Navy Bay had been commenced by the American Company,
hundreds of labourers having arrived there from
Carthagena and the surrounding country.

There are accounts from San José, the capital of the
South American State of Costa Rica, of the 11th of June.
General Don J. M. Castro, the founder of this republic,
had resigned his presidency and embarked for Europe,
in order to study the institutions of the Old World, and
to promote the welfare of his country by laying open its
resources to commercial and agricultural enterprise.
The President's administration appears to have been
wise and liberal. He has introduced ample religious
toleration; the right to all foreigners of being naturalised;
and the total abolition of slavery and the slave-trade.
Under his administration treaties of amity and
commerce have been concluded with Great Britain and
other powers. Tne state of Costa Rica is situate west of
Panama, on the great barrier dividing the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. It contains from 2500 to 3000 square
leagues. It is bounded on the N.E. by the Atlantic, on
the S.E. by the Pacific. The population is above 100,000.
The commerce of this country is chiefly carried on with
Great Britain in British bottoms. During the years
1848-9 the arrivals at Punta Arenas amounted to seventy
ships, with a total of 7188 tons of merchandise. The
development of commerce is at present paralysed by the
long and expensive voyage round Cape Horn, as many
of the productions of Costa Rica fitting for the markets
of Europe, cannot bear the heavy charges on exportation
by that route. The exportation in 1848 amounted
to 150,000 quintals of coffee, 10,000 hides, a considerable
quantity of mother-o'-pearl, sarsaparilla and dye-wood,
and a small lot of pearls from Golfo Dulce and Nicoya.
The state of Nicaragua is wholly supplied with tobacco
from Costa Rica; tortoise-shell is also exported in considerable
quantities. The annual value of importations
amounts to 1,000,000 of dollars, including 200,000 dollars
from Nicaragua. Some gold mines are now being
worked, and.there are many others of copper exceedingly
rich, of coal, nickel, zinc, iron, and lead mixed with
silver, but they are neglected for want of capital.
Traffic is at present carried on by the Port of Punta
Arenas, on the Pacific Ocean, to which port a good
carriage-road has been completed from the capital, a
distance of seventy-two miles. Obstacles which would
have deterred a less patriotic administration from the
undertaking were surmounted by President Castro in
the construction of this road. Forests, and mountains
attaining an elevation of 4500 feet, were cut through;
deep ravines and impetuous torrents were overcome;
and five excellent stone bridges thrown across the route,
at an expense of 150,000 dollars.

NARRATVE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE names of the Commissioners for inquiring into the state, discipline, studies, and revenues, of the Universities
and Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, have proved a guarantee for the earnestness and good faith of
the promoters of the inquiry. No friend to the real interests of either University need have any fear of
committing them to the decision of such men as Sir John Herschell and Doctor Peacock; or as Doctor Jeune,
Mr. Liddell, and Mr. Sacheverell Johnson; or as Professors Powell and Sedgwick. The effect is already felt,
and the howl of resistance sensibly diminished. Sedatives of a satisfactory kind have also been applied to
another as bitterly agitated question, and the reading-room of the British Museum is now enriched with a
manuscript catalogue bringing up the arrears of books to the latest practicable date, in a hundred and fifty-three
manuscript volumes. This, to which a duplicate copy is added, is in addition to other catalogues,
printed and in manuscript, already existing; and is further re-inforced by a catalogue of the munificent
bequest of the Grenville library, hitherto closed to the public by the absence of that accommodation. Thus
has been wisely substituted for a matter of very just complaint what must be termed even a source of national
pride, for it may be doubted if facilities of access equal to these exist in any other great library in Europe. A
third subject connected with literature of considerable present interest is that of the possibility of securing
any English copyright in a book written by a citizen of America, or any other alien. The question is again to
be brought before a court of law; but if the issue be taken largely on the construction of the Act of Anne,
and not on any such incidental point as the claim of a particular author to the rights of English citizenship,
there can hardly be a doubt but that the latest and most authoritative decision, pronounced two years ago
in the Court of Exchequer, will be finally affirmed. There can be no assignment of a thing that has no
existence; copyright has now no existence in England, except under the Act of Anne; and no one who has
carefully read that statute can have failed to arrive at the conclusion that its operation is strictly and
exclusively limited to English authors.

The month just passed has maintained its reputation
as the dullest of the literary year. Hardly a book worth
naming has been published in it. A second series of Mr.
Jesse's gossiping anecdotes of London and its Celebrities;
two re-publications from America, one a book called
Berber (a romance of which a parcel of Barbary corsairs
are the heroes, not at all worthy of the happy extravagance
of the author of Kaloolah), and the other a diary
of Rural Hours, by the daughter of Mr. Fenimore
Cooper, in which the scenery and social characteristics
of a village in a New York county are rather nicely hit
off; a translation from the German of somewhat similar
Pictures of Rural Life in Austria and Hungary, with a
mixture of rich scenery and romantic incident that
reminds one now and then of Mrs. Radcliffe; a capital
tract on the Mosaic Sabbath, in which the good sense
as well as learning of the subject is exhausted; and some
few volumes on subjects of medical treatment, interesting
only to practitioners in medicine; are the sole publications
of the month of which any mention falls strictly
within the purpose or intention of this record. Already,
however, notes of preparation promise a busy autumn,
both east ahd west of Temple Bar; and the present
dearth will doubtless make next month's harvest all the
more abundant.

The Gazette of Tuesday the 3rd inst. contains the
lists of the separate commissions appointed by Her
Majesty to inquire into the state, discipline, studies, and
revenues, of the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
For the Oxford Commission—The Right Rev.
Lord Bishop of Norwich; the Verv Rev. Archibald
Campbell Tait, D.C.L., Dean of Carlisle; the Rev.
Francis Jeune, D.C.L., Master of Pembroke College, in
the University of Oxford; the Rev. Henry George Liddell,
M.A., Head Master of St. Peter's College, Westminster;
John Lucius Dampier, Esq., M.A., Vice-Warden
of the Stannaries of Cornwall; the Rev. Baden
Powell, M.A., Savillian Professor of Geometry in the
University of Oxford; and the Rev. George Henry
Sacheverell Johnson, M.A., of Queen's College, in the
University of Oxford. For the Cambridge Commission—
The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Chester; the Very
Rev. George Peacock, D.D,, Dean of Ely; Sir John
Frederick William Herschell, Bart.; Sir John Romilly,
Knight, her Majesty's Attorney-General; and the Rev.