LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND THE DRAMA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6566, 2 December 1882, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND THE DRAMA.

1 • A new society journal is in preparation. • . Society is evidently much to be pitied. j : Manchester and Liverpool have now well- • conducted daily newspapers, published at a . halfpenny. j s Captain Mayne Reid has secured a pension ' ; from the United States Government for his i ! military services, i Messrs. Longmans and Co. announced the • j appearance of their new sixpenny magazine on November Ist. "Nobody," is the odd title -which the author of the " Wide, Wide World" has prefaced to a new tale. LoDgfellow, Cooper, Bret Harte, Mark ' Twaiu, Henry James, jun., and Mrs. Stotve have all been translated into Russian, besides ' Draper, Motley and Maury. There is reason to b-.lieve. that the essays ' contributed by Professor Stanley Jevons to ' the Contemporary Review will shortly be published in a collected form. ' The first part of Mr. Anthony Trollope's ' new novel. "The Land Leaguers," havin<* reference to Irisu life of the present time° ] was to appear in Life on November 15. ' ■ "Sheridan," one of the forthcoming volumes in the English Men of Letter series, is ' the work of Mrs. Oliphant. J. C. Moriso'n's " " Macaulay" will shortly be brought out. M. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, the veteran ! author and friend of Theirs, has finished his 1 French translation of Aristotle's " Historia Animalium," which will be published im- 1 mediately. * Yet another political newspaper is to be published at Paris after the holidays. This is 1 Le Passant, to be edited by M. Jules Simon ; ' and it is said to have a good deal of money at its back. ' ' Viscount de Spoelberg de Lovenjoul, a ' Belgian amateur, lias purchased a number of unpublished works by Balzac, comprising ' some tales for the young, and a complete collection of letters to his wife, which will 1 probably be given shortly to the world. The tiret volume of Messrs. Cassell and ' Co. 'a series of technological manuals, edited by Professor Aryton, F.R.S., and Dr. ' Wormell, was to be ready early in October, 1 It is entitled "Cutting Tools Worked by Hand and Machine," by Professor Robertß. \ Smith. ' Macmillan and Co., have brought out in their Nature series "The Scientific ' Evidences of Organic Evolution," by George 1 J. Romanes, F.R.S., &c. A more concise or , admirable statement of the theory of evolution has not yet appeared. It is the whole £ doctrine of Darwinism in a nutshell. A critic warns the poets who are inclined J to celebrate our Egyptian victories as to the • difficulties of the metre. The hard words are better put in the middle of the line. ' The neglect of this rule is that Tel-el-Kebir c is made to rhyme with sabre when it is really pronounced Tel-el-Kebeer, and would rhyme a with severe. r Mr. Jules Noriac, a writer of some mark, s the author of a. few novels and farces, but whose principal literary laurels appeared in * the columns of the Figaro, has just died, age £ 55, of a disease the name of which is, we ' believe, a medical neologism, the smoker's cancer. He suffered agonies for two years ' from a constantly increasing decay, which gradually invaded his whole face, and so r altered his appearance that his most intimate friends could, not recoguise him. * Signor Salvin's recent accident, says the v London World, seems to have been some- * what serious. He was on a ladder, examining the progress of tome work at his villa at ■* Trespiano. A boy accidentally displaced the * support of the ladder and it fell with him as s he was coming down. He had to take a great leap, was very much bruised, and one ' foot was so much injured that he had to keep ' to his room for three weeks. He was just in * the midst of preparing for a seven months' . engagement in America and this delay caused ' him great annojance. ? Wagner's generosity bids fair to become ' as proverbial as his urbanity. At the recent production of " Parsifal" at Bayreuth he pre ' sented each of the principal interpreters of "J his work with a souvenir as a mark of his •* gratitude. One received a watch, another a work of art, and so on. When it came to the I Amiortas, Hcrr Reichman, Wagner pulled— r ten marks from his pocket and pressed it *■ upon him effusively. As the artist, not unnaturally looked disappointed, he said to him * playfully, " What ! is that not enough for c you ! Why, the most admirable of Tristans I got only a thaler !" Messrs. A. Hey wood and Son, Manchester, 1 have in preparation a work by Mr. A. Arthur ( Rcade on the subject of "Study and Stimu- 1 lante."' The opinions of medical men as to alcohol and tobacco vary so much as to J have but little influence. To Mr. Rcade it ' seemed that, whatever its theoretical aspect, the question of the use of stimulants would be best solved by the experience of mental workers, and he has at considerable trouble s niticlc tin independent inquiry among the 1 representatives of literature, science and art, 1 in Europe and America. The replies are not only numerous, but in many cases cover a 1 wider ground than that contemplated. '