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The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851

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Title: The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851

Author: Various


        
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Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections.)








THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

Vol. III. NEW-YORK, JUNE 1, 1851. No. III.




HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, "FRANK FORESTER."

[Illustration]


We doubt whether the wood-engravers of this country have ever produced
a finer portrait than the above of the author of "The Brothers,"
"Cromwell," "Marmaduke Wyvil," "The Roman Traitor," "The Warwick
Woodlands," "Field Sports," "Fish and Fishing," &c., &c. It is from
one of the most successful daguerreotypes of Brady.

HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT is the eldest son of the late Hon. and Rev.
William Herbert, Dean of Manchester, and of the Hon. Letitia Allen.
His father was the second son of the second Earl of Carnarvon, who was
of the nearest younger branch of the house of Pembroke. He was a
member of Parliament in the earlier part of his life, and being a
lawyer in Doctors' Commons was largely employed on the part of
American shipmasters previous to the war of 1812. At a later period he
took orders, became Dean of Manchester, was distinguished as a
botanist, and as the author of many eminent works, especially
"Attila," an epic poem of great power and learning. He died about
three years ago. His mother was the second daughter of Joshua, second
Viscount Allen, of Kildare, Ireland,--closely connected with the house
of Leinster.

Mr. Herbert was born in London on the seventh of April, 1807; he was
educated at home under a private tutor till 1819, and then sent to a
private school near Brighton, kept by the Rev. Dr. Hooker, at which he
remained one year he was then transferred to Eton, and was at that
school from April, 1820, till the summer of 1825, when he left for the
university, and entered Caius College, Cambridge, in October. Here he
obtained two scholarships and several prizes,--though not a
hard-reading man, and spending much of his time in field sports--and
he graduated in the winter of 1829-30, with a distinguished reputation
for talents and scholarship. In November, 1831, he sailed from
Liverpool for New York, and for the last twenty years he has resided
nearly all the time in this city and at his place near Newark in New
Jersey, called the Cedars.

[Illustration]

In 1832, in connection with the late A. D. Patterson, he started _The
American Monthly Magazine_, nearly one half the matter of which was
composed by him. After the first year Mr. Patterson retired from it,
and during twelve months it was conducted by Mr. Herbert alone. On the
conclusion of the second year it was sold to Charles F. Hoffman, Mr.
Herbert continuing to act as a joint editor. At the commencement of
the fourth year Park Benjamin being associated in the editorship, it
was contemplated to introduce party politics into the work, and Mr.
Herbert in consequence declined further connection with it.

[Illustration]

By this time Mr. Herbert had made a brilliant reputation as a scholar
and as an author. In the _American Monthly_ he had printed the first
chapters of _The Brothers, a Tale of the Fronde_, and the entire novel
was published by the Harpers in 1834, and so well received that the
whole edition was sold in a few weeks. In 1836 and 1837 he edited _The
Magnolia_, the first annual ever printed in America on the system of
entire originality both of the literary matter, and of the
embellishments, which were all executed by American engravers from
American designs. A considerable portion of the matter for both years
was furnished by Mr. Herbert. In 1837 the Harpers published his second
novel, _Cromwell_, which did not sell so rapidly as _The Brothers_,
though generally praised by the reviewers. It 1840 it was reprinted by
Colburn in London, and was eminently successful. In 1843 he published
in New-York and London his third novel, _Marmaduke Wyvil, or the
Maid's Revenge_, a story of the English civil wars, and in 1848 the
most splendid of his romances, _The Roman Traitor_, founded on the
history of Cataline, a work which must be classed with the most
remarkable of those specimens of literary art in which it has been
attempted to illustrate classical scenes, characters, and manners.

In romantic fiction, besides the above works, Mr. Herbert has written
for the magazines of this country and Great Britain tales and sketches
sufficient to make twenty to thirty stout volumes. The subjects of his
best performances have been drawn from the middle ages and from
southern Europe, and they display besides very eminent capacities for
the historical novel, and a familiarity with the institutions of
chivalry and with contemporary manners hardly equaled in any writer of
the English language.

In 1839 Mr. Herbert commenced in the New-York _Turf Register_ a series
of papers, under the signature of "Frank Forester," from which have
grown _My Shooting Box, The Warwick Woodlands, Field Sports of the
United States and British Provinces_, and _Fish and Fishing in the
United States and British Provinces_--works which by the general
consent of the sporting world are second to none in their department,
in any of the qualities which should distinguish this sort of writing.
The principal distinction between these and all other sporting works
lies in this, that such works in general treat only of game in the
field and flood, and the modes of killing it, while these are in great
part natural histories, containing minute and carefully digested
accounts of every specie of game, beast, bird, and fish, compiled from
Audubon, Wilson, Giraud, Godman, Agassiz, De Kay, and other
authorities, besides long disquisitions into their habits, times of
migration, breeding, &c., from the personal observation and experience
of the author. Any person is at once enabled by them to distinguish
between any two even closely allied species, and to adopt the proper
nomenclature, with a knowledge of the reason for it. The sporting
precepts are admitted, throughout the western country especially, to
be superior to all others, as well as the papers relating to the
breaking and the kennel and field management of dogs, &c. The same may
be said of what he has written of guns and gunnery. Mr. Herbert has
hunted, shot, and fished during the last twenty years in every state
of the Union, from Maine to Maryland, south of the great lakes, and
from below Quebec to the Sault St. Marie northward of them. Not having
visited the southern or south western states, the accounts of sporting
in those regions are collected from the writings or oral
communications of their best sportsmen, and on these points much
valuable new information, especially as to the prairie shooting and
the sports of the Rocky Mountains, will be contained in the new
edition of the _Field Sports_ to appear in the coming autumn.

Besides his contributions to romantic and sporting literature, Mr.
Herbert has written largely in criticism, he has done much as a poet,
and his capacities in classical scholarship have been illustrated by
some of the finest examples of Greek and Latin translation that have
appeared in our time. In the aggregate his works would now make
scarcely less than fifty octavo volumes.

As we have intimated, the portrait at the beginning of this article is
remarkably good. Mr. Herbert is about five feet ten high, of athletic
habits, and an untiring and fast walker; fond, of course, of all field
sports, especially horsemanship and shooting, and priding himself upon
killing as much if not more game than any other gentleman in the
country out of New-York.

[Illustration]




TRENTON FALLS

[Illustration]


In a story called _Edith Linsey_, written by Mr. WILLIS, soon after he
left college, occurs the following description of Trenton Falls:

     "Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely know what
     you would call it, but the wonder of nature which bears the
     name is a tremendous torrent, whose bed, for several miles,
     is sunk fathoms deep into the earth--a roaring and dashing
     stream, so far below the surface of the forest in which it
     is lost, that you would think, as you come suddenly upon the
     edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in some
     inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer circle
     of the firmament,) and laid open by some Titanic throe that
     had cracked clear asunder the crust of this 'shallow earth.'
     The idea is rather assisted if you happen to see below you,
     on its abysmal shore, a party of adventurous travellers;
     for, at that vast depth, and in contrast with the gigantic
     trees and rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires,
     dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon your
     parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size and
     distinctness.

     "They showed me at Eleusis the well by which Proserpine
     ascends to the regions of day on her annual visit to the
     plains of Thessaly--but with the _genius loci_ at my elbow
     in the shape of a Greek girl as lovely as Phryne, my memory
     reverted to the bared axle of the earth in the bed of this
     American river, and I was persuaded (looking the while at
     the _feroniere_ of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of
     my Katinka) that supposing Hades in the centre of the earth,
     you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Trenton. I confess I
     have had, since my first descent into those depths, an
     uncomfortable doubt of the solidity of the globe--how the
     deuse it can hold together with such a crack in its bottom!

     "It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tomfoolery that
     could be laid to the charge of the moon, for a more
     omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of moonlight never
     sprinkled the wilderness with silver. It was a night in
     which to wish it might never be day again--a night to be
     enamored of the stars, and bid God bless them like human
     creatures on their bright journey--a night to love in, to
     dissolve in--to do every thing but what night is made
     for--sleep! Oh heaven! when I think how precious is life in
     such moments; how the aroma--the celestial bloom and flower
     of the soul--the yearning and fast-perishing enthusiasm of
     youth--waste themselves in the solitude of such nights on
     the senseless and unanswering air; when I wander alone,
     unloving and unloved, beneath influences that could inspire
     me with the elevation of a seraph, were I at the ear of a
     human creature that could summon forth and measure my
     limitless capacity of devotion--when I think this, and feel
     this, and so waste my existence in vain yearnings--I could
     extinguish the divine spark within me like a lamp on an
     unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation to
     the animals I walk among! And that is the substance of a
     speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a well-meant remark of
     his own, that 'it was a pity Edith Linsey was not there.' He
     took the clause about the 'animals' to himself, and I made
     an apology for the same a year after. We sometimes give our
     friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our
     rhapsodies!

     "Most people talk of the _sublimity_ of Trenton, but I have
     haunted it by the week together for its mere loveliness. The
     river, in the heart of that fearful chasm, is the most
     varied and beautiful assemblage of the thousand forms and
     shapes of running water that I know in the world. The soil
     and the deep-striking roots of the forest terminate far
     above you, looking like a black rim on the inclosing
     precipices; the bed of the river and its sky-sustaining
     walls are of solid rock, and, with the tremendous descent of
     the stream--forming for miles one continuous succession of
     falls and rapids--the channel is worn into curves and
     cavities which throw the clear waters into forms of
     inconceivable brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of half
     twilight below, with here and there a long beam of sunshine
     reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy or form a rainbow
     over a fall, and the reverberating and changing echoes:--

        "Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters,"

     maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying at
     every step with the varying phase of the current. Cascades
     of from twenty to thirty feet, over which the river flies
     with a single and hurrying leap (not a drop missing from the
     glassy and bending sheet), occur frequently as you ascend;
     and it is from these that the place takes its name. But the
     falls, though beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling
     and unequaled rapidity with which the waters come to the
     leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops wavering down
     into the abysm from trees apparently painted on the sky, and
     which is caught away by the flashing current as if the
     lightning had suddenly crossed it, you would think the vault
     of the steadfast heavens a flying element as soon. The spot
     in that long gulf of beauty that I best remember is a smooth
     descent of some hundred yards, where the river in full and
     undivided volume skims over a plane as polished as a table
     of scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one
     mirror of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, there
     is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the water like a
     catapult against the opposite angle of the rock, and, in the
     action of years, it has worn out a cavern of unknown depth,
     into which the whole mass of the river plunges with the
     abandonment of a flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing
     like the angel that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with
     divine serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last
     figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his pocket,
     and had a natural redolence of 'Paradise Lost' in his
     conversation.)

     "Much as I detest water in small quantities (to drink), I
     have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and
     waterfalls. It is, by much, the _belle_ in the family of the
     elements. _Earth_ is never tolerable unless disguised in
     green. _Air_ is so thin as only to be visible when she
     borrows drapery of water; and _Fire_ is so staringly bright
     as to be unpleasant to the eyesight; but water! soft, pure,
     graceful water! there is no shape into which you can throw
     her that she does not seem lovelier than before. She can
     borrow nothing of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her
     lap so brilliant as her own spray pearls and emeralds; Fire
     has no rubies like what she steals from the sunset; Air has
     no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and ever-changing
     drapery of silver. A health (in wine!) to WATER!

[Illustration]

     "Who is there that did not love some stream in his youth?
     Who is there in whose vision of the past there does not
     sparkle up, from every picture of childhood, a spring or a
     rivulent woven through the darkened and torn woof of first
     affections like a thread of unchanged silver? How do you
     interpret the instinctive yearning with which you search for
     the river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature--the
     clinging unaware to the river's course when a truant in the
     fields in June--the dull void you find in every landscape of
     which it is not the ornament and the centre? For myself, I
     hold with the Greek: "Water is the first principle of all
     things: we were made from it and we shall be resolved into
     it.""

[Illustration]

Of subsequent visits to this loveliest of spots, years after, Mr.
Willis has given descriptions in letters addressed to General Morris
for publication in the _Home Journal_, and we are soon to have from
Putnam in a beautiful volume all that he has written on the subject,
together with notices of the manner in which he enjoyed himself at Mr.
Moore's delightful hotel at the Falls, which is represented as
farthest of all summer resorts from the turmoil of the world and
nearest of all to the gates of Paradise. We borrow from these letters
a few characteristic and tempting paragraphs:

     "I was here twenty years ago, but the fairest things slip
     easiest out of the memory, and I had half forgotten Trenton.
     To tell the truth, I was a little ashamed, to compare the
     faded and shabby picture of it in my mind with the reality
     before me, and if the waters of the Falls had been, by any
     likelihood, the same that flowed over when I was here
     before, I should have looked them in the face, I think, with
     something of the embarrassment with which one meets,
     half-rememberingly, after years of separation, the ladies
     one has vowed to love for ever.

     "The peculiarity of Trenton Falls, I fancy, consists a good
     deal in the space in which you are compelled to see them.
     You walk a few steps from the hotel through the wood, and
     come to a descending staircase of a hundred steps, the
     different bends of which are so over-grown with wild
     shrubbery, that you cannot see the ravine till you are
     fairly down upon its rocky floor. Your path hence, up to the
     first Fall, is along a ledge cut out of the base of the
     cliff that overhangs the torrent, and when you go to the
     foot of the descending sheet, you find yourself in very
     close quarters with a cataract--rocky walls all round
     you--and the appreciation of power and magnitude, perhaps,
     somewhat heightened by the confinement of the place--as a
     man would have a much more realizing sense of a live lion,
     shut up with him in a basement parlor, than he would of the
     same object, seen from an elevated and distant point of
     view.

     "The usual walk (through this deep cave open at the top) is
     about half a mile in length, and its almost subterranean
     river, in that distance, plunges over four precipices in
     exceedingly beautiful cascades. On the successive rocky
     terraces between the falls, the torrent takes every variety
     of rapids and whirlpools, and, perhaps, in all the scenery
     of the world, there is no river, which, in the same space,
     presents so many of the various shapes and beauties of
     running and falling water. The Indian name of the stream
     (the Kanata, which means the _amber river_) expresses one of
     its peculiarities, and, probably from the depth of shade
     cast by the two dark and overhanging walls 'twixt which it
     flows, the water is everywhere of a peculiarly rich lustre
     and color, and, in the edges of one or two of the cascades,
     as yellow as gold. Artists, in drawing this river, fail,
     somehow, in giving the impression of _deep-down-itude_ which
     is produced by the close approach of the two lofty walls of
     rock, capped by the overleaning woods, and with the sky
     apparently resting, like a ceiling, upon the leafy
     architraves.... If there were truly, as the poets say
     figuratively, "worlds _within_ worlds," this would look as
     if an earthquake had cracked open the outer globe, and
     exposed, through the yawning fissure, one of the rivers of
     the globe below--the usual underground level of "down among
     the dead men," being, as you walk upon its banks, between
     you and the daylight.

     "Considering the amount of surprise and pleasure which one
     feels in a walk up the ravine at Trenton, it is remarkable
     how little one finds to say about it, the day after. Is it
     that mere scenery, without history, is enjoyable without
     being suggestive, or, amid the tumult of the rushing torrent
     at one's feet, is the milk of thought too much agitated for
     the cream to rise? I fancied yesterday, as I rested on the
     softest rock I could find at the upper end of the ravine,
     that I should tumble you out a letter to-day, with ideas
     pitching forth like saw-logs over a waterfall; but my memory
     has nothing in it to-day but the rocks and rapids it took
     in--the talent wrapped in its napkin of delight remaining in
     unimproved _statu-quo_-sity. One certainly gets the
     impression, while the sight and hearing are so overwhelmed,
     that one's mind is famously at work, and that we shall hear
     from it to-morrow; but it is Jean Paul, I think, who says
     that 'the mill makes the most noise when there is no grist
     in the hopper.'

     "We have had the full of the moon and a cloudless sky for
     the last two or three nights, and of course we have walked
     the ravine till the 'small hours,' seeing with wonder the
     transforming effects of moonlight and its black shadows on
     the falls and precipices. I have no idea (you will be glad
     to know) of trying to reproduce these sublimities on
     paper--at least not with my travelling stock of verbs and
     adjectives. To 'sandwich the moon in a muffin,' one must
     have time and a ladder of dictionaries. But one or two
     effects struck me which perhaps are worth briefly naming,
     and I will throw into the lot a poetical figure, which you
     may use in your next song....

     "The fourth Fall, (or the one that is flanked by the ruins
     of a saw-mill) is, perhaps, a hundred feet across; and its
     curve over the upper rock and its break upon the lower one,
     form two parallel lines, the water everywhere falling the
     same distance with the evenness of an artificial cascade.
     The stream not being very full, just now, it came over, in
     twenty or thirty places, thicker than elsewhere; and the
     effect, from a distance, as the moonlight lay full upon it,
     was that of twenty or thirty immovable marble columns
     connected by transparent curtains of falling lace, and with
     bases in imitation of foam. Now it struck me that this might
     suggest a new and fanciful order of architecture, suitable
     at least to the structure of green-houses, the glass roofs
     of which are curved over and slope to the ground with very
     much the contour of a waterfall....

