The new Paris review, La Politique Nouvelle, starts bravely its career as a rival of La Revue des Deux Mondes. The leading article, "La Constitution, c'est l'order," is by M. Marie, who was one of the chiefs of the Provisional Government, and Henri Martin, Gustave Cazavan, and Paul Rochery, are among the contributors; but the best attraction of the work to those who do not care for its politics, is the beginning of a charming novel by Madame Charles Reybaud, the authoress of Tales of the Old Convents of Paris.
Lamartine's reputation declines with every new attempt of his at money-making. There was never a man capable of doing well a half of what he advertises. He is writing a romance on the destruction of the Janizaries, for the Pays, another romance for the Siecle, and occasionally gives feuilletons to other journals; he is re-editing a complete edition of his own works, writing a history of the Restoration, and a history of Turkey, and has lately begun to edit a daily paper. He also continues the monthly pamphlet, of between thirty and forty pages, the Conseiller du Peuple, on political matters, and produces once a month a periodical, Les Foyers du Peuple, in which he gives an account of his travels, with tales and verses.
The Paris correspondent of the London Literary Gazette states, that an Assyrian, named Furis Schycyac, is at present attracting some attention in the literary circles. He had just arrived from London, where, it appears, he translated the Bible into Arabic, for one of the religious associations. He has accompanied his début in Parisian society with a mudh, or poem, to Paris, in which he almost out-Orientals the Orientals in his exaggerated compliments and gorgeous imagery. Paris, he declares, amongst other things, is the "terrestrial paradise," the "séjour of houris," and "Eden;" whilst the people are, par excellence, "the strong, the generous, the brave, the sincere-hearted, with no faults to diminish their virtues." This master-stroke has opened the Parisian circles to the cunning Assyrian.
M. Leroux has published in Paris a volume of Reminiscences of Travel and Residence in the United States, with observations on the Administration of Justice in this country.
The last Edinburgh Review has an article on Cousin, in which a general survey is taken of his life and of his works, of which he has just completed the publication of a new edition. The London Leader says that the critic ingeniously represents all Cousin's plagiarisms as the consequences of the progressive and assimilative intellect of the eclectic chief; that it would be easy with the same facts to tell a very different story; and correct the reviewer's "mistake," where he talks of Cousin as the translator of Plato. Cousin's name is on the title-page; but not one dialogue, the Leader avers, did he translate; it even doubts his ability to translate one. What he did was to take old translations by De Grow and others, here and there polishing the style; and the dialogues that were untranslated he gave to certain clever young men in want of employment and glad of his patronage. He touched up their style and wrote the Preface to each Dialogue, for which the work bears his name! This explains the puzzling fact that the translator of Plato should so completely misunderstand the purpose of the dialogue he is prefacing. Gigantic indeed would be the labors of Cousin—if he performed them himself.