GEORGE SAND dedicates her last performance to DUMAS, "because," she says, "I wish to protest against the tendency that may be attributed to me of regarding the absence of action as a systematic reaction against the school of which you are the chief. Far from me such a blasphemy against movement and life! I am too fond of your works; I read them and listen to them with too much attention and emotion; I am too much an artist in feeling to wish the slightest lessening of your triumphs. Many believe that artists are necessarily jealous of each other. I pity those who believe it, pity them for having so little of the artist as not to understand that the idea of assassinating our rivals would be that of our own suicide." * * * * * _A Critical History of the Philosophical School of Alexandria_ is the title of a work of serious philosophical claims, by M. VACHEROT. He had already published two volumes analyzing and developing the doctrines of the Alexandrian philosophy. In the present volume he has traced its influence upon the subsequent schools, passing in review Plotinus and his successors. The scope of the work invites and permits a discussion of the profoundest problems that now agitate the world of thought, and M. Vacherot has the credit of acquitting himself adequately and admirably of his task. * * * * * ROUSSEAU, on his death, left several papers to his friend Moulton, and the heirs of that person, in 1794, caused them to be deposited in the public library of Neufchatel, in Switzerland. There they have remained unknown until a few weeks since, when M. Bovet, of that town, examined them, and found that they embraced an essay entitled _Avant-propos et Preface a mes Confessions_, which has just been printed. Of course it will appear with all future editions of the Confessions. * * * * * BALZAC, besides his _Memoirs_, which are soon to appear in Paris, it is now stated left two other works, one a romance called _Les Paysans_, finished only a short time before his death, the other a collection of confidential letters to a lady, in which, it is said, he took pleasure in laying bare the secrets of his heart, and his real opinion of men and things. * * * * * M. NISARD was a few weeks ago received into the _Academie Française_. He succeeds the late M. Feletz, and has written a history of French literature, a book of _études_ on the Latin poets, and superintended a translation of all the Latin writers. * * * * * M. GAUTIER, formerly a deputy from the Gironde, a peer of France, Minister of Finance, and sub-governor of the Bank of France, has published a volume _On the Causes which disturb Order in France, and the means of Reëstablishing it_. * * * * *