     "Subterranean as this foaming river looks by day, it looks
     like a river in cloud-land by night. The side of the ravine
     which is in shadow, is one undistinguishable mass of black,
     with its wavy upper edge in strong relief against the sky,
     and, as the foaming stream catches the light from the
     opposite and moonlit side, it is outlined distinctly on its
     bed of darkness, and seems winding its way between hills of
     clouds, half black, half luminous. Below, where all is deep
     shadow except the river, you might fancy it a silver mine
     laid open to your view amid subterranean darkness by the
     wand of an enchanter, or (if you prefer a military trope, my
     dear General), a long white plume laid lengthwise between
     the ridges of a cocked hat."

[Illustration]




NEW PROOF OF THE EARTH'S ROTATION.


"The earth does move, notwithstanding," whispered Galileo, leaving the
dungeon of the Inquisition: by which he meant his friends to
understand, that if the earth did move, the fact would remain so in
spite of his punishment. But a less orthodox assembly than the
conclave of Cardinals might have been staggered by the novelty of the
new philosophy. According to Laplace, the apparent diurnal phenomena
of the heavens would be the same either from the revolution of the sun
or the earth; and more than one reason made strongly in favor of the
prevalent opinion that the earth, not the sun, was stationary. First,
it was most agreeable to the impression of the senses; and next, to
disbelieve in the fixity of the solid globe, was not only to eject
from its pride of place our little planet, but to disturb the
long-cherished sentiment that we ourselves are the centre--the be-all
and end-all of the universe. However, the truth will out; and this is
its great distinction from error, that while every new discovery adds
to its strength, falsehood is weakened and at last driven from the
field. That the earth revolves round the sun, and rotates on its polar
axis, have long been the settled canons of our system. But the
rotation of the earth has been rendered _visible_ by a practical
demonstration, which has drawn much attention in Paris and London, and
is beginning to excite interest in this country. The inventor is M.
Foucault; and the following description has been given of the mode of
proof:

     "At the centre of the dome of the Pantheon a fine wire is
     attached, from which a sphere of metal, four or five inches
     in diameter, is suspended so as to hang near the floor of
     the building. This apparatus is put in vibration after the
     manner of a pendulum. Under and concentrical with it is
     placed a circular table, some twenty feet in diameter, the
     circumference of which is divided into degrees, minutes,
     &c., and the divisions numbered. Now, supposing the earth to
     have the diurnal motion imputed to it, and which explains
     the phenomena of day and night, the plane in which this
     pendulum vibrates will not be affected by this motion, but
     the table, over which the pendulum is suspended, will
     continually change its position, in virtue of the diurnal
     motion, so as to make a complete revolution round its
     centre. Since, then, the table thus revolves, and the
     pendulum which vibrates over it does not revolve, the
     consequence is, that a line traced upon the table by a point
     projecting from the bottom of the ball will change its
     direction relatively to the table from minute to minute and
     from hour to hour, so that if such point were a pencil, and
     that paper were spread upon the table, the course formed by
     this pencil would form a system of lines radiating from the
     centre of the table. The practised eye of a correct
     observer, especially if aided by a proper optical
     instrument, may actually see the motion which the table has
     in common with the earth, under the pendulum between two
     successive vibrations. It is, in fact, apparent that the
     ball, or rather the point attached to the bottom of the
     ball, does not return precisely to the same point of the
     circumference of the table after two successive vibrations.
     Thus is rendered visible the motion which the table has in
     common with the earth."

Crowds are said to flock daily to the Pantheon to witness this
interesting experiment. It has been successfully repeated by Professor
Ansted at the Russell Institution, in London, in a manner similar to
the experiment at the Pantheon at Paris. The wire, which suspended a
weight of twenty-eight pounds, was of the size of the middle C-string
of a piano. It was thirty feet long, and vibrated over a graduated
table fixed to the floor. The rotation of the table, implying that of
the earth on which it rested, was visible in about five minutes, and
the wonderful spectacle was presented of the rotation of the room
round the pendulum. The experiment excited the astonishment of every
beholder, and many eminent scientific gentlemen who were present
expressed their great delight in witnessing a phenomenon which they
considered the most satisfactory they had witnessed in the whole
course of their lives.

Although nothing, to minds capable of comprehending it, can add to the
force or clearness of the demonstration by which the rotation of the
earth has been established, yet even the natural philosopher himself
cannot regard the present experiment without feelings of profound
interest and satisfaction; and to the great mass, to whom the
complicated physical phenomena by which the rotation of the earth has
been established are incomprehensible, M. Foucault's very ingenious
illustration is invaluable.

A correspondent of the Newark _Daily Advertiser_ appears to have
anticipated the experiment of M. Foucault, suspending a fifty-six
pound weight by a small wire from the rafters of a barn. But however
simple and conclusive the illustration, it should be attempted only by
scientific men. Professor Sylvester, writing to the _Times_, of
experiments made in London, says:

     "The experiments connected with the practical demonstration
     of the phenomenon require to be conducted with great care;
     and some discredit has been brought upon attempts to
     illustrate it in England by persons who have not taken the
     necessary precautions to protect the motion from the
     excentric deviation to which it is liable, and which may,
     and indeed must, have the effect of causing, in some cases,
     an apparent failure, and in others a still more unfortunate,
     because fallacious, success. I believe, from the character
     of the persons connected with the experiments, that the true
     phenomenon has been accurately produced and observed in
     Paris. I doubt whether as much can be said, with entire
     confidence, of any of the experiments hitherto performed
     here in London.

     "Any want of symmetry in the arrangements for the suspension
     of the wire, or in the centering of the weight, exposure to
     currents of air, or the tremulous motion occasioned by the
     passage of vehicles, may operate to cause a phenomenon to
     be brought about curious enough in itself, as a result of
     mathematical laws, but quite different from that supposed.
     The phenomenon of the progression of the apsides of an oval
     orbit, which is here alluded to, is familiar to all students
     in mechanics.

     "It is perfectly absurd for persons unacquainted with
     mechanical and geometrical science to presume to make the
     experiment. Indeed, such efforts deserve rather the name of
     conjuring than of experiment; but in this, as in many other
     matters of life, it is true that "fools rush in where angels
     fear to tread." Perhaps the too hasty rush at the
     experimental verification of Foucault's law may account for
     some persons in England, whose opinions when given with due
     deliberation are entitled to respect, having allowed
     themselves to express doubts (which I understand, however,
     have been since retracted) as to the truth of the law
     itself. In Paris there was no difference of opinion among
     such men as Lame, Poinsol, Binet, Leonville, Sturm, Chasles,
     Bruvues, I believe Arago, Hermite, and many others with whom
     I conversed on the subject, except as to the best mode of
     making the theory popularly intelligible."

Explanations will be necessary from lecturers and others who give
imitations of M. Foucault's ingenuity to render it intelligible to
those unacquainted with mathematics, or with the laws of gravity and
spherical motion. For instance, it will not be readily understood by
every one why the pendulum should vibrate in the same plane, and not
partake of the earth's rotation in common with the table; but this
could be _shown_ with a bullet suspended by a silkworm's thread. Next,
the apparent horizontal revolution of the table round its centre will
be incomprehensible to many, as representative of its own and the
earth's motion round its axis.

Doubtless we shall soon have public exhibitions of the demonstration
in all our cities.

The pendulum is indeed an extraordinary instrument, and has been a
useful handmaid to science. We are familiar with it as the
time-regulator of our clocks, and the ease with which they may be made
to go faster or slower by adjusting its length. But neither this nor
the Pantheon elucidation constitutes its sole application. By it the
latitude may be approximately ascertained, the density of the earth's
strata in different places, and its elliptical eccentricity of figure.
The noble Florentine already quoted was its inventor; and it is
related of Galileo, while a boy, that he was the first to observe how
the height of the vaulted roof of a church might be measured by the
times of the vibration of the chandeliers suspended at different
altitudes. Were the earth perforated from London to our antipodes, and
the air exhausted, a ball dropped through would at the centre acquire
a velocity sufficient to carry it to the opposite side, whence it
would again descend, and so oscillate forward and backwards from one
side of the globe's surface to the other in the manner of a pendulum.
Very likely, the Cardinals of the Vatican would deem this heresy, or
"flat blasphemy."

[Illustration]




THE BUTCHERS' LEAP AT MUNICH.


A correspondent of the London _Athenaeum_, writing from Munich, gives
the following account of the festival of the Butchers' Leap in the
Fountain: "This strange ceremonial, like the _Schaeffler Tanz_, is said
to have its origin in the time of the plague. While the Coopers danced
with garlands and music through the streets, the Butchers sprang into
the fountain in the market-place, to show their fellow-citizens that
its water was no longer to be dreaded as poisoned. Perhaps they were
the Sanitary Commissioners of those days; and by bathing themselves in
the water and dashing it about on the crowd would teach the true means
of putting pestilence to flight.

     "Though the Coopers' Dance takes place only once in seven
     years, the Butchers' Leap occurs annually, and always on
     _Fasching Montag_,--the Monday before Shrove Tuesday. I
     believe the ceremony is of great importance to the trade of
     the Butchers; as certain privileges granted to them are
     annually renewed at this time, and in connection with the
     Leap. These two ceremonies--of the Coopers' Dance and the
     Butchers' Leap--are now almost the last remains of the
     picturesque and quaint customs of old Munich.

     "The Butchers commence proceedings by attending High Mass in
     St. Peter's Church,--close to the Schrannien Platz, or
     market-place, in which the fountain is situated. It is a
     desolate-looking church, this St. Peter's, as seen from
     without,--old, decaying, and ugly; within, tawdry
     and--though not desolate and decaying--ugly. From staringly
     white walls frown down on the spectator torture-pictures,
     alternating with huge gilt images of sentimental saints in
     clumsy drapery. The altars are masses of golden clouds and
     golden cherubs.

     "Music, as from the orchestra of a theatre rather than from
     the choir of a church, greeted us as we entered. The
     Butchers were just passing out. We caught glimpses of
     scarlet coats; and saw two huge silver flagons, covered with
     a very panoply of gold and silver medals, borne aloft by
     pompous officials clothed in scarlet. Having watched the
     procession--some half-dozen tiny butchers' sons, urchins of
     five and six years old, with rosy, round faces and chubby
     hands, mounted on stalwart horses and dressed in little
     scarlet coats, top-boots, and jaunty green velvet
     hats--seven butchers' apprentices, the Leapers of the day,
     also dressed in scarlet and mounted on horseback--the
     musicians,--the long train of master-butchers and journeymen
     in long dark cloaks and with huge nosegays in their
     hats--and the scarlet officials bearing the decorated
     flagons,--having watched, I say, all these good folk wend
     their way in long procession up the narrow street leading
     from the church, and seen them cross the market-place in the
     direction of the Palace, where they are awaited by the
     King,--let us look around, and notice the features of the
     market-place:--for it is, in fact, a quaint old bit of the
     city, and well worth a glimpse.

     "If I love the Ludwig Strasse as the most beautiful portion
     of the new Munich, I almost equally love the Schrannien
     Platz as about the quaintest part of old Munich. It is long
     and narrow as a market-place, but wide as a street. The
     houses are old; many of them very handsome, and rich with
     ornamental stucco-work,--

        'All garlanded with carven imageries
        Of fruit and flowers and bunches of knot-grass.'

     The roofs are steep, red tiled, and perforated with rows of
     little pent-house windows. The fronts of the houses are of
     all imaginable pale tints,--stone colors, pinks, greens,
     greys, and tawnies. Three of the four corners of the
     market-place are adorned with tall pepper-box towers, with
     domed roofs and innumerable narrow windows. At one end is
     the fountain; and in the centre a heavy, but quaint
     shrine,--a column supporting a gilt figure of the Madonna.
     The eye wanders down various picturesque streets which open
     into the market-place; and on one hand, above steep roofs,
     gaze down the two striking red-brick towers of the _Frauen
     Kirche_--the cathedral of Munich:--those two red towers
     which are seen in all views of this city, and which belong
     as much to Munich as the dome of St. Paul's does to the city
     of London,--those towers which in the haze of sunset are
     frequently transformed into violet-tinted columns, or about
     which in autumn and winter mists cling with a strange
     dreariness as if they were desolate mountain peaks!

     "But the quaintest feature of all in the Schrannien Platz is
     a sort of arcade which runs around it. Here, beneath the low
     and massy arches, are crowded thick upon each other a host
     of small shops. What queer, dark little cells they are,--yet
     how picturesque! Here is a dealer in crucifixes,--next to
     him a woollen-draper, displaying bright striped woollen
     goods for the peasants,--then a general dealer, with heaps
     and bundles and tubs and chests containing every thing most
     heterogeneous,--and next to him a dealer in pipes. There are
     bustle and gloom always beneath these heavy low arches,--but
     they present a glorious bit of picturesque life. There are
     queer wooden booths, too, along one portion of the
     Schrannien Platz where it rather narrows, losing its
     character of market-place, and descending to that of an
     ordinary street. But the booths do not degenerate in their
     picturesque character. The earthenware booths--of which
     there are several--are truly delicious. Such rows and piles
     of dark green, orange, ruddy chocolate-brown, sea-green,
     pale yellow, and deep blue and grey vessels of all forms and
     sizes--all quaint, all odd--jugs, flagons, pipkins, queer
     pots with huge lids, queer tripods for which I know no
     name--things which always seem to me to come out of a
     witch's kitchen, but by means of which I suspect that my own
     dinner is cooked every day. All these heaps of crockery lie
     about the doors, and load the windows of the wooden booths,
     and line shelves and shelves within the gloom of the little
     shops themselves. When I first came here these old crockery
     shops were a more frequent study to me than any thing else
     in the old town.

     "We ascended a steep, narrow staircase leading out of this
     arcade into one of the houses above it, from which we were
     to witness the leaping into the fountain. I looked out of
     the window on the crowd that began to collect around the
     fountain, and noticed the tall roofs and handsome fronts of
     the houses opposite, and the crowd of pigeons--scores and
     scores of pigeons--assembled just opposite the fountain on
     the edge of the steep roof which rose like a red hill-side
     behind them. They seemed solemnly met to witness the great
     festivities about to be celebrated, and sat in silent
     expectation brooding in the sunshine. Then, I wondered what
     attraction the icy water could have for the children who
     leaned over the fountain's side--dabbling in the water as
     though it had been midsummer. The crowd increased and
     increased; and seven new white buckets were brought and
     placed on a broad plank which extended across one side of
     the fountain basin.

     "A shout from the crowd announced the arrival of the
     Butchers. First of all came the tender Butcher-infants, in
     scarlet coats, top-boots, and green velvet hats, borne in
     the arms of their fathers through the crowd in order that
     they might witness the fun. Then followed the scarlet
     officials:--and then came seven of the queerest beasts man
     ever set eyes on. What were they, if human? Were they seven
     Esquimaux chiefs, or seven African mumbo-jumbos? They were
     the heroes of the day--the seven Butcher-apprentices,
     clothed in fur caps and garments--covered from shoulder to
     heel with hundreds of dangling calves' tails--red, white,
     black, dun!

     "You may imagine the shouts that greeted them,--the peels of
     laughter. Up they sprang on the broad plank,--leaping,
     dancing, making their tails fly round like trundled mops.
     The crowd roared with laughter. A stately scarlet
     official--a butcher (_Altgesell_)--stands beside them on the
     plank. Ten times they drink the health of the royal family
     and prosperity to the butchers' craft. The _Altgesell_ then
     striking many blows on the shoulder of the nearest
     apprentice, frees him and all the remaining six from their
     indentures. They are henceforth full-grown butchers. Then,
     they plunge into the very centre of the fountain with a
     tremendous splash. The crowd shout,--the startled pigeons
     wheel in wild alarm above the heads and laughter of the
     crowd. The seven Tritons dash torrents of water on the
     multitude,--who fly shrieking and laughing before the
     deluge. The seven buckets are plied with untiring
     arms;--lads are enticed within aim by showers of nuts flung
     by the 'Leapers,' and then are drenched to the skin. It is a
     bewilderment of water, flying calves' tails, pelting nuts,
     and shrieking urchins.

     "The 'Leapers' then ascend out of their bath,--shake
     themselves like shaggy dogs,--have white cloths pinned round
     their necks as though they were going to be shaved,--and
     have very grand medals hung round their necks suspended by
     gaudy ribbons.

     "The procession retires across the market-place to its
     '_Herberge_,' and the crowd disperses,--but disperses only
     to re-assemble in various public-houses for the merriment of
     the afternoon and night. That night and the next day are
     'the maddest, merriest of all the year.' Music is every
     where--dancing every where. It is the end of the Carnival.
     Ash Wednesday comes,--and then, all is gloom."




