plenipotentiary of the Sultan, respecting a convention which
should be submitted to the Conference of the Four
Powers. Let your Majesty adopt that plan, on which
the Queen of England and myself are perfectly in
accord, and tranquillity will be re-established, and the
world satisfied. There is, in fact, nothing in this plan
that is not worthy of your Majesty, nothing that can
wound your honour. But if, from a motive difficult to
be comprehended, your Majesty should refuse, in that
case, France, as well as England, would be obliged to
leave to the fate of arms and to the hazards of war
what might be decided at present by reason and justice.
Let not your Majesty suppose that the slightest animosity
can enter my heart; it experiences no other sentiments
than those expressed by your Majesty in the letter
which you wrote to me on January 17, 1853. 'Our
relations,' you said, 'ought to be sincerely amicable, and
ought to be based on the same intentions—namely,
maintenance of order, respect for treaties, love of peace,
and reciprocal kind feeling.' That programme is worthy
of the Sovereign who traced it out, and I do not
hesitate to declare that I have remained faithful to it. I
request your Majesty to believe in the sincerity of my
sentiments; and it is in such sentiments that I am, Sire,
your Majesty's good friend, NAPOLEON."

It appears that these propositions have been peremptorily
rejected. The text of the Czar's answer has not
been published; but the Moniteur of the 19th inst. says:
"We announced yesterday that the Emperor had
received an answer from St. Petersburg. The Czar in his
letter to the Emperor discusses the conditions of arrangement
which had been proposed to him, and declares
that he can only enter into a negotiation on the bases
which he has made known. This answer destroys all
chance of a pacific solution, and France must prepare to
maintain by more efficient measures the cause which the
persevering efforts of diplomacy have failed to conduct
to a successful issue." The diplomatic proceedings, in
which this country has taken part, are referred to in the
explanations given by Ministers in parliament.

Accounts from Vienna state that Count Orloff
prolonged his stay there until the 8th instant; and then,
instead of visiting Berlin, or going to the Hague to
meet Baron Brunnow and M. Kisseleff, he set out
direct for St. Petersburg. What he proposed is understood
to have been shortly this—that the Turks should
send a Minister to treat directly with Russia at the
head-quarters of Prince Gortschakoff; that the old
treaties should be renewed; that political refugees
should no longer be harboured in the Ottoman
dominions; and that the Greek protectorate should be
conceded. These propositions were at once rejected.
Count Orloff modified them somewhat—entirely striking
out the first—but equally failed. It is stated that he
obtained a positive assurance that Austria and Prussia
would remain neutral: but this appears to be doubtful.

NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

The publications in general literature, scantier than
usual, issued during the month, have comprised a second
volume of Mr. De Quincey's Selections Grave and Gay
from his published works; a parliamentary retrospect of
the History of the Session 1852-3; a treatise by Dr.
Lindley Kemp, on Indications of Instinct, contained in a
number of Messrs. Longman's Traveller's Library; a
translation of Bungener's work on the reign of Louis XV,
entitled France before the Revolution, or Priests,
Infidels, and Huguenots; a new and prettily-illustrated
edition of Keats's Poems, with many original designs by
Mr. Scharf, jun., and a brief memoir by Mr. Milnes,
compressed from his larger work; the second volume
(containing the poems of Surrey and of minor
contemporaries) of Mr. Bell's Annotated Edition of the English
Poets; two volumes of Travels in Bolivia, with a Tour
across the Pampas, by Hugh de Bonelli; a new edition
(published originally in the United States) of Leonard
Horner's Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner,
enriched with much new matter, and several original
letters; a thirteenth edition of Archbishop Whateley's
Easy Lessons on Money Matters, to which we see
appended a concluding lesson on Trades' Unions and
Strikes; the second volume of Murray's British
Classics, comprising a second volume of Mr. Cunningham's
edition of the works of Goldsmith; an account of
Hungary Past and Present, written with impartiality and
calmness by an Hungarian exile, Emeric Szabad; a
curious volume by Major Alexander Cunningham, on
the lately opened Bhuddist monuments of central
India, called The Bhilsa Topes; a political treatise,
by Mr. Tremenheere, on The Constitution of the
United States compared with our own; a fourth
volume of Luigi Carlo Farini's Roman State, from
1815 to 1850, translated under the direction of the
present Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. John
William Kaye's Life and Correspondence of Henry St.
George Tucker; a large and handsomely illustrated
journal of sporting adventure and travel in Chinese
Tartary, by Colonel Frederick Markham, called
Shooting in the Himalayas; a new volume of Mr.
Gilfillan's edition of the Poets, containing Goldsmith,
Collins, and Thomas Warton; a description, by
an officer in active service on the spot, of Six
Months at Martaban during the Burmese War;
a book illustrative of a scene of great present
interest, the Russian borders of Asia, entitled Kazan,
the Ancient Capital of the Tartar Khans, by Edward
Tracy Turnerelli; a new part of George Cruikshank's
Fairy Library, containing Jack and the Bean-stalk;
a romance called The Star Chamber, by Mr. Harrison
Ainsworth; a brief but opportune Journal of a Residence
in the Danubian Principalities at the close of last
autumn, when the battle of Oltenitza was fought, kept
by Patrick O'Brien; a journal of an English pair-oar
expedition through France, and down the Rhine, by
three adventurous youths, entitled Our Cruise in
the Undine; a volume, apparently half-fact and
half-fiction, on the Progress of a Painter in
the Nineteenth Century, by Mr. John Burnet; a
book of metaphysical philosophy, an Investigation of
the Laws of Thought, by Dr. Boole; a lively account
of the Russo-Turkish Campaigns in the last eastern
war, by Colonel Chesney of the Artillery; four novels,
Miss Pardoe's Reginald Lyle, Mrs. Clara Walby's
Daughter of the South, Capt. Hamley's Lady Lee's
Widowhood, and Agnes Valmar; a volume of Reports
on Epidemic Cholera, drawn up, at the desire ot the
Cholera Committee of the College of Physicians, by
Dr. Baly and Dr. Gull; the third and fourth volumes of
the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; an
elaborate edition, in four large thick octavos, and with
a general explanatory index, of Sir Robert Peel's Speeches
in the House of Commons; some sketches of travel in
the dominions of the Sultan, by Mr. Warrington
Smyth, entitled A Year with the Turks; a volume on
Algeria, containing attractive illustrations, and ample
details of the topography and history of French Africa,
by Mr. Morell; a useful Handbook of the Mechanical
Arts for colonists and emigrants, by Mr. Scott Burn; a
translation of a curious Visit to Belgrade, in Messrs.
Chapman and Hall's Reading for Travellers; the
completion of the Rev. Thomas Wilson's edition of the
Pentateuch; a new edition, with sketches from Gilray,
of the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin; the first part
of a cheap People's Edition of Mr. Macaulay's
Essays; an edition, by Mr. Weld, of Leinman's
Adventures in the Wilds of North America, issued
in the Messrs. Longman's Traveller's Library; two
additional romances by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton {Paul
Clifford and Eugene Aram) in Mr. Routledge's cheap
series of his writings; and two handsome volumes,
well furnished with maps and illustrations, of Dr.
Hooker's Himalayan Journals, or Notes of a Naturalist
in Bengal.