1 His unselfish pretence,-affectionate, enduring, unselfish. Such disposition. a man is a loss, especially when he dies in the Mudie's Library and The following announcements on the 16th of June show the progress of the circulating library system : “Mr. Mudie is about to start a branch of his its branches. great circulating library in Birmingham, for the supply of readers in that town, and the Midland Counties, on the plan which has proved so successful at Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool. These local libraries are really splendid things. The new warehouses, in New Oxford Street, which are now nearly finished, will, we are told, contain 500,000 volumes, in addition to the present stock."+ * Mr. Edmund Yates, in his 'Recollections and Experiences,' makes frequent reference to his friend Albert Smith. + Charles Edward Mudie was born in the year 1818, in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where his father kept a little newspaper shop, and where works of fiction were lent out at a charge of a penny the volume. In the year 1840 Mr. Mudie started in business in Upper King Street, Bloomsbury, and in 1842 commenced his system of lending one exchangeable volume to subscribers at the rate of a guinea a year. In 1852 he moved to Oxford Street, taking in the first instance one house, at the corner of Museum Street. Gradually, as the business grew, he took additional houses, first in Museum Street and afterwards in Oxford Street, and open a subscription library. "Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son, taking advan- Smith & Son tage of the convenience offered by their railway book-stalls, are about to open a Subscription Library on a large scale, something like that of Mr. Mudie. The book-stalls will, in fact, become local libraries, small but select, with the immense advantage of hourly communication by train with a vast central library in London." George Payne Rainsford James, the novelist, died at Venice, where he was British Consul, on the 9th of June, at the age of fifty-nine. The Athenæum on the 23rd, in its obituary notice, says: "When it is recollected that it is some ten years since Mr. James ceased his course of literary production,-when it is recorded that there are upwards of a hundred (if not more) of novels and romances bearing his name, we feel as if he had died young, considering the vast opened the new hall on the 17th of December, 1860. In 1864 the business was converted into a limited company, with a capital of 100,000l. Of this Mr. Mudie retained 50,000l., and the remainder was subscribed by Mr. Bentley, Mr. John Murray, Mr. Miles, and other publishers, Mr. Mudie being appointed manager at a salary of 1,000l. a year. The library since its commencement has issued to its subscribers not fewer than five millions of volumes, more than two-thirds of which have been books of travel, adventure, biography, and history, and scientific works. G. P. R. The British Soane's amount of labour crowded within the compass of his life." The following in reference to the British Museum appears on July 14th: "From 1753, the year of its foundation, to the 31st of March of the present year, the total expense of the British Museum to the nation has been 1,382,733. 13s. 4d.,-no great sum for the inestimable benefit obtained by its outlay, and a considerably less one than would be required to keep a line-of-battle ship afloat for half the period. Mr. Panizzi states that there is room in the building, as it stands at present, for 800,000 additional volumes, and for a million altogether: - at the present rate of increase, space enough to accommodate the receipts of fifty years to come." It is mentioned on September 15th that "Mr. John Tidd Pratt, in his evidence, recently Sir John given as one of the trustees of Sir John Soane's Museum. Museum, before the South Kensington Museum Committee, stated that there were four trustees for life, and five additional trustees appointed by different bodies. That Sir John Soane left 30,000l. 3 per cents., and a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to support the Museum." On the morning of the 8th of September Mr. Herbert Herbert Ingram, the founder and proprietor of Ingram. the Illustrated London News, together with his eldest son, perished in the fearful accident on Lake Michigan, when the Lady Elgin, an American steamer, was sunk through collision with the schooner Augusta. Of 385 persons on board the Lady Elgin 287 were lost. The Athenæum on September 29th states: "Mr. Ingram was the other day a living illustration of the flexibility of our institutions and national manners. He had made his own fortune, and every one knew it. By his enterprise and talent, he had risen from the position of a country newsvender to the responsibilities of a newspaper proprietor, a Member of Parliament, a deputy-lieutenant, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. To-day, he is gone from among us, leaving the power he created in other hands. The story of his rise in life-of his merits and of his mistakes-will often be recalled by writers like Mr. Craik and Dr. Smiles as an encouragement to the young." Thomas Cochrane, Earl of The death of "the most famous seaman of our generation," Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald in the peerage of Scotland, is recorded Dundonald. on the 3rd of November. "After Nelson's death Lord Cochrane had no rival for dash and genius. The affair of the Basque Roads was enough for immortality; but this was only one of a series of amazing exploits, of which the Channel, the Mediterranean and the seas of South America were the scenes. Even during the long peace, when other fighting heroes lay up in lavender, and only fought their old battles in the cigarroom of a club, Lord Cochrane, partly through a gross public wrong under which he suffered, and partly from the creative restlessness of his character, contrived to lead a brilliant, stormy and romantic life. His career is one of the most attractive ever offered to a biographer; for his tongue was as sharp, his pen as nimble, as his sword; and his temper was of that haughty and heroic type, which, while singularly gracious and open, can endure no slight or wrong. Thus, his eightyfive years were filled with battles, protests, trials, discoveries, and recriminations. One of the most kindly and queenly acts of our Sovereign Lady was the restoration to Lord Dundonald of the honours of the Bath of which he had been unjustly deprived. It is a fact within our personal knowledge that, when this gracious message from Windsor Castle reached the Earl, His letter of his first letter of thanks was written,—not to the thanks to Sovereign or her Minister, but to Douglas Douglas Jerrold. Jerrold, who, by his frequent and masterly exposure of the wrong in Punch, and in other quarters, had been the chief means under Providence (as Lord Dundonald believed) of |