Mr. George Henry Moore, LL.D.-Idoneus homo -for upwards of thirty-three years connected with, and for the last twenty-five years librarian of the New York Historical Society, has just been appointed, by the trustees, superintendent of the Lenox Library.

George Gebbe, Philadelphia, has published "The Locomotive Engine, and Philadelphia's Share in its Early Improvement," by Joseph Harrison, Jr.

A curious book is now passing through the English press, the author of which seriously professes to give, from actual experience, a matter-of-fact account of the laws, manners, and customs of a kingdom situated in one of the planets of our solar system. The title of the book is "Another World."

New York Herald expeditions are not invariably successful, and our contemporary has for once had to confess a failure. The Herald sent an expedition, headed by a "special commissioner," to Cuba to find out the truth about the insurrection. The "special commissioner," however, was requested by the Government of Cuba to publish the information he had acquired at the expense of his employers in the Journal Officiel of the island. He naturally refused this request, and was consequently informed that "his life was in danger" from the "incensed volunteers." Startled by this direful threat, the "commissioner" demanded his passports, and immediately started for New York. As nothing succeeds like success, nothing ruins a man like a failure, and warmly does the Herald lash its unfortunate commissioner. "A Stanley is not met with every day, and the man who could be checked by disappointment, or driven back from his object by the fear of death through war, pestilence, or famine, would never have discovered Livingstone." "It is idle to speculate," continues the Herald, "whether a bold, resolute, and dignified, but modest, demeanor would not have been sufficient protection against these blustering volunteers, without the safeguard of American nationality, and a lawful peaceful mission. It is enough that our present commissioner has left the island with his work incomplete, and as this is a sufficient proof that he is not the right man in the right place, we are glad that he has thus early given us an opportunity to select his successor." Not discouraged by this failure, the Herald warns the volunteers that "it will find other agents who will succeed in their object," and that, although the services of Mr. Stanley will not be utilized, there are many others on the staff "who can make as brilliant a success in

Cuba as Stanley achieved in Africa." "We regard

it now as important to discover the true condition of the revolutionary army and the actual state of Cuban affairs as it was to discover Livingstone. In both expeditions the cause of humanity is to be served."

Of Mr. Page's "Memoir of Nathaniel Hawthorne," the Athenæum says:

"As regards this Memoir,' Mr. Page has merely extracted scraps from the 'The Note-Books,' a few passages from Fields's 'Yesterdays with Authors,' and a sentence or two from an old paper by Mr. Curtis. This is all. Mr. Page had no information to give us, and so we learn nothing that we did not know before. There is not a single fresh incident in the book. There is no example of that delightful humor which dropped out so slowly and unexpectedly. There is not even a fragment of an unpublished letter. The seven years of life in Europe is compressed into two pages: the whole Memoir,' properly so speaking, includes but fifty. This is a book which is discreditable to every one who is concerned in its publication. When we have said that (so far as Mr. Page is concerned) the book is utterly worthless, we have said nothing. It is much worse than this. It is a direct defiance to Mr. Hawthorne's expressed wishes; it is a direct injury to his children; it is scarcely less than a direct insult to the public."

Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge lately sold, in London, some fine specimens of the works of M. Schongauer and A. Dürer. By the former: The Angel of the Annunciation, 561.; The Annunciation, 467.; The Nativity, 22/.; The Baptism of Christ, 197.; Christ before the High Priest, 467.; Pilate washing his Hands, 411.; Christ presented to the People, 401.; Christ bearing the Cross, 201.; The Virgin in a Courtyard, 967.; Temptation of St. Anthony, 267.; St. Michael, 12/.; One of the Foolish Virgins, 13/.; The Censor, 217.-A. Dürer : The Little Passion, 157.; The Prodigal Son, Iol. The Virgin with flowing hair, 187,; Virgin suckling the Infant Christ, 12/.; Melancolia, 30l.; The Standard-Bearer, 71.; Life of the Virgin, 10/.; The Knight of Death, 75%.

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An American correspondent of the London Athenæum furnishes that journal with the following hitherto unpublished letter of George Washington:

MOUNT VERNON, February 5, 1788.

