The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-19 00:00:00

GERMANY.

According to a letter from Berlin, dated the 14th
inst., a bill will be presented in the next session of
the Prussian Chambers for the construction of a
railway from Stralsund to Berlin. This line will
be of great strategical importance in connexion
with the coast defences.

A letter from Ulm, of the 15th inst., says that
that federal fortress will shortly be armed with
rifled cannon. Many regiments of the artillery are
being organised on the French footing.

Advices from Munich state that the Castle of
Bitterstein, in the vicinity of the Bavarian capital,
is being prepared for the reception of Francis 11.
of Naples. The Queen of the Two Sicilies is the
daughter of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.

A Congress of German Sovereigns is spoken of
as likely to take place at Dresden, to settle the
internal affairs of the German Confederation.
•

THE BULWER NOVELS.

Novels and Romances by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton.
Library Edition. Blackwood and Son.
The thirteenth volume of this admirable collec-
ti vs reprint of Sir Bulwer Lytton's twenty cele-
brated works of imagination, places in the hands of
the subscribers to the " Library Edition," the first
half of one of the most beautiful and imaginative of
them all—Vol. I, of " The Last Days of Pom-
peii." It was only in this very year's
Academy Exhibition that one of the mot
gifted of living painters, Paul Falconer Poole—
during many years past now an " Associate," before
many years more, we will hope, to be " Acade-
mician' —proffered with his brush of fascination
a most exquisite tribute to the genius, and the poetry,
and the pathos luminous in every page of that noble
classic romance. Who that saw that picture of Mr.
Poole's can yet have forgotten it? The antique
boat floating over the waters of the Tyrrhinian
sea—floating dreamily away from the destroyed
cities over the calm surface of the deep flooded
with moonlight—floating solemnly past us as we
gazed upon the scene, bearing, under the
shadow of the sail, upon the slanting deck
of the little barque, the three chief personages
in the tale, the hero and the two heroines—lone,
and Nydia, and Glaucus ! Glaucus and lone—awed
by the remembrance of the terrors through which
they have but just passed, as by a miracle,
scatheless—side by side, clinging tenderly to-
gether. Nydia, the blind girl—whose sightless
eyes have enabled her to guide them through the
darkness enveloping the doomed cities, away from
the otherwise inevitable destruction—Nydia, (the
true heroine of the story) with her hands upon the
strings of her lyre, those strings, between
which shines resplendently the pale yellow
glory of the Italian moonlight. To many
of those most familiar with this romance of
romances, a sight of that lovely painting, from the
master-hand of Paul Poole, upon the walls of the
Academy this last season, must have been sugges-
tive of yet another perusal of the book itself,
to the closing incident of which that picture
formed no unworthy illustration. In this
very perfection of a library edition, issuing
now steadily month after month from the press of
the Messrs. Blackwood, there is certainly in type,
paper, size, and "getting up" generally, every pos-
sible inducement to the fulfilment:at once of that
intention—namely, to the re-perusal in this beauti-
ful. edition of this eminently beautiful romance of
the Last .Days of Pompeii.