views on School Economy. Two Fellows of Trinity
College, Cambridge, Mr. Davis and Mr. Vaughan, have
published an excellent translation of The Republic of
Plato, with Introduction, Analysis, and Notes. Three
useful contributions to popular science have been made
in The First Report of the Commissioners for the
Exhibition of 1851; in the First Part of the Record of
the School of Mines and of Science applied to the Arts;
and in a volume of Lectures on the Results of the Great
Exhibition, delivered by the many distinguished men
who treated of various branches of the subject at the
Society of Arts. Mr. Rymer Jones has published a
second volume of his Natural History of Animals.
Professor H. H. Wilson has made a timely and opportune
re-issue of a Narrative of the Burmese War in
1824-26, published in India at the time, with a moral
pointed to the similar affair in which we are now
engaged. Mr. Leoni Levi has completed his important
treatise on Commercial Law; its Principles and
Administration, of which the object was to shape the way to
the formation of a uniform legal code applicable to the
commerce of all nations, by exhibiting the various
agreements or differences of our existing mercantile law
with other known codes and laws of commerce, ancient
and modern.

Such books of a miscellaneous kind as remain to
complete our summary of the month, may be briefly
added. They comprise Mary Seaham, a novel by
Mrs. Grey; Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the
Lowly, a series of American sketches illustrative of
slave life; the Days of Bruce, a story founded on Scottish
history, by Grace Aguilar; Lydia, a Woman's
Book, by Mrs. Newton Crosland; and a story in three
volumes, called Fabian's Tower.

THE Annual Dinner of the Royal Academy, on the
1st inst., was a very interesting meeting. The president,
Sir Charles Eastlake, was in the chair, and the
tables were crowded with statesmen of all parties, and
men distinguished for rank and distinction in art,
science and literature. It happened to be the Duke
of Wellington's birth-day, and the circumstance was
gracefully alluded to by the chairman in proposing the
health of the Duke, who was present.—Chevalier Bunsen
acknowledged a toast to the foreign competitors: in
giving thanks for foreign painters, he expressed a hope
that they might also see within those walls sculpture,
and the works of the great master and genius of the age,
Thorwaldsen.—The Earl of Derby, in responding to
the toast of his health, expressed his ardent desire to
encourage the growing taste for the fine arts, and his
hope that his administration might (he said) "have an
opportunity of testifying our good-will to a pleasing and
delightful art by providing a more fitting and more
adequate locality for those treasures of ancient and
modern art which of late years this country has been
rapidly accumulating, and for the more rapid accumulation
of which little more is wanting than that which
I hope government may have it in their power to
provide—a more suitable space for their accommodation."
—The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke in a
similar spirit; but observed, that the task of obtaining
for art a habitation worthy of its lofty mission was full
of difficulties. "I cannot forget," he said, "that if the
House of Commons be applied to for this great object,
there sits there one who is distinguished for ability, and
who is—what I have no claim to be—an eminent and
successful statesman. If I could be assisted by the
noble lord the member for London—if he would but
exert his authority in that house, on whatever side he
may sit, I might indeed indulge in the hope that I
could succeed in fulfilling your expectations, and in
achieving a great result which has been too long delayed,
and to which my noble friend so significantly alluded
to-night. I will indulge in the hope from that reference,
that a palace may arise in this great metropolis,
worthy of the arts, worthy of the admiration of the
foreigner, worthy of this mighty people, as the becoming
emporium where all the genius and inventions of man
may be centered and celebrated. But to accomplish that
hope we must enlist all the sympathies of all the parties
in the state; and it is not to me—one whom accident
has placed in a position for which he is not qualified—
but to those whose long services and the evidences of
whose great abilities have gained the confidence of the
country, you must look: and if assisted by the noble
lord the member for the city of London, then indeed
the Royal Academy and this company may expect the
accomplishment of that which they have so long desired.
And, in the hope that the noble lord will so assist us, I
will break through the etiquette of the evening, and,
with your permission, I will venture to propose to you
'the health of the noble lord the member for the city
of London.' " The toast was received with great cheering
and laughter, and Lord John Russell made a genial
reply, in which he promised his best efforts to provide a
better habitation for the Royal Academy, and playfully
complimented Mr. Disraeli on the versatility of his
talents. "Mr. Burke and Mr. Macaulay," said Lord
John, "were both famous in literature, but I do not
know that either of them could produce a picture equal
to any in this room. Now, this is an arena which yet
remains open for the Chancellor of the Exchequer;
and, as he has succeeded in so many things already, I
hope he will try to succeed in the fine arts as he has
done in literature, and as, I must say, he has done in
political science." Speeches were also made by the Lord
Mayor of London, Lord Rosse, Lord Mahon, Professor
Owen, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earl of
Ellesmere. The last referred to himself in connection
with the noble picture-gallery of his family, as a keeper
of those "old lamps" who makes it "a study and
gratification to afford those who desire to catch from
them some sparks of the ancient fire, every facility they
wish."

A meeting on the subject of the Book Trade, very
numerously attended by booksellers and authors, was
held at Mr. Chapman's, in the Strand, on the 4th inst.,
with reference to the system of "protected" profits
enforced by the London Booksellers' Association. Mr.
Charles Dickens took the chair, and said that, though
he hesitated at first to do so, as the question struck him
to be purely a booksellers' one, he had been induced to
accede to the request, being on principle opposed to any
system of exclusion and restriction, and in favour of
every man having the free exercise of his thrift and
enterprise. Letters were then read from Mr. Cobden,
Mr. J. S. Mill, Professor de Morgan, Mr. H. Cole, C.B.,
Mr. J. Wilson, M.P., Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P., Mr. G.
Combe, Mr. G. R. M'Culloch, Mr. W. E. Gladstone,
M.P. Mr. Chambers, of Edinburgh, Mr. Leigh Hunt,
Mr. Howitt, Dr. Pereira, Mr. T. Carlyle, and others, all
expressing a decided condemnation of the course taken
by the London Booksellers' Association and of the
existing arrangements in the book trade. The following
resolutions, moved by Mr. Babbage, Mr. C. Knight,
Professor Newman, Professor Owen, and Mr. Ward,
were carried:—

"That the principles of free trade having now been established
by experience as well as by argument, it is the opinion of this
meeting that they ought to be applied to books as to all other
articles of commerce."

"That the principles of the Booksellers' Association are not
only opposed to those of free trade, but are extremely tyrannical
and vexatious in their application, and result in keeping the
prices of books much higher than they otherwise would be, thus
restricting their sale, to the great injury of authors, the public,
and of all connected with literature."

"That this meeting considers the peculiarity of the book
trade—viz., that the publisher fixes and advertises the retail
price of his publications—no valid argument for the maintainance
of the present restrictive system, and that the less the
office of promoting the retail sale is centralised in the publisher,
and the more it devolves on the local bookseller, the better for
the commerce of literature."

"That the trade restrictions, falling as they do with peculiar
severity upon books of a comparatively limited circulation,
greatly retard the spread of the higher branches of science and
philosophy by rendering it unprofitable, and, indeed, dangerous,
to publish works devoted to them."

"That experience having repeatedly shown that trade, with
artificially high profits and a small market, gains by being forced
into the natural system of low profits and a large market, this
meeting is of opinion that the abolition of the present restrictions,
so far from injuring the bookselling business, will greatly
benefit it."