Mr. Layard's fund having been exhausted, a subscription was lately set on foot for him in London, and its success we hope will enable him to prosecute his investigations with renewed vigor. He has, we hear, entirely recovered from his late indisposition, and needs but a supply of money to recommence his operations with renewed vigor.
Henry Alford, a very pleasing poet, a profound scholar, and most excellent man, is at the present time vicar of Wymeswold, in Leicestershire, England. He was born in London in 1810, and in 1832 graduated at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was afterwards Fellow. In 1835 he was married to his cousin, to whom are written some of his most charming effusions. At Easter in 1844 they lost one of their four children, and the bereavement seems to have induced the composition of many pieces full of tenderness and of remarkable beauty, which appear in the collection of his poems. In 1841 he was elected one of the lecturers in the University of Cambridge, and he is now, we believe, Examiner in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Logic in the University of London. He has published, besides his poetical works, which appeared in two volumes, some years since, several volumes of sermons, a work entitled Chapters on the Poets of Ancient Greece, written for the Nottingham mechanics; a volume of University Lectures; a work intended as a regular course of exercises in classical composition; and the Greek Testament, with a critically revised text, digest of various readings, &c., in which he has displayed sound learning and judgment. He is also editor of a very complete collection of the "Works of Donne", published some years ago at Oxford. The great labor of his life, however, centres in his edition of the Greek Testament, the first volume of which only, containing the four Gospels, has appeared. He is now working hard, eight or ten hours a day, in his theological researches, which promise a liberal harvest. We understand that he has in contemplation a poem of considerable length, the composition of which is to be the pleasant solace of his declining years. Mr. Alford's minor poems have within a few years been very popular in America, and won for their author the warm friendship and sympathy of many who will probably never know him personally. His pure domestic feeling, and hearty appreciation of whatever is most genial and hopeful in human nature, entitle him to the distinction he enjoys of being one of the truest "poets of the heart."
In a sketch of the artist Andrew Wilson, who died in Edinburgh two years ago, the Art Journal gives the following postscript of a letter from Sir David Wilkie to Wilson:
Madrid, Dec. 24th, 1827.
My Dear Sir,—Having been employed by our mutual friend, Mr. Wilkie, to copy the above, I cannot let the opportunity pass unimproved of speaking a word in my own name, and to call to your mind the pleasant hours we occasionally passed together many years since. Let me express, my dear sir, my great pleasure in thus renewing, after so long an interval, our acquaintance. You, of course, if you can recollect any thing of me, can only remember me as a raw, inexperienced youngster, while you were already a man, valuable for information, acquirements, and weight of character. With great regard, my dear sir, believe me, truly yours,
Mr. Alison, the historian, at a recent meeting of the Glasgow section of the Architectural Institute of Scotland, delivered an address in which he reviewed the state and progress of architecture, and its general influence on the mind and on the progress of civilization, from the period when it first became identified with Art to the present time.