NEGLECT OF THE PRESERVATION OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES.


A writer in the London _Athenaeum_, writing from Alexandria, endeavors
to convince those who profess an interest in Egyptian antiquities,
that if their present neglect continues, nothing will remain of the
stupendous relics now lying over the land, but a quantity of
pulverized fragments. The colossal statue at Memphis, said to belong
to the British Museum, for years depended on the precarious protection
of an old Arab woman, who was continually expecting and claiming a
small salary of five or six pounds per annum as guardian. She received
about so much from a variety of consuls, for a time, but the payment
was at last discontinued, and, from what was told her, she based her
hopes on the learned or the powerful in England. "But the learned and
the powerful never, I suppose," says the writer, "heard of her, and
she died, leaving the statue in charge of her son, who, in his turn,
seems to live in hope. There is little prospect of his getting any
thing, however; and very probably, in spite of his unrewarded zeal,
the magnificent statue--by far the finest in Egypt--will ere long be
burnt for lime. The neighboring pyramid of Dashour is being, as I have
already said, worked as a quarry, and I shall be very much surprised
if this handy block of stone escape notice." He suggests the formation
of a committee, consisting of the principal consuls and residents in
Egypt, to watch over the preservation of the monuments of the country,
and to be supplied, by governments or by the voluntary contributions
of the learned, with the funds necessary to pay guardians and
inspectors.

A very valuable museum of Egyptian antiquities we believe is now on
the way to the United States; but it embraces no such great works as
have been transported to Rome and Paris. Is it not worth while for the
New-York merchants to set up in Union or Washington Square, the great
statue of Memphis?

Or it would not be altogether inappropriate for the Smithsonian
Institution to have it imported into Washington. How much the
diffusion of "knowledge" would be promoted by such a movement it is
not easy to say: but a figure of this kind on Capitol Hill would have
such an effect on our eloquence! and our juvenile poets could go there
and in its shade invoke the presence of twenty centuries.




HENRY ROWE SCHOOLCRAFT.

[Illustration]


Mr. Schoolcraft is of English descent by the paternal side, his
great-grandfather having come from England during the wars of Queen
Anne, and settled in what is now Schoharie county in New-York, where
in old age he taught the first English school in that part of the
country, from which circumstance his name was not unnaturally changed
by the usage of the people from Calcraft to Schoolcraft. Our author
recently attempted in his own person to revive the old family name,
but soon abandoned it, and concluded to retain that which was begotten
upon his native soil, and by which he has long been so honorably
distinguished. He is a son of Colonel Lawrence Schoolcraft, who joined
the revolutionary army at seventeen years of age, and participated in
the movements under Montgomery and Schuyler, and the memorable defence
of Fort Stanwix under Gansevoort. He was born in Guilderland, near
Albany, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1793. In a secluded part of the
country, where there were few advantages for education, and scarce any
persons who thought of literature, he had an ardent love of knowledge,
and sat at home with his books and pencils while his equals in age
were at cock-fights and horse-races, for which Guilderland was then
famous. He is still remembered by some of the octogenarians of the
village as the "learned boy." At thirteen he drew subjects in natural
history, and landscapes, which attracted the attention of the late
Lieutenant-Governor Van Rensselaer, then a frequent visitor of his
father, through whose agency he came near being apprenticed to one
Ames, the only portrait-painter at that time in Albany; but as it was
demanded that he should commence with house-painting the plan was
finally abandoned. At fourteen he began to contribute pieces in prose
and verse to the newspapers, and for several years after he pursued
without aid the study of natural history, English literature, Hebrew,
German, and French, and the philosophy of language.

Mr. Schoolcraft's first work was an elaborate treatise, but partially
known to the public, entitled Vitreology, which was published in 1817.
The design of it was to exhibit the application of chemistry to the
arts in the fusion of siliceous and alkaline substances in the
production of enamels, glass, etc. He had had opportunities of
experimenting largely and freely by his position as conductor for a
series of years of the extensive works of the Ontario Company at
Geneva in New-York, the Vermont Company at Middlebury and Salisbury in
Vermont, and the foundry of crystal glass at Keene in New Hampshire.
In 1818, and the following year, he made a geological survey of
Missouri and Arkansas to the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, and in the
fall of 1819 published in New-York his View of the Lead Mines of
Missouri, which is said by Professor Silliman to have been "the only
elaborate and detailed account of a mining district in the United
States" which had then appeared. It attracted much attention, and
procured for the author the friendship of many eminent men. In the
same year he printed Transallegania, a poetical _jeu d'esprit_ of
which mineralogy is the subject, and which preceded some clever
English attempts in the same vein. It was republished in London by Sir
Richard Phillips in the next year.

Early in 1820 he published a Journal of a Tour in the Interior of
Missouri and Arkansas, extending from Potosi toward the Rocky
Mountains. His writings having attracted the notice of the government,
he was commissioned by Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, to visit
the copper region of Lake Superior, and to accompany General Cass in
his expedition to the head waters of the Mississippi. His Narrative
Journal of this tour was published in 1821, and was eminently
successful, an edition of twelve hundred copies being sold in a few
weeks. In the same year he was appointed secretary to the commission
for treating with the Indian tribes at Chicago, and on the conclusion
of his labors published his sixth work, entitled Travels in the
Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, in which he described the
country between the regions of which he had given an account in his
previous works. His reputation was now widely and firmly established
as an explorer, and as a man of science and letters. From this time
his attention was devoted principally to the Red Race, though he still
cultivated natural history, and wrote occasionally for the reviews and
magazines.

In 1822 he was appointed by President Monroe agent for Indian Affairs,
to reside at St. Mary's, at the foot of Lake Superior. In the years
1825, 1826, and 1827, he attended the important convocations of the
north-west tribes at Prairie du Chien, Pont du Lac, and Buttes des
Morts. In 1831 he was sent on a special embassy, accompanied by
troops, to conciliate the Sioux and Ojibwas, and bring the existing
war between them to a close. In 1832 he proceeded in the same capacity
to the tribes near the head waters of the Mississippi, and availed
himself of the opportunity to trace that river, in small canoes, from
the point where Pike stopped in 1807 and Cass in 1820 to its true
source in Itasca Lake, upon which he entered on the thirteenth of
July, the one hundred and forty-ninth anniversary of the discovery of
the mouth of the river by La Salle. His account of this tour was
published in New-York in 1834, under the title of An Expedition to
Itasca Lake, and attracted much attention in all parts of the country.

From 1827 to 1831 Mr. Schoolcraft was a member of the legislative
council of Michigan. In 1828 he organized the Michigan Historical
Society, in which he was elected president, on the removal of General
Cass to Washington, in 1831. In the fall of the same year he set on
foot the Algic Society at Detroit, before which he delivered a course
of lectures on the grammatical construction of the Indian
languages,[1] and at its first anniversary a poem on The Indian
Character. Guided by patriotism and good taste, he took a successful
stand in the west against the absurd nomenclature which has elsewhere
made such confusion in geography by repeating over and over the names
of European places and characters, giving us Romes, Berlins, and
Londons in the wilderness, and Hannibals, Scipios, Homers, and
Hectors, wherever there was sufficient learning to make its possessors
ridiculous. He submitted to the legislature of the territory a system
of county and township names based upon the Indian vocabularies with
which he was familiar, and happily secured its general adoption.

At Sault Ste. Marie Mr. Schoolcraft became acquainted with Mr. John
Johnston, a gentleman from the north of Ireland, who had long resided
there, and in the person of his eldest daughter married a descendant
of the hereditary chief of Lake Superior, or Lake Algoma, as it is
known to the Indians. She had been educated in Europe, and was an
accomplished and highly interesting woman. After a residence there of
eleven years he removed to Michilimackinac, and assumed the joint
agency of the two districts. In 1836 he was appointed by President
Jackson a commissioner to treat with the north-west tribes for their
lands in the region of the upper lakes, and succeeded in effecting a
cession to the United States of some sixteen millions of acres. In the
same year he was appointed acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for
the Northern Department, and in 1839 principal disbursing agent for
the same district.

In the last mentioned year he published two volumes of Algic
Researches, comprising Indian Tales and Legends, and soon after,
having passed more than twenty years as a traveller or resident on the
frontiers, he removed to the city of New-York, intending to prepare
for the press the great mass of his original papers which he had
accumulated in this long period. In 1841 he issued proposals for an
Indian Cyclopedia, geographical, historical, philological, etc., of
which only one number was printed, no publisher appearing willing to
undertake so costly and extensive a work of such a description. In
1842 he visited England, France, Germany, Prussia, and Holland. During
his absence his wife died, at Dundee, in Canada West, where she was
visiting her sister. Soon after his return he made another journey to
the west, to examine some of the great mounds, respecting which he has
since communicated a paper to the Royal Geographical Society of
Denmark, of which he was many years ago elected an honorary member,
and soon after published a collection of his poetical writings, under
the title of Alhalla, or the Lord of Talladega, a Tale of the Creek
War, with some miscellanies, chiefly of early date. In 1844 he
commenced in numbers the publication of Oneota, or the Red Race in
America, their History, Traditions, Customs, Poetry, Picture Writing,
etc., in extracts from Notes, Journals, and other unpublished
writings, of which one octavo volume has been completed. In 1845 he
delivered an address before a society known as the "Was-ah
Ho-de-no-sonne, or New Confederacy of the Iroquois," and published
Observations on the Grave Creek Mound in Western Virginia, in the
Transactions of the American Ethnological Society; and early in the
following year presented in the form of a Report to the legislature of
his native state, his Notes on the Iroquois, or Contributions to the
Statistics, Aboriginal History, and General Ethnology of Western
New-York.

The last and most important of Mr. Schoolcraft's works, the crowning
labor of his life, for the composition of which all his previous
efforts were but notes of preparation, is the Historical and
Statistical Information respecting the History, Condition, and
Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Collected and
prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, per act
of March 3, 1847. The initial volume of this important national
publication, profusely illustrated with engravings from drawings by
Captain Eastman, of the Army, has lately been issued in a very large
and splendid quarto, by Lippincott. Grambo & Co., of Philadelphia,
under authority of Congress. It embraces the general, national, and
tribal history of the Indian race, with their traditions, manners,
customs, languages, mythology, &c., and when completed will probably
extend to six or seven volumes. Until more of it is published, it will
not be possible to form any exact judgment of it, except such as is
warranted by a knowledge of the author's previous works: but such a
judgment must be in the highest degree favorable.

Mr. Schoolcraft's ethnological writings are among the most important
contributions that have been made to the literature of this country.
His long and intimate connection with the Indian tribes, and the
knowledge possessed by his wife and her family of the people from whom
they were descended by the maternal side, with his power of examining
their character from the European point of view, have enabled him to
give us more authentic and valuable information respecting their
manners, customs, and physical traits, and more insight into their
moral and intellectual constitution, than can be derived, perhaps,
from all other authors. His works abound in materials for the future
artist and man of letters, and will on this account continue to be
read when the greater portion of the popular literature of the day is
forgotten. With the forests which they inhabited, the red race have
disappeared with astonishing rapidity. Until recently they have rarely
been the subjects of intelligent study; and it began to be regretted,
as they were seen fading from our sight, that there was so little
written respecting them that had any pretensions to fidelity. I would
not be understood to undervalue the productions of Eliot, Loskiel,
Heckewelder, Brainerd, and other early missionaries, but they were
restricted in design, and it is not to be denied that confidence in
their representations has been much impaired, less perhaps from doubts
of their integrity than of their ability and of the advantages of the
points of view from which they made their observations. The works on
Indian philology by Roger Williams and the younger Edwards are more
valuable than any others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
but it now appears that these authors knew very little of the
philosophy of the American language. Du Ponceau's knowledge was still
more superficial, and excepting Mr. Gallatin and the late Mr.
Pickering, who made use of the imperfect data furnished by others, I
believe no one besides Mr. Schoolcraft has recently produced any thing
on the subject worthy of consideration. Something has been done by
General Cass, and Mr. McKenny and Mr. Catlin have undoubtedly
accomplished much in this department of ethnography; but allowing all
that can reasonably be claimed for these artist-travellers, Mr.
Schoolcraft must still be regarded as the standard and chief authority
respecting the Algic tribes.

The influence which the original and peculiar myths and historical
traditions of the Indians is to have on our imaginative literature,
has been recently more than ever exhibited in the works of our
authors. The tendency of the public taste to avail itself of the
American mythology as a basis for the exhibition of "new lines of
fictitious creations" has been remarked by Mr. Schoolcraft himself in
Oneota, and he refers to the tales of Mrs. Oakes Smith, and to the
Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie, and the Vigil of Faith, by
Mr. Charles F. Hoffman, as works in which this tendency is most
distinctly perceptible. In the writings of W. H. C. Hosmer, the
legends of Mr. Whittier, and some of the poems of Mr. Longfellow and
Mr. Lowell, we see manifestations of the same disposition.

No one who has not had the most ample opportunities of personal
observation should attempt to mould Indian life and mythology to the
purposes of fiction without carefully studying whatever Mr.
Schoolcraft has published respecting them. The chief distinction of
the Algic style with which he has made us acquainted is its wonderful
simplicity and conciseness, with which the common verbosity, redundant
description, false sentiment, and erroneous manners of what are called
Indian tales, are as little in keeping as "English figures in
moccasins, and holding bows and arrows."

The excellent portrait at the beginning of this article is from a
daguerreotype by Simons, of Philadelphia.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Two of these lectures were published in 1834, translated into
French by the late Mr. du Ponceau, and subsequently read before the
National Institute of France.




THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH.


The death, in London, a few weeks ago, of a daughter of the celebrated
Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach, has recalled attention
to the history of that remarkable and celebrated person, whose life
has the interest of a romance.

ELIZABETH BERKELEY, Margravine of Anspach, was born in December, 1750.
She was the daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeley, by his wife
Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax of Charborough. She was brought up
under the care of a native of Switzerland, the wife of a German tutor
of her uncle. She describes herself as having been a delicate,
diminutive child, addicted at an early age to reading, and of timid
and retired habits. She first beheld a play when she was twelve years
old, and from that occasion she dates the growth of her subsequent
partiality for theatrical entertainments. At the age of thirteen she
paid a short visit to France with her mother and her elder sister, and
at fourteen she had been, as she says she afterwards discovered, "in
love without knowing it" with the Marquis de Fitz James. On the 10th
May, 1767, she was married to William Craven, nephew and heir of the
fifth Lord Craven, whom he succeeded in 1769. She professes to have
felt indifference when receiving his addresses, but the marriage was
for some time a happy one, and she says, "My husband seemed to have no
other delight than in procuring for me all the luxuries and enjoyments
within his power, and it was an eternal dispute (how amiable a
dispute!) between us; _he_ always offering presents, and _I_ refusing
whenever I could." Gifted with genius and beauty, both of which she
knew well how to apply; a woman of Lady Craven's rank naturally drew
around her a large circle of admirers. She says of herself very
characteristically, "In London the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough
showed their partiality to me, and Mr. Walpole, afterwards Lord
Orford, Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and his friend Colman, were among my
numerous admirers; and Sir Joshua Reynolds did not conceal his high
opinion of me. Charles Fox almost quarrelled with me because I was
unwilling to interfere with politics--a thing which I always said I
detested, and considered as being out of the province of a woman."

It appears to have been in the year 1779 that Lady Craven discovered
the infidelities with which she charged her husband, when she
requested of him the favor "that he would not permit his mistress to
call herself Lady Craven." After an interval of about three years
spent in partial reconciliation, a separation took place. The
indifferent tone in which she treats the whole of this transaction,
and her professed readiness to overlook every slight that was not
public and glaring, are a stain on her character, which she has by her
own animated pen exhibited to an age which had forgotten the
accusations to which she was subjected. At the time of her separation
from her husband she was the mother of seven children.

