iven to the best among the poems, romances, and dramatic works
submitted; the second year to the best picture; the third year to the
best piece of statuary; the fourth year to the best piece of music,
whether sacred or profane, opera or oratorio. This circle having been
completed, the prize will next be given as at the first year; and so on
in regular succession. The successful competitor is to remain proprietor
of his work, as are all the others. The prize will he allotted by two
committees, one at Weimar the other at Berlin. The establishment of the
fund was celebrated at Weimar on the 23d of August.

* * * * *

GIFFORD, some five-and-twenty years ago, declared that all the fools of
the country had taken to write plays; and it would appear that all the
dull Englishmen of our day have taken to write pamphlets on the
slave-trade. The London _Times_ is very severe upon a book just issued by
Mr. W. Gore Ouseley, who was several years British Charge d'Affaires at
Rio, as such conducted a voluminous correspondence on the subject with
the government of Brazil, and might have been expected to have there
learned something on the slave-trade worth telling. According to his
reviewer he appears, however, to be one of that class of persons
described by Sterne, who, traveling from Dan to Beersheba, found all to
be barren; and no amount of observation can in any human being supply
defective reasoning faculties. So, says the _Times_, he has little or
nothing to say about the Brazilian slave-trade that has not been better
said a thousand times before; and when he does venture on a special
statement of his own, it topples down the whole superstructure of his
argument.

A work of rather more interest is "Seven Years' Service on the Slave
Coast of Africa", by Sir Henry Huntley, who, when a lieutenant in the navy
in 1831, was ordered to the scene of his observations. Shortly after his
arrival, he was appointed to the independent command of a small vessel,
in which he visited stations, looked out for slavers, chased them when he
saw them, and captured them when he could. A few years subsequently he
was nominated Governor of the settlements on the Gambia. His two volumes
contain his adventures during the whole or nearly the whole of his seven
years' service upon the station; the last closing abruptly in the middle
of preparations for a congress of black kings. The public is already
familiar with many of the