"Dear Sir:-At length I have got some answer to my application for Wolf Dogs. I wish it were more satisfactory, but such as it is I give it, as suspense, of all situations is the most disagreeable. The information comes from Sir Edward Newesham, a gentleman of family and fortune in Ireland; and is in these words: 'I have just received a letter from your noble and virtuous friend the Marquis de la Fayette, in which he communicates your wish to obtain a breed of the true Irish wolf dog, and desires me to procure it. I have been these several years endeavoring to get that breed without success; it is nearly annihilated. I have heard of a bitch in the north of Ireland, but not of a couple anywhere. I am also told that the Earl of Altamont has a breed that is nearly genuine; if he has I will procure two from him. The Marquis also wants some at his domain, where he is troubled by the wolves. If mastiffs would be of any service, I could send you some large ones, which are our guard dogs; you will honor me with your commands about them. They are very fierce, faithful, and long-lived.' "If, upon this information, you think I can be further useful, I shall be happy to render any service in my power. Mastiffs, I conceive, will not answer the purposes for which the wolf dog is wanted. They will guard a pen, which pen may be secured by its situation, by our dogs, and various other ways; but your object, if I have a right conception of it, is to hunt and destroy wolves by pursuit, for which end the mastiff is altogether unfit. If the proper kind can be had, I have no doubt of their being sent by Sir Edward, who has sought all occasions to be obliging to me.-I am, dear sir, your most ob'. and affec'. servant,

"G. WASHINGTON. "Charles Carter, Esq., of Ludler Farm, Fredericksburg."

The London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian writes that a very extensive and interesting sale of engravings by and after Turner is to come on at Messrs. Christie's in March. The engravings number considerably more than 20,000, and include thousands of copies of the larger and more expensive plates. The plates themselves are likewise valuable, many being in excellent condition. This property has lain for twenty years uncared for, in the house in Queen Anne street where Turner's studio was. This house, tenantless, dirty, literally rotting away, of which the neighbors said it was a disgrace and an eyesore to their street, contained the treasures which Messrs. Christie are about to offer to the world. Death has lately removed the man who was ostensible custodian of the property, and after his death there were found piles of engravings of all kinds reaching breast high around the room. Slates had fallen off the roof, the water had dripped in and was actually standing in tiny pools on some of the heaps of prints, and the floors had so far rotted that some of them appeared unsafe to carry a single person. By purchase or by death several of the claims on the property have become extinguished, until it is now vested jointly in the hands of two gentlemen, distant relatives of the painter, one of whom had to be fetched from the wilder parts of Alabama to establish his identity and his right to a share of these treasures. The sale will include quantities varying from about 400 to 600 each of the larger and more popular engravings, such as Caligula's Bridge, Dido and Æneas, Mercury and Argus, Mercury and Herse, and Crossing the Brook; more than 500 sets of the England and Wales series, and large numbers of the smaller book plates illustrating the works of Scott, Byron, Milton, Campbell and Rogers, together with those done for the Keepsakes, Annual Tours and other works. Of the published plates of Liber Studiorum there are few or no good examples, but collectors may enrich their folios from the etchings, of which there are more than 700 of the published series and more than 80 of the rarer unpublished. A number of the copper plates of the unpublished part of that work were found lying heaped in a corner of some old cupboard, where a charwoman had pitched them out of the way.

Dr. C. M. Ingleby has in preparation a volume entitled "Shakespears Prayse sung by the Poets of a Centurie," being a complete Catena of early notices of Shakespeare and his works, with a photographic frontispiece, reproducing the Hunt portrait.

The London Publisher's Circular gives its usual analysis of books published in England during the year 1872, with the following result: New books, 3,419; new editions, 1,100; American importations, 295; total, 4,814.

Messrs. Dodd & Mead have just published, from advance sheets, "Little Hodge," by the author of "Ginx's Baby."

The London Court Journal says that the Marquis of Ripon told "an amusing story" the other day in an after-dinner speech at Ripon. This is "the amusing story:" "He said he well remembered when he went out to America one of the first persons who came on board the steamer when he got to New York was a gentleman connected with the press, and having tried various persons of the English Commission, and not having extracted very much from any of them, he at last went in despair to a friend of his (the speaker), who was also attached to the Commission, and said, 'Sir, have you nothing to reveal? Well, his friend had nothing to reveal.' Now that is what we call a very "amusing" storyfor a lord.

