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Nantglyn, near Denbigh, who was placed in the bardic chair, according to ancient custom. There were fourteen competitors for this prize; eleven for the second prize, on "The Cambrian's Attachment to his Native Land," adjudged to Mr Evan Evans; and forty-nine for the third poetic garland, conferred on Mr James, the harper, for the best Englyn, or sonnet, on "What is Poetic Genius?" (Pa beth yw Awen.)

PROSE ESSAYS IN ENGLISH.

1. On the Notices of Britain, under whatever name in ancient Authors; containing Extracts from the Originals, with translations and comments. The Rev. W. T. Rees, A. M. Rector of Cascob, Radnorshire, and Prebendary of Brecon.

2. On the History and Character of the real Arthur, King of the Britons, and the fabulous Character of that name, whether of Romance, or of My thology. Mr John Hughes, of Brecon, author of Horæ Britannica, in two vols.*

There were ten competitors for the honour of the silver harp, which was awarded to R. Roberts, a blind man.

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on the Boards,

1495

3698

1558

3395

It appears from the Eighth Report of the National Society, that there are 1467 schools on Dr Bell's system; and from the Fourteenth Report of the British and Foreign School Society, that there are 297 schools upon the Lancasterian plan; making a total, upon the new system, of 1764 schools.

At the sale of the late Mr Bindley's library, at Evans's, in Pall-mall, a collection of single poems and ballads, published at about a halfpenny or one penny each, bound in eight volumes, sold at the immense price of L.837.

The commercial world will learn with satisfaction that a plan has been commenced, under the auspices of the British Government, for determining the relative contents of the weights and measures of all trading countries. This important object is to be accomplished by procuring from abroad correct copies of Foreign standards, and comparing them with those of England at his Majesty's Mint. Such a comparison, which could be effected only at a moment of universal peace, has never been attempted on a plan sufficiently general or systematic; and hence the errors and contradictions which abound in tables of Foreign weights and measures, even in works of the highest authority. In order, therefore, to remedy an inconvenience so perplexing in commerce, Lord Castlereagh has, by the recommendation of the Board of Trade, issued a circular, dated March 16, 1818, directing all the British Con1874 suls abroad to send home copies of the 3984 principal standards used within their 1873 respective consulates, verified by the 4102 proper authorities, and accompanied

The meeting concluded with an address from Chas. W. Wynne, Esq. and some poetic effusions from the Rev. Walter Davies, the chief of modern bards.

It appears by a summary of the Members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in their Calendars for 1819 and 1820, that the following is the number :

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• Printed for Ogle and Co. London.

by explanatory papers and other documents relative to the subject. Most of his lordship's orders have been already executed in a very full and satisfactory manner. The dispatches and packages transmitted on the occasion are deposited at the Royal Mint, where the standards are to be forthwith compared. The comparisons are to be made by Robert Bingley, Esq. the King's Assay Master of the Mint, and the calculations by Dr Kelly, of Finsbury-square, who originally submitted the plan to government; and who will publish the results of those comparisons and calculations, as soon as they are completed, in the second edition of his "Universal Cambist." A report was this year made to the Society of Education at Paris by M. Jomard, from which it appears, that the number of schools already established for boys is 41, and for girls 22. These schools are capable of affording accommodation to about 6600 scholars. The whole number of schools in France is said to be upwards of 1000; of which 360 are included in M. Jomard's report. Of these 45 are instituted for girls; and the whole of them might instruct 40,600 scholars, or about 115 per school. On July 1, 1818, there were under instruction 19,175 children. There is also another description of schools, established by the Brethren of the Christian Faith." These, in the course of three years, have increased from 60 to 142; and, in the year 1818, they had 25,000 pupils.

The theatres in France have long been under the immediate control of the government, and various regulations have at different periods been made respecting them. In November, 1796, a decree was passed, and which still continues in force, enacting, that a decime on every franc of the price of admission at all places of public amusement, should be collected for

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Total . . 485,137 491,826 497,358

The French actors form a kind of joint stock company, and a committee of six, with a commissioner named by the government, is appointed to ma nage the interests of the society. The committee, however, have little power, the principal authority being vested in the commissioner. The receipts of the theatre are divided into twenty-four equal parts; one part is set aside for unexpected demands; one half part is given to the pension or superannuated fund; another half part is assigned to the decorations, scenery, repairs, &c. The other twenty-two parts are distributed amongst the actors, none re ceiving more than one part, nor less than one-eighth of a part. The actors, on entering this society, contract an engagement to play for twenty years, after which they are entitled to a re tiring pension of 4000 francs per num, (about 1701.) These pensions are payable, half out of an annual allow ance of 100,000 francs (about 42001.) made by government to the theatre, and the other half out of funds raised out of the receipts and contributions of the actors.

