government never required at once from the population
of the empire so considerable a sacrifice. 80,000 men
are regarded as the average result of the recruitment of
one-half of the empire, at the rate of 7 or 8 men per
1000 souls. I do not exaggerate by estimating at
200,000 men the numbers recruited in virtue of the
new decree. That maximum, however, will scarcely
suffice to complete the effective force of the different
corps and fill up the vacancies occasioned by the war.
Every man is worth about 5000 roubles, so that a
landed proprietor who owns 1000 serfs pays to the
State 50,000 roubles. You may consequently judge of
the enormity of the sacrifice imposed upon him."

During the Czar's recent visit to Odessa, he attended
Divine Service in the Cathedral. At the threshold, the
archbishop, in presenting the Cross and the holy water,
addressed (says the Russian Journal) some words full
of unction to his majesty. These words were: "Pious
Sovereign! Thou hadst scarcely put on the crown of
thy ancestors, when it pleased Providence to surround
it with thorns. Our bodily eyes are not accustomed to
see such an ornament sparkle on the head of kings, but
the eyes of faith see in it, with piety and respect, a
souvenir of the crown of Christ. Have not indeed
such crowns been worn by the most pious kings and
princes from David, Jehoshaphat, Constantine, Vladimir
the Great, to Dimitrii, our hero of the Don, and finally
thy patron, Alexander Newsky? 'Have courage, and
let not thy soul become weak at the sight of these
smoking brands,' said the prophet to the warrior-king,
Ahaz, when the two kingdoms of Israel and Assyria
united against him in an unjust war. How closely do
these words of the prophet apply to us and our enemies!
This unhappy France! Is she not in truth the brand
which for half a century has carried fire throughout the
entire world? And the proud, but to-day abased and
jeopardised Britain! What is she, if not the other
brand, which, after being extinguished for two centuries,
recommences to smoke in the midst of a yawning
gulf? And we also will say with the Prophet, 'Let
not thy soul grow weak at the sight of these two
smoking brands before us! ' At a sign from the Most
High the winds abate, and the rain falls to fertilise our
fields. These brands depart, and Russia, protected by
God, recovers itself for the joy of her chief, and for the
well-being even of her own enemies. Enter, then, O
pious Sovereign, the temple where once thy august
father came in the depth of night to raise towards
Heaven his thanks for having escaped the tempest and
shipwreck—enter, and in thy turn raise with us thy
prayers to the King of kings for the cessation of the
tempest which now rages both upon sea and land.
May Heaven grant this temple may again see thee
kneeling before God, but then only to render
acknowledgments and to give thanks. Amen."

In the United States an attempt has been made to
excite a hostile feeling towards this country, but
apparently without success. Several persons having been
prosecuted at Philadelphia for having recruited for the
militia service of England, Mr. Cushing, the attorney-
general, in a letter to the district attorney of Philadelphia
on the subject of these prosecutions, made a violent
attack on the British government as having through its
agents violated the rights of the United States. A person
named Wagner has been tried and convicted of
having contravened the American Foreign Enlistment
Act, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a
fine of 100 dollars.

A railway accident has occurred near St. Louis by
which twenty-two persons lost their lives and fifty were
wounded.

NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.

The approach of Christmas has at length infused some
activity into the great publishing houses, and in number
and importance the past month's contributions to
literature are at least respectable. They have comprised,
in Biography, the third and fourth volumes of the
Memoirs of James Montgomery; the Life and Works
of Goethe, with Sketches of his Age and Contemporaries,
by Mr. G. H. Lewes; a curious little tract of Charles
the Second's day, entitled Memoirs of Sir John King,
Knt., written by his Father in 1677, Sir John King
having been a highly successful nisi prius lawyer; a
Life of Fielding, by Mr. Frederick Lawrence; a Life
of Jeanne d'Albret, the celebrated Queen of Navarre, by
Miss Freer; a second volume of Lord Brougham's
Sketches of Statesmen; and an illustrated Life of
Luther. In History there has been published Mr.
Prescott's Reign of Philip the Second, and Lieut.-Col.
Hamley's Campaign of Sebastopol, the latter written, as
history has not often been written, on the spot where
the history was acted. To Fiction the contributions
have been Lady Willoughby, or the Double Marriage,
a novel by Mrs. La Touche; the first volume of the
Collected Miscellanies of Mr. Thackeray; a single-volume
story by Holme Lee, called Gilbert Massenger; a child's
story by Mrs. R. Lee, called Sir Thomas, or the
Adventures of a Cornish Baronet; another by Miss Geraldine
Jewsbury, Angelo, or the Pine Forest in the Alps; Tales
of Magic and Meaning, by Mr. Alfred Crowquill, and the
Talking Bird, by Miss Kirby; and a sequel to
"Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland" under
the title of Lilliesleaf. Of books of travels the principal
are Pictures from Cuba, by an American traveller,
Mr. Hurlbut; Eastern Experiences, by Mr. Kennard;
the Last of the Arctic Voyages, being a narrative of
Sir Edward Belcher's last expedition in search of Sir
John Franklin, published under the authority of the
Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty; notes of travel
up The Rhine, by Mr. Henry Mayhew, accompanying
a series of engravings after drawings by Mr. Birket
Foster; a translation of M. About's description of
modern Greece and the Greeks; a new edition, with
important additions, of Lord Broughton's Travels in
Albania and other Provinces of Turkey, forty-five
years ago; and Two Summer Cruises with the Baltic
Fleet last year, being the log of the Pet Yacht, by the
Rev. R. E. Hughes. The Poems published have
comprised a new translation after Æschylus, of
Agamemnon the King, by Mr. Blew; Mr. Longfellow's
Song of Hiawatha; a new edition of Longfellow's
Miscellaneous Poems, illustrated by Gilbert; and Men
and Women, fifty short poems by Robert Browning.
Finally, the additions in Miscellaneous Literature have
included a reply to Sir James Emerson Tennent on the
Wine Duties considered financially and socially, by
Mr. Bosville James; the second volume of Wilson's
Noctes Ambrosianæ; Mr. Punch's new Pocket Book;
an Inquiry concerning Religion, by Mr. George Long;
the continuation of Dr. Lindley's Ferns of Great
Britain, nature-illustrated by Mr. Henry Bradbury;
a volume of Cambridge Essays, on the plan of those
published earlier in this year by the members of the
sister university; the first volume of Arago's Popular
Astronomy, translated and edited by Admiral Smyth and
Mr. Robert Grant; a new edition of Æschylus, with an
English commentary by Mr. Paley (in Messrs. Long's and
Macleane's excellent Bibliotheca Classica); a volume on
Electricity by Mr. Noad; an essay on the Music of the
Nineteenth Century and its Culture, by Dr. Adolph B.
Marx; a new and greatly improved edition of Mr.
Haydn's Dictionary of Dates and Universal Reference;
a Pocket Dictionary of the English and Turkish
Languages; the Keepsake, and the Court Album for 1856;
an elaborate essay on the Currency, in a letter to the
Duke of Argyle; an essay on The Bayeux Tapestry,
with outlines of the subjects elucidated, by an
accomplished northern antiquary, Mr. Collingwood Bruce; a
Handbook of the Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance,
as applied to furniture and decorations, translated
from the French of Jules Lebarte, with very numerous
and finely executed woodcuts; and an Analytical View
of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, by Lord Brougham
and Mr. E. P. Rowth.