EDWARD EVERETT has been many years engaged in the collection and arrangement of materials for a systematic Treatise on the Modern Law of Nations; more especially in reference to those questions which nave been discussed between the governments of the United States and Europe since the Peace of 1783. This will be Mr. Everett's "life poem." Hitherto he has written nothing very long except the "Defense of the Christian Religion," published when he was about twenty-one years of age. We have just received from Little & Brown their edition of the "Orations and Speeches" of Mr. Everett, in two very large and richly-printed volumes, which we shall hereafter notice more largely. These are to be followed, at the author's leisure, by his Political Reports and Speeches and Official Papers, in two large volumes, and his contributions to the North American Review, which, if all included, we think will make four others: so that his works, beside the new treatise above mentioned, will be completed in not less than eight volumes. We are gratified at the prospect of such a collection of these masterpieces of rhetoric, so full of learning and wisdom, and infused by so genial a spirit. We wish some publisher would give us in the same style all the writings of Alexander Everett.
CHARLES MACKAY has lately published in London, a work upon which he had long been engaged, under the title of "Progress of the Intellect." We suspect, from the reviewals of it which appear in the journals, that it is of the German free thinking class of philosophical histories. It embraces dissertations on Intellectual Religion, Ancient Cosmogony, the Metaphysical Idea of God, the Moral Notion of God, the Theory of Mediation, Hebrew Theory of Retribution and Immortality, the Messianic Theory prevailing in the days of Jesus, Christian Forms and Reforms, and Speculative Christianity. And these dissertations are written with an eloquence and power unexampled in a work of so much learning.
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M. AND MAD. DE LAMARTINE having returned from the East, are at present Staying at the Villa du Prado, a branch of the Hotel des Empereurs, a pleasant house on the banks of the Huveaune, in the midst of the most beautiful landscape. It was in a country box, upon the Avenue du Prado, that Lamartine wrote, in 1847, his "Histoire des Girondins." Lamartine is pleased with his Smyrna estate; he was received there by his vassals en grand seigneur, but he found that he would be obliged to expend a good deal of money before the estate would be profitable.
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THEODORE PARKER'S "Massachusetts Quarterly Review," is dead, and—God be Praised that New England refused to support it any longer. Mr. Parker says in the farewell to his readers, that the work "has never become what its projector designed that it should be;" and expresses a hope that "some new journal will presently be started, in a more popular form, which will promote the great ideas of our times, by giving them an expression in literature, and so help them to a permanent organization in the life of mankind."
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CAPT. SIR EDWARD BELCHER, R.N., known in the literary and scientific world by his extensive voyages of survey and discovery, is now on a visit to New York, whence he will shortly proceed to Texas. Sir Edward Belcher is a gentleman of remarkable energy of character, and of eminent abilities.
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A LETTER from M. Guizot, assigning the motives of his refusal to appear as a candidate of the Institute for a seat in the Superior Council of Public Instruction, is published by the Espérance of Nancy. The Principles avowed by M. Guizot lead directly to a separation of Church and State.