this new edition of Bacon, for which a great necessity exists in the market, the beginning of a series of standard works of the first class. Every effort will be made to issue the volumes in a style of excellence and magnificence that shall surpass anything yet produced by book makers at home or abroad. Messrs. Houghton & Co., of the noted Riverside press at Cambridge, have these works in hand. The books will be printed upon the finest tinted paper, and bound in a style which for beauty and durability will commend itself to all tastes. Lord Bacou's works will be followed by a complete edition of the writings of Sir Walter Scott, including his novels and poems, and his life by Lockhart.

HISTORY OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE.-Messrs. A. Williams & Co., of Boston, propose to publish soon a History of Williams College, which has been prepared by Rev. Calvin Durfee, aided by Prof. A. Hopkins and others. Besides an introduction by Gov. Washburn, it will contain seventeen chapters, embracing a sketch of the life of the Founder, and early friends and patrons of the College; a memoir of the several Presidents, and the history of their respective administrations; an account of the buildings, libraries, apparatus, and progress in the college studies; besides a large space has been given to the religious history of the Institution. It is a work of labor and research; and every possible care has been taken to render it accurate and reliable.

Dr. WORCESTER'S QUARTO DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.*We have received, at the last moment, a copy of Dr. Joseph E. Worcester's Quarto Dictionary of the English Language, containing 1854 pages. Its external appearance is in every way creditable to the publishers. We have only time or space to refer our readers to some interesting Articles: pp. 41, 42, where the author has a more thorough investigation of the word or phrase, all to, than we have elsewhere seen; p. 362, where the transition of day star" from its original meaning "lucifer," or "morning-star," to "the sun," is elucidated by the usage of the poets; p. 615, where the multitudinous meanings of the verb to get are illustrated by an extract from Dr. Withers; p. 1558, where the application of the name turtle to the tortoise is elucidated by an interesting passage from C. Folsom, Esq.; p. 1257, where we find a discussion concerning ride and drive; p. 672, where the spelling height and drought is strenuously advocated. We hope to be able in some future number to review this work more at length.

* A Dictionary of the English Language. By JOSEPH E. WORCESTER, LL. D. Boston: Hickling, Swan, & Brewer. 1860. 4to. pp. 1854.

THE FINE ARTS.

PHOTOGRAPHIC COPIES OF PAINTINGS.-We have lately had the pleasure of examining a collection of photographic copies of paintings from the establishment of Augustus Runkel, 618 Broadway, New York. Our readers are well aware of the great improvements that have been made in the art of photographing, within the past few years. The contrast between the impressions now taken, and those taken only two or three years ago, is very marked. There is now a uniformity of softness and clearness which extends through the whole picture, and there is an absence of that indistinctness which has heretofore been so decided an objection to all photographs. The improvement of which we have spoken has been especially great in the copies that are made of engravings and paintings. Mr. Runkel, of New York, has made this department of the art his especial business. His collection is very large and rich, embracing copies of a great number of the most celebrated paintings. We will mention, as among them, nearly all the Madonnas of Raphael, many of the finest paintings of Murillo, nearly all of Ary Schaeffer with which we are familiar, many of Rosa Bonheur, of Landseer, and of Turner, We have also seen an excellent copy of that most remarkable painting of Kaulbach—which is perhaps not surpassed in modern art— the fresco which adorns the walls of the new Museum in Berlin, "The Destruction of Jerusalem." But we do not propose to give the whole catalogue. We advise our readers, on visiting New York, to visit the rooms of Mr. Runkel. The price of his photographs is very low, averaging about three dollars each, so that for a very moderate sum, comparatively, a person may procure for his portfolio copies of all the best paintings in the world, which in beauty and delicacy of finish approach that of good engravings. Mr. Runkel proposes to visit New Haven and Hartford in April next, for the purpose of taking photographs of the public buildings in both cities, and is now ready to receive orders for taking at the same time views of private residences. An advertisement, containing his address in New York, will be found at the end of the present number, on page 6 of the "Advertiser."

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. LXX.

MAY, 1860.

ARTICLE I-HUMBOLDT, RITTER, AND THE NEW
GEOGRAPHY.

Humboldt's Kosmos. Four Vols. 8vo. Stuttgardt. 18451858.

