At Dijon, on occasion of the opening of a section of the Paris and Lyons Railway, the President made a speech reflecting severely upon the Assembly which he charged with a failure to support him in carrying out the popular improvements which he desired to effect. Though considerably moderated as published, the speech caused great excitement in the Assembly. General Changarnier evidently assumed it to be a declaration on the part of the President of an intention to disregard the prerogatives of the Assembly, should that body prove adverse to his plans. He assured the members that in any case they might rely upon the army, who would implicitly obey their officers. The debates in the Assembly continue to be very bitter and acrimonious, sometimes hardly stopping short of personal violence.
GERMANY, Etc.
From the remaining portion of Europe there is little of special interest. The Frankfort Diet has resumed its regular sittings, but nothing of importance has been proposed. At Hamburg, an affray occurred between the populace and a party of Austrian troops, in which lives were lost.
In Portugal, the Ministry of the Marquis of Saldanha seems likely to maintain its place.
In Italy there is the same hostility to the Austrian rulers, manifesting itself as it best may. In Milan, not only is tobacco proscribed by the people, as a government monopoly, but the purchase of tickets in the state lotteries is looked upon as an act of treason to the popular cause. At Pavia, the Count Gyulay, the Military Governor of Lombardy, appearing in the theatre, almost all the audience rose and left the house; and the few who remained were received with hisses by the crowd when they finally came out. At Florence, the Count Guicciardini, and five others have been sentenced to six months' banishment for being found, to quote the words of the procès verbal, "sitting round a small table," upon which "occasion Count Piero Guicciardini read and commented upon a chapter in the Gospel of St. John," in the Italian translation of Diodati, under circumstances that "offer valid and sufficient proof that this reading and comment had no other purpose than mutually to insinuate into the parties religious sentiments and principles contrary to those prescribed by the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion."
Literary Notices.
The Parthenon is the title of a serial work on a new plan, published by Loomis, Griswold, and Co., the first number of which has just been issued in a style of uncommon typographical elegance, and containing original articles from several distinguished American writers. It is intended to present, in this publication, a collection of specimens of the literary talent and cultivation of the United States, as exhibited in the productions of our most eminent living authors. Among the contributors, whose pens are enlisted in the proposed enterprise, we find the most celebrated names in the field of American letters, together with a host of lesser lights, who have yet distinction to achieve. The contents of this number are of a high order, and give a rich promise of the future excellence of the work. It opens with an Indian Legend, by Cooper, called "The Lake Gun," which is followed by poetical contributions from Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Gould, Duganne, and Ross Wallace.
Narrative of Travels in America, by Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley (published by Harper and Brothers), is a perpetual effusion of astonishment and admiration at the natural resources and the social developments of the Western Continent. Lady Wortley is not a traveler of the regular English stamp, judging every thing American by the standard of the Old World, and giving vent to the disappointment of absurd anticipations by ridiculous comparisons. She has no doubt gone to the contrary extreme, and presented a too rose-colored picture of her impressions of America. With the quickness of observation, and gayety of temperament with which she mingled in all classes of American society, she could not fail to catch its most important features; but we think she often mistakes the courtesy and deference which her own frankness and intelligence called forth for a more decidedly national characteristic than is warranted by facts. On questions at issue between her own country and the United States, she uniformly takes sides with the latter. She shows a warm American heart every where, without the slightest disposition to flatter English prejudices. Evidently her nature is strongly magnetic; she wears her foreign habits like a glove, and throws them off at pleasure; adapting herself with cordial facility to the domestic life of New England, or the brilliant far niente of Mexico. This disposition gives her book a highly personal and often gossiping character. She talks of the acquaintances she forms with the delight of a joyous child, who has found a new amusement, and generally with as little reserve. No one can complain of her fastidiousness, or of her unwillingness to be pleased. Indeed, the whole volume gives you the idea of a frank, impulsive, high-hearted Englishwoman, rejoicing to escape for a while from the restraints of conventional etiquette, and expressing herself with the careless ease of a perfectly natural character, among scenes of constant novelty and excitement. So completely does she throw herself into the mood of the passing moment, that she adopts all sorts of American colloquialisms, with as much readiness as if she had been to "the manner born," embroidering her pages with a profusion of familiar expressions, caught from the rebellious volubility of Brother Jonathan, and which most shock the "ears polite" in every drawing-room in England. It will be seen that her work belongs to the amusing order of travels, and makes no pretensions to intense gravity or profound wisdom. You read it as you would listen to the rattling talk of the author, pleased