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EDINBURGH:

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS;

AND W. S. ORR, AMEN CORNER, LONDON.

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NEW PERIODICAL.

CHAMBERS'S

PAPERS FOR THE PEOPLE.

THE remarkable success which attended the publication of CHAMBERS's MISCELLANY OF USEFUL AND ENTERTAINING TRACTS-a work which left off with a weekly sale of 80,000 copies - has in some measure induced the Publishers to project the present Serial, which, however, will differ considerably in scope and appearance from its predecessor, and be in various respects a novelty in literature.

It is mainly addressed to that numerous class whose minds have been educated by the improved schooling, and the popular lectures and publications, of the last twenty years, and who may now be presumed to crave a higher kind of Literature than can be obtained through the existing cheap periodicals. These Papers-each to contain a distinct subject will embrace History, Archæology, Biography, Science, the Industrial and Fine Arts, the leading topics in Social Economy, together with Criticism, Fiction, Personal Narrative, and other branches of Elegant Literature. The work will thus comprehend the usual field of the Quarterly Reviews and higher-class Magazines, while its period of publication and price must render it accessible to a much larger section of the reading public.

Publishing in Weekly Numbers, at Three-halfpence each; in Monthly Parts, at Sevenpence; and a Volume, consisting of Eight Numbers, will be issued every Two Months, in Coloured Fancy Boards, Price One Shilling and Sixpence.

TAINBURGH, 2d February 1850.

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URING the dark period of the Middle Ages, a family of eminence, en

spread into other of the minor states of Italy. A Grecian origin has been ascribed by genealogists to this family, whose name on settling in Italy was changed from Calomeros into the synonyme Buonaparte, by which it was subsequently known. Such is the doubtful origin of the Buonaparte family; of whom it is only distinctly known that they occupied a respectable place among the lesser Italian nobility, until dispersed by that long and disastrous civil war which ensued on the struggle between secular powers, and which is typified in the ferocious antagonism of the Guelfs and Ghibellines. The Buonapartes, like many other families of greater name and eminence, were now scattered and extinguished in the homes of their birth or adoption; and whilst a remnant still lingered in the basin of the Apennines, the last relic of which survived at the close of the eighteenth century in the person of an old ecclesiastic, a wealthy canon of the Abbey of San-Miniato, the chief of the stock took refuge in the small island of Corsica, and settled at Ajaccio, among whose rude nobility his descendants were enrolled, and even admitted to all the privileges then accorded to that jealous distinction. At that period Corsica was under the tutelary sovereignty of the republic of Genoa, but in 1768 it and its small dependencies passed under the dominion of the crown of France, despite the heroic efforts of the celebrated Paoli to preserve the independence of its sterile mountains.

After its final subjugation, Corsica was assimilated in its internal administration to the other provinces of France, and had provincial states composed of the three orders of nobility, clergy, and commonalty or third estate. It

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