Ritter's Erdkunde. AFRICA. One Vol. 8vo. ASIA. Eighteen Vols. Berlin. 1822-1859. 8vo.

Guyot's Earth and Man. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 12mo.

ONE of the well known master-pieces of Raphael, which adorn the stanze of the Vatican, presents to our eye "the School of Athens," an assembly of philosophers studying, teaching, arguing, and disputing within the porch of a temple of science. Aristotle and Plato, the former extending his hand over the visible earth, the latter pointing upward to the unseen world,―representatives of material and speculative philosophy,-form the center of the group, while around them Socrates, Diogenes, Pythagoras, and Epictetus, with a score of lesser luminaries, are engaged in earnest discussion.

The

world has not often come so near to the reality of this conception of the painter, as within a few years past. Berlin, the Athens of the North, has lately assembled a company of philosophers, more knowing and more wise than the masters of Grecian science ever brought together in the groves of the Academy, or the portico of the Lyceum; even more knowing and more wise than those whom the master of Italian art, drawing from different centuries and from different towns, has represented in his ideal school.

Frederick William IV, who still wears the crown, though he has yielded the scepter of the kingdom of Prussia, evinced throughout his reign an enlightened desire for the promotion of the higher education, and for the advancement of every department of human science. It is owing to the wise policy of this monarch that the city of his royal residence, while comparatively new, has surpassed nearly all the older towns in Germany. Although poorly situated for mercantile transactions, it rivals Hamburgh and Bremen as a commercial center; and although long established custom still retains in Leipsic the control of the book trade, yet the publications of the Prussian capital are annually becoming more and more numerous and important. The once famous Pinacothek and Glyptothek of Munich are already eclipsed by the splendor of the New Museum in Berlin, while the old universities of Vienna and Prague have seen their younger sister in the North become the most attractive of the higher schools of Germany, with somewhat of the surprise which Harvard and Yale would experience if Beloit and Kenyon should suddenly be found superior in celebrity and influence.

All the faculties in Berlin have been distinguished during the last twenty years. In Theology, Neander is but just gone, while Hengstenberg, Twesten, Nitzsch, and Strauss remain in active service. Savigny, Puchta, Heffter, and Stahl have occupied the chairs of jurisprudence. Bopp, the brothers Grimm, Bekker, and Boeckh are known to every student of philology. Trendelenburg expounds the history of philosophy, Pertz exhumes the early monuments of German civilization, Ranke

reviews the history of Europe, and Lepsius unriddles the hieroglyphics of Egypt.

Not less distinguished, certainly, are the exponents of physical science. Encke watches the movements of the heavens, and Dove interprets the laws of terrestrial physics; Rose classifies the productions of the mineral kingdom, and Braun the varied forms of vegetation; Ehrenberg is a world-acknowledged giant in the Lilliputian domains of the Infusoria, and Mitscherlich, substituting the analysis of the crucible for that of the lens, has penetrated to an equal depth beyond the surface knowledge of common men.

But above this eminent group of physicists,-may we not say above all the philosophers of Berlin ?-two men of science have long been conspicuous, Alexander von Humboldt and Karl Ritter. Friends through long lives, kindred in taste and in pursuits, distinguished both at home and abroad beyond any of their associates, they have terminated together an honorable career, and the world of science and letters now mourns its double loss.

Those of our countrymen-and the number is not small-who have been so fortunate as to see these distinguished men in the Royal Prussian Academy of Science, at one of its stated meetings, in the university Aula, on some festive occasion, and especially those who have met them in the social circles where the scientific professors are accustomed to assemble, cannot fail to have remarked, that whether in public or in private, Humboldt and Ritter were the objects always of respectful attention and of undisguised admiration. Such a company of scholars as has been the pride of Berlin for the last five and twenty years recalls the golden period of English literature, in the days of the learned Queen Bess, and even more forcibly the glory of Weimar, when Goethe and Schiller and Herder and Wieland made the court of an unimportant Duchy not less renowned than the capital of an empire. Indeed it requires no effort of the imagination to bring to life the dream of Raphael already alluded to, placing Humboldt and Ritter as the center of the illustrious group in the school of modern Greece.

We propose in this Article to call attention to the services