NARRATIVE OF FOREIGN EVENTS. THE Proclaimation of the French Empire took place on the 2nd. inst. On the previous day the Corps Legislatif announced the definitive result of the "Plebiscité to be as follows:- Ayes. Null. 7,864,189 The Empire was proclaimed throughout France on Sunday the 5th. In all the churches of the diocese of Paris, the "Domine salvum fac Imperatorem nostrum Napoleonem was chanted, according to the form prescribed by the Papal See in 1804. The new Emperor attended mass in the chapel of the Tuileries. The Senate met on the 6th to receive two projects of a Senatûs-consultum ; one modifying the constitution, the other relating to the civil list. The new constitution consists of sixteen short articles. The Emperor has taken to himself all but absolute power. He grants pardons and amnesties. He authorises all public works by decree. All control over the finances is taken away from the legislative corps. Senators will receive an annual salary of 30,000 francs; the deputies of the legislative corps "receive an indemnity" of 6000 francs a year. The Emperor may nominate senators to the number of one hundred and fifty. The members of the imperial family called ultimately to the succession, and their descendants, are made French Princes. They will be senators and councillors of state. The oath of allegiance is "I swear obedience to the Constitution and fidelity to the Emperor." The second Senatûs-consultum leaves the fixing of the civil list to the senate. The crown claims all the old royal domains as an "immoveable dotation:" the moveable dotation consists of the jewels, pictures, libraries, museums, works of art, and furniture at the imperial palaces: they are inalienable. Debts or pensions granted by the Emperor cannot be charged on the imperial domain. The "private property " of the Emperor is united to the State. The jointure of the Empress will be fixed at the Emperor's marriage. An annual dotation of 1,500,000 francs is reserved for the Emperor to distribute at his pleasure among the princes and princesses. The senate has voted the Senatûs-consultum fixing the civil list; but the new Constitution is still under discussion, and it appears that in some points, opposition is ventured upon. Jerome Bonaparte, the ex-King of Wurtemburg, is now heir presumptive to the imperial throne. The Moniteur contains a decree of the Emperor, dated the 18th inst., to the following effect: แ In case of our leaving no direct heir, legitimate or adopted, our well-beloved uncle, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, and his descendants, direct and legitimate, the issue of his marriage with the Princess Catherine of Wurtemburg, from male to male, by order of primogeniture, to the perpetual exclusion of the females, are appointed to succeed us. There has been a fresh persecution at Florence similar to that of the Madiai. Some time ago, Guarducci, a banker's clerk, was arrested, with Count Guicciardino and others, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment for reading the Bible. Mr. Sheil, then our minister at Florence, interfered, and the sentence was commuted into banishment for that period. Guarducci went to Piedmont; and the year having elapsed, he returned to his family, and resumed his old employment in the same banking-house at Florence. On the 21st November, the Police entered his house at three in the morning, and found there a copy of Diodati's Bible. Guarducci was arrested instantly; and alarm is felt for his fate, as capital punishment for religious offences is now the law of Tuscany. There has been a ministerial crisis at Madrid, arising apparently from court intrigues of no interest out of Spain. An unsuccessful combination against the ministers of Bravo Murillo led in the first instance to the exile of General Narvaez, who was sent on a pretended mission to Vienna. But Bravo Murillo [DECEMBER, 1852. and his Cabinet have since been forced to resign, and a new ministry is not yet formed. The law against the freedom of the press in Belgium has been passed by the Chamber of Representatives after a strenuous opposition. The chamber has voted military defence of the country. a grant to ministers of 6,000,000 francs for the The Emperor of Austria has paid a visit to the King of Prussia at Berlin, for the first time in the history of the two nations. He has been received with great splendour and festivity. Five persons, condemned to death on political charges, have been executed at Mantua with atrocious cruelty. They were all respectable in station. Their judges were Benedek, well known in the Gallician massacres, Bolga, a nephew of him who was spared by the Milanese in 1848, and Rossi, both accuser and judge. Even the officer who signed the sentence of death had been spared by the Venetians in 1848. They were tried before a secret tribunal; and were tortured during the trial, with the stick, in the vain hope that they would confess. They were hanged in a new and peculiar manner, partly supported