Literary Record. The Statistics of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, as given in the Metropolitan Catholic Almanac for 1856, represent that there are 7 archbishops, 33 bishops, 1,761 priests, and 1,910 churches distributed among 41 dioceses, and two apostolic vicariates, and showing for the past year an increase of 1 bishop, 57 priests, and 86 churches. During the year, 2 bishops and 21 priests departed this life; 1 was elevated to the episcopacy, and besides these, about 115, whose names appeared on the catalogue of 1855, are not reported for 1856, whence it appears that the total accession of priests during the year was nearly 200. Mrs. Gore is busy preparing a work for pub lication, to be entitled "Memoirs of the Present Century-Social, Literary, and Political." The work was commenced with a view to posthumous publication; but a recent notorious failure, by which Mrs. Gore is one of the most considerable losers, has, it is said, made it necessary that the work should appear as soon as it is ready. Octogenarians, who delight in the writings of Mrs. Gore, are the greatest gainers by the heavy losses of this pleasing writer. The Allgemeine Zeitung states that William Makepeace Thackeray has realized by his writings and lectures $500,000, a sum, says this journal, which would enrich half a dozen German satirists, and change them from literary vagabonds into steady citizens. The Journal de la Librairie of Paris has published some curious statistics of the rates at which the Allies have "rushed into print" since 1811. It appears that from the 1st of November, in 1811, to the 31st of December, 1855, or in forty-four years and four months, no less than 271,994 books have been published in France. This number includes books written in foreign languages, as well as the Greek and Latin authors. The number of engravings, drawings, lithographs, maps, and plans, reaches 47,425, and to this number must be added 17,449 musical compositions-making altogether, 336,868 publications. In the year 1855 alone, 8,235 literary works were published in France, with 1,105 musical compositions. The engravings, maps, lithographs, issued within the same period, amount to 2,857 issues: the total for last year being 12,217. Of the fortyfour years included in the statistics of the Journal de la Librairie, it appears that last year, with the exception of 1825, was the most productive. In 1825 the number of publications amounted to 8,265. Since 1851, the progress of the literary labors of France appears to have the thousands of ephemeral publications. The been gradual, owing probably to the war, and figures from 1821 to 1854 run thus: in 1851 7,350; in 1852, 8,264; in 1853, 8,060; in 1854, 8,336. Shakspeare continues in great favor in Germany; good translations of his best pieces appear as frequently, if not oftener, than those of Göthe and Schiller. Russian Journals.-In Russia there are in course of publication ninety-five newspapers, and sixty-six magazines and periodicals, devoted to the proceedings of learned Societies. Of these, seventy-six newspapers and forty-eight magazines are in the Russian language; fifteen newspapers and ten magazines in German; two newspapers and six magazines in French; three newspapers in English; one newspaper in Polish, and one in Latin; two newspapers in Georgian, and two in Lettish; also three newspapers in Russian and German, and two in Russian and Polish. In St. Petersburgh, twenty-six newspapers and forty-two magazines are published in the languages above mentioned. Of the direct newspapers in the Russian language, pub lished in St. Petersburgh, one resembles the French "Moniteur," and publishes a collection of the laws and orders of the government twice a week. Another publishes the decrees and decisions of the Imperial Senate. A third deals in light literature, with a sparing admixture of politics. The "Russian Invalide" is a daily military newspaper. There is a government paper, which appears once a week, and another which is published daily. Recent French papers announce that a large number of autograph letters of Napoleon the First to his mother and to his great-uncle, Archdeacon Lucien, is said to have been found in Corsica. They were written in 1785, at the time when young Bonaparte had left Brienne, and entered the Ecole Militaire at Paris, and are all signed "Napoleone di Bonaparte." The possessor of this treasure has repaired to Paris, in order to offer it for sale to the French gov ernment. The late Dr. Scudder.