THE POLITICAL MAXIMS AND THE PRIVATE THOUGHTS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT is the title of a curious piece in the last number of _Frazer's Magazine_. It is unique as a sample of kingcraft; and every line supplies a proof of the candor, hypocrisy, unscrupulousness, sense of duty, courage, sensuality, and intellect, of the great Prussian, to whom are partially due the literary merits or demerits of the paper. * * * * * The new edition of the POEMS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, contains besides many original pieces, her translation of the "Prometheus Bound," of AEschylus, never hitherto published, although, as she informs us, once privately circulated in another and less complete form. It bears no mark of a woman's hand: it is rugged, massive, and sublime, as befits the grand old fate drama which the genius of the Greek moulded out of the immortal agony of the beneficent Titan. From the new poems we select the following exquisite love sonnets, from a series scarcely inferior to those in which Shakspeare has given the history of his heart-life: "I lift my heavy heart up solemnly, As once Electra her sepulchral urn, And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see What a great heap of grief lay hid in me, And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn Could tread them out to darkness utterly, It might be well perhaps. But if instead Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow The gray dust up, ... those laurels on thine head, O my beloved, will not shield thee so, That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred The hair beneath. Stand further off, then! Go. "Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Never more Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore, Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.