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Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 42, 6 September 1864, Page 3

Exploration of Western Australia. — The Sydney Herald says : — Accounts just received from the explorers describe the country about Roebuck Bay (Western Australia), and inland for a great distance, as well watered and grassed, equal to and pastoral land in Yictorir. M. Ernest Renan. — M. Ernest Renan, on the subject of his appointment to the post of Conservator of the Manuscript Department at the Imperial Library, has addressed a letter to the Minister of Public Instruction. He declares that to accept the functions to which the Emperor has thus deigned to appoint him would be to resign the chair which he occupies at the College of France, and to which he was elected by the professors of that institution and by his fellow members of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres ; he cannot, therefore, accept the post conferred upon him. The chair of the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syriae languages is not, he affirms suppressed, nor is he dismissed £i-otn it ; but tlie salary attacked to that professorship is merely devoted to some other purpose. The Hebrew and Armenian languages are, he observes, his speciality, and lie considered it as a part of his • moral duties to promote the study of them, the emolument derived being only a secondary consideration. So deep was his impression of the importance of the study of those languages that so soon as he felt convinced that his former class would not be re-opened, he collected a small number of Orientalists at his own house, to whom he continued the lessons which he should have given at the college. Mr. Renan concludes his letter in these terms :■ — ' Apply, therefore, Monsieur lo Mmistre, the funds voted for the chair of the Hebrew, Chaldean, and Syriae languages to whatever purpose you may think proper. 1 retain the title ■which I hold from the twofold presentation of the Professors of the College of France and the members of the Institute. Without salary I will continue to perform the duties which that title imposes on me— that is to say, to labor with all my strength to promote the progress of studies, the tradition of -which ha* been " eenfidsd to *b«."