The several volumes of essays, entitled, Companions of my Solitude, Friends in Council, Essays Written during the Intervals of Business, &c., are now announced to be by a Mr. Helps. Most of them have been republished in this country, and much read here. They are agreeable and sensible, but without any very original or striking qualities to give them a permanent place in literature.
Among the English announcements made in the last month are, Personal Recollections of Mary Russell Mitford and Anecdotes of Her Literary Acquaintances; Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham, from original letters and documents, by the Earl of Albemarle; several new books on the war in Affghanistan; The Convent and the Harem, by the Countess Pisani; Pictures of Life in Mexico, by R. H. Mason; Women of Early Christianity, by Miss Kavanagh; Hippolytus and his Age, or, Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus, by the Chevalier Bunsen; China during the War and since the Peace, including Translations of Secret State Papers, by Sir J. F. Davis; Sketches of English Literature, by Mrs. C. L. Balfour; Symbols and Emblems of Early and Midiæval Christian Art, by Louisa Twining; a new work by Dr. Layard, entitled Fresh Discoveries at Nineveh, and Researches at Babylon; a new work by Sir Francis Head, with the facetious title, All my Eye; Some Account of the Danes and Northmen, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by J. J. A. Worsaae, of Copenhagen; An Illustrated Classical Mythology and Biography, by Dr. William Smith; Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, by Sir Woodbine Parish; and two new volumes of Grote's History of Greece.
The English Dissenters have recently established a new college. It is the result of a union of three existing similar institutions, at present belonging to the Independents—namely, Coward, Homerton, and Cheshunt Colleges; and it is anticipated, from such a concentration of Nonconformist resources and energies, that the standard of learning among them will be raised still higher than it is at present, though it is not now below that in the established church, which, controlling the great universities, is pleased not to admit that a man may understand Greek or Mathematics unless he subscribes to the thirty-nine articles.
Sir Charles Lyell, lately, in an Address to the Geological Society, demolished again the paltry affair which for some time has constituted the main artillery of the atheists, The Vestiges of Creation; and The Leader thereupon declares that, "In proportion as any branch of inquiry rises out of mere details into the higher generalizations which alone constitute science, we find our scientific men, with rare exceptions, pitiably incompetent."
"Christopher North" (Professor Wilson), has been compelled by ill health to make arrangements for dispensing with the delivery of his lectures on moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, at the ensuing session. The great poet, philosopher, critic, sportsman, and humorist, is in the sixty-third year of his age.