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Les Annales des Lagides, publish ed at Paris, announced a fact that the learned in general were not ac quainted with. The number of reigns of the Greek Egyptian kings, sors to Alexander the Great, has been

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generally fixed at ten; but proof is here adduced, that they amounted to twenty-one. This work was crowned last year with the particular sanction of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, at the competition for prizes; and it has been justly recommended in various French periodical publications, as one of the most important that have appeared on ancient history for many years.

It contains, in fact, the history of Egypt under the Ptolemies, from Alexander to Augustus ; and, as those kings had a share in almost all the great events that occurred either in Europe or Asia for about three centuries, a chronological synopsis of their history serves also to illustrate that of the princes or states that were their contemporaries. A number of chronological tables are annexed, with two cuts, or plates, of medals. The author is M. Figeac.

GERMANY.-The Emperor Francis published an edict, ordaining that the work entitled, Jus Criminale Hungaricum, or the Criminal Laws of Hungary,' published by M. Vuchetich, Professor of the Roman Civil Law, &c. in the University of Pesth, be considered as the standard and guide by which all the lectures on law in the Universities of Hungary shall be modelled. His Majesty has ordered the sum of 3000 florins to the author.

The number of students in the University of Leipsic increased to upwards of a thousand. Many that were at the University of Jena, and which they were obliged to quit, repaired to Leipsic, where their conduct was unblameable. At Jena, there were thirteen Greeks, seven of whom are now at Leipsic, where others of their countrymen had previously been prosecuting their studies. A number of Courlanders and other Russians were also in that University.

There was published at Vienna, a

polemical Journal in the Greek language, entitled Calliope, the object of which was to deprecate the taste for Literature and the Arts beginning to revive in Greece. The ostensible editor is M. Athanasius of Stagyra, but the real editor is a soi-disant Athenian, whose name is odious to all Greeks that are lovers of liberty. The seventeenthnumber contained a libellous and offensive diatribe, levelled at the methods of Pestalozzi, which, by an inexcusable ignorance, were confounded with the philosophy of Kant. Invectives the most outrageous and abusive were lavished upon the venerable Coray, the most illustrious of modern Greeks, who, by all the intelligent men of that unhappy nation, is hailed as the reformer, the father, and the benefactor of his country.

A Geographical Society was established at Vienna, the object of which was to facilitate the execution of different labours projected in the interior of the Austrian monarchy, and to concentrate various means of information relating to geography and statistics. M. the Baron de Schwitzen, counsellor of state, was occupied in the formation of this Board, which is placed under the immediate direction of the Council of State.

There was recently discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, a manuscript copy of the Iliad of Homer of the fourth century, with sixty pictures, equally ancient. The characters are square capitals, according to the usage of the best ages, without distinction of words, without accents or the aspirates; that is to say, without any sign of the modern Greek orthography. The pictures are upon vellum, and represent the principal circumstances mentioned in the Iliad. M. Angelo Maio, professor at the Ambrosian College, caused the manuscript to be printed in one volume, with the engravings from the

pictures, and the numerous scholia attached to the manuscript. These new scholia fill more than thirty-six pages in large folio; they are all of a very ancient period, and the greater part of hem are by authors anterior to the Christian era and to the school of Alexandria. The authors quoted are one hundred and forty in number, whose writings have been lost, or are entirely unknown. The manuscript, however, does not contain the Iliad entire, but only the fragments which relate to the pictures.

A letter, dated December 23, 1819, from A. Mai, the principal librarian of the Vatican to the Pope, giving an account of Cicero's Treatise de Republica, excited great expectation.

"I have the honour and satisfaction," says M. Mai, in his letter to the Pope, "to inform your beatitude, that in two re-written Codices of the Vatican I have lately found some lost works of the first Latin classics. In the first of these MSS. I have discovered the lost books De Republica of Cicero, written in excellent letters of the best time, in three hundred pages, each in two columns, and all fortunately legible. The titles of the above noble subject, and of the books, appear in the margin; and the name of Cicero, as the author of the work, is distinctly legible. The other re-written codex presents various and almost equally precious works. It is singular that this MS. contains some of the same works which I discovered and published at Milan, and I have here found what was there wanting. I perceived this at first sight, not only from comparing the subject, but also from the hand-writing, which is precisely the same as that of the Milan MS.

