G. SAXE will soon publish a new poem which he delivered recently at the commencement of Middlebury College, with the applause which crowns all his efforts in this way.
A RE-ISSUE of the Complete Works of Eliza Cook will be shortly commenced in her Journal, and continued weekly until completed.
THE INSTITUTE OF GOETHE has just been founded by the government of Saxe Weimar. It consists simply of a prize of twenty thousand francs offered to the competition of the literary and artistic world. The first year it will be given to the best among the poems, romances, and dramatic works submitted; the second year to the best picture; the third year to the best piece of statuary; the fourth year to the best piece of music, whether sacred or profane, opera or oratorio. This circle having been completed, the prize will next be given as at the first year; and so on in regular succession. The successful competitor is to remain proprietor of his work, as are all the others. The prize will he allotted by two committees, one at Weimar the other at Berlin. The establishment of the fund was celebrated at Weimar on the 23d of August.
GIFFORD, some five-and-twenty years ago, declared that all the fools of the country had taken to write plays; and it would appear that all the dull Englishmen of our day have taken to write pamphlets on the slave-trade. The London Times is very severe upon a book just issued by Mr. W. Gore Ouseley, who was several years British Charge d'Affaires at Rio, as such conducted a voluminous correspondence on the subject with the government of Brazil, and might have been expected to have there learned something on the slave-trade worth telling. According to his reviewer he appears, however, to be one of that class of persons described by Sterne, who, traveling from Dan to Beersheba, found all to be barren; and no amount of observation can in any human being supply defective reasoning faculties. So, says the Times, he has little or nothing to say about the Brazilian slave-trade that has not been better said a thousand times before; and when he does venture on a special statement of his own, it topples down the whole superstructure of his argument.
A work of rather more interest is "Seven Years' Service on the Slave Coast of Africa", by Sir Henry Huntley, who, when a lieutenant in the navy in 1831, was ordered to the scene of his observations. Shortly after his arrival, he was appointed to the independent command of a small vessel, in which he visited stations, looked out for slavers, chased them when he saw them, and captured them when he could. A few years subsequently he was nominated Governor of the settlements on the Gambia. His two volumes contain his adventures during the whole or nearly the whole of his seven years' service upon the station; the last closing abruptly in the middle of preparations for a congress of black kings. The public is already familiar with many of the topics, from the occasional narratives of voyages and adventures along the coast. Visits to the commandants of the so-called castles; a description of the European and native mode of life at the settlements; accounts of the slave-stations, the slave-dealers, the slaves, and the slave-trade, together with sketches of more legitimate commerce, and occasional trips to the islands lying off the coast, for change of air and fresh supplies, are frequent features. Sir Henry Huntley's duties sometimes brought him in contact with native chiefs, and continually with slavers, in the search, the capture, and the pursuit. During the latter part of his career, the office of Governor gave great variety and largeness to his subjects; consisting of public business, palavers with native potentates, and matters connected with home policy. In point of literary character this work very nearly resembles the author's "Peregrine Scramble." Indeed, the "Seven Years' Service" is a sort of continuation of that book, without the form of fiction.
M. JULES LECHEVALIER, known in this country chiefly as one of the foreign Correspondents of The Tribune, but in Europe as an able writer on the Social Sciences, has recently delivered in Paris and Berlin, and in London, (where he is residing as a political exile,) a series of lectures, which will soon be given to the world in a volume, upon the subject of his favorite studies. M. Lechevalier's system, which he denominates "New Political Economy," is based upon the principle of association, in opposition to that of competition and laissez-faire, which constitute the groundwork of the school of the present political economists. In the course of his series he pointed out the gradual tendency of the competitive principle to produce extremes of riches and poverty, and ultimately revolutions, and maintained, that by the adoption of the associative principle alone, society can be preserved from confusion and destruction. He contends that the new political economy, or Socialism, is essentially Conservative, while the present system of unlimited competition, or buying cheap and selling dear, is destructive, M. Lechevalier pretends to base his system on the moral principles of Christ, and maintains that Christianity cannot be practically carried out in any other way. His lectures abound in examples of the working of the two opposing systems.
The Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, Boston, are going forward in the work of re-publishing the old standard works of the New-England theology. They have issued a fine edition of Bellamy and have procured an edition of Edwards the younger. They are now about commencing the stereotyping of Catlin's Compendium, and the whole works of Dr. Hopkins. We wish they would go back a century further, and give us the best works of Mather and his contemporaries.
There is a political novel by OTTO MULLER, of Manheim, announced, under the title Georg Volker: ein Vreiheits Roman, which is said to give a faithful picture of the Baden revolution, and to open with the rise of the peasantry in the Ottenwald.
THE DUC DE LA ROUCHEFOUCAULD's celebrated "Moral Reflections, Sentences, and Maxims," have just appeared in a new and very much improved translation, and with notes, pointing out similarities of sentiments in ancient and modern authors, and sometimes proving that Rochefoucauld's good things have been made use of without sufficient acknowledgment, by moderns. There is also an introduction, which dissertates well on the purpose and quality of the reflections. Such books were once very popular; but in this country they have not been much read. We have indeed had numerous editions of "Lacon," and Dr. Bettner's "Acton" has found a thousand purchasers; but the Rev. Dr. Hooker's "Maxims," which, in our opinion, are as good as anything of their kind in the English language, we believe have not attracted attention, and Mr. Simms's "Egeria" has been printed only in the columns of a newspaper.
A new theory has just been propounded at Paris in a book called "Armanase," (a Sanscrit word, meaning the "Reign of Capacity"). The author asserts the present forms of administrative government are injurious instead of useful to society, and ought to be replaced by institutions of a new and different order. His principle is, that the sovereignty of the individual ought to be instituted for that of governments, and that great associations of mutual assurance may be advantageously substituted for the existing system of management by office-holders. The author shows also that the progress of the natural and mechanical sciences will deliver man from the pressure of the more painful sorts of labor; and that wealth, freed from the barriers which now hinder its circulation, would be distributed freely throughout society. Intellectual property would be seriously guaranteed, and would enrich the men of genius, whose inventions and discoveries are now profitable, not to the authors, but to the capitalists who take advantage of them. By this means an important element of revolutions will be removed. The author proposes, that in order to prevent all suffering, a civil list shall be set apart for the people, who will be the king. This civil list is to be composed of a tax of one per cent., levied on all who have property in favor of those who have nothing. But, says he, let no one imagine that all would be dissolution and ruin in this system, without law or government. Crimes and offenses will be tried by juries, that is to say, by a living code. Property will no longer be seizable for debt, and the courts will become useless. Everybody shall have the absolute right to buy land by paying its possessor ten per cent, on its value: this is to give a chance for carrying on all sorts of grand public enterprises without trouble from the proprietors of little pieces of land. It may perhaps be doubted, whether the "Reign of Capacity" has exhibited any astonishing endowments in that respect.
THACKERAY, in Pendennis, has given offense, it appears,
