Dr. C. Casati, who has just published a work in two volumes entitled Nuovo rivelazioni sui fatti in Milano nel 1847-48, is preparing for the press an edition of the unpublished letters of Pietro Borsieri, the prisoner of the Spielberg, together with letters addressed to him by several of his friends, among whom were Arrivabene, Berchet, Arconati, and Della Cisterna. The correspondence contains many particulars relating to the sufferings of these patriots in the Austrian prisons, and to the privations suffered by Borsieri and his companions in America. Dr. Casati will contribute a biographical sketch of Borsieri and notes in illustration of the letters.
At the meeting of the Florence Academia dei Lincei (department of historical sciences) on January 18, it was announced that no competitors having presented themselves for the prize offered by the Minister of Public Instruction for an essay on the Latin poetry published in Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the competition will remain open until April 30, 1888.
Edward Odyniec, the Polish poet and journalist, and friend of Mickiewicz, died in Warsaw on January 15. He was born in 1804, and was educated at the University of Wilna, where he was a member of the celebrated society of the Philareti. His period of poetic activity falls chiefly in the time of the romantic movement in Poland. His odes and occasional poems were printed in 1825-28, and many of them have been translated into German and Bohemian. His translations from Byron, Moore, and Walter Scott are greatly admired in Poland. He also published several dramas on historical subjects. Odyniec was editor, first of the Kuryer Wilanski, and afterwards of the Kuryer Warszawski, and was highly esteemed as a political writer. He was personally very popular in Warsaw, and his funeral was attended by many thousands of people.
Dr. A. Emanuel Biedermann, Professor of Theology in the University of Zürich, died in that city on January 26. He was born at Winterthur in 1819, studied theology at Basel and Berlin 1837-41, and in 1843 was elected Pfarrer of Münchenstein in the Canton of Basel-land. In 1850 he was made Professor Extraordinarius of Theology in the University of Zürich, and in 1864 Professor Ordinarius of “Dogmatik.” His Christliche Dogmatic (Zürich, 1864) is the best known of his theological writings. In connection with Dr. Fries he founded in 1845 the Liberal ecclesiastical monthly, Die Kirche der Gegenwart, out of which the still extant Zeitstimmen was developed.