best things of Jerrold and Hood, as well as of men eminent and living, are found in its pages. In these same pages, Leech, Doyle, and Tenniel have grown famous as the most kindly of moralists and caricaturists. Two volumes of this humorous and illustrated history of our own times are on our table; and it is very curious and very amusing to return upon the events and follies which we see interested us twenty years ago. It is like reading a packet of our own correspondence of that period."

The 'Ency. On the 15th of June an account is given of clopædia Britannica.' Messrs. A. & C. Black's dinner at Greenwich,

on the 5th, to celebrate the completion of the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica,' when Mr. Black "read the following statistical paragraph respecting the seventh and eighth editions of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica ': -Amount paid to contributors and editors, 40,970,-cost of paper, 52,503,-of printing and stereotyping, 36,708/.,—of engraving and plate-printing, 18,277.,—of binding, 22,613,— of advertising, 11,081,-of miscellaneous items, 2,269,-making a total cost of 184,421. Of these two editions of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' there have been printed above 10,000 copies. The amount of duty paid upon the paper, calculated at 11⁄2d., was 8,573.......

These figures indicate the magnitude of this literary enterprise."

Lord Campbell.

Lord Campbell died on Sunday, the 23rd of June. He was born in 1781, the son of a Scotch minister of narrow fortunes. After receiving a preliminary education at St. Andrews, he came to London while still a lad, and obtained a post on the Morning Chronicle. In 1806 he was called to the Bar, and from that time devoted himself assiduously to his profession. He entered the House of Commons in 1830 as member for Stafford, and became Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1841; but on the resignation of Lord Melbourne's Cabinet he was for five years without profession or office. During this time he devoted himself entirely to literature, and entered on those labours which resulted in the production of The Lives of the Lord Chancellors' and 'The Lives of the Chief Justices.' In 1859 the prize he had so long desired and struggled for was gained, and he took his seat upon the woolsack. The Athenæum in its obituary notice of the 29th of June mentions the great service rendered to literature by his Libel Act (which allowed a person to plead Libel Act. justification) and his Act for the Suppression of Obscene Publications. "These Acts have in no small degree contributed to the freedom of discussion and the purity of the press. Of them

selves they would be sufficient witnesses to his fame."

"On the 29th of June, at Florence,—after a life of health so fragile that its prolongation till now has been a marvel,-died the greatest of Elizabeth English poetesses of any time," Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Browning. The Athenæum of July 6th thus

Barrett

'Essay on Mind'

refers to her early life: "Her training, it may be said, was strict; her frame delicate beyond ordinary delicacy, but the girl managed to lay hold of quaint learning and daring thought,— to rise on the wings of a soaring fancy, with an instinct which seemed to defy circumstance, physical disqualification, and limited experience of society. Her beginning of authorship was no publishing of 'Lines to a Rose,' no secondhand reminiscence of scenes and feelings better portrayed elsewhere, but an and a translation of the Æschylus. The last, when satisfied its author that, on some call for its republication being made, she re-translated the Greek tragedy. Of these essays little transpired to the world till the year 1836, when 'The RoRomaunt of maunt of Margret,' anonymously published in the Margret.' New Monthly Magazine, startled all true readers of poetry by its daring and deep originality...... Presently the same unseen hand gave out other gifts, other poems,-incomplete, perhaps, (as

'The

Prometheus' of printed, so little

'The

an uncut diamond may be incomplete). Some among them drifted to this journal; every one having its diamond-novelty and beauty, and a nerve which set it apart from the horde of sweet verses written on pleasant themes, by anybody, or nobody.-No name was announced in connexion with these early successes. Presently, a collection of these scattered lyrics was put forth headed by The Seraphim,' a sacred drama prompted by no less vaulting an ambition than Seraphim.' that of one professing to have watched the Crucifixion, and who hid herself in the guise now of an awe-stricken, now of an awe-raised, angel. By this time Miss Barrett's name was abroad, and it became known, also, that she had been for years the inmate of a darkened room, -doomed, as was thought, to slow death, and as such withdrawn from active share in the world of society or letters. But her poems broke the door of the dark chamber for her against her will. Old friends, of course, had long ministered to her there; but strangers would write to her, and thus by degrees she was drawn into a commerce with much that is boldest in speculation, rarest in fancy, choicest in literary worth. Her letters are as remarkable as her poems-filled with noble thoughts, recondite allusions, thickcoming fancies,-never worldly, always womanly, —but almost without peer among the letters of

of Exile.'

women. A second collection of verse, headed 'The Drama by 'The Drama of Exile,' in which she trod Milton's ground with the step of a poetess, had not long appeared, and placed her yet higher with her public;-when it was told that the inmate of the darkened chamber had risen from Her her couch to marry a poet, in many of his marriage. instincts and fashions delicately fitted to herself,

Windows.'

and was gone out into the world-into Italy.The eagerness with which one so long prisoned flung herself into the life of a beautiful and new world, the resolution with which she adopted it as the country of her heart and hope, was to Casa Guidi be seen in her next poem, 'Casa Guidi Windows,' a passionate moralizing on what happened in the South in 1848. She enjoyed all she saw, and grasped at all she held, much as a bird freed from its cage might do ;-intensely, enthusiastically happy, with a belief in goodness and progress which nothing could daunt, nor set aside......Those whom she loved, and whom she has left, will remember her (so long as life lasts) by her womanly grace and tenderness, yet more than by her extraordinary and courageous genius." To the Italians the death of Elizabeth Browning came as a personal loss, and a battalion of the National Guard was to have followed at the funeral, but a misunderstanding as to time frustrated this testimonial of respect.