Mr. Henry Stevens has issued an essay called Photobibliography: a Word on Catalogues and How to make them. The first suggestion of the reader will be, What has the first word to do with the second and explanatory title? and the ready answer of Mr. Stevens would be, after a lively and well-deserved attack upon the present system of cataloguing, that he proposes to photograph all valuable title-pages of rare books, certain editions of which are necessary to be identified, and thus to place before the book-student or buyer the vera effigies of an editio princeps, or any other valuable example, such as, for instance, the 1623 folio of Shakespeare, the first edition of Sidney's Arcadia, or of Robinson Crusoe, or a rare Caxton. Mr. Stevens then, by a delicate forethought, reduces these titles to the ninth part of the original, and produces very charming little miniature title-pages, which could be inserted in any catalogue, and which would at once identify the edition. The thought is a happy one, if the practice is to be indulged in only by those who are rich and able to afford luxuries, perfect catalogues being of the number; but we quite agree with Mr. Stevens when he says that his system would make bibliography an exact science. As he adds, "It is not well to put a library into its catalogue, but better to put a catalogue into a library;" and we can quite conceive that such copies of titles could be produced so as to be infinitely better than any mere descriptive work of the ordinary cataloguer. The specimen photogram which Mr. Stevens issues is really very admirable, and will convince the most sceptical as to the excellence of the plan. The only thing to be got over is the expense. Mr. Stevens' collection of photograms of books already comprises many of the rarest volumes relating to America, the works of Marco Polo, Vespucci, &c., and of the early editions of Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan, Raleigh, and some of the early English, French, and Italian romances and poems.-Publisher's Circular.

Mr. John M. Bellew, author of "Blount Tempest," "Shakespeare's Home," "The Poet's Corner," etc., is now amongst us to give us a specimen of his qualities as a reader. For a number of years Mr. Bellew has been well known throughout England'as one of the most successful elocutionists of the period. With Shakespeare, Hood, Pope, Tennyson, Ingoldsby or Dickens-the pathetic, the humorous or the sublime-Mr. Bellew is equally at home. dially recommend all of our readers who can do so to pay a speedy visit to Steinway Hall. A rich intellectual treat is in store for them.

We cor

Soon after the death of Mr. Forrest the news papers of the day gave an account of a fire which was said to have destroyed the choicest treasures of his library, or, in their own language, "reduced them to ashes." Among the works destroyed was the first folio edition of Shakespeare, 1623, concerning which it is stated that it was the most precious of his books, and was worth ($5,000) five thousand dollars. Of course it is to be regretted that it was destroyed, but its value is much overestimated. The writer sold this very copy to Mr. Forrest in October, 1860, for $375. It has, doubtless, appreciated since, but $500 is as much as such a copy is worth; it was what is known as a made up copy-the title and last leaf being in fac-simile. Books do not readily burn, and it is certainly somewhat remarkable that $20,000 worth of books should be destroyed by fire which was put out by "a fireman and a policeman."

Robert Burns's birthday was celebrated in this city on the 24th ult., by a dinner given at Delmonico's. George Macdonald was one of the guests, and delivered a speech. The Burns' Club in Brooklyn also gave a dinner, at which Mr. W. C. Bryant was one of the speakers of the evening.

At one of Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Wood's recent sales an interesting historical picture was disposed of to Mr. Graves. It is a large canvas, presumed to have been painted by Stoop, and represents the entry of Charles II into London. The gay monarch is on horseback, the picture is full of portraits of men memorable at the Restoration. Stoop, the artist, came over with Charles, and was afterwards sent by Charles to attend Catherine of Braganza from Lisbon. He did a series of etchings of that event.

Mr. Parker Gillmore ("Ubique ") has a new book in preparation, entitled "Adventures Afloat and Ashore."

Dr. Beke contemplates a journey to the East with a view to Biblical explorations. He proposes to look for "The Mount of God" in the country east of the Gulf of Akaba.

"The May Queen," by Alfred Tennyson, in illuminated borders designed by L. Summerbell, has been published by Frederick Warne & Co. Miss Summerbell has added a new charm to Mr. Tennyson's poem, if, indeed, that be possible. She has inclosed the words of the poet in a framework of graceful flowers, the colors of which are so arranged that they please the eye without distracting it or interfering with the perusal of the verses. All who love the art of illuminating will be pleased with this book, apart from the beauty of the poem.

