NARRATIVE OF FOREIGN EVENTS.

THE Foreign intelligence of the month is barren of
interest.

In France, no political event of any importance has
occurred. Trade is described in the Paris journals as
very dull. Commerce, it is said, does not recover from
its state of languor. Business is flat, and the prolongation
of the dead season is the more extraordinary that none
of the factories are encumbered with stock, and a very
small demand would suffice to restore the ateliers to
activity. Stringent regulations are adopted with
respect to the residence of foreign refugees, who are
ordered not to take up their abode within a hundred
miles of the frontier of the countries from which they
fled. No political refugee is to reside in the department
of the Seine, at Lyons, or Marseilles, without an express
authorisation.

In Spain there has been a change of ministry. The
debates on the railway question having been very violent,
the Queen prorogued the Cortes, and the ministers
resigned in a body. The formation of the new cabinet
is not yet announced.

The accounts from Italy and Sicily are full of severe
proceedings against political offenders. Several
hundreds of persons have been arrested at Palermo, belonging
to all classes of society. There are among them noblemen,
priests, monks, citizens, workmen, and even
women. Those against whom the strongest suspicions
prevailed, have been taken to the citadel of Messina.
The King of Naples has ordered all Sicilians to be
expelled from that city, in consequence of a Swiss soldier
having been found murdered at Palermo.

The dates from New York are to the 12th inst. The
chief article of intelligence is the appointment of the
Hon. James Buchanan as minister to this country.

NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

Among the more important works in general literature
issued during the past month may be named two new
volumes, the third and fourth, of Moore's Letters and
Journals; a new and greatly improved edition of the
late Captain Cunningham's History of the Sikhs; an
Abridged Statistical History of Scotland, full of
information clearly arranged; a new edition of Horace with
an English commentary and notes by Mr. Macleane,
which appears in Mr. George Long's admirable Bibliotheca
Classica; an elaborate volume on Public Education
by Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, describing the
policy and results of the government plan during the
years of its administration by the Committee of Privy
Council; the old English translation of Gerrit de Veer's
famous Three Voyages by the North East in 1594-5-6,
carefully edited and corrected by Doctor Beke, and
reproduced, with all the characteristic engravings of the
quaint old draughtsman of Elizabeth's day, by the
Hakluyt Society; a striking volume of half-real half-
romantic autobiography called Lorenzo Benoni, or
Passages in the Life of an Italian; a republication of
two biographical essays by Macvey Napier on Lord
Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh, taken from the
Edinburgh Review; a fifth volume, devoted to the reformation
in England, of Doctor d'Aubigné's History of the
Reformation of the Sixteenth Century; an edition of
the Elegies of Propertius, with English notes by Mr.
Paley; another strenuous protest, by Mr, V. Schœlcher,
against the imperial usurpation in France, Le Gouvernement
du Deux Décembre; and, in a magnificent volume
of lithographed drawings, Mr. Layard's second series of
The Monuments of Nineveh.

In the special department of travel there have been
some entertaining volumes. Mr. Boner's Chamois Hunting
in the Mountains of Bavaria gives new interest to an
old scene. Mr. Dundas Murray has made clever
additions to his Cities and Wilds of Andalucia. Mr. Brodie
Cruikshank has published his experience of Eighteen
Years on the Gold Coast of Africa. Captain Bourne's
account of the Giants of Patagonia, describing his
captivity among those ''extraordinary savages," has
been issued with woodcuts in the Illustrated Library.
Mr. William Tyrone Power has published his Recollections
of a Three Years' Residence in China; Mr. Ross
Browne, a "Crusade in the East" under the title of
Yusef, or the Journey of the Frangi; and from a "British
resident of forty years in the East," we receive travels in
the regions of the lower Danube on The Frontier Lands of
the Christian and the Turk. Finally, in a volume filled
with remarkably interesting matter, Captain Elphinstone
Erskine has published his Journal of a Cruise among
the Islands of the Western Pacific, which comprises a
curious narrative of a residence on one of the islands by
an English sailor, who acquired the language of the
savages and became half-naturalised among them.

In poetry, original and translated, we have to record
the appearance of Mr. Collier's single-volume edition of
The Plays of Shakespeare after the text of that
emendator of the second folio who has lately made so
much noise, but unhappily without any mark to
distinguish his new readings; a graceful little volume of
Poems by Edwin Arnold; Goethe's Faust, annotated
by Falck Lebahn; a posthumous collection of Poems by
Edward Quillinan, and, by the same writer, a translation
of the early and most striking part of the Lusiad of
Camoens; a thoughtful dramatic poem called the
Idealist by Mr. J. H. Röhrs; an English verse
translation of the Eumenides of Æschylus, with notes
critical and explanatory by M. Bernard Drake; a little
book of extracts entitled Select Poems of Prior and
Swift; a great number of minor poems, such as
Christmas at the Hall, Half a Dozen Ballads by
Mr. Tupper, Poems by Mr. Magnay, Dioramic
Sketches, Wanderings in the British Islands, &c,—and
a translation in the original metres of the complete
Poems of Goethe, executed by Mr. Edgar Browning, and
prefaced by a brief account of the great poet's life.

In fiction the principal new publications have been a
journal supposed to be written during the period of the
progress of the English Reformation, called The Diary
and Houres of the Ladye Adolie, written by Lady
Charlotte Pepys; another supposed journal of more
modern date, founded on an unhappy love story connected
with the unfortunate Lord Derwentwater, with the
title of the Diary of Margaret Bethune Baliol;
Mr. Kingsley's new romance collected from Frazer's
Magazine, Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face;
another collection from the same magazine, of the sporting
and other experiences of Captain Digby Grand; an
autobiography of Ada Gresham, by Mary Anne
Lupton; a new novel by the authoress of the Initials,
Cyrilla; and a book with the title of Family Romance,
which purports, however, to be strictly authentic
narratives of episodical wonders in the "domestic
annals of the aristocracy."

The subject of India continues to call forth a mass of
publications especially devoted to the discussion of it.
Putting aside a great number of pamphlets, including
one by Mr. Prinsep on the India Question in 1853,
another on India Reform by Mr. John Chapman, an
Exposure of the Maladministration of the East India
Company by Mr. Maclean, and the first and second
of what promise to be a striking series of tracts issued
as India Reform Pamphlets,—we shall mention only the
more important volumes which the last month has
contributed to this fertile theme. Mr. Hay Cameron
has written on the Duties of Great Britain to India.
Mr. Dyke, of the Madras Civil Service, has described
Salem, an Indian Collectorate. Mr. Campbell Robertson
has narrated, with reference to subsequent events, the
Political Incidents of the First Burmese War. Mr.
Neil Baillie has discussed the Land Tax of India.
And Mr. Irving has detailed the Theory and Practice
of Caste in the Anglo-Indian Empire.