A second series of EUGENE SUE's _Mystères du Peuple_ is announced as about to commence at Paris. This is an attempt to set forth the history of the French people, or working classes, the form of a modern story being merely a frame in which to set the author's pictures of former times. The first series completes the history of the early Gauls and of Roman domination; the second will treat of feudalism and of the introduction of modern social castes and distinctions. Sue has published a preamble in the form of an address to his readers, in which he draws the outline of the subject he is about to treat, and establishes his main historical positions by reference to a great variety of learned authorities. The same author is now publishing in _La Presse_ a new novel called _Fernand Duplessis, or Memoirs of a Husband_. We have seen some eight or ten numbers of it; so far it is comparatively free from the clap-trap romance machinery in which French writers in general, and Sue in particular, are apt to indulge, while it is otherwise less unobjectionable than the mass of his stories. * * * * * The historian MICHELET has published a new part of his _Revolution Française_. It is devoted to the Girondists. The conclusions of the author are that these unfortunate politicians of a terrible epoch were personally innocent, that they never thought of dismembering France, and had no understanding with the enemy, but that the policy they pursued in the early part of '93, was blind and impotent, and if followed out could only have resulted in the destruction of the republic, and the triumph of the royalists. The whole is treated in the Micheletian manner, in distinct chapters, each elucidating some mind. * * * * * A work _On the Fabrication of Porcelain in China, with its History from Antiquity to the present Day_, that is to say, from 583 to 1821, has just been translated from Chinese into French by STANISLAS JULIEN, and published at Paris. It puts the European manufacturer perfectly in possession of the secrets of Chinese workmen, their methods, and the substances they employ. M. Julien has previously translated a Chinese essay on education of silkworms, and the culture of the mulberry. He is one of the most learned sinologues in Europe. * * * * * A French archæeologist, M. FELIX DE VERNEILH, has published an elaborate essay on the Cologne Cathedral, in which he denies to Germany the credit of inventing the purest model of the pointed arch, and demonstrates that this Cathedral was not planned at the beginning of the most brilliant period of Christian art, but was the climax thereof, and that instead of having served as the archetype in construction of other edifices, it shows the influence of them, and especially of the Cathedral of Amiens. * * * * *