the Jews having been disturbed in building the Temple, prayed that search might be made in the house of records for the edict of Cyrus permitting them to return to Jerusalem. The chamber recently found might be presumed to be the House of Records of the Assyrian Kings, where copies of the Royal edicts were duly deposited. When these tablets had been examined and deciphered, he believed that we should have a better acquaintance with the history, the religion, the philosophy, and the jurisprudence of Assyria 1500 years before the Christian era, than we had of Greece or Rome during any period of their respective histories.----M. Guillen y Calomarde has just discovered a new telescopic star between the polar star and Cynosure, near to the rise of the tail of the Little Bear--a star at least that certainly did not exist in October last. According to the observations of M. Calomarde, the new star should have an increasing brilliancy, and it is likely that in less than a month this star, which now is visible only through a telescope, may be seen with the naked eye.----The Senate of the University of Padua is at present preparing for publication two curious works, of which the manuscripts are in the library of that establishment. One is a translation in Hebrew verse of the "Divina Commedia," of Dante, by Samuel Rieti, Grand Rabbi of Padua, in the 16th century. The second is a translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," likewise in Hebrew, in stanzas of 18 verses of a very complicated metre, from the pen of the Rabbi.----ELIOT WARBURTON is engaged in collecting materials for a History of the Poor, which is to appear in the spring.