The thirteen unedited letters of Voltaire, now published at Moscow in the fifth volume of the "Memoirs of Prince Vorontzof," deserves attention, says the Temps, since Voltaire never left anything written which did not contain either some curious peculiarity, or some distinctive feature, of his genius. They are not remarkably interesting in a literary or historical point of view, but their bibliographical attractions are greater; for they are original, and the the signatures are autographs. One of these letters contains a curious profession of faith on the part of Voltaire, which was called forth by the request made to him on behalf of Catherine II of Russia by his friend, Count Vorontzof, to represent that sovereign's interference in favor of the Polish dissenters in its true light. "I am indeed," he writes, "in my fifth attack of fever; and I am seventy-four years old; but as long as I am not dead, I shall eagerly embrace that which you propose to me. I even believe that this project will make me live. Great passions give strength. I idolize three things,-liberty, toleration, and your empress. I entreat these three divinities to inspire me. I await your orders."

Mr. Armitage, the eminent English artist, is engaged in painting a large picture of Chicago, the cartoon of which was at the last Royal Academy exhibition. This painting is to be hung in the Town Hall at Chicago.

Mr. J. Murray Graham, author of "An Historical View of Literature and Art in Great Britain," &c., is engaged in preparing a memoir of the lives of Viscount Stair and the first two Earls of Stair, all of them Dalrymples, and well known to readers of modern Scotch history. The viscount was distinguished as a lawyer and patriot. The first earl is notorious in history for the share he took in the Glencoe massacre, an atrocity which was scarcely atoned for by his subsequent services in bringing about the legislative union between England and Scotland. The second earl was concerned in several historical passages of interest, especially while acting as ambassador to France during the early years of the regency.

Messrs. Blackwood have in press a new book of poems by Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton).

Mr. Ruskin has at last consented to allow the two volumes of his "Modern Painters," which have long been out of print, to be reprinted. They will be merely a reprint, intended to complete the sets of the work now incomplete, and will not interfere with the new and largely abridged and revised edition, in favor of which Mr. Ruskin at first refused to allow the reissue of the old one.

The following humorous letter to a London journal tells its own story. We give it a place as one of the "Curiosities of Literature :

True

Sir: I only venture to intrude upon you because I come, in some sense, in the interests of public morality; and this makes my mission respectable. Mr. John Camden Hotten, of London, has, of his own individual motion, republished several of my books in England. I do not protest against this, for there is no law that could give effect to the protest; and, besides, publishers are not accountable to the laws of heaven or earth in any country, as I understand it. But my little grievance is this: My books are bad enough, just as they are written; then what must they be after Mr. John Camden Hotten has composed half a dozen chapters and added the same to them? I feel that all true hearts will bleed for an author whose volumes have fallen under such a dispensation as this. If a friend of yours, or even you yourself were to write a book, and set it adrift among the people, with the gravest apprehensions that it was not up to what it ought to be intellectually, how would you like to have John Camden Hotten sit down, and stimulate his powers, and drool two or three original chapters on to the end of that book? Would not the world seem cold and hollow to you? Would you not feel that you wanted to die and be at rest? Little the world knows of true suffering! And suppose he should entitle these chapters "Holiday Literature, Story of Chicago," "On Children," "Train up a Child and Away he Goes," and "Vengeance;" and then, on the strength of having evolved these marvels from his own consciousness, go and "copyright" the entire book, and put in the title page a picture of a man with his hand in another man's pocket, and the legend "All Rights Reserved." (I only suppose the picture: still, it would be a rather neat thing.) And, further, suppose that, in the kindness of his heart and the exuberance of his untaught fancy, this thoroughly well-meaning innocent should expunge the modest title which you had given your book, and replace it with so foul an invention as this, 66 Screamers and Eye-Openers," and went and got that copyrighted too. And suppose that, on top of all this, he continually and persistently forgot to offer you a single penny, or even send you a copy of your mutilated book to burn. Let one suppose all this, Let him suppose it with strength enough, and then he will know something about woe. Sometimes when I read one of those additional chapters constructed by John Camden Hotten, I feel as if I wanted to take a broom-straw and go and knock that man's brains out. Not in anger, for I feel none. not in anger, but only to see: that is all-mere idle curiosity. And Mr. Hotten says that one nom de plume of mine is "Carl Byng." I hold that there is no affliction in this world that makes a man feel so down-trodden and abused as the giving him a name that does not belong to him. How would this sinful aborogine feel if I were to call him John Camden Hottentot, and come out in the papers and say he was entitled to it by divine right? I do honestly believe it would throw him into a brain fever, if there were not an insuperable obstacle in the way.