by the waist and feet,-a mode inflicting great and protracted punishment; so that the fifth man was an hour and a quarter witnessing the deathstruggles of his friends, The accounts from New York are to the 12th instant. Both houses of Congress met on the 6th, when the President's valedictory message was read-a paper of great length, entering minutely into all the foreign and domestic relations of the United States. The excitement at Havana in relation to the Crescent City has entirely subsided. The Governor (Captain-General) having been quite satisfied with Purser Smith's affidavit and explanation, had agreed to admit him in future, and the Crescent City, to the port of Havana without molestation. There is much anxiety and alarm felt in New York on account of the increase of crime. Four young men had been sentenced to death for wilful murder, and two others were awaiting sentence for the same crime, A telegraphic despatch from New Orleans announced the arrival at that port of advices from Mexico, which are very important, as they announce the progress of a formidable revolution in Tamaulipas. The city of Victoria, which is the capital of that state, had been captured by the insurgents, who were advancing on Tampico. There had been a battle in the state of Sonora, in which the government troops under Blanco had been defeated. The state of Aguas Calientes has pronounced in favour of the revolt of Guadalajara. At Mazatlan two vessels of war have joined the insurgents, and at Orizaba the garrison and town were expected to surrender. A remarkable case, respecting the liberties of slaves in passing through a free State, has been decided at New York. It appears that a Mr. Lemmon, transporting eight slaves from Virginia to Texas, touched at New York to take ship thence to New Orleans, in October. When he arrived in New York Bay, he went ashore to make arrangements for the transhipment of his slaves and other property; but by some means he was induced to land them, and then he received notice that they would be claimed. The case was heard before Judge Payne, on a writ of habeas corpus obtained by Lemmon. Judgment was delivered on the 13th of November. The slaves, through a coloured man named Louis Napoleon, claimed their liberty, on the ground that the act of landing them in New York set them free. Mr. Lemmon claimed the slaves, on the ground that they were still the property of his wife; that he had not intended them to reside in New York, but was passing from Virginia to Texas, and had been compelled to touch land. Judge Payne cited the act under which the case came. Down to 1841, the law was, that a slave passing through or travelling from New York State remained a slave, providing his stay in the State was less than nine months. But that law had been } changed by the "Revised Statutes," which, repealing certain sections of the law, that would have saved the slaves to their owner, left the first section operative, and made slaves "imported, introduced, or brought" into the State of New York, absolutely free. He adjudged that the eight coloured persons mentioned in the writ of habeas corpus obtained by Lemmon be discharged. In accordance with this judgment, the slaves were delivered up to Louis Napoleon, placed in coaches, and driven off, amid the cheers of other coloured people. mento has been almost entirely destroyed by fire. Nearly every house was burned, and many lives were lost. Destructive fires have also occurred in San Francisco and Marysville. The fire in Sacramento city laid waste an extensive area of the city, leaving ninetenths of the population houseless. The loss is estimated at 10,000,000 dollars. The Democratic State Journal office was destroyed; also the State Hospital, the patients in which suffered dreadfully. During the nine days which elapsed since the occurrence of the fire and the departure of the steamer, 350 buildings had Advices from California state that the city of Sacra- | been restored. NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART. THE pent-up stream of publication, confined so long by the various accidents of the year, has come down in a flood at last, and the Christmas counters of the booksellers are fairly inundated with new books and new editions. Of course our summary deals with the former only. The Hon. Capt. Devereux has written, in two octavo volumes containing many original letters set in original letters set in a well-arranged narrative, the lives of his most famous ancestors, The Earls of Essex, in the century between Elizabeth and the Commonwealth. Sir Archibald Alison has published his first instalment of what promises to be a mournful History of Europe, from the fall of Napoleon I. to the rise of Napoleon III. A third volume of illustrative essays and correspondence has been added to the Life and Letters of Niebuhr, to which the Chevalier Bunsen prefixes a valuable disquisition on the character of his teacher and friend. Captain E. Buckle has written a Memoir of the Services