Lady Craven had in the mean time produced her first play, "The
Sleepwalker," a translation from the French, printed in 1778, at her
friend Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In 1779 she published
"Modern Anecdotes of the Family of Kinvervankotsprakengatchdern, a
Tale for Christmas." This was a caricature of the ceremonious
pomposity of the petty German courts; it was dramatized by Mr. M. P.
Andrews. Soon after the separation, she passed some time in France,
where she met with the Margrave of Anspach. They formed a sudden
friendship for each other, and agreed to consider each other (we are
told) as brother and sister. In June, 1785, Lady Craven commenced a
tour, in which, starting from Paris, she passed by the Rhine to Italy,
went thence by the Tyrol to Vienna, passed on to Warsaw, Petersburg,
and Moscow, proceeded by the Don to Turkey, and returned by Vienna,
which she reached in August, 1786. On this occasion she ran, by her
own account, a serious risk of being made Empress of Austria. In 1789
she published an account of her tour (1 vol. 4to), in letters
addressed to the margrave, saying in the dedication, "Beside
curiosity, my friends will in these letters see, at least for some
time, where the real Lady Craven has been, and where she is to be
found--it having been the practice for some years past for a
Birmingham coin of myself to pass in most of the inns in France,
Switzerland, and England, for the wife of my husband. My arms and
coronet sometimes supporting in some measure this insolent deception;
by which, probably, I may have been seen to behave very improperly."
This work is interesting from the many sketches it contains of eminent
people--such as the Empress Catharine, the Princess Dashcoff, Prince
Potemkin, Count Romanzoff, Admiral Mordvinoff, the Duc de Choiseul,
and others. It is full of accurate observation and lively description,
expressed in clear and simple English--a style from which in later
life she considerably diverged. She descended into the grotto of
Antiparos, being the first female to undertake the adventure. The
French biographers maintain that the tameness of her description of
the scene shows a deficiency of appreciation of the wonderful and
sublime. She does not indeed ornament her description with hyperboles
and exclamations, but it is clear and expressive, and by the
distinctness of the impression which it conveys to the reader, shows
that the scene was fully noticed and comprehended by the writer. After
her return from her journey, she visited England to see her children,
and then proceeded to France, where she joined the margrave and
accompanied him to Anspach. Here, during a residence of a few years,
she established a theatre, which was chiefly supplied with dramatic
entertainments of her own composition. They were collected into two
volumes 8vo, under the title of "Nouveau Theatre d'Anspach et de
Triesdorf," the latter being the name of a country seat nine miles
from Anspach, where she laid out a park and garden in the English
manner. She established at the same time "a society for the
encouragement of arts and sciences." She soon afterwards visited, in
company with the margrave, the congenial court of Naples, where she
made the acquaintance of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Her conduct
was the subject of much censure both in England and among the
officials of the court of Anspach, to whom her interference was a
natural subject of distrust; and if it should even be admitted that
her own account of the purity of her motives and conduct is correct,
it cannot be denied that she afforded material for forming the worst
interpretations of them. She maintains that she always opposed the
cession of his dominions to the crown of Prussia by the margrave in
1791, but she was almost his sole adviser on the occasion. She states
that she received the first hint of his design at Naples. One day
while she was dressing for dinner, a servant intimated that the
margrave desired to see her. On her appearance he said, "I must go to
Berlin _incog._--will you go with me? it is the only sacrifice of your
time I will ever require of you." They set out together, and on the
way through Anspach they found the establishment nearly in open revolt
against her influence. The king, however, was kind and generous in the
extreme, and the contracting parties are represented as only striving
to excel each other in generosity. Meanwhile the margrave's first wife
died, and Lord Craven's death occurred six months afterwards, on the
26th September, 1791. Immediately on hearing of this event, Lady
Craven was married to the margrave. "It was six weeks," she says,
"after Lord Craven's decease that I gave my hand to the margrave,
which I should have done six hours after, had I known it at the time."
As the cession of the margraviate to Prussia dates 2d December, 1791,
the marriage must have taken place about three weeks before it. The
nuptials were solemnized at Lisbon, whence the new married pair passed
through Spain and France to England.

The margrave, on the sale of his principality, resolved to spend his
days with his wife in England. They had no sooner arrived, however,
than the storm of family and public indignation which had been brewing
against the margravine burst upon her head. She received a letter from
her three daughters, saying, "with due deference to the Margravine of
Anspach, the Miss Cravens inform her that, out of respect to their
father, they cannot wait upon her," and her eldest son, Lord Craven,
refused to countenance her. The margrave received a message from the
queen, through the Prussian minister, to the effect that his wife,
though she had received a diploma from the emperor, could not be
received at court as a princess of the empire. She says that she
refused to derogate from her dignity by appearing merely as a peeress
of England; but it is not clear that she would have been received in
that capacity. She addressed a memorial on the subject to the House of
Lords, but they gave her no redress; indeed it would not have been
consistent with the practice of that body to interfere on such an
occasion. Soon after their arrival, the margrave purchased through
trustees, Lord Craven's estate of Benham, and the mansion of
Brandenburgh House, a place celebrated as afterwards affording a
retreat to Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV. Until the margrave's
death in 1806, it was a scene of continued profusion and gayety, in
which the luxuries and amusements of an English mansion were united
with those of a German court, "My whole enjoyment," says the
margravine, "during the margrave's valuable life, was to do every
thing in my power, to make him not only comfortable, but happy. Under
my management, the world imagined that he spent double his income."
Her attachment to her second husband was strong. She speaks of him
with an enthusiasm and devotion which bear the stamp of sincerity. "I
believe," she says, "a better man never existed. There never was a
being who could act upon more sincere principles. Nothing could divert
him from what was right. None could bear with patience, like himself,
the ill conduct of those to whom he was attached. None could more
easily forgive." After his decease, the margravine, who succeeded to
the large property which he left, felt impatient to recommence her
wanderings. On the restoration she sailed for France, and, after being
interrupted in her movements by the reign of the hundred days, reached
Rome, where it was said that she kept open house for all the
revolutionists of all countries who chose to accept her hospitalities.
The King of Naples afterwards presented her with a small estate, in
which she built a palace, where she resided till her death, which
occurred on January 13, 1828. Only two years previously, and when she
was seventy-six years old, she surprised and delighted the English
world by the publication of her well-known memoirs. This work is
perhaps one of the best examples of the French memoirs which English
literature possesses. It is indeed thoroughly French, not only in
spirit but in idiom, and, to the reader, has all the appearance of a
translation from that language. It thus affords, in its style, a
remarkable contrast to the book of travels above noticed. It contains
a vast variety of anecdotes and sketches of character, always amusing
if not always accurate. It has no continuity of narrative, leaping
backwards and forwards through all ages, and among every variety of
subject: from a description of the monument which she erected to the
memory of her husband, she takes occasion to give a rapid sketch of
the history of the art of sculpture. The least pleasing feature in the
work is its intense egotism. The margravine was a woman of
wonderfully versatile genius. She wrote with fluency in French and
German. She was an accomplished musician and actress; and she tells
us, "I have executed many busts myself, and among others one of the
margrave, which is generally allowed to be extremely like him."




LONDON DESCRIBED BY A PARISIAN.


M. Francis Wey, who is a college professor and _litterateur_ of some
eminence in Paris, has published for visitors from the continent to
the Great Exhibition, a volume entitled _Guides a Londres_, composed,
we believe, of a series of articles, _Les Anglais chez Eux_ (the
English at Home), which he had contributed to the _Musee des
Familles_, an old and favorite Parisian journal. It is very amusing to
see the manner in which these things are received by the British
press. The sensitiveness of which the Americans are accused is quite
equalled in that which is displayed in the London criticisms of
Monsieur Wey. And just at this time it is all the more pleasant to us,
for that our amiable Mother-Country critics are quoting with so much
enjoyment the characterizations of us poor United-Statesers, done in
the same way, by a gentleman of the same country. Even _Blackwood_
does not seem to have a suspicion that a Frenchman could caricature or
in any way exaggerate the publicities or domesticities of New-York;
but all the independent, care-for-nothing John Bulls see only
"rancor," "ill-will," and "absurdity" in the Frenchman's views of
English society. The _Literary Gazette_, the _Weekly News_, and all
the rest, have the same tone. French travellers, it is said--

     "Instead of patiently collecting their facts, they _invent_
     them. Instead of representing social usages as they really
     are, they state them as what they choose to suppose. They
     mistake flippancy for wit, and imperturbable assurance for
     knowledge. They speak _ex cathedra_ of matters of which they
     are profoundly ignorant. And the consequence of all this is
     that they commit the drollest blunders, make the most
     startling assertions, indulge in the most grotesque
     appreciations, and flounder in the most extravagant
     absurdities."

We wonder if a single British reviewer will introduce, with such a
paragraph, his extracts from the Letters on America, by M. XAVIER
MARMIER? Not a bit of it.

On the English language, M. Wey says--

     "The Englishman has invented for himself a language adapted
     to his placid manners and silent tastes. This language is a
     murmur, accompanied by soft hissings; it falls from the
     lips, but is scarcely articulated; if the chest or throat be
     employed to increase the power of the voice, the words
     become changed and scarcely intelligible; if cried aloud,
     they are hoarse, and resemble the confused croaking of frogs
     in marshes."

     "The English are passionately attached to their language.
     They have only consented to borrow one single word from us,
     and that is employed by their innkeepers--_table d'hote_,
     which they pronounce _taible dott_. And yet we have taken
     hundreds of words from them!"

English women--

     "English women give to us the preference over their own
     countrymen. Our gallantry is something new to them, and our
     politeness touches their hearts. But though they love us, we
     are not liked by their lords and masters. There is no
     exaggeration in all that has been said of the beauty of
     English women--an assemblage of them would realize the
     paradise of Mahomet."

Their dresses--

     "Many white gowns are to be seen. White is a _recherche_
     luxury in that land of tallow and smoke, where linen becomes
     dirty in three hours. However, good taste is making some
     progress. Ladies may be met with who are well dressed,
     although, generally speaking, a sort of audacity is
     displayed in wearing the most irreconcilable colors. What
     gives English women a somewhat _bizarre_ appearance, is the
     custom they have of swelling out their petticoats, by means
     of circles of whalebone or iron:--this causes them to
     resemble large bells in movement."

English manners--

     "English manners, rigid and cold, and dominated by arid
     rationalism, are the work of Cromwell. His bigotry and
     hypocrisy, his exterior austerity, his narrow formalism,
     suit the Englishman; he keeps up Cromwell's character, and
     admires himself in his usages. But he has no pity for his
     model--he never forgives Cromwell for having made him what
     he is. His spite towards that man is the last cry of nature,
     and the vague regret of a liberty of imagination of which
     neither the joys or the aspirations have been known since
     his time." "They have no grace, no _desinvoltura_, no poesy
     in them, but are methodical, reasonable, indefatigable in
     work and in amassing lucre."

How the English love--

"They love nothing with the heart; when they do love, it is
exclusively of the head."

English bankers--

     "In France we have the love of display; but in London it is
     not so. There, some of the principal bankers go every
     morning to the butchers' shops to buy their own chops, and
     they carry them ostensibly to some tavern in Cheapside or
     Fleet Street, where they cook them themselves. Then they buy
     three pennyworth of rye-bread, and publicly eat this Spartan
     breakfast. The exhibition fills their clients with
     admiration. But in the evening these good men make up for
     this by taking in their own palaces suppers worthy of
     Lucullus."

Flunkeys--

     "The English aristocracy are distinguished by the number,
     the canes, and the wigs of their lacqueys. Seeing constantly
     a footman, well powdered and bewigged, carry horizontally a
     large Voltaire cane behind certain sumptuous carriages, I
     asked for an explanation; it was soon given--wig, powder,
     and cane are aristocratic privileges. Not only must a man
     have a certain number of quarterings to be authorized to
     make his servants use such things, but he must pay so much
     tax for the lacquey, so much for the wig, so much for the
     tail to the wig, and so much for the cane."

What most strikes a Frenchman in London--

"The coldness of the men towards the fair sex, and their profound
passion for horses."

Officers of the life and horse guards--

"Cupid seems to have chosen them--they are possessed of such ideal
beauty."

English taverns--

     "The Englishman likes to be alone, even at the tavern. He
     fastens himself up in a box, where none can see him. There
     he drinks with taciturn phlegm. He takes tea, boiling grog,
     porter of the color of ink, and beer not less black. He is
     very fond of brandy, and drinks large glasses of it at a
     draught. He does not go to the tavern to amuse himself, but
     because drinking is a grave occupation. The more he swallows
     the calmer he is. One can however scarcely decide if his
     obstinate moroseness be a precaution against drunkenness, or
     the effect of spirituous liquors taken in excess. At some of
     the taverns are three gentlemen, dressed in black, with
     white cravats, who sing after one of them has struck the
     table with a little hammer; they are as serious as
     Protestant ministers or money-changers."

English food--

     "Thick stupefying beer, meat almost raw and horribly spiced;
     strong libations of port wine, followed by
     plum-pudding--such is the meat of these islanders."

How the English eat--

     "They eat at every hour, every where, and incessantly. The
     iron constitution of their complaisant stomachs enables them
     to feed in a manner which would satisfy wolves and lions.
     The delicate repast of a fair and sentimental young lady
     would be too much for a couple of Parisian street porters."

Stables and museums--

     "Stables are clean and brilliant as museums ought to be; and
     the museums are as filthy as stables in Provence."

The Queen's stables--

     "They form a college of horses, with pedantic grooms for
     professors, and a harness room for a library:"

English omnibuses--

     "The omnibuses of London are worn out, ill built, and
     remarkably dirty. Even in wet weather nobody is ever allowed
     to enter the interior so long as any places are vacant
     outside. We had expected to find them built of mahogany and
     lined with velvet."

London--

     "London, wholly devoted to private interests, offers nothing
     to the heart or mind. The city is too large; a man is lost
     in it; you elbow thousands of people without the hope of
     meeting any one you know. Even if you have a large fortune
     you would be ignored. Originality is there without effect;
     vanity without an object; and the desire of shining is
     chimerical. Intelligence has therefore only one opening,
     politics; pride only one object, the national sentiment; but
     as the people must feel enthusiasm for something, they adore
     horses; and as they must admire somebody, they burn incense
     under Lord Wellington's nose."

After midnight--

     "At midnight the English leave the taverns, the public
     gardens, the theatres, and the open air balls, and fill up
     the supper saloons (not very reputable places), and the
     oyster rooms, where they eat till morning. After sunrise,
     the policemen are occupied in picking up in the gutters
     drunkards of both sexes, and all conditions."

London rain--

     "It is tallow melted in water, and perfectly black."

A bad quarter--

     "Between Cornhill Street and Thames Street, there lives what
     is called the populace of London; there pauperism is
     frightful. The wretched inhabitants of that district are
     brawlers, drunkards, and prize-fighters."

At Westminster Abbey--

     "Shakspeare slumbers at a few steps from Richard II. The
     tombs bear traces of Presbyterian mutilations; but in other
     places the Calvinists scattered the bones of the deceased
     Bishops of Geneva. Such is the intolerance of the
     Protestants that they have not admitted the statue of Byron
     to the Abbey, and his shadow may be heard groaning at the
     door."

At Her Majesty's Theatre--

     "To go with a blue cravat is _shocking_. When the doors are
     open, blows with the fist and the elbow are given without
     regard to age or sex. It is the peculiar fashion of entering
     which the natives have. If a Frenchman be recognized the
     people cry _French dog_. In the pit, the man behind you will
     place his foot on your shoulder. The ladies are plunged up
     to the neck in boxes. In the theatre there is an echo, which
     produces an abominable effect; but such is the vile musical
     taste of the English that they have never found it out. In
     the saloon you hear the continual hissing of teakettles."

The English Parliament--

     "The House of Commons at present meets in a hole. The peers
     are in their new chamber. It is small, not monumental, and
     heavily ornamented. It reminds one of our tea shops, or a
     _boudoir_. The lords, when assembled, are generally placed
     on their backs, or rather lean on the back of the neck, and
     keep their legs above their heads. The Queen's throne, like
     constitutional royalty, is a gilded cage."

The new Houses of Parliament--

     "They are an immense architectural plaything, and the
     English only admire them because they cost a vast sum."

English love of titles--

     "One of my friends gave me a letter of introduction to Sir
     William P----, _Esquire_. I left the letter with my card at
     the Reform Club, Pall Mall. Two hours after Sir William came
     to my residence; but as I was not at home he wrote a line,
     and addressed it to me with the flattering designation of
     _Esquire_. England is the country of legal equality; but
     this sort of equilibrium does not extend to social usages;
     and although our _penchant_ for distinctions seems puerile
     to the English, it would be easy to prove that they are not
     exempt from it. They have not, as we have, the love of
     uniforms, laced coats, epaulettes, or decorations; their
     button-holes often carry a flower, but never a rosette or
     knot of ribbon. But every body pretends to the title of
     _Sir_, which was formerly reserved exclusively to members of
     the House of Commons, to Baronets, and to some public
     functionaries. As, however, the title _Sir_ has become too
     vulgar, every body calls himself _Esquire_ to distinguish
     himself from his neighbor. This remark, nevertheless, does
     not concern my friend Sir William, for he is really an
     Esquire."

English soldiers--

     "The noise which announces their approach is very singular.
     Picture to yourself the monotonous music of a bear's dance,
     executed by twenty fifers, whilst a man beats a big drum.
     The coats of the infantry are too short, and are surmounted
     with large white epaulettes. The men sway their bodies about
     to the beating of the drum, and carry their heads so stiffly
     that they appear to be balancing spoons on their noses. All
     the officers and non-commissioned officers carry long sticks
     with ivory handles."

Resemblance of Englishmen one to another--

     "All Englishmen are alike. They live in the same way, are
     subject to the same logical rules, condemned to the same
     amusements. The proof that there exists only one character
     amongst them, and that they have only one way of living, is,
     that it is impossible, on seeing them, to divine their
     profession. A lord, a minister, a domestic, a street singer,
     a merchant, an admiral, a soldier, a general, an artist, a
     judge, a prize-fighter, and a clergyman, have all the same
     appearance, the same language, the same costume, and the
     same bearing. Each one has the air of an Englishman, and
     nothing more. They live in the same way, work at the same
     hours, eat at the same time, and of the same sort of food,
     and are all sequestrated when away from home from the
     society of women."

