beneficial. Under these circumstances, it has been
resolved by the committee that no more free passages for
emigrants should be offered, but that the advantages of
the fund should be extended to any females desirous to
emigrate, without distinction of age, residence, or
occupation, upon a payment of £22 for each emigrant, being
nearly £10 less than the present rate of charge for
intermediate passengers, found with stores, bed, bedding,
mess-utensils, and all the other equipments furnished
by this Society. The emigrants going out under the
protection of this Society will thus have a great pecuniary
boon conferred on them, as well as other considerable
advantages. Arrangements have been entered into with
Messrs. Green and Co., at Blackwall, for the emigration
of these parties in their first-class London ships, and the
emigrants will be received into the Emigrants' Home,
in London, prior to embarkation. During the voyage,
they will be placed under the care of an experienced
surgeon and matron, and upon their arrival in the colony
they will have all the advantages of the Government
Home, and the Immigration Inspector's experience and
counsel. The first party of emigrants on this system
are to be despatched in a first-class ship at the latter end
of July.

         NARRATIVE OF FOREIGN EVENTS.

The intelligence from Constantinople respecting the
dispute with Russia, continues to be uncertain and
contradictory. The diplomatic negociations have been
broken off by the departure of Prince Menschikoff from
Constantinople; and it is said that the Emperor of
Russia has rejected the proffered mediation of England,
Austria, Prussia and France. No hostile movement
had been made by Russia at the date of the last
accounts, but the Turks are actively mustering their
forces to meet the Russians should they cross the Pruth.
On the 13th inst. the English fleet anchored in Besika
Bay, near the straits of the Dardanelles, where the
French fleet was also expected.

The advices from New York to the 11th inst. are of
no political importance. The Earl of Ellesmere and
the English commissioners to the New York Exhibition
arrived there on the 10th. Each commissioner
has a separate mission, and the general scope of their
inquiries will comprise the industrial resources of the
United States.

NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

The past month has been singularly barren of
publications having any marked character or special interest,
and even the number of miscellaneous books and
pamphlets has been greatly less than it usually is at this
season of the year.

Mr. George Finlay has completed a History of the
Byzantine Empire, or rather of that instructive period
of it, comprised between 716 and 1057, in a single octavo
volume which appears opportunely. Mr. Arthur
Martineau has, in a smaller volume, sketched Church
History in England to the Reformation. In a curious
volume filled with that kind of laborious and very
valuable, though rather clumsy original investigation,
so much less common now than in the last century, Mr.
Beale Poste has given us Britannic Researches, or
New Facts and Rectifications of Ancient British
History. His eminence the Cardinal Wiseman has
collected, in three goodly octavos, his Essays on Various
Subjects. Mr. Thackeray has collected, and annotated,
his lectures on the English Humourists of the Eighteenth
Century. Doctor Vaughan has re-written, with large
additions, his memoir of the Life of Wycliffe. Mr.
John Allen has expounded his views of nonconformity,
and his objection to ecclesiastical establishments, in a large
octavo entitled State Churches and the Kingdom of
Christ. Miss Costello has written a Memoir of Mary
the Young Duchess of Burgundy and her Contemporaries.
Mr. Francis, who has already given us the
romance of the Bank and the Stock Exchange, now
entertains us with his Chronicles of Life Assurance.
A new volume of D'Aubigne's History of the
Reformation has appeared simultaneously in English and
French, of which the special subject is the
commencement of the Reformation in England. Mr.
Edward Strachey has discussed, with reference to recent
disquisitions and discoveries, Hebrew Politics in the
times of Sargon and Sennacherib. And there has been
collected into one large volume, without abridgment,
all those Contributions to the Edinburgh Review by
Francis Jeffrey, which formerly filled four octavos.

When to these have been added a few books of travel,
and two or three of poetry and poetical criticism, all
the literature of the month will have been mentioned
that may fairly claim notice in our narrative.

Mr. Dyce has contributed to recent discussions on the
test of our great dramatic poet, A Few Words about
Shakespeare. Mr. Collier has sent forth, with some
enlargement, and a not very judicious adherence to the
most obviously hazardous "corrections,'" a new edition of
his manuscript-corrector's Notes and Emendations. A
new rhymed version of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered
has been made by Mr. Alexander Cuningham Robertson.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has published several original
poems in the third volume of his collected Poetical and
Dramatic Works. Mr. Bode, late student of Christchurch,
has turned into spirited verse several of the
early and delightful traditions of the Father of History,
to which he gives the name of Ballads from Herodotus.
Little volumes entitled Poems have also been published
by Mr. Archer Gurney, and (once a formidable name in
poetical literature) Mr. John Dennis. To turn from the
poets to the travellers, Mr. Palliser's Solitary Rambles
and Adventures of a Hunter in the Prairies, takes us to
the least frequented scene, and entertains us with more
dangerous encounters than any since Mr. Cumming
Bruce's. Commander Inglefield carries us on one
more Summer Search for Sir John Franklin. Mr.
Cayley takes us into Spain, and from his Saddle-bags
(Las Alforjas, such is the title of his volumes) empties
out upon us his observations on the country and people
there. An underground traveller has explored Our
Coal and our Coal- Pits. Colonel Churchill has described
Mount Lebanon for us in three good-sized octavos,
which contain the results of a ten years' residence
among the tribes, from 1842 to last year. Finally we
have to mention Mr. John Barrow's Tour on the
Continent in 1852, and Miss Selina Banbury's Life
in Sweden with Excursions in Norway and Denmark.

The subject of India still gives occasion for innumerable
pamphlets, the most striking of which, since our last
publication, have been Mr. Clark Marsham's Letter to
Mr. Bright; the sixth, seventh, and eighth of the
Tracts on India Reform; a criticism by a native on
The Civil Administration of the Bombay Presidency;
a review by Mr. Kerr, of Public Instruction in the
Bengal Presidency from 1835 to 1851; and a larger
treatise, by Major Hough, on India as it Ought to Be.
The spirited writer on the Morality of Public Men has
again discoursed on the same theme, enriched as it has
been by several illustrations "since his last;" and the
Registration of Assurances Bill has called forth several
letters both for and against the ministerial scheme.