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 The presi1st inst., was a very interesting meeting. dent, 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 be centered and celebrated. But to accomplish that hope we must enlist all the sympathies of all the parties

may

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 cheer-
ing 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. he hesitated at first to do so, as the question struck him Charles Dickens took the chair, and said that, though 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 Mr. J. S. Mill, Professor de Morgan, Mr. H. Cole, C.B.), enterprise. Letters were then read from Mr. Cobden, 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, al 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 :

แ

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 tyrannica and vexatious in their application, and result in keeping the prices of books much higher than they otherwise would be, thu restricting their sale, to the great injury of authors, the publi and of all connected with literature."

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

'That the trade restrictions, falling as they do with peculia 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, wi artificially high profits and a small market, gains by being for into the natural system of low profits and a large market, th meeting is of opinion that the abolition of the present restr tions, so far from injuring the bookselling business, will grea benefit it."

result of the visits of the Emperor of Russia to Vienna and Berlin has transpired. Stocks and Funds, British and foreign, have therefore, from these causes, been by no means brisk this month.

Monthly Supplement to "HOUSEHOLD WORDS," Conducted by CHARLES DICKENS.

A FULL report of political progress since our last Narrative, ample as if contained in a blue-backed folio, could say no more than that we have advanced a month nearer to the General Election. That is the goal to which everything has tended. Nothing has been acted or said that has not had direct reference to the hustings, the Tapers and Tadpoles have done their best, and several good cries have gone to the country.

Nevertheless nothing is in danger, except the seats of a few honourable gentlemen. What Mr. Disraeli calls, with great love and unction, in his addresses to the farmers of Bucks, our Protestant Crown, might really have seemed to be, from the loudness of the shouts raised to its rescue, in some ittle peril. But closer inquiry shows there is nothing alarming. For example, the Colonial Minister and others, with a shrewd electoral look out at Exeter Hall, made speeches upon the Frome Vicarage case prophetic of direful consequences to protestant bishops who should institute to protestant livings men of more than doubtful protestant faith; but afterwards came in Mr. Gladstone, and, with as shrewd regard to his own electors at Oxford, saved the bishop more particularly in question by the odd expedient of insisting on his immediate impeachment; whereupon the protestant fire of the Commons' house which had just flared up to inconvenient warmth, fanned by a majority of votes as well as speeches, was left to burn itself out, and poor Mr. Horsman, not feeling himself equal to an impeachment, took nothing at all by the success of his more moderate motion, and the Frome Vicarage case came to nothing. Just so it has been with Maynooth. After a series of speeches that left not unbespattered a single spot of the scarlet dress of her who sitteth on the seven hills, Mr. Spooner quietly took up his hat and wished the old lady good evening, not having the heart to subject her to further inconvenience. What remains to be done the electors are expected to do. In like manner with Education. When it was unexpectedly announced the other day that the education question between Church and State, long in agitation, had been settled by unqualified rrender to the Church of everything in dispute, it was ared that some immediate and overpowering necesy must exist for so sacrificing the interests of the ty, till Lord Derby's explanation that the change was ot to take effect till the new parliament should have d an opportunity of voting on it, reduced the moentous announcement to a mere election manœuvre. d, whatever sensible people may think of the Fopriety of popish priests carrying their images and ppery through the streets of protestant cities, who es any higher motive than a hustings one to the clamation of the other day against them? Thether the hustings has been as judiciously ealed to in Lord Malmesbury's blundering assent Treaty with M. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, by

[PRICE 2d.

which not only Frenchmen of liberal opinions would no longer have been safe in England, but Englishmen politically suspected would no longer have been safe in France, from which treaty he only at last escaped by flatly turning tail on his own proposal;-whether the electors have been propitiated equally by Lord Derby's announced determination to let affairs take their own way at the Cape;-whether the Militia Bill will be found, without any kind of drawback, an attractive novelty commanding popular gratitude;whether the money clauses and other clauses in the New Zealand Government Bill will be as agreeable to everybody, here and there, as to the late New Zealand Company;-and finally, whether the amendment by the Lords, nullifying in effect the Corrupt Voters Punishment Bill, will be as pleasant to the electors of Birmingham and the West Riding as to those of Norwich and Harwich :-all this is open to doubt. On the other hand it admits of no doubt whatever that the case of Mr. Mather has not been managed in a way that is likely to be well received at any polling place in the country, be its colours blue or yellow, orange or green. Generally, it may be premised, we have not a praiseworthy style of managing such matters. We carry into them too much of mere shopkeeping. We protect the honour of our subjects abroad too much after the fashion that we use to protect the honour of our wives at home. We enforce our civis Romanus sum by making foreign governments pay, and it is at times an awkward precedent. An English gentleman was bastinadoed at Scutari, and we made the Turk salve his battered soles with money. M. Pacifico watched the case with interest, saw a means of turning it to account in a little matter of his own, and managed in the end to turn the laugh also hugely against us. Mather's case threatens consequences a thousand But Mr. times worse than Don Pacifico's. In the first place, the position in respect of Italian affairs which we hold to Austria, is infinitely more delicate than any in which we could possibly have stood to poor little insignificant Greece. To have Austrian officers sabring an Englishman in the most polished capital of Tuscany, is on all hands confessed to be no small matter, in whatever light the question of redress is viewed. Lord Malmesbury consenting to view it only in one light, as a matter of pecuniary compensation, it became in the next place obvious that the efficiency of the reparation, the satisfaction to the national honour, would depend wholly on the more or the less. damage is to property, how much more should it be This being admittedly so when the held so when personal outrage is in question. The amount demanded is in truth everything, if it be once determined that the demand should take that shape at all. confession of wrong, and a redress of it, to pay It really would have been a five thousand pounds, when to offer two hundred was neither more nor less than an insult. But