of the Bengal Artillery, which is well edited by Mr. J. W. Kaye. Lord Belfast has favoured us with his opinion of the Poets and Poetry of the XIX. Century, in which the poetical extracts are interesting and the critical views not too recondite. Mrs. Charles Meredith, a lady who as Miss Louisa Twamley wrote pleasantly on nature and flowers, has now written her nine years' experience of a Home in Tasmania, in which, the book being full of every day domestic incidents and details, a very large reading public is likely to find themselves more than commonly interested. Lieutenant-Colonel Burn has compiled, with great labour and care, a Naval and Military Technical Dictionary of the French Language. Mr. James Fergusson has published a very pithy treatise on French Fleets and English Forts, or what he calls "the perils of Portsmouth; and Capt. Elliott, apropos of the same vitally important theme, has drawn up a very striking and apparently feasible Plan for the formation of a Maritime Militia. Mr. Hallam has selected and presented from his book on the Literature of Europe, a series of Literary Essays and Characters. M. A. de la Rive has issued a Treatise on Electricity; and Mr. J. A. Langford a volume on Religion and Education. Mrs. Jameson has added to her former very beautiful volume on Scriptural Art another not less beautiful on Legends of the Madonna. Mr. William Grattan has described, in two foolscap volumes, the Adventures of the Connaught Rangers; and another Irishman has set forth, in three, his Reminiscences of an Emigrant Milesian with Souvenirs of the Brigade. Lord John Russell has given us the first instalment of the Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore, in which a diary is begun which promises before it ends to rival, in minuteness and honesty, even the immortal confidences of Pepys. Captain Keppel has made public another Visit to the Indian Archipelago, with fresh extracts from that "diary of Sir James Brooke," which, whatever of the romantic may once have seemed to belong to it, has been sadly stripped of its romance during the last four years. Mr. John Mac Gregor has discoursed on the Results of Recent Commercial and Financial Legislation; Sir Edward Colebrook on the Indian Civil Service; and an anonymous writer, of very marked ability, on the Morality of Public Men. The writer of the denunciatory Letters of an Englishman has collected them into a book by way of a Christmas present to the new French Emperor; and Mr. Andrew Scoble has translated, for one of Mr. Bohn's Libraries, M. Guizot's not less timely History of Representative Government. Dr. Dunmore Lang has republished his History of New South Wales, with additions bringing it down to the summer of the present year; and has added to it a volume of remonstrance on the alleged grievances of the colony, claiming Freedom and Independence for the Golden Lands of Australia. Mr. P. J. Stirling has also treated, at the length of an entire volume, on The Australian and Californian Gold Discoveries; and Mr. C. Barter has described Six months in Natal. A volume has come over to us from New York, very pleasantly depicting the Homes of American Authors; and an American Doctor of Divinity has compiled for his countrymen, and for us, a large goodly volume of Select British Eloquence, comprising speeches of the best English orators from the Commonwealth to our own day, own day, beginning with Eliot and ending with Brougham. Among the books issued with a view more particularly to the season, story books appear to hold the first place. The names of the principal ones may be given. Agatha's Husband is a tale in three volumes, very earnestly told by the same writer who gives her younger readers in one small volume, Philip's Book, her idea of A hero. Talpa, or the Chronicle of a Clay Farm, is a Christmas volume for farmers which puts something of the graces of fiction into even sub-soil drainage, and which contains some designs by George Cruikshank, of first-rate humour and fancy. Mr. Charles Reade has told in one freshlywritten volume that story of Peg Woffington, which has moved so many tears and smiles at the Haymarket Theatre; and the original of which is no doubt this narrative, for it is too full of spirit and movement to be regarded as the after-thought or copy. Katie Stewart is a pretty little tale out of Blackwood's Magazine. The Little Dreamer is a tale from the German, very nicely illustrated; so is a Leaf of a Christmas Tale. Arbell, the Adventures of a Bear, and a Day of Pleasure, are stories all devised for the young, and all very prettily ornamented by clever artists. Retail Mammon, or the Pawnbroker's Daughter, is addressed with a somewhat graver moral to taller readers. The Experience of Life is one of those pleasingly written tales of religious feeling which would be the better for removal of their touches of Tractarianism. To these various story-books, may be added some gift-books of a general kind, which owe much of their attraction to