The French at London--

     "At London the French labor under two subjects of anxiety,
     caused by their national prejudices. Accustomed to consider
     themselves as the first people in the world, to dazzle some,
     to despise others, and to display every where the confident
     pride of their supremacy, they, on treading the British
     soil, experience the impression of a greatness not borrowed
     from them; they are astonished at finding a people as
     remarkable as ours, as original as we are, and carrying to a
     still prouder degree the sentiment of their pre-eminence.
     Then our countrymen become disquieted; the intolerance of
     their national faith becomes mitigated; they are ill at
     ease, and for the first time in their lives feel constraint.
     Ceasing to believe themselves amongst slaves as in Italy,
     amongst vassals as in Belgium, or amongst innkeepers as in
     Switzerland or Germany, they endeavor to resemble sovereigns
     visiting other sovereigns, and by forced politeness render
     them involuntary homage."

Feeling of the English toward the French--

     "They honor us with a marked attention, though they are
     indifferent to the rest of mankind. Our opinions respecting
     them cause them anxiety. They either admire us
     enthusiastically, or disparage us bitterly; but, in reality,
     they are obsequious and servile toward us!"

After a good deal of the numerous statues to Wellington, this at
English admiration of Waterloo--

     "The trumpet of Waterloo which has been sounded in London
     every where incessantly, and in every tone, during
     thirty-five years, diminishes the grandeur of the English
     nation. This intoxication seems that of a people who, never
     having won more than one battle, and despairing to conquer a
     second time, cannot recover from their surprise, nor bear in
     patience an unhoped-for glory."

How the English judge Napoleon--

     "Public opinion has avenged the prisoner of St Helena; but
     does it follow that in 1815 the English protested with
     sufficient energy against his imprisonment! No. Englishmen
     are naturally indifferent and indulgent as regards their
     foreign neighbors, so long as patriotism or private interest
     is not at stake. Napoleon was the most terrible of their
     enemies; he placed England within ten steps of bankruptcy,
     and seriously menaced national manufactures. Not possessed
     of military instinct, the English do not pretend to
     chivalrous generosity. On the fall of the Empire, caused by
     the implacable perseverance of coalitions, the nation
     remembered that the Hundred Days cost its government a
     million an hour, and so long as the deficit was not made up,
     their resentment underwent no diminution. But now if you
     celebrate his glory before them, they will not display
     hostility. You must not, however, touch the till of this
     tribe of tradesmen, or they will be your bitter enemies. And
     the proof that they are nothing but shopkeepers is that
     their first functionary sits in a gilded arm chair on a
     wool-sack."




THE BEAUTIFUL STREAMLET AND THE UTILITARIAN.


Alphonse Karr's new book, _Travels in my Garden_, is full of social
heresies, but quite as full of wit. We find in _Fraser's Magazine_ for
May translations of some admirable passages, with specimens of his
peculiar speculation. Karr is an ardent lover of Nature; he takes note
of all her caprices, and respects them,--remarks under what shade the
violet loves to dwell, and tells us how certain plants--the volubulis,
the scarlet-runner, and the Westeria, for instance--invariably twine
their spiral tendrils from left to right, whereas hops and
honeysuckles as infallibly twist theirs from right to left. He knows
which are the plants that fold, when evening comes, their leaves in
two, lengthwise,--which are those that close them up like fans, and
which are the careless ones that crumple them up irregularly with
happy impunity, for the next morning's sun smooths them all alike. He
loves Nature in all her details, but with disinterested love, and has
no idea of making her subservient to his pride, or selfishly
monopolizing her; he has evidently no wish to wall in woods and
meadows, and call them a park, or to dam up sparkling, bubbling,
dancing streams, and turn them into cold, spiritless, aristocratic
sheets of water. Indeed, in one of the first chapters of the book,
there is a fanciful bit of sentiment about a happy little stream that
falls into the hands of a pitiless utilitarian, which we are tempted
to quote:--

     "That stream which runs through my garden gushes from the
     side of a furze-covered hill; for a long time it was a happy
     little stream; it traversed meadows where all sorts of
     lovely wild flowers bathed and mirrored themselves in its
     waters, then it entered my garden, and there I was ready to
     receive it; I had prepared green tanks for it; on its edge
     and in its very bed I had planted those flowers which all
     over the world love to bloom on the banks and in the bosom
     of pure streams; it flowed through my garden, murmuring its
     plaintive song; then, fragrant with my flowers, it left the
     garden, crossed another meadow, and flung itself into the
     sea, over the precipitous sides of the cliff, which it
     covered with foam.

     "It was a happy stream; it had literally nothing to do
     beyond what I have said,--to flow, to bubble, to look
     limpid, to murmur, amidst flowers and sweet perfumes. It led
     the life I have chosen, and that I continue to lead, when
     people let me alone, and when knaves and fools and wicked
     men do not force me--who am at once the most pacific and the
     most battling man on earth--to return to the fight. But
     heaven and earth are jealous of the happiness of gentle
     indolence.

     "One day my brother Eugene, and Savage, the clever engineer,
     were talking together on the banks of the stream, and to a
     certain degree abusing it.

     "'There,' said my brother, 'is a fine good-for-nothing
     stream for you, forsooth, winding and dawdling about,
     dancing in the sunshine, and revelling in the grass instead
     of working and paying for the place it takes up, as an
     honest stream should. Could it not be made to grind coffee
     or pepper?'

     "'Or tools?' added Savage.

     "'Or to saw boards?' said my brother.

     "I trembled for the stream, and broke off the conversation,
     complaining loudly that its detractors (its would-be
     tyrants) were treading down my forget-me-nots. Alas! it was
     but against them alone I could protect it. Before long there
     came into our neighborhood a man whom I noticed more than
     once hanging about the spot where the stream empties itself
     into the sea. The fellow I plainly saw was neither seeking
     for rhymes, nor indulging in dreams and memories upon its
     banks,--he was not lulling thought to rest with the gentle
     murmur of its waters. 'My good friend,' he was saying to the
     stream, 'there you are, idling and meandering about, singing
     to your heart's content, while I am working and wearing
     myself out. I don't see why you should not help me a bit;
     you know nothing of the work to be done, but I'll soon show
     you. You'll soon know how to set about it. You must find it
     dull to stay in this way, doing nothing,--it would be a
     change for you to make files or grind knives.' Very soon
     wheels of all kinds were brought to the poor stream. From
     that day forward it has worked and turned a great wheel,
     which turns a little wheel, which turns a grindstone; it
     still sings, but no longer the same gently-monotonous song
     in its peaceful melancholy. Its song is loud and angry
     now,--it leaps and froths and works now,--it grinds knives!
     It still crosses the meadow, and my garden, and the next
     meadow; but there, the man is on the watch for it, to make
     it work. I have done the only thing I could do for it. I
     have dug a new bed for it in my garden, so that it may idle
     longer there, and leave me a little later; but for all that,
     it must go at last and grind knives. Poor stream! thou didst
     not sufficiently conceal thy happiness in obscurity,--thou
     hast murmured too audibly thy gentle music."




SIR EMERSON TENNANT ON AMERICAN MISSIONS IN CEYLON.


One of the most respectable persons employed in the English colonial
service, is Sir EMERSON TENNANT, LL. D., K. C. B. &c., who was for
many years connected with the administration in Ceylon, and is now, we
believe, Governor of St. Helena. He has recently published a volume
entitled _Christianity in Ceylon_, in which there are some passages of
especial interest to American readers, displaying in a favorable
light, the services rendered to civilization by the missionaries of
this country. These parts of his work have attracted much
consideration. The _Dublin University Magazine_ remarks:

"We describe the American Mission, which acts under the direction of
one of the oldest and most remarkable of the existing associations for
the dissemination of Christianity, "The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions," whose head-quarters are at
Boston, in Massachusetts. The first settlers in Massachusetts, like
those of New England generally, were missionary colonists. Their
charter, given by Charles I., states that one of the objects of the
king and of the planters was the conversion of the natives to the true
faith; and the seal of the company thus incorporated bore the device
of a North American Indian, with the motto "_Come over and help us_."
It may be interesting to add, that the "pilgrim fathers" of the New
England States were, indirectly, the cause of the Protestant missions
of the Dutch. They were, as our author states, 'the first pioneers of
the Protestant world, and the first heralds of the Reformed religion
to the heathen of foreign lands. Their mission is more ancient than
the Propaganda of Rome, and it preceded by nearly a century any other
missionary association in Europe. It was encouraged by Cromwell, and
incorporated by Charles II.; and Cotton Mather records that it was the
example of the New England fathers, and their success amongst the
Indians, that first aroused the energy of the Dutch for the conversion
of the natives of Ceylon.'

"We cannot doubt that amongst the main causes of the prosperity of
North America are, the permanence of religious feeling, and the
blessing attendant on the fact, that the missionary spirit has never
perished. The labors of this great people on their own vast continent
have been conducted with the greatest judgment, and marked by a
success which encouraged their extension in other lands. In the year
1812, they turned their attention to the East, and, under an act of
incorporation from the state of Massachusetts, commenced their
missionary efforts in the Old World. Their first missionaries to India
appeared there in 1812, but were ordered by the Governor-General to
leave Calcutta by the same vessel in which they had arrived. One of
them landing in Ceylon, on his voyage home, was so struck with the
openings which it presented for missionary enterprise, and so much
encouraged by the Governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, to engage in it,
that, on his representations, the American Board, in 1816, sent out
three clergymen and their wives, who fixed their residence at Jaffina,
which has been ever since the scene of their remarkable labors. These
were reinforced in 1829, and for many years their establishment has
consisted of from seven to eleven ordained ministers, with a
physician, conductors of the press, and other lay assistants; these
are selected from Congregationalists and Presbyterians. It is
gratifying to be enabled to add, that a most cordial good-will and
desire to co-operate has from the beginning prevailed between them and
the other Protestant missionaries in their neighborhood. For thirty
years they have assembled periodically in a "missionary union," to
decide on measures and compare results. "With all of them education
is," as our author says, "a diurnal occupation; whilst in their purely
clerical capacity they have felt the necessity of proceeding with more
cautious circumspection, improving rather than creating opportunities,
relying less upon formal preaching than on familiar discourses, and
trusting more to the intimate exhortation of a few than to the effect
of popular addresses to indiscriminate assemblies.'

     "'The first embryo instruction is communicated by them in
     free village schools, scattered everywhere throughout the
     district, in which the children of the Tamils are taught in
     their own tongue the simplest elements of knowledge, and the
     earliest processes of education--to read from translations
     of the Christian Scriptures, and to write their own
     language, first by tracing the letters on the sand, and
     eventually by inscribing them with an iron style upon the
     prepared leaves of the _Palmyra palm_. It will afford an
     idea of the extent and perseverance with which education has
     been pursued in these primitive institutions, that, in the
     free schools of the Americans alone, 4,000 pupils, of whom
     one-fourth are females, are daily receiving instruction, and
     upwards of 90,000 children have been taught in them since
     their commencement, a proportion equal to one-half the
     present population of the peninsula.'"

"It was soon seen that, in addition to these primary schools, the
establishment of boarding schools was extremely desirable, for the
purpose of separating the pupils from the influence of idolatry. The
attempt was made, but proved to be attended with difficulties which
would have appeared to many insurmountable. In the first place, the
natives were suspicious, not conceiving that strangers could undertake
such toil, trouble, and expense, without an interested object. The
more positive difficulty was connected with caste, with the reluctance
of parents to permit their children to associate with those of a lower
rank.

     "'This the missionaries overcame, not so much by inveighing
     against the absurdity of such distinctions as by practically
     ignoring them, except wherever expediency or necessity
     required their recognition. In all other cases where the
     customs and prejudices of the Tamils were harmless in
     themselves, or productive of no inconvenience to others,
     they were in no way contravened or prohibited; but as
     intelligence increased, and the minds of the pupils became
     expanded, the most distinctive and objectionable of them
     were voluntarily and almost imperceptibly abandoned.

     "'When the boarders were first admitted to one of the
     American schools at Batticotta, a cook-house was obliged to
     be erected for them on the adjoining premises of a heathen,
     as they would not eat under the roof of a Christian; but
     after a twelvemonth's perseverance, the inconvenience
     overcame the objection, and they removed to the refectory of
     the institution. But here a fresh difficulty was to be
     encountered; some of the high caste youths made an objection
     to use the same wells which had been common to the whole
     establishment; and it was agreed to meet their wishes by
     permitting them to clear out one in particular, to be
     reserved exclusively for themselves. They worked incessantly
     for a day, but finding it hopeless to draw it perfectly dry,
     they resolved to accommodate the difficulty, on the
     principle, that having drawn off as much water as the well
     contained when they began, the remainder must be
     sufficiently pure for all ordinary uses.'"

"In addition to these primary and boarding-schools, the American
Mission, in 1830, established schools for teaching English, and for
elementary instruction of a more advanced description. These were all
under a discipline avowedly Christian, yet the missionaries found that
they were able not only to enforce the fee demanded, but to maintain
their regulations without loss of numbers.

     "'And it is a fact,' says Sir Emerson Tennent, 'suggestive
     of curious speculation as to the genius and character of
     this anomalous people, that in a heathen school recently
     established by Brahmans in the vicinity of Jaffna, the
     Hindoo Community actually compelled those who conducted it
     to introduce the reading of the Bible as an indispensable
     portion of the ordinary course of instruction.'"

"This does not seem so strange to us. The shrewd Tamils, as we collect
from other observations in the work before us, perceived how the
Bible-reading children had improved in demeanor, conduct, and success
in life. For these same reasons, and possibly in some cases from a
deeper feeling never yet avowed, the Roman Catholic peasantry of
Ireland, before the introduction of the National System of Education,
and previously to, and, in many cases, long after, the expressed
hostility of their priesthood, anxiously sent their children to the
schools of the Kildare-place and the Hibernian Bible Societies.

"The other missionaries, we need hardly say, were as active as the
Americans. After some years of further experience, they all felt the
necessity of founding educational institutions of a still more
advanced description for the instruction of the natives in their own
language. It became plain to them that, from physical as well as moral
causes, the conversion of the natives could be only hoped for through
the medium of their well-taught and well-trained countrymen. The
niceties of the language and their modes of thought presented
difficulties of a most serious character to others; the very terms of
the ordinary address of a missionary suggested ideas altogether
different from what he intended. Thus, when GOD is spoken of, they
probably understand one of their own deities who yields to every vile
indulgence; by SIN, they mean ceremonial defilement, or evil committed
in a former birth, for which they are not accountable; _hell_ with
them is only a place of temporary punishment; and _heaven_ nothing
more than absorption, or the loss of individuality. Under these
impressions each of the missionary bodies at Jaffna formed for
themselves a collegiate institution, in which the best scholars from
their other schools were admitted to a still more advanced course, and
taught the sciences of Europe. That of the Church Missionary Society
of England was established at Nellore, but subsequently removed to
Chundically; the Wesleyans commenced theirs in the great square of
Jaffna; and that of the Americans was founded at Batticotta, in the
midst of a cultivated country, within sight of the sea, and at a very
few miles distant from the fort."

     "'It was opened in 1823, with about fifty students chosen
     from the most successful pupils of all the schools in the
     province; and the course of education is so comprehensive as
     to extend over a period of eight years of study. With a
     special regard to the future usefulness of its alumni in the
     conflict with the errors of the Brahmanical system, the
     curriculum embraces all the ordinary branches of historical
     and classical learning, and all the higher departments of
     mathematical and physical science, combined with the most
     intricate familiarization with the great principles and
     evidences of the Christian religion.

     "'The number which the building can accommodate is limited,
     for the present, to one hundred, who reside within its
     walls, and take their food in one common hall, sitting to
     eat after the custom of the natives. For some years the
     students were boarded and clothed at the expense of the
     mission; but such is now the eagerness for instruction that
     there are a multitude of competitors for every casual
     vacancy; and the cost of their maintenance during the whole
     period of pupilage is willingly paid in advance, in order to
     secure the privilege of admission.

     "'Nearly six hundred students have been under instruction
     from time to time since the commencement of the American
     Seminary at Batticotta, and of these upwards of four hundred
     have completed the established course of education. More
     than one-half have made an open profession of Christianity,
     and all have been familiarized with its doctrines, and more
     or less imbued with its spirit. The majority are now filling
     situations of credit and responsibility throughout the
     various districts of Ceylon; numbers are employed under the
     missionaries themselves, as teachers and catechists, and as
     preachers and superintendents of schools; many have
     migrated, in similar capacities, to be attached to Christian
     missions on the continent of India; others have lent their
     assistance to the missions of the Wesleyans and the Church
     of England in Ceylon; and amongst those who have attached
     themselves to secular occupations, I can bear testimony to
     the abilities, the qualifications, and integrity, of the
     many students of Jaffna, who have accepted employment in
     various offices under the Government of the colony.'"