unhappily Lord Malmesbury, who appears to have felt this at last, did not feel it at first; and not having felt it at first, he is now trying to repair his original want of apprehension, and all the grievous blunders that have followed it, by threatening to recall our minister from Tuscany. Not a step has the Mather case made since our last, therefore, even in the direction of the polling-booths. It has retrograded, not advanced.

The end to the lamentable imbroglio, indeed, no one can at present foresee. But it somewhat oddly happens that the recall of an English minister from Tuscany a thing now made probable by Lord Malmesbury, and at all times, one would have thought, an infinitesimally unimportant thing-would unquestionably, at this moment, be inconvenient and unwise. For the first time these many years, an English representative has positively business in Tuscany. Austria happens to be now using the most strenuous efforts to extend her tariff, and form a large Customs Union, of which, over Italy on the one side and Germany on the other, she is to have undisputed control. To effect this, the Grand Duke has been placed under violent pressure; to which he so reluctantly yields, that the steady support of an English minister would in all probability give him the requisite strength to make even yet a successful resistance. Now, there is an old saying about the folly of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face; and if Lord Malmesbury succeeds in making it the issue of the Mather affair, that English commerce, with English influence, should at so critical a moment be excluded from the Italian peninsula, he will have added a notable illustration of that ancient saw to those other diplomatic efforts which bid fair to make his foreign administration memorable.

of the Austrian officer, and Mr. Mather had received a pecuniary compensation, as large as the damages he would probably have recovered in an English court of justice.

On the following day the Case of Mr. Mather once of some correspondence on the subject in the papers of more gave rise to a discussion, owing to the publication that morning. The Earl of MALMESBURY stated that the letter purporting to be addressed to him by Mr. Mather, sen., complaining of the course which had been adopted by the government, and which formed a portion of the published correspondence, had never been received by him, either at his official or private residence. As the case was now concluded, he would lay the whole correspondence upon the table of the house, had or not acted as became the honour of the country. and would leave their lordships to judge whether they The house adjourned for the Whitsun Holidays.

a

On Monday, June 7th, the Duke of NEWCASTLE put question to the government on the subject of the Constitution to be granted to the Cape of Good Hope, and after strongly intimating his opinion that the raising of the franchise in that colony from 257. to 50%., which had been proposed and carried by the Colonial Secretary, was impolitic and injurious to the interests of the colony, disallow or to sanction the alteration? he asked whether her Majesty's ministers intended to He also wished to know whether the Cape was to have an elective or a nominee upper chamber?-The Earl of DERBY said the ordinances had not yet been received in this country, and the government had suspended their opinion on the subject till they could have the advantage of revising them along with the observations of the new Governor-General Cathcart.

On Tuesday, June 8th, the Earl of MALMESBURY moved the second reading of a bill to carry into effect the articles of the convention between England and France for the Mutual Surrender of Criminal Offenders, and explained that the measure did not extend to political offenders.-The Earl of ABERDEEN concurred The history of the past month, deadened by these in the general principle of the bill, but took exception dull intrigues of clectioneering politics, would have to many of its details.-Lord CAMPBELL complained of been nearly blank of life and interest but for a the novel principle of making the mere warrant of the remarkable trial between two renegade priests. Dr. French authorities and identification, without proof or Newman, who made one of the earliest steps from reasonable suspicion of guilt, sufficient evidence for, the Oxford to Rome, libelled Dr. Achilli, formerly a Domi- surrender of persons from under the protection of English law. Lord BROUGHAM and other peers joined nican monk in Italy, now an Evangelical preacher in a small chapel in London, and Achilli brought an action in the objection, and the LORD CHANCELLOR promised to consider the point in committee.-Lord CRANWORTH against his accuser. The charges were, if proved, was of opinion that the bill was wrong in principle, and of a character to blast the prospects of any minister that no change in detail could render it tolerable. of any sect; some of them were so gross that the mere After some further discussion the motion was agreed report in the newspapers of the details sworn to is not to. calculated to improve public morals. The verdict of the jury went against the accuser, and, technically, in