-The Rev. H. M. Scudder, eldest son of Dr. Scudder, now of the mission at Arcot, is engaged preparing a memoir of his father. Mr. E. W. A. Tuson, Chancellor of the Austrian Consulate-General in London, has just furnished a valuable contribution to commercial literature, under the title of the "British Consul's Manual;" a work upon which much care and labor appear to have been exercised to make it as complete as possible. In addition to its general features, it contains a most useful consolidation of the commercial treaties and conventions concluded between Great Britain and foreign countries, while there is likewise included in the appendix a vocabulary of international and maritime law and insurance, and full tables of foreign moneys, weights, and measures, with their equivalents in English. The Rev. Dr. Bergen, the oldest minister of the Synod of Illinois, is engaged in writing a history of the Presbyterian Church in that state. -- Darling's Cyclopædia Bibliographica. — The volume of the "Cyclopædia Bibliographica," arranged under subjects, is in active preparation, and will be ready for the press about the end of this year. Besides being very complete in theological literature, it will embrace nearly all departments of knowledge, pointing out the best books on each subject. It will be issued in the same manner as the volume already published on "Authors, their Lives and Works." Literary Forgery.-M. Constantine Simonides has been arrested in Leipsic, on the charge of having sold to the King of Prussia, for two thousand thalers, a manuscript which he pretended contained three books of Uranius on the most ancient epoch of the history of Egypt, but which has been discovered to be a forgery. It is stated that the forgery was so skillfully imitated that it deceived the Academy of Berlin, and that it was by its recommendation that the king purchased it. The arrest of M. Simonides will create considerable sensation throughout the learned world, as he has long been known as a literary antiquary, and as the proprietor of several rare manuscripts. The London Athenæum has the following remarks on the subject: "The first classical scholars of Germany adopted the story, and Professor Dindorf has published part of the scroll of 'pure Simonides,' under the title of Uranii Alexandrini De Regibus Ægyptiorum Libri Tres; Operis ex Codice Palimpsesto edendi Specimina proposuit Gulielmus Dindorfius, 1856. The palimpsest consists of seventy-one leaves, each page containing two columns, so that the whole work would comprise two hundred and eighty-four columns. It is written, we learn from Professor Dindorf, in uncial letters. After the original writing had been effaced, the parchment appeared to have been used again by a writer of about the twelfth century, for copying four works of greater interest than the History of Uranius. Specimens of these works are given by Professor Dindorf. These four works, as Professor Dindorf says, are easy to read on the scroll of Simonides, while the effaced text of Uranius offers great difficulty, and requires the application of the strongest chemical means to make it legible. * ** We need not show any further the great importance of this new scroll-bad it only been genuine. But we are sorry to add, for Uranius, for Professor Dindorf, and for all Egyptologists, that the manuscript is a forgeryone of the most successful ever known among the Amanitates Literaria. The name of Simonides is known to many collectors of manuscripts in England. He was in England last year, and, though notices had been published in foreign papers to warn the public against his forgeries, it is said that he was successful in disposing of several Greek manuscripts in this country which he pretended to have discovered in a monastery of Mount Athos. If some of these manuscripts should turn out to be forgeries, those who bought them may now console themselves! Simonides went back to Germany. He presented the palimpsest of Uranius to the Academy of Berlin. The members of the Academy appointed a commission to report on the genuineness of this manuscript; and with the assistance of some of the first chemists of the day, the Academy, comprising men like Bekker, Boekh, Lepsius, Meineke, Haupt, and Pertz, declared that the manuscript was genuine, and petitioned the King of Prussia to buy it at a very high price. Professor Lepsius advanced two thousand thalers to Simonides, in order to secure the manuscript for the Academy, and Professor Dindorf, who has perhaps seen more Greek manuscripts than any scholar living, was so eager to bring this wonderful discovery before the world, that he had a specimen of it printed without delay. His pamphlet will become a scare book, for it was hardly published when Professor Lepsius arrived at Leipzig with a policeman to arrest Simonides. Professor Lepsius, delighted at first by the complete confirmstion which Uranius gave to his system of Egyptian chronology, found at last that the coincidences between Uranius and the writings of Bunsen and himself were of too startling a nature. The Berlin Academy had to reconsider its verdict. Simonides awaits his trial; Professor Dindorf recalls his pamphlet; and the Berlin Academy will go into mourning during Lent.” M. Humboldt stood alone among the German savans in his assertion of the spurious character of the Simonides scroll. The London Times is now stereotyped, by which means the whole of the country circulation is got into the post-office in time for transmission by the morning mails. This is the first daily newspaper which has ever undergone this process, and we may shortly expect to see our own