Oh!

Yes-to come back to the original subject, which is the sorrow that is slowly but surely undermining my health,Mr. Hotten prints unrevised, uncorrected, and, in some respects, spurious books, with my name to them as author, and thus embitters his customers against one of the most innocent of men. Messrs. George Routledge & Sons are the only English publishers who pay me any copyright; and therefore, if my books are to disseminate either suffering or crime among readers of our language, I would ever so much rather they did it through that house, and then I could contemplate the spectacle calmly as the dividends came in.-I am, Sir, &c.,

SAMUEL L. CLEMENS ("MARK TWAIN").

Mr. Walter Besant is preparing a new work on the French Humorists.

Mr. G. Smith, of the British Museum, gives the following account of the record of the Deluge which he has lately deciphered from the Assyrian monuments:-"The cuneiform inscription which I have recently found and translated gives a long and full account of the Deluge. It contains the version or tradition of this event which existed in the early Chaldean period at the city of Erech (one of the cities of Nimrod), now represented by the ruins of Warka. In this newly-discovered inscription, the account of the Deluge is put as a narrative into the mouth of Xisthrus or Noah. He relates the wickedness of the world, the command to build the ark, its building, the filling of it, the Deluge, the resting of the ark on a mountain, the sending out of the birds, and other matters. The narrative has a closer resemblance to the account transmitted by the Greeks from Berossus, the Chaldean historian, than to the Biblical history, but it does not differ materially from either; the principal differences are as to the duration of the Deluge, the name of the mountain on which the ark rested, the sending out of the birds, &c. The cuneiform account is much longer and fuller than that of Berosus, and has several details omitted both by the Bible and Chaldean historian. This inscription opens up many questions of which we knew nothing previously, and it is connected with a number of other details of Chaldean history which will be both interesting and important. This is the first time any inscription has been found with an account of an event mentioned in Genesis." For convenience of working, Mr. Smith had divided the tablets into sections according to the subject matter of the inscriptions. These documents were much mutilated, but search being made among the broken pieces of inscriptions, eighty fragments were found, which enabled Mr. Smith to restore nearly all the text of the description of the Flood, and a large portion of the other legends. These tablets were originally at least twelve in number, forming one story or set of legends, the account of the Flood being on the eleventh tablet. The writing on these tablets was executed about 600 B.c., in the time of King Assurbanipal, in whose library at Ninevah they were found. But they are evidently copies of a still more ancient composition, dating not later than the 17th century before Christ, and possibly much earlier. Sir Henry Rawlinson attributes a far higher antiquity to the originals, showing that the historical era of the Assyrians dated back 5,150 years B.C., and that the legend belonged to the mythological period, and probably 1,000 or 1,500 years earlier. Beneath the mounds and ruined cities of Chaldea there probat ly are other legends and histories calculated to shed much light on the early history of mankind.

