M. DE LUYNES is now engaged at Paris in publishing a work on the antiquities of Cyprus.  He has discovered a number of inscriptions in ancient Cyprian writing, and is having them engraved on copper.  The writing is that which preceded the introduction of the Phoenician character upon the island, and seems to have no affinity either with that or with the Assyrian, which is discovered to have been once used there.  The work of M. de Luynes will open a new problem for the philologists.  It will be difficult to decipher the inscriptions and language, unless there can be found somewhere an ancient Cyprian inscription, with a translation in some known tongue; but in a time which has read the riddles of the pyramids, nothing of this sort is to be despaired of.  M. de Luynes is the last of the great French nobles who makes a worthy use of his riches.

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SIR ROBERT PEEL left full and specific directions in his will for the early publication of his political memoirs; and ordered that the profits arising from the publication shall be given to some public institution for the education of the working-classes.  He believed his manuscripts and correspondence to be of great value, as showing the characters of the great men of his age; and directed that his correspondence with the Queen and Prince Albert shall not be published during their lives without their express consent.  He confided the task of preparing these memoirs to Lord Mahon and Mr. Cardwell.  Their duty will, however, be comparatively light, though delicate, from the admirable and orderly state in which he left his papers.

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MR. JOHN P. BROWN, author of “The Turkish Nights Entertainments,” recently published by Putnam, is now on a visit to this country as the Secretary of the Commissioner of the Sublime Porte, Captain Ammin Bey.

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EUGENE SUE’S new romance “The Mysteries of the People,” has been prohibited in Prussia.

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M. BURNET DE PESLE has just published the first part of his Examen Critique de la Succession des Dynasties Egyptiennes, a work to which competent critics assign a high value.  He follows the method of Champollion, rejecting hypotheses and admitting only the testimony of the historians and monuments.  At the same time he treats his subject with independence and originality, though he advances nothing for the sake of novelty.  The second part of the work will be devoted to the discussion of the ancient inscriptions, dynasty by dynasty, and reign by reign.

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WASHINGTON IRVING is claimed by the English as by both birth and spirit a British author.  In the question of copyright lately before the Vice Chancellor, the case rested in part upon a plea that Mr. Irving’s father was from the Orkneys and his mother from Falmouth, so that, though he was born in New York, he was not an alien.  Still, our “Diedrich Knickerbocker” was Colonel Irving once, and served in this capacity against the king, and it will not he safe for him to establish the position assumed by his publisher.