journals adopting a similar, if not a better plan. Heine. — After lying on a sick bed during eight years, with the mind, fancy, and wit still living in a paralyzed body, the celebrated German author, Heinrich Heine, died in Paris last month, not having yet reached his fiftieth year. "Heine passed away,"says the London Athenæum, "without having done justice to his remarkable gifts. His stores of fancy, tenderness, and deep thought were traversed by a vein of sarcasm which spared no one, and a spirit of mockery which respected nothing. Hence, with all the grace of his minor poems, and all the brilliancy of his prose, both, we imagine, will only live in that outer court of the Temple of Fame, so to say, beyond which those who have not sincerity cannot should not-pass. His long disease, we are told, was borne with a sort of sardonic patience, affecting to witness, and his powers of repartee were unimpaired till a very late period." The University of Breslau exhibits a remarkable example of toleration and progress, having in connection with it a college for "Jewish theology." This was founded and endowed by a Berlin Israelite banker of the name of Fräukel, and now, in the second year of its existence, numbers thirty students within its walls. of whom twenty-one are Prussians, three Austrians, and six from the rest of Germany. The most interesting event in the literary world this season is the publication of the works of the Emperor Louis Napoleon, the third and fourth volumes of which have been issued. The third volume contains his letters, speeches, &c., before he was nominated to the Presidency, and from this period to the coup d'etat. His new work, entitled "Du Passe et de l'Avenir de l'Artillerie," not being completed, the fourth volume contains copious extracts from the MSS. There is certainly novelty in a monarch publishing his own works. Rossini, who has published nothing since "William Tell" and the "Stabat," has just written a noble melody, entitled "The Separation." Arts and Sciences. A REMARKABLE feat in the art of bronze casting has added another laurel to the famous foundry at Munich. Two statues have been cast at a single of metal. One, colossal, of the King of Bavaria, to be erected at Lendau, on the Lake of Constance; the other, not quite so large, for a public building in the capital. Both were perfectly successful, though the molten mass had a weight of one hundred and fifty leutner. Expected Visit from European Savans.-Some leading citizens of Albany, in which city the next annual session of the American Association for the advancement of Science is to be held, have entered into correspondence with the various packet ship owners, hence to Europe, to secure free passages for notable European savans who have been invited to attend the August meeting of this Association. At this meeting, in addition to the ordinary proceedings, the State Museum of Natural History will be inaugurated by an address from the Hon. Wm. H. Seward, and the Dudley Observatory by an address from the Hon. Edward Everett. The Hon. James S. Wadsworth, of Genesee, has generously subscribed $500 toward defraying the expenses of the distinguished chemist Liebeg. The committee feel a strong assurance that they can secure the attendance of Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal of Greenwich, Le Verrier, of France, Argelander, of Germany, the Struves of Russia, and others distinguished in science. Notice has been given by M. de Lesseps, the French engineer, that the international commission for carrying out the proposed canal through the Isthmus of Suez, is to meet this spring in London, to discuss and make final arrangements for the works. | in, enter by another opening or openings into the calcining furnace, which is placed upon the same level, or nearly so, with the flowing furnace, the gases passing off by a suitable flue or flues to the chimney. In the passage or passages which conduct from the flowing furnace to the calcining furnace, there are placed suitable doors or dampers, which are so arranged that, by opening or closing certain of them, the gases or flame may either be directed into the calcining furnace, or cut off and turned into a waste flue. | Professor Mitchell closed one of his recent lectures with the following magnificent illustration Describing the gradual tendency of the earth's orbit to assume the circular form, he said its short diameter was gradually lengthening, and would continue so to expand until it should become perfectly circular, when it would again contract to its original shape and dimensions. And so the earth would vibrate periodically, and these periods were measured by millions upon millions of years. "Thus," said Prof. M., "the earth will continue to swing back and forth, and to and fro, in the heavens, like a great pendulum pealing the seconds of eternity." The London Journal gives an account of some newly patented processes in iron manufacture. Into the molds, or chills, into which molten iron is run, a mixture of many of the purer oxides of iron, combined with combustible