"Another of the instruments of conversion adopted by these
indefatigable men is _the press_. They were long obliged to have their
tracts written out on _olahs_, or strips of the Palmyra leaf, which,
when the missionary took for distribution, were strung round the neck
of his horse. The printing establishment of the American Mission has
for many years given constant employment to upwards of eighty Tamil
workmen. Their publications are either religious or educational; and
one of their ulterior objects is to supersede the degraded legends
still in circulation. The natives of Ceylon, like most other Asiatics,
have a strong repugnance to reading. This, however, has been to some
extent already overcome, both on the continent of India and in Ceylon,
as is evident from the facts of the establishment of native presses in
Hindostan, and of the success of a missionary newspaper in Ceylon for
the last seven years, which has now more than seven hundred
subscribers, of whom five-sixths are Tamils. The Church Missionary
Society have also a press amongst the Tamils; the Wesleyans
established theirs in the Singhalese districts, and the Baptists have
one at work in Kandy. One of the greatest, among the many triumphs of
the missionaries in Ceylon, has been in the education of girls. The
position of woman in that island, as in most parts of the East, was
one of inferiority and toil. She was not permitted to sit at table
with the males, or even to eat in the presence of her husband. Her
education was so wholly neglected that, amongst the Tamils, no woman
knew her alphabet, except such as rather gave the accomplishment a bad
name--the dancing girls and prostitutes attached to the temples, who
learned to read and write that they might copy songs and the legends
of their gods. It was, however, plain that no extensive good would be
effected without the education of women. The male converts could not
get suitable wives, and the children would be in the hands of
idolaters. In addition to their natural influence in a family, the
women of the Tamils, where this new attempt in education was first
made, had rights of property, which, notwithstanding the inferiority
of their social position, gave them peculiar influence.

     "'It is, we are told, a paramount object of ambition with
     Tamil parents to secure an eligible alliance for their
     daughters by the assignment of extravagant marriage
     portions. These consist either of land, or of money secured
     upon land; and as the law of Ceylon recognizes the absolute
     control of the lady over the property thus conveyed to her
     sole and separate use, the prevalence of the practice has,
     by degrees, thrown an extraordinary extent of the landed
     property of the country into the hands of the females, and
     invested them with a corresponding proportion of authority
     in its management.'"

Impressed with the urgency of the object, the missionaries attempted
the establishment of female schools, and especially of boarding
schools, where Hindoo girls might be trained, and separated from evil
influences until they could be settled with the approbation of the
guardians. They had at first great difficulty in getting pupils, and
only enticed them by presents of dress, or some such cogent bribe, or
by engagements to give fortunes of five or six pounds to all who
remained in their institutions until suitably married. Even with these
allurements their early efforts promised no success. Parents were
inveighed against for allowing their daughters to be instructed, and
so strong was native prejudice that the children, when learning to
read, blushed with shame. These and other obstacles have been
surmounted, and, as the following extract shows, the missionaries have
no longer to allure, but must select their scholars. The Americans
made the first experiment at Oodooville, a few miles distant from the
fort of Jaffna:--

     "'The hamlet of Oodooville is in the centre of a tract of
     very rich land, and the buildings occupied by the Americans
     were originally erected by the Portuguese for a Roman
     Catholic church, and the residence of a friar of the order
     of St. Francis. It is a beautiful spot, embowered in trees,
     and all its grounds and gardens are kept in becoming order,
     with the nicest care and attention.

     "'The institution opened in 1824, with about thirty pupils,
     between the ages of five and eleven; and this, after eight
     years of previous exertion and entreaty, was the utmost
     number of female scholars who could be prevailed on to
     attend from the whole extent of the province. This
     difficulty has been long since overcome. Instead of
     solicitations and promises, to allure scholars, the
     missionaries have long since been obliged to limit their
     admissions to one hundred, the utmost that their buildings
     can accommodate; and now, so eager are the natives to secure
     education for their daughters, that a short time before my
     visit, on the occasion of filling up some vacancies, upwards
     of sixty candidates were in anxious attendance, of whom only
     seventeen could be selected, there being room for no more.
     The earliest inmates of the institution were of low castes
     and poor; whereas the pupils and candidates now are, many of
     them, of most respectable families, and the daughters of
     persons of property and influence in the district.

     "'The course of instruction is in all particulars adapted to
     suit the social circumstances of the community; along with a
     thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and the principles of
     the Christian religion, it embraces all the ordinary
     branches of female education, which are communicated both in
     Tamil and in English; and combined with this intellectual
     culture, the girls are carefully trained, conformably to the
     usages of their country, in all the discipline and
     acquirements essential to economy and domestic enjoyments at
     home. Of two hundred and fifty females who have been thus
     brought up at Oodooville, more than half have been since
     married to Christians, and are now communicating to their
     children the same training and advantages of which they have
     so strongly felt the benefit themselves.'"

"The consequence of these proceedings is, that the number of
households is fast increasing, where the mother, trained in the habits
of civilized life, and instructed in the principles of Christianity,
is anxious to give to her children the like advantages."




A PAPER OF ... TOBACCO.


We find a lively passage on tobacco in the pleasant new book by
Alphonse Karr. It must be borne in mind that, in France, tobacco is a
monopoly--and a very productive one--in the hands of government:--

     "There is a family of poisonous plants, amongst which we may
     notice the henbane, the datura stramonium, and the tobacco
     plant. The tobacco plant is perhaps a little less poisonous
     than the datura, but it is more so than the henbane, which
     is a violent poison. Here is a tobacco plant--as fine a
     plant as you can wish to see. It grows to the height of six
     feet; and from the centre of a tuft of leaves, of a
     beautiful green, shoot out elegant and graceful clusters of
     pink flowers.

     "For a long while the tobacco plant grew unknown and
     solitary in the wilds of America. The savage to whom we had
     given brandy gave us in exchange tobacco, with the smoke of
     which they used to intoxicate themselves on grand occasions.
     The intercourse between the two worlds began by this amiable
     interchange of poisons.

     "Those who first thought of putting tobacco dust up their
     noses were first laughed at, and then persecuted more or
     less. James I., of England, wrote against snuff-takers a
     book entitled _Misocapnos_. Some years later, Pope Urban
     VIII. excommunicated all persons who took snuff in churches.
     The Empress Elizabeth thought it necessary to add something
     to the penalty of excommunication pronounced against those
     who used the black dust during divine service, and
     authorised the beadles to confiscate the snuff-boxes to
     their own use. Amurath IV. forbade the use of snuff under
     pain of having the nose cut of.

     "No useful plant could have withstood such attacks. If
     before this invention a man had been found to say, Let us
     seek the means of filling the coffers of the state by a
     voluntary tax; let us set about selling something which
     every body will like to do without. In America there is a
     plant essentially poisonous; if from its leaves you extract
     an empyreumatic oil, a single drop of it will cause an
     animal to die in horrible convulsions. Suppose we offer this
     plant for sale chopped up or reduced to a powder. We will
     sell it very dear, and tell people to stuff the powder up
     their noses.

     "'That is to say, I suppose, you will force them to do so by
     law?'

     "'Not a bit of it. I spoke of a voluntary tax. As to the
     portion we chop up, we will tell them to inhale it, and
     swallow a little of the smoke from it besides.'

     "'But it will kill them.'

     "'No; they will become rather pale, perhaps feel giddy, spit
     blood, and suffer from colics, or have pains in the
     chest--that's all. Besides, you know, although it has been
     often said that habit is second nature, people are not yet
     aware how completely man resembles the knife, of which the
     blade first and then the handle had been changed two or
     three times. In man there is no nature left--nothing but
     habit remains. People will become like Mithridates, who had
     learnt to live on poisons.

     "'The first time that a man will smoke he will feel
     sickness, nausea, giddiness, and colics; but that will go
     off by degrees, and in time he will get so accustomed to it,
     that he will only feel such symptoms now and then--when he
     smokes tobacco that is bad, or too strong--or when he is not
     well, and in five or six other cases. Those who take it in
     powder will sneeze, have a disagreeable smell, lose the
     sense of smelling, and establish in their nose a sort of
     perpetual blister.'

     "'Then, I suppose it smells very nice.'

     "'Quite the reverse. It has a very unpleasant smell; but, as
     I said, we'll sell it very dear, and reserve to ourselves
     the monopoly of it.'

     "'My good friend,' one would have said to any one absurd
     enough to hold a similar language, 'nobody will envy you the
     privilege of selling a weed that no one will care to buy.
     You might as well open a shop and write on it: Kicks sold
     here; or, Such-a-one sells blows, wholesale and retail. You
     will find as many customers as for your poisonous weed.'

     "Well! who would have believed that the first speaker was
     right, and that the tobacco speculation would answer
     perfectly! The kings of France have written no satires
     against snuff, have had no noses cut off, no snuff-boxes
     confiscated. Far from it. They have sold tobacco, laid an
     impost on noses, and given snuff-boxes to poets with their
     portraits on the lid, and diamonds all round. This little
     trade has brought them in I don't know how many millions a
     year. The potato was far more difficult to popularize, and
     has still some adversaries."




LORD JEFFREY AND JOANNA BAILLIE.


Joanna Baillie's first volume of poems was severely criticised in the
_Edinburgh Review_ by Jeffrey. In an article upon the deceased poetess
in _Chambers's Journal_, we have an account of her subsequent
relations with the reviewer. She visited Edinburgh in 1808.

     "As she did not refuse to go into company, she could not be
     long in that city without encountering Francis Jeffrey, the
     foremost man in the bright train of _beaux-esprits_ which
     then adorned the society of the Scottish capital. He would
     gladly have been presented to her; and if she had permitted
     it, there is little doubt that in the eloquent flow of his
     delightful and genial conversation, enough of the admiration
     he really felt for her poetry must have been expressed, to
     have softened her into listening at least with patience to
     his suggestions for her improvement. But in vain did the
     friendly Mrs. Betty Hamilton (authoress of 'The Cottagers of
     Glenburnie') beg for leave to present him to her when they
     met in her hospitable drawing-room; and equally in vain were
     the efforts made by the good-natured Duchess of Gordon to
     bring about an introduction which she knew was desired at
     least by one of the parties. It was civilly but coldly
     declined by the poetess; and though the dignified reason
     assigned was the propriety of leaving the critic more
     entirely at liberty in his future strictures than an
     _acquaintance_ might perhaps feel himself, there seems
     little reason to doubt that soreness and natural resentment
     had something to do with the refusal."

     "It was in the autumn of 1820 that Miss Baillie paid her
     last visit to Scotland, and passed those delightful days
     with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, the second of which is
     so pleasantly given in Mr. Lockhart's life of the bard. Her
     friends again perceived a change in her manners. They had
     become blander, and much more cordial. She had probably been
     now too long admired and reverently looked up to not to
     understand her own position, and the encouragement which,
     essentially unassuming as she was, would be necessary from
     her to reassure the timid and satisfy the proud. She had
     magnanimously forgiven and lived down the unjust severity of
     her Edinburgh critic, and now no longer refused to be made
     personally known to him. He was presented to her by their
     mutual friend, the amiable Dr. Morehead. They had much
     earnest and interesting talk together, and from that hour to
     the end of their lives entertained for each other a mutual
     and cordial esteem. After this, Jeffrey seldom visited
     London without indulging himself in a friendly pilgrimage to
     the shrine of the secluded poetess; and it is pleasing to
     find him writing of her in the following cordial way in
     later years: "_London_, April 28, 1840.--I forgot to tell
     you that we have been twice out to Hampstead to hunt out
     Joanna Baillie, and found her the other day as fresh,
     natural, and amiable as ever--and as little like a Tragic
     Muse. Since old Mrs. Brougham's death, I do not know so nice
     an old woman." And again, in January 7, 1842.--"We went to
     Hampstead, and paid a very pleasant visit to Joanna Baillie,
     who is marvellous in health and spirits, and youthful
     freshness and simplicity of feeling, and not a bit deaf,
     blind, or torpid.""




_Authors and Books._


DR. TITUS TOBLER, a Swiss savan, has just published a work entitled
_Golgotha, its Churches and Cloisters_, in the course of which he
undertakes the "Jerusalem question," or the discussion of the probable
localities of the Scripture narrative of the crucifixion. Among the
able German accounts of this treatise, which cannot fail to arrest the
attention of the sacred student, we find the following notice of
Professor Robinson, the first profound and adequate contemporary
authority upon the subject: "Until the American Robinson, all the
early comparisons and criticisms upon the holy sepulchre were based
much more upon instinct and furious sectarianism, than upon a generous
love of truth and a genuine insight into the matter. Only with
wearisome effort, and not without the consent of the whole Church
power, was Robinson's mighty grasp upon pious tradition repelled. In
the main question the learned Yankee was not altogether wrong. But he
is too rash in battle, too impatient, too reckless, too ambitious, and
his armor was evidently not proof in all parts. Even the knowledge of
the Semitic orient, of its antiquities and customs, seems, if we may
say so without offence to transatlantic vanity, a little threadbare.
But the Robinsonian breach in the wall was not to be entirely
plastered up and its traces concealed. This American has first
recognized the right way of breaking into the citadel of tradition;
others, with more or less skill, have followed his track and widened
the breach. But it was reserved for the inflexible ability of Dr.
Tobler to dig up the very foundations, although he is no centaur, no
giant, and in the pride of strength, does not scorn a childlike
faith."

       *       *       *       *       *

Among recent German romances we note second and third editions of
JEREMIAS GOTTHELF'S _Sylvester-Dream_, and the _Peasant's Mirror, or a
Life-History_. The author is not much known beyond Germany, but is
there recognized as having the greatest certainty and correctness in
delineation, the most genial principle, and the soundest and freshest
life of any contemporary writer. The Sylvester-Dream is as vague and
fantastic, and of the same electrical effect, as the similar sparkling
flights of Dickens and Jean Paul. _Uriel the Devil_, a satirical
romance, in eight pictures, bears the name of Kaulbach, but whether
the author is related to William Kaulbach, the great painter, we have
no means of ascertaining. This, with the _Memorabilia of a German
House-Servant_ are spoiled by their imitations of Jean Paul, and the
latter is somewhat strongly infected with Hoffman's Phantasies. But
they are both books of more than common talent. Two romances by two
women are most curtly and contemptuously noticed, in a style of
uncourteous condemnation hardly to be paralleled in England or
America, in which countries the chivalry of private respect for the
fair sex always ameliorates condemnation of their writings. "Of these
two books there is little else to say than that they are moral and
respectable, and extremely well written for women. The former author
has the rare and memorable heroism in a woman to allow her heroine to
reach her thirty-fourth year."

Levin Schuneking formerly Grand-Master at the Court of the Elector of
Cologne, has just published _The Peasant Prince_, a romance, called in
Germany his best work.

       *       *       *       *       *

KOHL, the traveller or writer of travels, has just published a book
upon the Rhine, which is not of the usual character of his works, as
the author perhaps feared too much the criticising contrast of Victor
Hugo's _Rhine_, to undertake a detailed and sprightly description of
the present life and aspect of the country. The new work is, in fact,
an attempt to portray, according to Ritter's principles, a famous
river region in its geological, historical and statistical relations;
and from this point of view to present it vividly to the mind. The
contents are simple and succinctly arranged, and the book is a signal
success in the popularization of the results of recent geographical
research. It has the same relation to the old river guide books, that
Ritter's philosophical geography has to the old geographies.

       *       *       *       *       *

ANASTASIUS GRUN, the famous German poet, has just edited the poetical
remains of Nicolaus Lenau, of whom Auerbach wrote a graceful
reminiscence for the German _Museum_, under the title of _Lenau's last
Summer_. The chief poem of the collection is entitled _Don Juan_,
which, although not fully finished, the German critics highly extol.
Soon after the death of Lenau, in a madhouse, last year, we gave some
account of him in the _International_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of Sir CHARLES LYELL'S Second Journey in America, which Mr. E.
Dieffenbach has rendered into German, the Germans say that its
geniality and _gentlemanliness_, its graceful and striking pictures of
the state of society, politics, and religion, and its popular
treatment of scientific subjects, make it altogether charming. A
reviewer notes what Lyell says of the universal tendency to read among
the American laboring classes, and quotes some interesting facts, as
that one house published eighty thousand copies of Eugene Sue's
Wandering Jew, in various forms and at various prices. The same house
had sold forty thousand copies of Macaulay's History of England, at
the end of the first three months, at prices varying from fifty cents
to four dollars, while other houses had sold twenty thousand copies,
and this sale of sixty thousand copies while Longman was selling
fifteen thousand at one pound twelve shillings.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Countess HAHN-HAHN, who for several years has occupied in German
literature a position corresponding to that of George Sand in France,
with whose views of life and society she strongly sympathized, and
whose "Faustina" and other works were republished here, has recently
become a Roman Catholic, as our readers will have seen, and has just
written the following letter to a Hamburg journal:

     "To correct some misapprehension, I feel it to be my duty to
     declare that the new edition of my complete works announced
     by Alexander Duncker in Berlin is no new series, but an
     edition with a new title. A new series of those writings
     will never appear, as I no longer recognize as my own the
     spirit in which they were written.

