Mr. Bohn announces the following important Works as about to appear shortly: Kirby and Kidd's Bridgewater Treatises.—Coin-Collector's Hand-Book, by H. N. Humphreys, with numerous engravings of Ancient Coins.—Greek Anthology; or Select Epigrams of the Greek Classic Poets, literally translated into Prose, with occasional parallels in verse by English Poets.—Oersted's Soul in Nature, and other works, translated from the Danish, with Life of the Author.—Rome in the 19th Century; with Maps and Diagrams.—Kugler's Historical Manual of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture, Ancient and Modern.
The election of the Greek Professor in the University of Edinburgh was fixed for the 2d of March. The number of candidates in the field was very large, but it was thought that many would retire before the day of election. The principal struggle was supposed to be between Dr. William Smith, of New College, London, the learned author of the Classical Dictionaries; Dr. Price, late of Rugby, the friend of Dr. Arnold; Professor Macdowall, of Queen's College, Belfast; and Professor Blackie, of Aberdeen. The emoluments of the chair are upward of 800l., and the college duties extend only over about half the year, during the winter session from November to May.
Professor Robinson, our townsman, whose proposed expedition to Palestine we lately announced, was at Berlin, at the latest accounts, and expects to be at Beyrout on the 1st of March. He intends to occupy most of his time in visiting the more remote districts of the country, and those villages off the usual routes, which are least known to travelers. Toward the completion of the topography and geography of Palestine, we may expect many new facts to be thus obtained. One of the American missionaries in Syria, the Rev. Eli Smith, and Mr. William Dickson, of Edinburgh, are to join Professor Robinson at Beyrout, and accompany him in the journey. The identification of the site of the Holy Sepulchre, about which there has been much dispute lately, is one object to which special attention will be given. Dr. Robinson was in London, on his route to the Continent, and attended the meetings of the Geographical and other Societies.
The wife of Professor Robinson has recently published a protest in the London Athenæum against a garbled English edition of her work on the Colonization of New England. Mrs. Robinson says, "A work appeared in London last summer with the following title: 'Talvi's History of the Colonization of America,' edited by William Hazlitt, in two volumes. It seems proper to state that the original work was written under favorable circumstances in German and published in Germany. It treated only of the colonization of ew England:—and that only stood on its title-page. The above English publication therefore, is a mere translation—and it was made without the consent or knowledge of the author. The very title is a misnomer; all references to authorities are omitted; and the whole work teems with errors, not only of the press, but also of translation—the latter such as could have been made by no person well acquainted with the German and English tongues. For the work in this form, therefore, the author can be in no sense whatever responsible."
A late number of the London Leader in a review of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, or the Whale, says, "Want of originality has long been the just and standing reproach to American literature; the best of its writers were but second-hand Englishmen. Of late some have given evidence of originality; not absolute originality, but such genuine outcoming of the American intellect as can be safely called national. Edgar Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville are assuredly no British off-shoots; nor is Emerson—the German American that he is! The observer of this commencement of an American literature, properly so called, will notice as significant that these writers have a wild and mystic love of the super-sensual, peculiarly their own. To move a horror skillfully, with something of the earnest faith in the Unseen, and with weird imagery to shape these phantasms so vividly that the most incredulous mind is hushed, absorbed—to do this no European pen has apparently any longer the power—to do this American literature is without a rival. What romance writer can be named with Hawthorne? Who knows the horrors of the seas like Herman Melville?"