matter, is introduced. Chemical action ensues, and the nature of the pig-iron is changed, so that when afterward subjected to the process of puddling, it is more readily converted into malleable iron-the quality of which is improved, and may be changed by the addition of other oxides, salts, &c., either added in the molds at the same time with the mixed oxide of iron, or afterward. M. Brongniart has established the existence of a veritable fossil forest, imbedded in the superincumbent sand-stone, at the Freuil coal seam, in the Loire department, the trees of which are in their natural position or slightly inclined. It has also been discovered, by mcchanical analysis, that coal, mingled with a large proportion of earthy matter, contains small plants, of which the surfaces are characteristic. They are often decomposed like charcoal, like which they present a fibrous tissue. Gouin & Co., of Paris, have constructed two most remarkable locomotives, one of which is an enormous express engine, on six wheels, with two pair of coupled driving-wheels ten feet in diameter. The point most worthy of notice in this engine is the manner in which driving-wheels of this diameter are applied, the difficulty with wheels of this size of keeping the center of gravity sufficiently low having always been a stumbling-block to English engineers. They have attained this object by separating the boiler into parts, placed vertically one above the other-the lower part forming the water-chest, and the upper part the steam-chest, connected together by large vertical tubes. The axles of the enormous drivingwheels of this engine pass between the water and steam-chests, in the apertures between the vertical connecting tubes of the boiler. This engine is the largest ever constructed, and weighs sixty-two tons. A mechanic has effected an important improvement in furnaces for reducing lead and copper ores. The principal feature in the improved reverberatory furnace is, that one fire serves the double purpose of reducing and calcining the ore. The fire is contained in an ordinary fire-place, situated at one end of the double-furnace. The gases and flame from this fire pass through a lateral opening or flue into the reducing or flowing furnace, and, after pass-burgh, operas of Mozart are to be performed in ing over the surface of the ore contained there- the most splendid style possible, and the dif Preparations are making in all parts of Germany to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mozart, on the 27th of June next, with great pomp. At Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Darmstadt, Gotha, and Ham ferent governments have supplied funds for the purpose. At Königsberg, Magdeburg, Bonn, Cologne, Dessau, and other places, there are to be festivals, occupying from one to three days; and in other towns there are to be concerts. The proceeds of all these performances are to be sent to a society at Gotha, which has been formed for developing the love of music among the lower classes. The Florence correspondent of one of our exchanges says: "In the department of sculpture, America is strongly represented here. Mr. POWERS, chief pillar in her marble temple, stands firm in his place; while his finely finished works grow slowly and surely. I Pensierosa (or la Pensierosa, as it should be called, being a female figure) is now coming out in "the white stone," which well befits so pure an expression of intellectual beauty. The colossal WEBSTER is progressing, and the model of the lithe "California" is nearly finished. This beautiful statue is to be executed in marble for Mr. ASTOR, of New-York." The annual meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences has again passed off without adjudicating the great prize in the department of mathematics. This has only been awarded three times since 1836. The Scientific American says that a pencil which would give a clear, black stroke, and inscribe indelible characters upon paper so as to supply the place of pen and ink, would be a fortune for the inventor. It has no doubt that such invention will yet be made. A new apparatus for raising ships is in progress of construction by Captain Bell, of this city. His contrivance consists of two large timber tanks, shaped like a bootjack, and intended to receive the ends of a sunken vessel between them. They will be sunk to the required position by filling with water, and when properly adjusted, the water will be exhausted, thus securing a lifting power. seum. A block of petrified wood, dug from the earth in Germany, has been sent to the Vienna MuIt is four feet in diameter, and has the appearance of a butcher's block, with a cleft at one end, extending toward the center. The petrifaction is complete, extending through the whole block. At the same museum is also a fragment of one of the wooden pillars of a bridge over a river of the plain of Troy, destroyed long ago, but portions of the pillar of which remain in the earth. This bridge is supposed to have been erected fifteen hundred years since, and the pillar in the museum