Elizabeth Barret Browning has published a new poem, Casa Guidi Windows, which gives a vivid picture of the tumult and heroism of Italian struggles for independence, as seen from the poet's windows, at Florence, with the fervid commentary of her hopes and aspirations.
A novel by Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, published by Mr. Hart, of Philadelphia, has been dramatized by Mr. Henry Paul Howard, for the Haymarket Theatre in London, and brought out in a very splendid style, with J. W. Wallack in the leading character.
Colonel Cunningham, a son-in-law of Viscount Hardinge, has just published in London "Glimpses of the Great Western Republic in the year 1850."
We shall look with much interest for the result of the new scheme for the encouragement of life assurance, economy, &c., among literary men and artists in England. To bring this project into general notice, and to form the commencement of the necessary funds, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, one of its originators, has written and presented to his associates in the cause, a new comedy in five acts, under the significant title, Not So Bad as we Seem. It was to be produced on the sixteenth ult., under the management of Mr. Charles Dickens, in a theatre constructed for the purpose, and performed by Robert Bell, Wilkie Collins, Dudley Costello, Peter Cunningham, Charles Dickens, Augustus Egg, A.R.A., John Forster, R. H. Horne, Douglass Jerrold, Charles Knight, Mark Lemon, J. Westland Marston, Frank Stone, and others. The tickets were twenty-five dollars each, and the Queen and Prince Albert were to be present. The comedy is hereafter to be performed in public; and the promoters of the scheme are sanguine of its success. Mr. Maclise has offered to paint a picture (the subject to be connected with the performance of the comedy), and to place it at the disposal of the guild, for the augmentation of its funds. The prospects are encouraging.
The Rev. C. G. Finney, so well known in the Presbyterian churches of this country, has passed some time in London, and an edition of his Lectures on Systematic Theology has just been published there, with a preface by the Rev. Dr. Redford, of Worcester, who confesses, that "when a student he would gladly have bartered half the books in his library to have gained a single perusal of these Lectures; and he cannot refrain from expressing the belief, that no young student of theology will ever regret their purchase or perusal." The book makes an octavo of 1016 pages.