Trebizond say that Madame Coralia Volanti has created a perfect furore there, by her extraordinary performances on the high rope.
Bertha's Black Box is the title of a new Serial Story, by a popular and prolific writer, to be commenced in an early number of Alsatia. It will be illustrated by Bannocks.
Mr. Wycherley Bibb has a farcical comedy in preparation which will be produced at the "Sheridan" in the course of the season. The plot turns on one of the principal characters mistaking a private mansion for an hotel. Facey Smiles has a wonderful part in it.
Mr. Salvator Rose, R.A., is working hard to get all his pictures ready for the forthcoming Royal Academy Exhibition. Perhaps, the most striking is a scene from Smith's Classical Dictionary, in which Agamemnon is represented as blowing a kiss, across the Prytaneum, to Clytemnestra, who is pacing the Bema, in the absence of her guardian on a secret expedition. Ægisthus appears in the background, detained by some law business, and the Chorus is endeavouring to convince him that he is in the wrong. This powerful painting, with its subtle nuances, its harmonious play of light and shade, its truthful rendering of the Piraeus, and the splendid drawing of the Chorus's left leg, will carry conviction to all who can reverence a conscientious manipulation of another of the grand old trilogies of the Athenian stage.
The new metal, Fluozinium, is steadily making its way against the current of scientific prejudice. It has been discovered in almost limitless quantities in conjunction with tufa and hæmatite; and the most delicate persons may inhale its fumes with perfect safety. In specific gravity Fluozinium is superior both to nickel and cobalt; it will ignite nowhere but on the box, and not often there; and for porosity, frangibility, and opalescence, no metal in our time has approached it.
The Dryrot Society have at the present time two more volumes of unusual interest ready for their subscribers, who, it must be said, regretfully, are much in arrear with their subscriptions. One is the Foundation Deeds, in abbreviated Latin, of the Monastery of St. Kilda, in Kincardineshire, dating as far back as the fourteenth century; the other, a list of all persons holding in capite a carucate of land and upwards, who were in fief to the Crown in the Border Wars. A few copies will be struck off on large paper, and six on vellum.