A very valuable and interesting chapter of French literary history, is M. de Bligniere's Essay on Amyot and on the French Translators of the Sixteenth Century, lately published at Paris in an octavo volume. Amyot was the first to render Heliodorus, Plutarch, and Lenginus into French, and his excellence consists in a naive sincerity, which, while it seeks only the true version of his author, lends to it unconsciously the most pleasing impression of the translator himself.
A new French translation of the works of Silvio Pellico has appeared at Paris, from the pen of M. Lezaud. It includes the Memoirs of the celebrated Italian, and his Discourses upon Duties. The translation is praised by no less a critic than Saint Marc Girardin.
A French translation of the Rig-Veda, that is, of the most ancient of all the Vedas, is just finished at Paris, where the fourth and last volume appeared about the middle of January. The translator is M. Langlois of the Institute.
In the year 1851 there were published in France 7,350 works in different languages; the average yearly product of the previous ten years was only 6,456; of musical works in 1851, there were 485.
There is now appearing serially at Paris a History of the Bastille, from its foundation in 1374, to its destruction in 1789. It is to contain a full narrative of its mysteries, its prisoners, its governors, its archives, the tortures and punishments inflicted upon prisoners, with revelations of the whole internal management of this great prison, and also a great variety of adventures, dramatic, tragical and scandalous. The dish is to be completed and spiced with some rich glimpses of the mysteries of the French police during the period referred to. The authors of this publication are Messrs. Arnould, Albioze, and Magnet. The last named has sometimes been employed to help Alexander Dumas as a playwright. These writers also announce that when they have got through with the Bastille, they shall attack the Castle of Vincennes, and give the history of the same from its foundation to the present day. They propose first to consider it as a royal palace, under which head they will narrate a variety of orgies and debauchery; next as a fortress, when they will narrate sieges and battles; and finally as a state prison, when they will give the history of the leading prisoners there confined, with an account of the dungeons, the torture chambers, &c., and kindred particulars. This work will be illustrated with steel engravings.