Recent publishers' announcements of especial interest to Harvard students comprise a volume on the history of Kentucky, issued in the "American Commonwealth Series," by Prof. N. S. Shaler ; volumes in the "American Men of Letter Series" on Hawthorne, by Prof Lowell, on Emerson, by Dr. Holmes, on Margaret Fuller, by F. W. Higginson, and on Franklin, by McMaster, author of the recently published History of the United States; and in the "American Statesman Series" on Henry Clay, by Carl Schurz and on Patrick Henry, by Prof. Moses Coit Tyler. The edition de luxe of Prof. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads is also promised soon. "Yankee Doodle," the Poem recently read before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa, by Robert Grant, and Charles Francis Adams, "College Fetich" have already appeared in pamphlet form.

During the past summer the buildings of the Johns Hopkins University have undergone many needed repairs. President Gilman has been spending the summer in Europe, visiting and studying places of learning in England and on the continent, with his eyes open for any improvement which may be advantageously introduced in the Hopkins foundation. The excellence of the work done during the past year has been generally recognized, and the programme laid out for the coming session will be watched with interest, while the results will be received with the consideration to which they are entitled. Nature, an English scientific weekly journal, with an extensive circulation and of great influence, in a very favorable note congratulates the university on the progress it has made and the position it has attained. It holds up the Johns Hopkins as a model for the old universities of England to study in the pursuit of original research.