"The contents are-1. The correspondence between Fronto and Marcus Aurelius before and after he was Emperor. This is an instructive, affectionate, and very interesting collec

tion; the first and second books, containing epistles to M. Aurelius, were published from the Milan MS.; that now found in the Vatican contains the third, fourth, and fifth books, as well as the supplement to the second, and some other works by Fronto, Latin and Greek. 2. The fine commentary of the ancient inedited scholiast on Cicero, begun to be published by me at Milan, and now to be increased by five other orations, with the supple. ments to those already printed at Milan. 3. A fragment of an oration, by Q. Aurelius Symmachus, with the supplement of two by the same author, already published by me. 4. The supplements to the homily, or Gothico-Ulphilan commentary, a por tion of which was also found at Milan, together with an essay of Ulphilas, These valuable works, mixed into two volumes, which were taken for writing parchment in the middle ages, were sent partly to Rome, and partly to Milan, from the Convent of St Colum banus at Robbio. They will now be again united in a Roman edition of them, which I shall lose no time in publishing.

(Signed) "ANGELO MAL." The public have been already ap prised of the publication, in the Ar menian language, of the Chronicle of Eusebius; to which may be added, that Doctor Zobrab, who brought the manuscripts to Constantinople, has been an assistant to M. Majo in the Latin translation, and in the publication, by augmenting it with a copious preface, with notes, and with the Chronicle of Dr Samuel, an Ar menian writer, who lived in the thir teenth century.

Baron de Niebuhr, Prussian Am bassador to the Holy See, discover. ed and published several MS. works hitherto unknown. They are chiefly fragments of Cicero's Orations Pro M. Fonteio and Pro C. Rabirio; a frag

ment of the 91st book of Livy; and two works of Seneca.

The Abbé Amadeus Peyran, professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Turin, discovered some fragments of Cicero in a manuscript from the monastery of St Colomban de Rabbio, a town on the Trebia, in the dominions of the King of Sardinia. This MS. presents important new readings of orations already known, and confirms the identity of several texts that have been tortured by indiscreet critics. It contains also fragments of the orations Pro Scauro, Pro M. Tullio, In Clodium, orations unfortunately lost.

It appears from a report made on the 1st of June, by M. Scovazzo, director, that a school, on the plan of mutual instruction, was established, with every prospect of success, at Palermo, in Sicily. It was opened for 250 children; the progress was rapid, and the jury of monitors proved very useful. Such was the ardour for this mode of instruction, that holidays were suppressed, and there were no interruptions but the Sunday and certain grand festival days. A general enthusiasm prevails for the new method. There had also been a similar school for about three months at Messina. Others were to be opened at Trapani, Mazara, Agrigento, Syracuse, Termini, &c. and no obstacles whatever occur to the dissemination of this method throughout Sicily. Even the Jesuits have adopted it in their college of Alcamo, and before the expiration of two years, there would not be a village without a school of mutual instruction.

SPAIN. Before the late Revolution in Spain, there was at Madrid but one Gazette, with another Journal or two, occupied in annunciations of ecclesiastical holidays, processions, &c. or the price current. At present, the list is little short of formidable.

It comprises, 1. "The Gazette of Madrid." 2." The Ancient Journal of Madrid." 3. "La Miscellanea," published every fortnight: it opposes religious intolerance and political prejudices. 4. "Le Constitutionnel," in the same spirit. 5. "The Law," in support of legal authority. 6. "The Publicist,' supports the constitution and opposes despotism. 7. "The Courier, political and literary:" its contents are more miscellaneous than those of the other journals; which, however, do not wholly lose sight of literature. 8. "The Bee-hive, or Colmena," exerts itself in favour of the unhappy and oppressed, in firm and determined language. 9. "The Spanish Minerva.” 10." The National Minerva." 11. "The Palladium, or Patriotic Journal of the Societies of St Sebastian, and of the Inn of Malta." This paper takes its tone from the Societies it represents it is now less furiously patriotic than it was formerly. 12. The Zealous Citizen." 13. "The Aurora:" this journal records the proceedings of patriotic societies; it has been extremely personal, but is now less violent. 14. "The Conservator," constitutional and loyal. 15. "The Vigilant." 16. "The Sun" records accurately decrees and edicts. 17." The Chronicle of the Arts." 18. "The Universal Observer" is distinguished by impartiality and moderation. 19." The Messenger." 20. "The Economic Library," or Annals of Arts, Agriculture, and Commerce. Publications of this description have been for some time past popular in Spain: the present has been well received. 21. "Correspondence between two Friends of Liberty:" this paper discusses subjects too elevated for the popular mind. 22. "Letters by a poor little Pretender," was a work intended to tell truth ironically: the attempt supposes the author to possess much taste,

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