Mr. Hoe, celebrated for his printing presses, has just completed a new one, having eight cylinders, and thus throwing off eight sheets at each revolution, for the use of the Sun newspaper in New York. He was the recipient lately of a public dinner given to him by the proprietors of the paper, at which several of the most eminent literary celebrities in the country were present as guests. The occasion was one of interest: we hope it may be deemed indicative of a growing disposition to tender public honors to the benefactors, as well as to the destroyers, of their race.
The literary productions of the month will be found noticed in another department of this Magazine. Several works of interest are promised by the leading publishers. The Harpers have in press a volume of traveling sketches, entitled Nile Notes, by an American, which will be found to be one of the best of its kind. It is written with great vivacity and with very marked ability. Many of its chapters are fully equal to Eothen, and the work in its general characteristics is not at all inferior to that spirited and admirable book. The Harpers have also in press a work by Mr. H.M. Field, giving a succinct history of the Great Irish Rebellion with biographical sketches of the most prominent of the Irish Confederates. It will find a wide circle of readers. The Harpers are also about to publish Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor in the Nineteenth Century, made up of his Letters in the London Morning Chronicle upon that subject, revised and extended. These papers reveal a state of things not at all creditable to the English people or to the age in which we live. As originally published in London they excited great attention and have done much toward arousing the public sense of justice to the poor.
Cooper, the novelist, has a work in preparation upon the Social History of this country. It will probably, however, not be published until fall. Mr. Putnam has in progress a new and very elegantly printed uniform edition of his novels. Another New York house promise a complete edition of Joanna Baillie's poems, with a new edition of Elizabeth Barret Browning.
Prof. Agassiz, the celebrated Naturalist, is making a survey of the Florida reefs and keys, in the hope that he may throw some light upon their formation and growth. He is nominally attached to the Coast Survey.
American scholars still continue their valuable contributions to classical learning. Prof. Drisler, of Columbia College, one of the most thorough and accurate linguists in the country, is engaged upon an English-Greek Lexicon, which will be a most valuable aid to the classical student, in connection with similar works by the same author hitherto issued.
In the departments of religious and theological literature, we find indications of renewed activity among the divines of our country. Prof. J. Addison Alexander, of Princeton, has a new critical and exegetical work in the course of preparation. Rev. Dr. Spring will soon publish, through M.W. Dodd, a volume under the title of First Things, a series of lectures designed to set forth and illustrate some of the facts and moral duties earliest revealed to mankind. From Rev. Dr. Condit, of Newark, we are to have a work entitled The Christian Home, setting forth the relations, duties, and benefits of the domestic institution. Rev. H.A. Rowland, author of a work on the Common Maxims of Infidelity, has in press a volume under the title of The Path of Life.
The late Edmond Charles Genet, Embassador from the Republic of France to this country at the close of the last century, left behind him, at his decease, a vast amount of papers, consisting of journals of his life, letters from the prominent statesmen and politicians of this country, and correspondence with his sister, the celebrated Madame Campan. It is understood that members of his family are arranging them with a view to publication. From the close social and political relations which M. Genet, after his dismissal from the embassy, bore to the prominent politicians of the Democratic party, there can be no doubt that these papers, if judiciously edited, will throw much light upon the political history of the period preceding the war of 1812.
It is known by those familiar with current Continental literature, that the wife of Prof. Edward Robinson published, some time since, in Germany, under her usual pseudonym, Talvi, a very full and excellent history of the early Colonization of New England. This work has lately been translated from German into English by William Hazlitt, and published in London. It was published originally at Leipsic in 1847. We presume it will be reprinted here.
Rev. H.T. Cheever's Whale and his Captors has been reprinted in London, with a preface by Dr. Scoresby, who commends it very highly.