their features of ornament, but in which the literature is of a higher average than used to prevail in books of a similar character ten or twenty years ago. The Poetry of the Year, and the Poets of the Woods, contain many beautiful designs printed in colours, and extracts not less beautiful or bright from the most famous English poets. Bartlett gives us a series of Pictures from Sicily, well executed, both with pencil and pen. And finally, Mr. Sandys describes, in a seasonably illustrated volume, Chrismastide: its History, Festivities, and Crowds. Mr. Of the shoals of new editions newly furbished up for the time, it is impossible to speak; nor indeed is this list we have offered of the strictly new books by any means complete. But it will sufficiently show how busy the publishers have been, and in what various ways. COMMERCIAL RECORD. BANKRUPTS. From the London Gazette of Nov. 30th.-H. VENNALL, Hastings, stone-mason.-M. CASEY, Paker-street, outfitter.-W. ROBINSON, Maidstone, linen-draper.-W. COOKE, Albert-terrace, Bow, miller.-J. WARREN, George-street, Hanover-square, dentist.— T. P. WILLS, Portsea, brewer.-G. LESTER, High-street, Poplar, builder.-R. JONES, Coventry, hatter.-F. HASTINGS, Cheltenham, tea-dealer. Dec. 4th.-R. COLLS, Charlton, builder.-E. NOBLE, Downstreet, plumber.-T. CORBY, Lower Eaton-street, builder.-J. E. SPICER, Chilworth, Surrey, paper-manufacturer.-H. CAPPER, Gravesend, victualler.-P. CowAN, Skinner-street, Snow-hill, brass-founder.-C. J. PICKFORD, Cheltenham, upholsterer.-T. WHEELER, jun., Winstone, Cirencester, cattle-dealer.-R. JONES, Oswestry, Shropshire, hatter.-D. COE, Manchester, grocer. Dec. 7th.-J. R. OATES, Finch-lane, Cornhill, tailor.-W. H. SURRIDGE, known as W. SURRIDGE, Harrow-road, horse-dealer. -R. GREAR, Bradley-terrace, Wandsworth-road, wax-chandler. -D. SUTHERLAND, Preston, seed-merchant.-W. Bacon, Brentwood, grocer.-R. BELL and G. CAMPBELL, Liverpool, merchants. Dec. 10th.-II. STAGG, Croydon, gracer.-C. RHODES, Terrace, Kensington, milliner.-W. J. BOWDEN, Ware, apothecary.-W. THORNTON, Battersea, carpenter.-T. BARNSHAW, Brunswickstreet, Poplar, retailer of beer.-J. GILL, Calvert's-buildings, Southwark, hop-factor.-A. BAIN, Old Bond-street, electricclock-maker.-J. GOULDIN, Outwell, Norfolk, potato-dealer.-E. PISTRUCCI, Salisbury-street, Strand, lithographic artist.-R. H. MURRAY, Alfred-place, Camden-road, baker.-E. and E. F. ENGLISH, Bath, auctioneers.-D. WILLIAMS, Dowlaise, Glamorganshire, grocer.-J. CRIDLAND, Sidmouth, grocer.-T. SPEED, sen., Liverpool, butcher.-J. KERON, Altrincham, Cheshire, builder.-J. NESS, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grocer. Dec. 14th.-W. ROBINSON, Grand Junction-terrace, Edgwareroad, upholsterer.-J. SPRATT, Sloane-street, coach-builder. A. BUNNETT, Bridge House-place, Newington-causeway, windowblind-manufacturer.-J. ASKEY, Shelton, Staffordshire, timbermerchant.-W. WALTON, Leamington Priors, baker.-S. DUDGEON, Litchurch, Derbyshire, builder.-G. HIRST, Kirkburton, Yorkshire, manufacturer. Dec. 17th.-J. K. VOTE, Albion-square, Dalston, builder. R. S. BOULTER, Mount-row, Westminster-road, tailor.-C. Jacob, Ingram Court, Fenchurch-street, merchant.-W. WELLINGTON, Paddington, builder.-S. SALTER, Abbot's Langley, maltster.W. SHIOBERL, Great Marlborough-street, publisher.-B. James, Newport, Monmouthshire, builder J. ATKINSON, Hull, seedcrusher.-C. TULLY, Sunderland, shipowner.-C. B. REID, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, brewer.-S. C. HARRISON, Sunderland by-the-sea, linen-draper. Dec. 21st.-J. ARTIGUES, Mark-lane, general-merchant.— F. W. THOMAS, Leadenhall-street, auctioneer.-T. MANLEY, Exeter, dealer in wool.-W. BATE, Camelford, Cornwall, butcher.-F. PEARSON, Liverpool, painter. Dec. 24th.-W. J. KERRIDGE, Deptford, cheesemonger. Dec. 28th-W. H. PERCIVAL, Bloomsbury-square, publisher.G. COLLIER, Hatton-garden, bookbinder.-W. MCGEORGE, St. John-street-road, draper.-J. TALL and J. MINGAY, Crawfordstreet, Bryanstonc-square, mechanical tool manufacturers.-W. TANNER, Alcester, Warwickshire, draper.-A. SKELTON, Mount Tabor, Halifax, stone delver. MONEY MARKET. The Stock Market has been steady during the month, the variations having been trifling. The closing price of Consols on the 27th was 100 to 1003. The prices of Foreign Stocks have shown little fluctuation; and in Railway Shares business has een somewhat languid, and operations not extensive. PROVISIONS-LATEST WHOLESALE prices. Bacon, per cwt., Irish, 50s. to 51s.; middles, 51s. to 53s. Beef, per 8 lb., mid. to prime, 2s. 6d. to 4s. 2d. doz.; Carlow, 84s. to 90s. Cheese, per cwt.—Cheshire, 44s. to 66s.; Derby, plain, 48s. Hams, per cwt.-York ́or Cumberland, 94s. to 100s.; Irish, 50s. to 74s.; Westphalia, 44s, to 50s. Mutton, per 8 lb., mid. to prime, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 10d. Potatoes, per ton.-Kent and Essex Shaws, 60s. to 72s.; Pork, 3s. to 4s. Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by Bradbury & Evans, Whitefriars, Londen |