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.”