THE REV. ORVILLE DEWEY, D.D., we learn from the correspondence of the _Christian Inquirer_, is living upon the farm where he was born, in Sheffield, Massachusetts, having, in the successive improvements of many years, converted the original house into an irregular but most comfortable and pleasant dwelling. The view from the back piazza is as fine as can be commanded anywhere in Berkshire, and should the shifting channel of the Housatonic only be accommodating enough to wind a little nearer the house, or even suffer some not impossible stoppage which would convert the marshy meadow in front into a lake, nothing can be conceived of which could then improve the situation. In this lovely retirement, Dr. Dewey endeavors to unite labor and study; working with his own hands, with hoe and rake, in a way to surprise those who only know how he can handle a pen. He is preparing, in a leisurely way, for a course of Lectures for the Lowell Institute, upon a theme admirably suited to his previous studies, and in which it is evident his whole mind and heart are bound up. We are glad to know that it is not until winter after next that this work must be taken from the anvil.
DR. HOOKER, we learn, has again proceeded to a new and unexplored region in India, in the prosecution of his important botanical labors. THE AUTHOR OF THE AMBER WITCH, the Pomeranian pastor, Meinhold, has been condemned to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of one hundred thalers, besides costs, for slander against another clergyman named Stosch, in a communication published in the _New Prussian Zeitung_. The sentence was rendered more severe than usual in such cases by the fact that Meinhold, who appears to possess more talent than temper, had previously been condemned for the same offense against another party. The _Amber Witch_ is one of the "curiosities of literature", for in the last German edition the author is obliged to prove that it is entirely a work of imagination, and not, as almost all the German critics believed it to be when it appeared, the reprint of an old chronicle. It was, in fact, written as a trap for the disciples of Strauss and his school, who had pronounced the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be a collection, of legends, from historical research, assisted by "internal evidence". Meinhold did not spare them when they fell into the snare, and made merry with the historical knowledge and critical acumen that could not detect the contemporary romancer under the mask of the chronicler of two centuries ago, while they decided so positively as to the authority of the most ancient writings in the world. He has been in prison before.