has become petrified to the depth of an inch and a half from the surface. Scientific men are endeavoring to compute, from this example, how long it must have taken the butcher's block, four feet in diameter, to become entirely petrified. Perfumery. It is stated in a recent publication on the art of perfumery, that Europe consumes annually, at the very lowest estimate, one hundred and fifty thousand gallons of perfumed spirits, under various titles, such as eau de Cologne, essence of lavender, esprit de rose, &c. The art of perfumery does not, however, confine itself to the production of scents for the handkerchief and bath, but extends to imparting odor to inodorous bodies, such as soap, oil, starch, and grease, which are consumed at the toilet of fashion. Some idea of the commercial importance of this art may be formed, when we state that one of the large perfumers of Grasse and Paris employs annually 80,000lbs. of orange flowers, 60,000lbs. of cassie flowers, 54,000lbs. of rose leaves, 32,000lbs. of jasmine blossoms, 32,000lbs. of violets, 20,000lbs. of tuberose, 16,000lbs. of lilac, besides rosemary, mint, lemon, citron, thyme, and other odorous plants in large proportions. For the manufacture of ottar of roses, the same author tells us that the cultivators of the rose in Turkey "are principally the Christian inhabitants of the low countries of the Balkan, between Selimno and Carloya, as far as Philippopolis in Bulgaria, about two hundred miles from Constantinople. In good seasons this district yields 75,000 ounces; but in bad seasons only 20,000 to 30,000 ounces of ottar are obtained; it is estimated that it requires at least 2,000 rose-blooms to yield one drachm of ottar." Mr. C. H. McCormick, of " reaper" renown, has just received his "grand medal of honor" from the French Exhibition of Industry, in acknowledgment of the originality, great merit, and successful working of his machine, at the official test. The medal is of pure gold, of large size, contains some $125 worth of the shining ore, and is, of course, faultlessly executed. The award of the grand medal of honor to Mr. McCormick is thus announced in the Paris Moniteur: "McCormick, Chicago, United States, inventor of the reaping machine which has performed the best in all the trials, and which is the type after which have been made all the other reaping machines, with diverse modifications, which have not changed the principle of the discovery." The scientific world will learn with regret the death of the celebrated astronomer, Von Biela, which took place at Venice on the 18th ult., in his seventy-fourth year. At an early age he entered the service of Austria, and it was in the year 1826, while quartered with his regiment-the 18th Infantry the Line-at the little town of Josephstadt, in Bohemia, that he made the interesting discovery of the comet (called after him) circulating round the sun, between that luminary and the orbit of Saturn. Having retired from the army, he spent the last years of his life in the study of his favorite science-astronomy. A letter lately received from Florence by Rossini, announces the death of Doehler, the pianist, of consumption. The Caloric Engine.-We learn that Captain Ericsson has nearly completed an engine to furnish motive power to a large manufacturing establishment in this city, and that there has already been constructed and finished at one of the West-street foundries, a splendid double horizontal engine, which, we understand, is to be sent to Europe. It is about thirty horse power, has been repeatedly run in the presence of several scientific gentlemen, and realized within a fraction of what was anticipated by the inventor. HE palace, that immense structure lift- | tural monuments. It was completed about against the sky, reminds one, when contrasted with the other edifices of the Swedish capital, in vastness of extent, though not in outline, of the Coliseum of the "seven-hilled city." It is the first object which arrests the attention of the traveler on his approach, and the last one which lingers upon his vision on his departure. View the city from whatever direction you may, it is still the same all-absorbing feature. This magnificent structure was designed by Count Tessin, an architect, to whom Sweden owes all of her finest architec Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by Carlton & Phillips, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. VOL. VIII.-34 massive grandeur, as well as chasteness and simplicity of design, compares favorably with any structure of the same character on the continent. Upon my arrival, an officer of the royal household escorted me through long ranges of apartments, rich in gilding, marbles, frescoes, and upholstery, looking, of course, monotonous and cheerless, like all great royal residences. Of those showplaces, which offer the greatest attractions to an American on his first arrival in Europe, perhaps none become so distasteful, and actually so soon pall upon the sight, as the great palaces of sovereigns. To us, born and educated in republican Amer |