Finchley." In 1800 he went to Harrow, and
among his associates were Peel and Byron.
"It

is a singular circumstance that from 1807 to 1815, that is to say during the period of early manhood usually most full of incident and most rapid in development, we lose sight of Procter almost entirely......In 1817 he met the writer who, of all others, influenced him most, Leigh Hunt." In 1820 he was associated with the newly started London Magazine. "In 1824, after an engagement of three years, he married the daughter of Mrs. Basil Montagu, and went to live with his wife's parents. There was born, in 1825, Adelaide Anne Procter, their eldest child, herself to become a famous poetess......In middle life Procter had been the first to assert the supreme genius of Mr. Robert Browning, and in later years that poet was his attached friend and associate. Finally, the man who had lived with Keats and Lamb enjoyed the loving enthusiasm of Mr. Swinburne, thus taking hands, across seventy years, with two distant epochs in poetry."

The forthcoming Caxton Celebration is the The Caxton subject of an article by Mr. William Blades Celebration. on the 19th of May. The exhibition was opened by Mr. Gladstone on the 30th of June, and the Athenæum of that day states that it "will be certainly most interesting.

One hundred One hundred and fifty-three Caxtons, the and fifty-three Caxtons greatest number ever gathered together, have exhibited. been lent for the purpose by the Queen, by

Earl Spencer, by the Duke of Devonshire, by the Public Library, Cambridge, by the Bodleian Library, by Lord Jersey, Mr. ChristieMiller, and other fortunate possessors of such treasures. Added to these are the books of Colard Mansion, of Rood and Hunte, of

Machlinia, Wynken de Worde, Pynson, &c. The The series of block-books is also very remarkblock-books. able, and the history of printing on the

Continent is illustrated by a fine collection of early printed books, commencing with the Gutenberg (or Mazarine) Bible and Mentz Psalter, of which a fine copy, on vellum, is shown, from the library at Windsor, and continued in a geographical and chronological series down to the sixteenth century." The loans for the exhibition were most liberal, the books from Althorp alone being insured for something between 50,000l. and 60,000l. The exhibition remained open until the 1st of

* At the Crawford sale, June 15th, 1887, a Mazarine Bible was knocked down to Mr. Quaritch for 2,650l. Mr. Quaritch stated that he had bought this particular copy at the same rooms, thirty years ago, for 6957. At the Perkins sale in 1873 a copy realized 3,400l.; and at the sale of Sir John Thorold's library in 1884 a specially fine copy fetched 3,900l.

Profits

Pension

September, and the profits, which reached given to the 1,116l. 3s. 2d., were handed to the Printers' Printers' Pension Corporation, with which two pensions Corporation. were established the Stephenson of 10l. a year and the Caxton Celebration Pension of 25/. a year.

Prince L. L.
Bonaparte's

of the English Dialects.'

Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, it is stated on the 26th of May, "has given to the Classification Philological and English Dialect Societies 600 copies each of his new octavo map, in red and black, of his 'Classification of the English Dialects.' His labours and publications on the subject began, as is well known, many years before the Dialect Society started." Dr. Philip P. Carpenter died of typhoid Dr. Philip P. Carpenter. fever at Montreal on the 24th of May, at the age of fifty-seven. The Athenæum of the 2nd of June states that by his death "conchology has lost one of those patient, assiduous labourers who make their mark not by any brilliant discovery or novel doctrine, but by carrying the scientific spirit into the toilsome study of specific types and their geographical distribution." Dr. Carpenter arranged "the national Arranges the Smithsonian collection of shells in the Smithsonian Institu- collection of shells. tion, Washington, under the charge of Prof. Henry; and was subsequently engaged in similar work for other public museums in the Northern States."

Miss

M. Carpenter.

On the 23rd of June the death of his sister, Miss M. Carpenter, is announced. The Athenæum says: "A singularly good memoir of her appeared in Monday's Times. The most remarkable, perhaps, of her writings was her Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes, and for

Her measures Juvenile Offenders,' published in for reforming

the

young.

'Falstaff's

1850, in which were set forth the principles on which all subsequent measures for the reformation of the young have been based."

"Falstaff's Letters. By James White. With Letters, by Notices of the Author," is reviewed on the James White. 23rd of June. "Lovers of Elia remember that here and there in the immortal Essays there occur references to a certain Jem White, never to be mentioned without some word of sympathy and praise. The name of this worthy has dropped out of literature, and even the special students of Lamb's writings need to be reminded who he was. A fellow-scholar with Lamb at Christ's Hospital, and holding some office there long enough for Leigh Hunt to remember him, James White seems to have been a youth of great brilliancy and parts, and to have vehemently attracted the timid and morbid nature of Elia by his friendship for superior physical energy. White and Lloyd were Lamb's earliest literary friends; the

Charles
Lamb's

White.

first a fantastic creature, full of whim and spirit, the second a grave and melancholy lad, portentously solemn." It was in 1796 "that the little book which is here reprinted went through the press......He had just, at Lamb's recommendation, read the comedies and histories of Shakspeare, and the result was this volume of letters, written, as the more eminent friend said in later days, 'from the fulness of a young soul, newly kindling at the Shakespearian flame, and bursting to be delivered of a rich exuberance of conceits.' The book had little or no success, and White was never again tempted into authorship." James White married the daughter of Faulder the bookseller, and died about 1820. "In his later years he was a modest agent for newspapers."

The progress of the telephone was at this Origin of the time attracting much attention. The musical telephone. telephone of Mr. Cromwell Varley, then being exhibited at the Queen's Theatre, is described on the 24th of July. Prof. Graham Bell's Prof. Bell. articulating telephone was exhibited by Mr. Preece at the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth, on Friday, the 24th of August, and by the inventor himself on the following Tuesday, and the Athenæum of the 1st of September gives an account of the proceedings.

Mr. Edward Viles, on the 15th of December,