NARRATIYE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

VERY few books of any mark or character, with one exception, have been published during the past
month; but university reform has made greater progress than the apparently unsatisfactory result of the
renewed debate would seem to indicate, and in this important question is involved not only the better
training of men to the service of literature, but to that of legislation and public life. The steady persistance
of Government in the proposed University Commission has had its due effect, and the furious outcry of
illegality has dropped to a very urgent plea of inexpediency. Thus cadit quæstio. The leading advocates
of the universities are now fain to confess that there are "many most extensive and important improvements"
which they trust to see effected by the universities themselves, if the Government will only be quiet.
But the Government is too far pledged to recede; and, if it would test what is likely to be done by laissez-
faire in the coming half-century, it has but to note what advances the last fifty years have made, by observing
the perfect applicability to the existing state of the imiversities, of what was written of them, at the commencement
of the century, by the poet Wordsworth. This curious revelation, which the writer's recent death
has caused to be made opportunely, is remarked upon below. Nor will we hesitate to add that the course
already taken by university authorities on questions of education quite apart from their own institutions,
should in itself be held quite decisive against their claim to have the settlement of this great reform
entrusted to them. They have contributed to the general educational discussion its bitterest and most
narrow-minded opponents; and it is to them we chiefly owe that still disgraceful obstruction of the efforts
of the Privy Council to extend the blessings of instruction to the people, which rests on no better plea than
their hatred of admitting laymen to any share in the management of schools connected with the Church,
however assisted those schools may be by the public money of the State. Priestly arrogance has rarely
ventured further even in the times and countries most degraded and enslaved by it.

The most prominent and interesting publication of
the month has been that of Wordsworth's autobiographical
poem of The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's
Mind. It consists of fourteen books, is of larger bulk
than The Excursion, and is written in blank verse, in
the style of that poem. It is addressed to Coleridge;
and, though its auto-biographical details have till now
withheld it from publication, appears to have been
written at the opening of the century. Wordsworth
had then retired to his native mountains with the hope
of being enabled to construct a literary work that might
live; and, desiring to ascertain how far nature and
education had qualified him for such employment, he
undertook to record, in verse, the origin and progress of
his own powers, as far as he was acquainted with them.
The Prelude was the result, as he has himself long ago
explained in his preface to The Excursion; and adopting
his own illustration, it will be found to bear
something of the same relation to the more complete
developments of its author's mind and genius as the
ante-chapel of a Gothic church has to the body of the
edifice. The portions of it which will probably strike
most readers, and will certainly be read with peculiar
interest just now, are those descriptive of his residence
at Cambridge, and its unfavourable effect upon him.
He condemns the trivial influences to which youths not
naturally given to hard work are exposed; he speaks
unfavourably of the kind of struggles elicited by the
competition of hard-working students; he denounces
compulsory chapel-attendance as of most evil
tendency; and, in many passages of eloquent beauty,
doing delightful homage to the great names and time-
honoured associations connected with both universities,
he sighs for the adoption of improvements which might
see them once more the kindly and hospitable retreats
of destitute scholars, and the truly quiet, meditative
nurseries of knowledge and religion.

Another note-worthy poem of the month, also a
posthumous publication though written some years ago,
is a dramatic piece attributed to Mr. Beddoes, and
partaking largely of his well-known eccentricity and
genius, called Death's Jest-Book or the Fool's Tragedy.
A republication of Mr. Cottle's twenty four books of
Alfred, though the old pleasant butt and "jest-book"
of his ancient friend Charles Lamb, hardly deserves
even so many words of mention. Nor is there much
novelty in A Selection from the Poems and Dramatic
Works of Theodore Korner, though the translation is a
new one, and by the clever translator of the Nibelungen.
To this brief catalogue of works of fancy we may,
perhaps, properly add the mention of two somewhat
clever tales in one volume, with the title of Hearts in
Mortmain and Cornelia, intended to illustrate the
working of particular phases of mental emotion; and
another by Mrs. Trollope, called Petticoat Government.

In the department of history we have nothing more
important to notify than a somewhat small volume with
the very large title of the Correspondence of the Emperor
Charles V. and his Ambassadors at the Courts of
England and France; which turns out to be a limited
selection from letters existing in the archives at Vienna,
but not uninteresting to English readers, from the fact
of their incidental illustrations of the history of our
Henry the Eighth, and the close of Wolsey's career.
Two books of less pretension have contributed new facts
to the history of the late civil war in Hungary; the first
from the Austrian point of view by an Eye-witness, and
the second from the Hungarian by Max Schlesinger.
Mr. Baillie Cochrane has also contributed his mite to
the elucidation of recent revolutions in a volume called
Young Italy, which is chiefly remarkable for its praise of
Lord Brougham, its defence of the Pope, its exaggerated
scene-painting of the murder of Rossi, its abuse of the
Roman Republic, and its devotion of half a line to the
mention of—Mazzini!

Better worthy of brief record are the few miscellaneous
publications with which we shall conclude our
summary; and which comprise an excellent new translation
of Rochefoucauld's Maxims, with a better account of
the author, and more intelligent notes, than exist in any
previous edition;—most curious and interesting
Memorials of the Empire of Japan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, which Mr. Rundell of the East India
House has issued under the superintendence of the
Hakluyt Society, and which illustrate our English
relations with those Japonese in a manner not so satisfactory
as is exactly desirable;—an intelligent and striking
summary of the Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver, and
Lymne, written by Mr. Roach Smith and illustrated by
Mr. Fairholt, which exhibits the results of recent
discoveries of many remarkable Roman antiquities in Kent;
—and a brief unassuming narrative of the Hudson's Bay
Company's Expedition to the Shores of the Arctic Sea
in 1846 and 1847, by the commander of the expedition,
Mr. John Rae.

Mademoiselle Rachel terminated on the 26th her
engagement at the St. James's Theatre, which has lasted
the greater part of the month. Besides performing a
round of her principal characters in the tragedies of
Corneille and Racine, she appeared as the heroine of
Scribe's drama Adrienne Lecouvreur—a part which
made an immense impression on the public. With
Rachel's departure this theatre closed for the season.