The first number of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's German Dictionary is just out. It would be premature to criticise the work in its present stage; it seems, however, to be most carefully and accurately compiled. It is printed in large octavo form, in double columns, on good paper, and in a clear print. Some idea may be formed of the labor which has been expended on this work, from the fact that all the leisure time of a learned professor has been devoted for the last three years to reading through the works of Goethe alone in connection with it. The first number consists of one hundred and twenty pages, and contains about half the letter A. It is announced to us that 7000 copies had been subscribed for up to the 20th of April. This is a result almost unparalleled in the German book-trade, and not often surpassed in England.
The library of the convent at Gaesdorf, in Germany, is in possession of a most interesting MS. of Rempen's De Successione Christi. It contains the whole of the four books, and its completion dates from the year 1427. This MS. is therefore the oldest one extant of this work, for the copy in the library of the Jesuits at Antwerp, which has generally been mistaken for the oldest MS., is of the year 1440. The publication of this circumstance also settles the question as to the age of the fourth book of Rempen's work, which some erroneously assumed had not been written previous to 1440.
The new Catalogue of the Leipzig Easter Book-Fair contains, according to the German papers, 700 titles more than the previous Catalogue for the half year ending with the Fair of St. Michael. The latter included 3860 titles of published books, and 1130 of forthcoming publications. The present Catalogue enumerates 4527 published works and 1163 in preparation. These 5690 books represent 903 publishers. A single house in Vienna contributes 113 publications. That of Brockhaus figures for 95.
From Kiel it is stated that Germany has lost one of her most celebrated natural philosophers in the person of Dr. Pfaff, senior of the Professors of the Royal University of Kiel—who has died at the age of seventy-nine. M. Pfaff is the author of a variety of well-known scientific works—and of others on Greek and Latin archæology. Since his death, his correspondence with Cuvier, Volta, Kielmayer, and and other celebrated men, has been found among his papers.