The romantic legends which enlivened the historical text-books of our boyhood frequently fare but ill at the hands of modern inquiry; but it is not often that they suffer so signal and, we may add, so painful an explosion as the legend of William Tell has recently suffered frrom the hands of the Historical Society of the Old Swiss Cantons. The conclusions arrived at on this subject by the learned body in question are thus stated in the Cologne Gazette :— "There never was a Landvogt Gessler nor a William Tell. Tell never refused to lift his hat, never fired at an apple on his son's head, although the very crossbow with which the deed was done is exhibited in Zurich; he never crossed the Lake of Lucerne in a tempest of wind and rain; he never boldly jumped upon the Tell Platte, never spoke his speech in the defile at Kussnacht, and never shot the Landvogt. What is more, the inhabitants of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden never met by night on the Rütli.” Might not the Swiss Historic Society have dealt more tenderly with William Tell? It must be confessed that the slayer of the tyrant Gessler has for some time past been receding more and more into the region of myths, and, that the free Switzer, if of an antiquarian turn, has been somewhat shy of alluding to the once-famous legend. But might not the utter annihilation of the hero have been reserved for esoteric circles, and the traditions which have made Altorf a shrine for the pilgrim, and the dark waves of the Bay of Uri nobler than all the waters of Zurich or Geneva, been left to linger on with guides and guide-books if only for the sake of excursionists? Granting that Tell is probably the merest myth, the chance embodiment of a legend current in one shape or another in every land where free archers and tyrant lords have strutted their brief hour on the stage, might he not have received the benefit of a possible doubt and been gently set aside with a verdict of "Not Proven." Possibly the historic iconoclasts have some grudge against his memory as that of an impostor who has usurped the place of better men, and obscured the fame of more authentic heroes like that Arnold von Winkelried, who made a pathway for his countrymen by clasping to his breast the sheaf of Austrian spears. But who, when Tell is denied us, will believe in Swiss heroes more? It will be much if another generation regard the Lion of Lucerne without uncomfortable historic doubts.

The London Daily News says that Oliver Cromwell, represented as a sneak, a bully, and a would-be-traitor, is at this moment being played in an English theatre by a low comedian; and the question naturally arises how far a dramatic author is within his right in falsifying history, slandering great names, and outraging the moral sense of his own time. It would, no doubt, be hard to deny to the dramatist that freedom of interpretation which is assumed by the historian, and that liberty has been exercised in many directions by all dramatists who have dealt with history; but there is nothing more striking in the greatest historical dramas known to literature than the general faithfulness of the pictures of society and of celebrated per

sons which they present. We consider (the News says) that an author has outraged literary precedent, as well as historical truth and good taste, who deliberately portrays Oliver Cromwell as a knave, a hypocrite, and a time-server, ready to betray his companions and sell his soul for the promise of an earldom. We do not believe that any such monstrous defiance of probability is to be found in dramatic literature worthy of the name. But even if such a thing had happened during some period of political excitement, and while his character and actions had not yet received the dispassionate investigation of history, such a fact would not justify, in these later days, an insult paid to one of the great names that ennoble English history.

The Emperor of Germany recently paid $200 for an autograph letter of Washington.

The London Times gives the following high, but well-merited praise to Woodward & Gates' " Encyclopædia of Chronology, Historical and Biographical," recently published in this country by Lee & Shepard : "We have biographical dictionaries enough, and to spare. There is no lack of gazetteers and topographical books; but hitherto the ground which this work aspires to fill has been to a great extent unoccupied. It is a book of universal reference on chronology, and contains within the compass of some 1,500 pages a brief epitome of those events which mark the rise, progress, decline, and fall of states, and the changes in the fortunes of nations. Hence it not only records the leading events and incidents in the lives of public characters at home and abroad in all ages of the world, but gives us brief entries of wars, battles, sieges, alliances, treaties of peace, geographical discoveries, the settlement of colonies and their subsequent foctunes; in a word, of all such occurrences as are of general historic interest. The biographical records are of necessity brief; but they generally contrive to give us the principal events of great men's lives, chronologically arranged; and where these men happened to be authors as well, we are supplied with a short list of their principal works Some of the articles, notably those on Ireland, the Irish Church, Rome, Germany, Paris, the Jews, Wellington, Napoleon, etc., extend over a column or more; but in these cases, the information given, instead of being 'massed,' and run on, is broken up into several paragraphs, each carefully arranged in chronological order. The same principle is followed up by distributing long articles, where that is possible, under several heads-a process which greatly facilitates the work of referIt only remains to add that the book is characterized by the most scrupulous care in its minutest details. Thus, for instance, where there is any doubt as to dates of time and place, both accounts are given, with references at the foot to those writers on whose authority they respectively rest. This plan, it is obvious to remark, is the only one which can furnish the student with the means of comparing and estimating the value of conflicting statements; and the names of the authorities there cited will serve to indicate the general trustworthiness of other statements, which are accompanied by no list of such authorities. The book itself-the product of nearly twenty years of brain-work-is wonderfully exact and complete."

ence.