other three editors named, will be duly and cheerfully made, as the occasions for them shall arise.... "In the Introductions our leading purpose is to gather up all the historical information that has yet been made accessible, concerning the times when the several plays were written and first acted, and the sources whence the plots and materials of them were taken. It will be seen that in the history of the poet's plays, the indefatigable labors of Mr. Collier and others, often resulting in important discoveries, have wrought changes amounting almost to a total revolution, since the Chiswick edition was published. And we dwell the more upon what Shakspeare seems to have taken from preceding writers, because it exhibits him, where we like most to consider him, as holding his unrivalled inventive powers subordinate to the higher principles of art. Besides, if Shakspeare be the most original of writers, he is also one of the greatest of borrowers; and as few authors have appropriated so freely from others, so none can better afford to have his obligations in this kind made known."... THE STONES OF VENICE--RELIGION, GLORY, AND ART. Mr. John Ruskin, the "Oxford Student," whose _Modern Painters_ and _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ have made for him the best fame in the literature of art, has just completed the most remarkable of his works, _The Stones of Venice_, and from advance sheets of it (for which we are indebted to Mr. John Wiley, his American publisher), we present some of his preliminary and more general observations, indicating his great argument that THE DECLINE OF THE POLITICAL PROSPERITY OF VENICE WAS COINCIDENT WITH THAT OF HER DOMESTIC AND INDIVIDUAL RELIGION. Popular as the previous works of Mr. Ruskin have been, we cannot doubt that this splendid performance will be the most read and most admired of all.