NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

The most interesting volumes issued during the past
month have heen biographical or autobiographical.
Taking them in the order of their appearance, we
have first to notice a neat and well–written sketch of the
Life of Marshal Turenne, which appears in Messrs.
Longman's library for travellers. A Frenchman has
raked together, and an Englishman has misspent some
time in translating, a number of ex–parte and violent
statements against the leader of the Italian revolutionary
party, which is published with the title of Mazzini
judged by his Countrymen. Lord John Russell has
sent forth the first portion (in two octavos) of the
Memorials and Correspondence of Charles James Fox, on the
collection of which Lord Holland was occupied for so
many years, to which Mr. Allen made afterwards many
additions, and which have since received from Lord
John himself, as these volumes show, not the least
valuable of their connecting links and interpolations of
party–history. Miss Anna Mary Howitt has written,
under the title of An Art Student in Munich, some
agreeable sketches of personal recollection and
experience gleaned in that city of art. Mr. N. P. Willis has
found a publisher, not deterred by his former gossipings,
to introduce to English readers his last Summer
Cruise in the Mediterranean. Captain Warburton has
written a Memoir of Charles Mordaunt, Earl of
Peterborough and Monmouth, a subject which fascinated
Walter Scott, though he did not pursue the intention he
once had of adorning it with the graces of his genius.
Lord Londonderry has added, to those formerly issued,
a new section (the third) of the Correspondence,
Despatches, and other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh.
Mr. G. L. Chesterton, the able and
respected governor of Cold Bath Fields prison, has
described his early adventures as well as his more mature
experiences, in two entertaining volumes entitled
Peace, War, and Adventure, an Autobiographical
Memoir. Mr. William J. Smith, formerly librarian
at Stowe, has completed his portion of The Grenville
Papers (including Richard and George Grenville's
Correspondence, and the personal Diary of the latter,)
to which he has prefixed an elaborate Essay endeavouring
to identify Junius with Lord Temple, but hardly succeeding
even to his own satisfaction. An intelligent private
Soldier, employed since his discharge in one of the County
Constabularies, has written a very clear and curious
account of Four Years' Service in India during Lord
Gough's last campaigns. A small volume has appeared
in one of the latest of the Railway Libraries, devoted to
the Character and Anecdotes of Charles the Second.
The Rev. J. P. Fletcher, long engaged in foreign
missions connected with religious societies, publishes The
Autobiography of a Missionary, in two volumes of
blended fiction and fact. Mr. Otto Wenckstern
translates in a small volume those of Goethe's Opinions on
books, men, and things as are to be met with, not in
his published works, but his recorded conversations.
Mr. C. D. Yonge has translated, for one of Mr. Bohn's
libraries, Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of
Eminent Philosophers; and, for another of those
instructive publications, Mr. B. Thorpe has translated
Dr. Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great. Finally we have
to mention, that the flev. Doctor Hanna has put forth,
in a supplementary volume to his father–in–law's Life and
Letters, a Selection from the Correspondence of the late
Thomas Chalmers, D.D.; and that Mr. De Quincey
has commenced the publication of his Autobiographical
Sketches, as the first volume of a collection of his works,
to be entitled Selections Grave and Gay from Writings
published and unpublished.

In history we have to record the appearance of the
first part of a cheap people's edition of Alison's History
of Europe; of an abridged history, for schools, of The
Fall of the Roman Republic, written by Mr. Charles
Merivale; of a well–translated version from the French
of Doctor De Felicé's History of the Protestants of France
from the Commencement of the Revolution to the Present
Time; of a new and original History of Scotland from
the Revolution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite
Insurrection, 1689–1784, which we owe to the researches of
Mr. Hill Burton; of Mr. Kaye's History of the Administration
of the East India Company, which may be described
as "the case" of that not very popular governing
body; of a new volume (the eleventh) of Mr. Grote's
learned History of Greece; of a translation, by Mr.
Thomas Parker, of Don Adolfo de Castro's History of
Religious Intolerance in Spain; of an elementary volume
called , First Steps in British History being certain
supposed letters to a young nobleman by his tutor; and of a
translation of the very remarkable Introduction to the
History of the Nineteenth Century, for which the
distinguished historian, Gervinus, is now undergoing
incarceration in one of the prisons of Prussia.

To the department of general literature and travels,
the principal volumes added have been the first volume
of the new edition (the eighth) of the Encyclopædia
Britannica; Professor Faraday's Lectures on the Non–
Metallic Elements, arranged with remarks by M. Scoffern;
a clever lecture by M. Tourrier on French as it was
in 1353, and as it is in 1853; a volume on the Educational
Institutions of the United States, translated from an
intelligent Swedish traveller and observer, Siljeström;
three large volumes (the production of an American
publisher) of the Works of William H. Seward, a
distinguished senator and statesman of America; two
amusing volumes of Classic and Historic Portraits, by
Mr. James Bruce; an illustrated volume (in Messrs.
Ingram & Cooke's Library) of London City Tales,
intended to exhibit in action the more romantic records
of the chief City Companies; another volume, in the
same library, on the Boyhood and Early Life of
Extraordinary Men, and a third on English Forests and
Forest Trees, with many illustrations; a novel called
Sir Frederick Derwent; an illustrated volume of
Memorials of Early Christianity; an English version,
with the admirable illustrations by Raffet, of Prince
Anatole de Demidoff"s Travels in Southern Russia in
1837; a description (from Scotland) of The British
Cabinet in 1853; three of the plays of Æschylus,
the Agamemnon, Eumenides, and Supplices, with
Latin annotations by Mr. F. A. Paley; a volume of
severe criticism on some books which have lately
appeared, impugning, in some particulars, the sincerity
and good conduct of the society of Friends, to which the
writer, Mr. Sandham Ely, gives the title of Ostentation;
a series of Sam Slick Wise Saws and Modem Instances;
a small volume reproducing the American Slave Code;
a fifth and concluding volume of Lord Chesterfield's
Works, collected and edited by Lord Mahon; a "Fur
Trader's" sketches of American Indian Life and
Character; an elementary school–book by Doctor
Donaldson, Latinæ Grammaticæ Rudimenta, and
another, by the same admirable scholar, of Longer
Exercises in Latin Prose Composition; a volume by
Doctor Francis on Change of Climate as a remedy for
dyspeptic and other affections, and another by Doctor
Hinds on The Harmonies of Physical Science; a volume
of criticism on Mr. Collier's recent "Notes and Emendations"
to Shakespeare's text, in which, under the title
of The Text of Shakespeare Vindicated, Mr. S. Weller
Singer unsparingly denounces Mr. Collier's discovery as
an imposture; a narrative, by Mr. Galton, of an
Explorer in Tropical South Africa; a volume on Home
Life in Germany by a very intelligent  American
traveller, Mr. Loring Bruce; an account of Travel Life
and Adventure in the British and the American provinces
by Lieut–Col. Sleigh, which he entitles Pine Forests and
Hac matack Clearings; two volumes of Memorandums
made in Ireland in the Autumn of 1852, by Doctor
Forbes; and a collection into one volume, with some
new dialogues, of Mr. Landor's Imaginary Conversations
of Greeks and Romans, perhaps the most perfect of all
his writings.