MR. OCTAVIAN BLEWITT, K.L., F.R.G.S., many years secretary of the Royal Literary Fund, died recently, aged 81. In early life Mr. Blewitt travelled much in Italy, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and other countries, and on his return to England was, in 1839, elected to the post of secretary to the Royal Literary Fund. In this capacity Mr. Blewitt spent many years in arranging the papers, literary, financial, and historical, which constituted the records of the association. Mr. Blewitt was the author of several well-known works, including “The Panorama of Torquay,” published in 1828, and afterwards reprinted in an enlarged edition as “A Descriptive and Historical Sketch of the District comprised between the Dart and Teign,” also the “Handbook for Central Italy and Rome,” and the “Handbook for Southern Italy and Naples,” being two of the series of Murray’s Hand-books. SIGNOR LUIGI BONFATTI, the archivist and librarian of Gubbio, in Umbria, died suddenly at the end of October. “Every seeker into the strange and eventful history of what is now but the time-worn relic of a mediæval city,” writes Mr. W. Mercer, “has lost in him a guide, philosopher, and friend. Only a week before his death he climbed with me the picturesque tower of the Palazzo Pubblico, that often served as a prison-house for captives taken in battle. His pen, fertile with a knowledge of the local antiquities, may be traced in numerous brochures and collected records of recent date. He strove to pierce the shadows that cluster round the memory of Maestro Giorgio and others who made Gubbio famous for his porcelain manufacture, marvels truly of the potter’s art that are scattered far and wide. One small plate only is left to witness in the Municipio to the brilliant _reverberi_ that distinguished the work of artists whose successors from time to time have vainly imagined that they also have caught the secret of the changing colours under flashes of instantaneous light. I left him busily arranging rare books, with a promise that he would send me an early copy of a history of Gubbio, now nearly ready for the press in the able hands of a learned notary, Signor Lucarelli. Those who have known Signor Bonfatti will join me in lamenting the loss of a scholar whose name may sound strange outside Umbria, and unfamiliar to most Italian ears, but which is, nevertheless, an enduring name, notwithstanding its closest connection is with a half-forgotten, ruinous city that itself lies out of the beaten track of wayfarers.” Meetings of Learned Societies. METROPOLITAN.