One of the most practical handbooks of a higher order for the use of the learned, in Roman Antiquities, is that by W. Beeker, ex-Professor at Leipzig—the third part of which has just made its appearance. The parts already published contain the first part of the State Government of ancient Italy; the Provinces ('of which we have here for the first time a complete statistical account'); and the State Constitution. The publisher promises that in the coming volumes there will be given the departments of Finance and War, Jurisprudence, Religion and Private Antiquities. In connection with this we may cite the Legis Rubriæ pars superstes, a beautifully lithographed fac-simile of this classic curiosity, and also by Dr. Adam Zinzow De Pelasgicis Romanorum Sacris, which is a treatise on those oldest of the Roman local legends which the author considers as Pelasgic.
In our forgetfulness of such "opium reading" we are oft apt to imagine the days of mysticism and the supernaturalism gone by. Germany, however, occasionally reminds us that the world is ever prone to return to the spectre-haunted paths trodden by its forefathers. One of the latest recallers of this description, is a second and very considerably enlarged edition of Dr. Joseph Ennemoser's Historio-Physiological Inquiries into the Origin and Existence of the Human Soul. Of a somewhat similar school, we have the second volume of the collected works of Franz Von Baader, and separate from these, by Dr. Franz Hoffmann, Franz Baader in his relations to Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Herbart. Six groschens worth of stout and vivid abuse of the atheist Feuerbach has also been published by Bläsing of Erlangen.
We have already called attention to the tenth edition of Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexikon, now publishing serially at Leipzig. The twenty-first part is before us, and we again take occasion to commend the work to our readers. We know no other encyclopædia which compares with it in universal excellence and utility, and this edition is a great improvement upon its predecessors. In the biography of living personages of distinction it is especially rich; in this respect alone it deserves to be found in the libraries even of those who own the earlier editions. The biographies of American statesmen and scholars are given with detail and correctness.
A work which may be of some interest to the belles-lettres antiquarian, has just been published by Schmidt, of Halle: The Sources of Popular Songs in German Literature. Such a performance is more necessary for the songs of Germany than for those of any other nation, since no where else is there so much which really requires explanation to the moderns.
A most agreeable book is Schiller and his Paternal House, lately published at Stuttgart, by Herr Saupe. The great poet is here depicted in the midst of his father's family, all of whom loved him dearly, and respected as much as they loved.