Literature.
--The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon has recently taken to editing a religious periodical, called the ‘"Baptist."’ Even the preachers both in this country and England are sucked into the whirlpool of journalism.Harrison Ainsworth and Dudley Costello are the principal contributors to Bentley's Magazine.
A shilling edition of Emerson's "Conduct of Life" is published in England, despite the unfavorable reviews of the Athenæum and the Critic.
Miss Muloch, author of "John Halifax," has turned editor, and is to supervise a new monthly shilling magazine; she has contributed largely to McMillan's Magazine.
Lamartine has offered a play to the Porte Saint Martin, and it was rejected. A double mortification. The piece was called La Servante.
The new pamphlet, "Rome and the French Bishops," is attracting nearly as much attention in Paris as "The Pope and the Congress," a year ago.
Victor Hugo having completed his great romance of Les Miserables, demands $60,000 for the six volumes. Solar, the publisher of La Presse, offers $15,000 for the right to publish the work in the feuilleton form, and another publisher offers $15,000 for the absolute property of the volumes, but the poet resists both inducements. Who shall talk of the lack of business talent, the improvidence and carelessness of literary men?
Motley's new volume is in press by the Harpers, and indeed ready for publication. They hold it back solely on account of the times.
Some of the copy of Thackeray's Virginians was written so hastily that the original manuscript was sent to this country before the author had corrected the proofs.
The two first volumes of a French translation of a German work called ‘"Enigmatical Personages and Wonderful Histories,"’ are just published in Paris.
Anthony Trollope, John Hollingshead, and George Lewee are the principal contributors to the Cornhill Magazine, besides Thackeray.