                             IDA, COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN."



       *       *       *       *       *

DAVID COPPERFIELD has been translated into German, with the
peculiarities of speech of the different classes of characters
unattempted. Old Pegotty and Ham speak "pure Castilian." It is easy to
see how the dramatic character of the book is thus lost. Indeed,
Dickens is almost the only very famous English author who is not much
translated. The Battle of Life, one of the least valuable and
characteristic of his works, is well known upon the Continent, because
it was so easy to translate. But what can a descendant of Dante, for
instance, ever know of the drolleries of Sam Weller? Fancy a
_spiritual_ Frenchman trying to catch the fun of Pickwick!

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Judd's _Richard Edney_ induces a German critic to say of him,
"This is a new English poet of the Carlyle and Emerson school, who,
inspired by the example of Jean Paul, turn the English language
topsy-turvy, and introduce a jargon that makes us satisfied with our
own romantic barbarism."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. S. C. HALL'S _Sorrows of Women_ has been also translated into
German, and is highly praised.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Vienna, most of the recent publications have more or less relation
to affairs. There is very little of pure literature. M. de Zsedenyi,
one of the most capable Hungarian political writers, has published a
work entitled _Responsibility of the Cabinet and the State of
Hungary_. The author of _The Genesis of the Revolution_, (supposed to
be Count Hartig, who was a Minister without portfolio under Prince
Metternich) has again appeared before the public with 146 closely
printed pages of _Night Thoughts_, some of which had better never have
seen the light of day. A Mr. Schwarz has published a work advocating
"protection," and in it he spares neither England nor the Austrian
Minister of Commerce. Free trade notions have indeed been attacked in
a score of books by continental thinkers lately, and free trade
opinions seem to have received, throughout Europe, a most decided
check.

       *       *       *       *       *

The late Prince VALDIMAR, of Russia, made three or four years ago a
journey to India, and besides taking part with the British army in
sundry engagements, occupied himself busily in investigating the
manners and customs of the people, the antiquities, history, and
natural productions of the country. He wrote an account of his
journey, and illustrated it with numerous drawings. His family is now
causing this to be printed and the drawings to be engraved, and in a
short time the work will be completed. Only three hundred copies are
to be struck off, and they are to be presented to royal and
illustrious personages. The getting up of the publication will cost
40,000 thalers.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. LEON DE MONBEILLARD has written a little treatise upon the _Ethics
of Spinoza_, in which--being a spiritualist who admits the dogma of
the creation and of human personality--he is said to have refuted the
great philosopher, yet without calumniating or disfiguring his
doctrines, and with a constant admiration of all that is truly
admirable in Spinoza.

The work has not yet crossed the sea, but we cannot help thinking that
the colossal views of so great a mind are not to be entirely disproved
in the delicate dimensions of an "_opuscule_," as the able little
treatise of M. Montbeillard is called by the critics.

       *       *       *       *       *

JOSEPH RUSSEGGER, imperial director of the mines at Schemnitz, has
published the results of five years' travel in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, comprising a universal scientific and artistic as well as
social and picturesque view of those countries. It is in four volumes,
very splendidly illustrated in all these departments, and is published
at a cost of forty dollars.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS, the famous rationalist, has published a
work entitled _Christian Marklein_, a picture of life and character
from the present time, giving charming if not very new views of the
Wurtemberg theological schools.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the _German Universities_, it appears from the census just taken,
with the exceptions of those of Koenigsberg, Kiel, and Rostock, the
numbers for which have not been officially returned, there were for
the last term on the registers 11,945 students. The universities may
be classed, according to the number of students at each, in this
order: Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Leipsic, Breslau, Tubingen, Goettingen,
Wurzburg, Halle, Heidelberg, Giessen, Erlangen, Friburg, Jena,
Marburg, Greifswalde. Berlin has 2,107 students, and Greifswalde only
189. The number studying the law is 3,973; of theological students,
2,539; pursuing the study of philosophy and philology, 2,357; medical
students, 2,146; and there are 549 engaged in political economy. Halle
reckons the greatest proportional number of theological students,
there being 330 out of a total of 597; Heidelberg has most students of
law; Wurzburg, most of medicine; and Jena, most students of theology.
The greatest numbers of foreign students are to be found at
Heidelberg, Gottingen, Jena, Wurzburg, and Leipsic.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Independence Belge_ gives an account of Frau Pfeiffer, a woman
who left Vienna several years ago to travel alone in the most distant
and unfrequented parts of the world. After visiting Palestine and
Egypt, Scandinavia and Iceland, she landed in Brazil, penetrated the
primitive forests, and lived among the natives; from Valparaiso she
traversed the Pacific to Otaheite, thence to China, Singapore, Ceylon,
Hindostan, to the caves of Adjunta and Ellora to Bombay, whence she
sailed up the Tigris, to Bagdad, and then entered upon the arduous
journey to Babylon, Nineveh, and into Kurdistan; and passing to the
Caucasus, she embarked for Constantinople, visiting Greece in her way
home to Germany. She is now in London, visiting the Great Exposition.

       *       *       *       *       *

FERDINAND HILLER, Superintendent of the Cologne Musical Academy, and a
contemporary and friend of Mendelssohn, whom, in the beginning, it was
supposed he would surpass as a composer, has been recently in Paris,
renewing his old experiences. He saw there most of the famous literary
and artistic notabilities, and gossips pleasantly about them in the
_feuilleton_ of a German journal. He saw Henry Heine, whose body is
almost dead, but whose mind is as vigorous as ever. Hiller says that
Heine chatted with him about God and himself, of the King of Prussia,
and of Hiller--of the Frankfort Parliament and his own songs. Heine's
features, he says, are interesting, and even more beautiful than they
were formerly. The fallen cheeks leave the noble oval of the head and
the delicately chiselled nose mournfully apparent. The eyes are
closed. He can only see with the left, by elevating the lid with his
finger. He wears a close-trimmed beard, and his hair is as brown and
luxuriant as ever. The slim white hand is ideally beautiful. It
belongs, according to the doctrine of Carns, to the class of the
purely psychological. Heine had just written a song for a German
composer; and that no poet can sing more sweetly for music, the many
of his verses which Schubert has "married to immortal" tune
sufficiently indicate. Mendelssohn also composed the most dreamily
delicate music to Heine's "Moonlight on the Ganges."

Ingres, the painter, now seventy years old, the pride and model of the
severe classicists of the French school, is a comely old man, with
rich dark hair, luminous eye, and smooth brow. He is still light and
active in movement, and a genial serenity broods over his whole
character and manner. His love of music is no less enthusiastic than
that of a lover for his mistress. The great German composers are great
gods to Ingres. The remembrance of a beautiful sonata fills his eyes
with tears. Ingres has recently finished a portrait, which is not
inferior to any thing he has ever done.

Of musical men, Hiller saw Halevy, a successful composer and genial
companion, with a gentle strain of irony in his conversation. Hector
Berlioz has not grown to be fifty without some of the snowy tracks of
time, but the volcanic genius is still alive. His conversation is like
an eruption, now a burning lava-stream of glowing inspiration, now
sulphurous mockery and scorn, and now, wide-flying, a shower of sharp
stones of criticism. He tells the most laughable stories of his London
life, and his musical difficulties and experiences there. In Paris he
is only librarian of the "Conservatoire," and director of great
concerts.

Jules Janin, the sparkling "J. J." of the _Journal des Debats_, and
the grand seigneur of the Parisian _feuilletonistes_, leads the most
loitering, pleasant life, and grows merry and fat thereby. He sits
upon a luxurious ottoman, wrapped in a gorgeous _robe de chambre_, by
the fire-place of his beautifully adorned study, and there among his
books and bijoux of taste and art, gives audience to all the world. He
has visits without end. He gives instruction and advice, hears all
that every body has to say, applauds extravagantly, as he writes, all
things in this world and some more, until it is time to go to dinner,
or to see a new vaudeville. He has beside a beautiful wife, and
suffers with the gout. Could his cup be fuller?

The poet Beranger, too, who seems to Hiller the songfullest of
song-writers, charmed him by the gravity, and sweetness, and nobility
of his character. Beranger received him quietly at Passy, near Paris,
where he resides, a hale old man of more than seventy years. His hair
is white, but his face has the freshness of blooming health. In his
features there is a remarkable blending of geniality and intelligent
sharpness. They are largely moulded, and their general expression is
as generous, fine, and graceful as his verses. The perfect simplicity
of his household is very striking. The only hints of any luxury are
some medallion portraits, among which Hiller observed Napoleon and
Lamartine. Yet this severity is so evidently the result of taste and
not of poverty, that it has no unpleasant effect. The beauty and
richness of his conversation filled his visitor with the greatest
regret that he could not record it all. His first great remembrance is
the destruction of the Bastille. His essay in literature was by the
songs which circulated universally in manuscript before they were
printed. But his literary ambition was toward works of great scope and
extent, and it was not until after thirty years of age that he felt
distinctly what he could do best. Of his songs he said, "I present to
myself a song, as a great composition--I sketch a complete plan,
beginning, middle, and end, and make the refrain the quintessence of
the whole."

While Beranger was finding a letter, he opened a drawer, in which
Hiller saw scraps of song and sketches of poems, which he longed to
seize, as a wistful boy would grab at the money piles in a banker's
window. The following is the letter in which Beranger speaks of the
Marseillaise:

     "I thank you, Madame, for the pleasant letter which you
     addressed to me. It has revealed to me a noble heart, and
     although I do not believe such hearts as rare as many say,
     it is always a fair fortune to meet them.

     "What you say of the Marseillaise is entirely just. But
     remember, Madame, that it is the people itself, which always
     selects its songs, words, and melodies, uninfluenced by any
     one in the world. Once made, this choice endures, with
     authority even among the later generations, whose experience
     would not have made it.

     "I have often enough thought about a new song of the kind,
     but I am too old now, and the circumstances of the time have
     robbed my voice of power. You, Madame, saw the true thought
     of the song which should be now sung, and I lament that you
     find the poetical harness not flexible enough for it.

     "As to your remarks upon my new songs, I must say that I
     trouble myself as little about the destiny of my younger
     daughters as about that of their elder sisters. And I am
     surprised that you speak to me of a Lierman, who should have
     known me. Excuse, Madame, my delay in acknowledging and
     thanking you for your letter, and believe me your devoted,

                                        BERANGER."



       *       *       *       *       *

A recent Italian translation of the _Diplomats and Diplomacy of
Italy_, which first appeared in Professor Von Raumer's _Pocket Book_
for 1841, contains three hitherto unprinted MSS. from the Venetian
archives. They are curious and interesting, as indicating the strict
surveillance which the republic maintained, by means of its
ambassadors, over the whole world of the period.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. WILLIS'S _Hurry-Graphs_ have a French rival in the _Pensees d'un
Emballeur_, by M. Commerson, chief editor of the _Tintamarre_ (Paris
journal.) They are called fantastic, original and forcible.

       *       *       *       *       *

A work to create some surprise, coming from Spain, is the _Persecution
of the Spanish Protestants by Philip the Second_, by Don ADOLPHO DE
CASTRO. The name of Castro is honorably distinguished in Spanish
literature. The present author is a grandson, we believe, of Rodriguez
de Castro, who wrote the BIBLIOTECA ESPANOLA. He displays abilities
and a temper suitable for the task he attempted; he has joined to
careful and intelligent research a bravery of characterization which
quite relieves his work from the censures which belong to most Spanish
compositions of its class. That he could print in Madrid a work in
which statecraft and ecclesiastical persecutions are so frankly dealt
with, is a fact of more significance than a dozen such revolutions as
have vexed the slumbers of other states. In Spain, above all
countries, the spread of a taste for historical studies must be
regarded as pregnant with important consequences. It shows that the
barriers of ignorance and self-conceit, which have so long isolated
that country from the rest of Europe, are beginning to be effectually
broken down. To the common Protestant reader, indeed, De Castro's work
will appear studiously moderate, or perhaps timid. But it should be
remembered that it was written for a public which is four or five
centuries behind our own, in all that constitutes true liberty and
enlightenment; and what would appear most gratuitous cowardice here
may easily enough be remarkable courage in Spain. To speak in favor of
Protestantism at all, still more to become the biographer of the
Protestant martyrs, is an undertaking which demands from a Spaniard,
even of the present day, no ordinary amount of resolution. And we
should be by no means surprised to hear that De Castro has been, in
one way or another, made to pay some penalty of his rash enterprise.
That it is both a dangerous and an unpopular one is manifest from the
caution with which historical as well as religious topics are treated.
Compiling what we cannot better characterize than as a Spanish
supplement to Fox's "Book of Martyrs," the author nowhere professes
himself a Protestant. And the slow and gradual way in which he unmasks
the character of Philip II., shows how haughty and sensitive are the
public whom he has undertaken to disabuse of a portion of the
inveterate pride and prejudice which they nourish on all subjects
affecting their church or their country. On the whole, however, though
the Protestant reader will occasionally desiderate a little more
warmth and indignation when chronicling such atrocities, we should say
that the book rather gains than loses by this studied moderation both
in tone and opinions. It certainly gains in dignity and
impressiveness; and it is vastly better adapted to make its way with
the author's countrymen, than if he had betrayed at the outset a
sectarian bias, which would have revolted them, before they had time
to make acquaintance with the sad and sanguinary events of which he is
the historian. The ground gone over is necessarily much the same as in
M'Crie's _History of the Reformation in Spain_, a work which possibly
suggested the undertaking, and to which De Castro gives due credit for
learning and ability. His advantage over the Scottish historian
consists in his command of a variety of documents in print and in
manuscript, to which access could be had only in Spain, especially the
publications of the Spanish reformers themselves, which are
exceedingly rare in consequence of the pains taken to destroy them by
the Inquisition. The most remarkable result obtained by De Castro's
researches, and the feature in his work for which he claims the
greatest credit is the new light he has thrown on the history of Don
Carlos. But unfortunately the question as to the Protestantism of that
prince remains in much the same obscurity as before. His having been
tainted by heretical opinions would aid certainly in accounting for
his father's malignity towards him; but otherwise there seems to be no
proof of the fact; and our own opinion is, that his tolerant views as
to the treatment of the Flemish provinces were misconstrued into bias
towards Protestant doctrines. The inference relied on by De Castro and
others, that if he had remained Catholic he must have shared his
father's extravagant bigotry, is lame. Don Carlos did no more than
follow the usual course of heirs apparent when he disapproved of his
father's tyranny; and his sympathies with Aragon are not less marked
than those with Flanders.

       *       *       *       *       *

LONGWORTH, who distinguished himself in the Hungarian troubles, is
writing a history of them. There is promise of so many books upon the
subject that we shall be able to find out nothing about it. By the
way, we wonder that no one has yet chosen for a motto to place upon
his title-page, this sentence, which Lord Bolingbroke wrote more than
a hundred years ago:

     "_I mean to speak of the troubles in Hungary. Whatever they
     become in their progress, they were caused originally by the
     usurpations and persecutions of the emperor. And when the
     Hungarians were called rebels first, they were called so for
     no other reason than this, that they would not be slaves_."

It is from his _Letters on History_, and occurs where he has been
speaking of the hostility of foreign powers to Austria.

       *       *       *       *       *

A PENNY MAGAZINE, in the Bengalese language, is to be established in
Calcutta, under the editorship of Baboo Rajendralal Mittra, the
librarian of the Asiatic Society. It is to be illustrated by
electrotypes executed in England, of woodcuts which have already
appeared in the _Penny Magazine_, the _Saturday Magazine_, and the
_Illustrated News_.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NATIVE of India has translated the tragedy of _Othello_ into
Bengalee Othello's cognomen in the Oriental version is Moor Bahadoor
(General Moor).

       *       *       *       *       *

IN ITALY, at Turin and Florence, a great number of valuable works have
been issued, illustrative of the recent revolutions. They do not claim
to be histories, for history is impossible, while events are
contemporary and cannot be contemplated from a universal point of
principle and analysis. But these volumes are what the French with
their happy facility would call studies for history. They are the
material from which the great historic artists must compose their
pictures--they are the diary of the movement--they follow all the
changes of the time, hopeful or despondent, with the fidelity and
closeness of an Indian upon the trail. We have seen several of these
publications, and hope ere many months to see a treatise upon the
republican movement in Europe from a pen well able to sketch it, and
which is fed by ink which is never for a moment red.

The largest and most important of these works is that of M. Gualterio,
just published in Florence, which comprises several letters of the
Austrian lackey, Francis IV., Duke of Modenas, and throws light upon
many of the darkest passages of the dark Austria-Italico policy. Among
other letters, also, one of the most remarkable is that of the
Cardinal Gonsalvi, well known as the able and humane Prime Minister of
Pius VII., and to whose memory there is now upon the walls of St.
Peter's a monument by Thorwaldsen, of which a statue of the Cardinal
is part. This letter speaks of the miserable conduct of the political
trials, and "justice," he says, "charity, the most ordinary decency
demands that all humanity shall not be so trampled under foot. What
will the English and French journals say--not the Austrian, when they
learn of this massacre of the innocents." This was thirty years ago.
But at this moment, were there an able and humane minister at the
Vatican, how truly might he repeat Gonsalvi's words!

It is in works like these, and in the journals and pamphlets published
during the intensity of the struggle, that the still-surviving Italian
genius, which it has been so long the northern policy to smother and
repress, betrayed itself. Nor among these works, as striking another
key, ought we to omit the Souvenirs of the War of Lombardy by M. de
Talleyrand-Perigord. Duke of Dino--and the history of the Revolution
of Rome by Alphonse Balleydier. The Souvenirs are devoted to the glory
of the unhappy King Charles Albert, the dupe of his own vanity and the
victim of his own weakness.

Upon the pages of M. le Duc de Dino, however, he blazes very
brilliantly as a martyr--martyr of a cause hopeless even in the first
flush of success--martyr of an army without enthusiasm, of a
liberalism without freedom or heroism. The English royalists, the
reader will remember, were fond of the same title for the unhappy
Charles I.

In M. Balleydier's history of the Roman revolution, Rossi is the
central figure, in whose fate there was something extremely heroic,
because he had received information, just as he quitted the Pope's
palace to go to the assembly, from a priest who had heard it in
confidence, that he was to be attacked, and he must have known the
Italian, and especially the Roman character, sufficiently to have felt
assured of his fate. After hearing the priest, Rossi said to him
calmly: "I thank you, Monseigneur, the cause of the Pope is the cause
of God," and stepping into his carriage drove to the palace of the
Cancelleria, at whose door he fell dead, by a stroke that wounded much
more mortally the cause which condemned him, than the cause he
espoused.

       *       *       *       *       *

With all our waste of money, and continual boasts of encouraging
individual merit, we have not yet a single pension in this country
except to homicides. "They manage these things better in France." A
return just published in the official _Moniteur_, shows that one
department of the government, that of Public Instruction, distributes
the following pensions to literary persons: five of from $400 to $480
a year; nine of $300 to $360; twenty-nine of $200 to $240; thirty-four
of $120 to $180; and fifteen of $40 to $100. To the widows and
families of deceased authors, two of $400 to $450; six of $300 to
$360; seventeen of $200 to $240; twenty-five of $120 to $180; and
thirty-one of $40 to $100. In addition to this, it may be mentioned,
that the same department distributes a large sum annually, under the
title of "Encouragements," to authors in temporary distress, or
engaged in works of literary importance and but small pecuniary
profit. It also awards several thousands to learned societies, for
literary and scientific missions, purchases of books, &c. The
department of the Interior gives $2,500 a year in subscriptions to
different works, and nearly $30,000 for "indemnities and assistance to
authors." The other departments of the government also employ
considerable sums in purchasing books, and in otherwise encouraging
literary men. It is said indeed to be no unusual thing for an author,
laboring under temporary inconvenience, to apply for a few hundred,
or, in some cases, thousand francs, and they are almost always
awarded. No shame whatever is attached to the application, and no very
extraordinary credit to the gift. Surely, France must be a Paradise
for authors.

       *       *       *       *       *

A BOOKSELLER in Paris announces: "Reflections upon my conversations
with the Duke de la Vauguyon, by Louis-Augustus Dauphin, (Louis XVI.,)
accompanied by a fac simile of the MS., and with an introduction by M.
FALLOUX, formerly Minister of Public Instruction." Falloux is a
churchman of the stamp of Montalembert. We are apt to doubt the
genuineness of these luckily discovered MSS. of eminent persons. We
have no more faith in this case than we had in that of the Napoleon
novels, mentioned in the last _International_.

       *       *       *       *       *

The late M. De BALZAC, who, besides being one of the cleverest writers
of the age, was a brilliant man of society, and a very notorious
_roue_, left, it appears, voluminous memoirs, to be printed without
erasure or addition, and his friends are much alarmed by the prospect
of their appearance. It is said that his custom of extorting letters
from his friends upon any subject at issue, under pretence of
possessing an imperfect memory, and his method of classing them, will
render his memoirs one of the completest scandalous _tableaux_ of the
nineteenth century that could ever be presented to the contemplation
of another age. Opposition to the publication has already been
offered, but without success, and the princess-widow is busily engaged
with the preparations for printing, intending to have the memoirs
before the world early in June. They extend minutely over more than
twenty years.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. E. QUINET, who was long associated with Michelet, in the College of
France, and who is known as a writer by his _Alemagne et Italie,
Ultramontanisme, Vacances en Espagne_, etc. has published in Paris
_L'Enseignement du Peuple_. "On the 24th day of February, 1848," he
says, "a social miracle places in the hands of France the control of
its destiny. France, openly consulted, replies by taking up a position
in the scale of nations between Portugal and Naples. There must be a
cause of this voluntary servitude; the object of these pages is to
discover this cause, and, if possible, to protect futurity against the
effects of its operation." This is the problem he proposes to solve,
and he concludes that the important secret is in the fact, that the
"national religion is in direct contradiction with the national
revolution." "Chained by the circumstance of its religion to the
middle ages, France believes that it can march onward to the end of a
career opened to it solely because of its protest against every great
principle of government which those ages held sacred." He has worked
ten years, he tells us, to demonstrate two things: The first, that
catholic states are all perishing; the second, that no political
liberty can be realized in those states. "I have shown," he continues,
"Italy the slave of all Europe, Spain a slave within, Portugal a slave
within and without, Ireland a slave to England, Poland a slave to
Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, slaves of Austria--Austria herself, the
mother of all slavery, a slave to Russia. Looking for similar proofs
out of Europe, I have shown in America, on the one hand, the
increasing greatness of the heretical United States; on the other
hand, the slavery of the catholic democracies and monarchies of the
south: _in the former a_ WASHINGTON, _in the second a_ ROSAS." M.
Quinet considers that the only remedy applicable to an evil of this
magnitude is the utter separation of church and state. Leave but the
slightest connection between the two, and the former will inevitably
overpower the latter. The one is a compact, organized, single-minded
body; the other is scattered, loosely put together, swayed to and fro
by every change in the political atmosphere, and can offer no
resistance that is sufficient to oppose the steady, unremittent
attacks of its enemy. The two, therefore, must not be placed in
collision. The very indifference manifested towards the national
religion by the great bulk of the French people is the cause why so
much danger is to be apprehended from the efforts of the church.
Because a religion is dead, says M. Quinet, there is the danger. A
living religion, like that of the puritans, may certainly mould the
government into a despotic form, but it communicates to it, at least,
a portion of its own power and energy, whilst a dead religion
infallibly occasions death to the state and to the people with which
it is politically and organically united. He argues the whole subject
with eloquent force, and with not a little of the earnestness which
reminds the reader of his personal controversies with the Roman
Catholic Church.

       *       *       *       *       *

A history of _Marie Stuart_, by I. M. Dargaud, has just been published
in Paris, and for its brilliancy, completeness, clearness, and
impartiality, attracts much attention. Queen Mary of Scotland was one
of the famously beautiful women whose history is romance. She must be
named with the heroines of history and the figures of poetry, with
Helen, and Aspasia, and Cleopatra. Certainly, we trace no more
sparkling and sorrowful career than hers upon the confused page of
history, and our admiration, condemnation, surprise, sorrow and
delight, fall, summed in a tear, upon her grave. In this work it
appears that she was undoubtedly privy to the death of Darnley. During
his assassination, she was dancing at Holyrood. The fearful
fascination of a brigand like Bothwell, for so proud and passionate a
nature as Mary's, is well explained by M. Dargaud. He is just, also,
to her own tragedy, the long and bitter suffering, the betrayal of
friends; the final despair, and the laying aside two crowns to mount
the scaffold. She died nobly, and as most of the illustrious victims
of history have died; as if nature, unwilling that they should live,
would yet compassionately show the world in their ending, that heroism
and nobility were not altogether unknown to them.

_Apropos_ of this history of Queen Mary, Lamartine has written a
letter to Beranger, which praises the work exceedingly, but much more
glorifies himself. The letter is a perfect specimen of that vanity,
wherein only Lamartine is sublime: "Ah! if you or I had had such a
heroine at twenty years, what epic poems and what songs would have
been the result!"

       *       *       *       *       *

THE COUNT MONTALEMBERT, the fervid champion of Catholicism in the
French chamber, has just published a work, entitled _The higher and
lower Radicalism: in its enmity to Religion, Right, Freedom and
Justice, in France, Switzerland and Italy_.

       *       *       *       *       *

Although M. GUIZOT appears to be as busily engaged as ever in
politics, the advertisements of the booksellers would induce a belief
that his whole attention is given to literary studies. He has just
published _Etudes Biographiques sur la Revolution de l'Angleterre_,
which, with his sketch of General Monk, he says, "form a sort of
gallery of portraits of the English Revolution, in which personages of
the most different characters appear together--chiefs or champions of
sects or parties, parliamentarians, cavaliers, republicans, levellers,
who, either at the end of the political conflicts in which they were
engaged, or when in retirement towards the close of their lives,
resolved to describe themselves, their own times, and the part they
played therein. In the drawing together of such men," he adds, "and in
the mixture of truth and vanity which characterize such works, there
is, if I do not deceive myself, sufficient to interest persons of
serious and curious minds, especially among us and in these times; for
in spite of the profound diversity of manners, contemporary
comparisons and applications will present themselves at every step,
whatever may be the pains taken not to seek them." The studies here
collected we suppose are not new; they are doubtless the articles
which the author contributed to the _Biographie Universelle_ and other
works before he became a minister--perhaps, as in the cases of his
"Monk" and "Washington," with scarcely a word of alteration. The work
is, however, interesting. The period of English history to which it
refers has been profoundly studied by Guizot, and it would probably be
impossible to select a mode of treating it that would admit of more
effective or attractive delineation. The life of Ludlow appears as the
first of the series.

       *       *       *       *       *

French Literature tends in a remarkable degree towards monarchical
institutions. Guizot and his associates publicly advocate the
Restoration. M. Cousin has published a new argument against
Republicanism, and M. Romieu, whose curious book, which men doubted
whether to receive as a jest or an earnest argument, _The Era of the
Caesars_--in which he declared his belief that the true and only law
for France is _force_--is before the public again, in a volume
entitled _Le Spectre Rouge de 1852_. He predicts the subversion of all
order, and such terrible scenes as have never been witnessed even in
France, unless some one bold, resolute, scorning all "constitutional"
figments, and relying solely on his soldiers--some one who shall say
_L'etat c'est moi!_ shall save France. A Cromwell, a Francia, or in
default of such Louis Napoleon--any one who will constitute himself an
autocrat, will become the saviour of France!

       *       *       *       *       *

The COUNT DE JARNAC, formerly secretary and _charge d'affaires_ of the
French embassy in London, has published a novel which is well spoken
of, entitled the _Dernier d'Egmont_.

       *       *       *       *       *

A French traveller in upper Egypt has collected for the Parisian
Ethnological Museum copies of many curious inscriptions upon the walls
of the great temple of Philae. Among others, there is the modern one of
Dessaix, which the Parisians think "reflects the grandiose simplicity
of the Republic." "The sixth year of the Republic, the thirteenth
Messidor, a French army commanded by Bonaparte descended upon
Alexandria; twenty days after, the army having routed the Mamelukes at
the Pyramids, Dessaix, commanding the first division, pursued them
beyond the Cataracts, where he arrived the thirteenth Ventose of the
year seven, with Brigadier-Generals Davoust, Friant, and Belliard.
Donzelot, chief of the staff, La Tournerie, commanding the artillery,
Eppler, Chief of the twenty-first Light Infantry. The thirteenth
Ventose, year seven of the Republic, third March, year of J.C., 1799.
Engraved by Casteix." The last date, however, strikes us as a base
compromise to the _temporal_ prejudices of the world, on the part of
the author of this "simple and grandiose" inscription.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. de Saint Beauve has published in Paris some hitherto inedited MSS.
of MIRABEAU, consisting of _Dialogues_ between the great orator and
the celebrated Sophie (Madame de Monnier), written when Mirabeau was
confined in the fortress of Vincennes, principally, it seems, from the
pleasure he had in reflecting on the object of his passion. He gives
an account of their first meeting, the growth of their love, and their
subsequent adventures, in the language, no doubt, as well as he could
recollect, that had passed between them, in conversation or in
letters. There is not much that is absolutely new in these papers, or
that throws any peculiar light on Mirabeau's character, but nothing
could have been written by him which is without a certain interest,
especially upon the subject of these _Dialogues_. Circulating-library
people had always a morbid desire to see illustrious personages while
under the influence of the tender passion.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Progression Constante de la Democratie pendant soixante ans_, is the
title of a new Parisian brochure well noticed. Of the same character
is the _Le Mont-Saint-Michel_, by Martin Bernard, a serial publication
devoted to the details of the sufferings of Democratic martyrs. The
author is now in exile, having shown himself too republican for the
present Republic.

       *       *       *       *       *

Victor Hugo's paper, _L'Evenement_, says of Louis Philippe's Gallery
at the Palais Royal, which the heirs now wish to sell, that it has two
paintings of Gericault's, the Chasseur and the Cuirassier, and that
they symbolize the two phases of the Empire, victorious France and the
Invasion. He hopes, therefore, that they will not be permitted to go
out of France.

       *       *       *       *       *

William Howitt is writing a life of George Fox.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Ticknor's _History of Spanish Literature_ is reviewed in _La Revue
des Deux Mondes_ by PROSPER MERIMEE, of whose recent travels in the
United States we have had occasion to speak once or twice in _The
International_. M. Merimee is the author of a _Life of Peter the
Cruel_, of which a translation has been published within a few months
by Bentley in London, and he professes to be thoroughly acquainted
with Spanish literature, from a loving study of it while residing in
Spain. Perhaps he had some thought of writing its history himself; he
certainly seems to bestow unwillingly the praises he is compelled to
give Mr. Ticknor, whose extraordinary merits he however distinctly
admits. "The writer of this History," he says, "has gone into immense
researches; he has applied himself deeply and conscientiously to the
Castilian language and the Spanish authors: he has read, he has
examined, every thing that the English, French, and Germans, had
published on this subject. He possessed an advantage over the critics
of old Europe--that of being able to treat literary questions without
mixing up with them recollections of national rivalries." He concludes
his article by saying, "This work is an inestimable repertory; it must
be eminently useful in a library. It comprises very good biographical
notices of the Spanish authors, and numerous abstracts which obviate
the necessity of reference to the original authorities. The
translations, which are copious, are executed with surpassing taste,
to afford an idea of the style of the Spanish poets. Thanks to the
flexibility of the English language, and the ability or command of the
author in using it, the translations are of signal fidelity and
elegance. The rhythm, the flow, the idiomatic grace and _curiosa
felicitas_, are rendered in the most exact and the happiest manner."

       *       *       *       *       *

By a letter in the London _Times_, signed ERNESTO SUSANNI, it appears
that M. LIBRI may be a very much wronged person. The readers of the
_International_ will remember his trial, a few months ago, and his
condemnation to ten years' imprisonment (in default of judgment), and
deprivation of the various high offices he held, for having, as was
alleged, stolen from the Mazarine Library, besides others, the
following volumes: _Petrarca, gli Triomphi_, 1475: Bologna, in folio;
_Pamphyli poetae lepidissimi Epigrammatum libri quatuor; Faccio degli
Uberti, opera chiamata Ditta Munde Venezia_, 1501, quarto; _Phalaris
Epistole, traducte del Latino da Bartol: Fontio_, 1471, quarto;
_Dante, Convivio_: Florence, 1490, quarto; &c. M. Susanni alleges that
the learned bibliographer, M. Silvestre, has discovered in the
Mazarine Library that, contrary to the very circumstantial affirmation
of the deed of accusation, the above-mentioned books _are still in
their places on the shelves of that library_, from which they have
never been absent, and where any one may go and see them, and verify
the fact for himself. The persons employed to draw up the charges
against M. Libri never appeared to understand that two different
editions of a work were totally different things, and they have
accused M. Libri of having stolen a work from a public library, simply
because M. Libri possessed an edition of that work, though different
from the one the library had lost, or, better still, which it had
never lost at all. Considering all the circumstances, and the
attention which was attracted to the case throughout the learned
world, this is very curious: it will form one of the most remarkable
of the _causes celebres_.

       *       *       *       *       *

The new Paris review, _La Politique Nouvelle_, starts bravely its
career as a rival of _La Revue des Deux Mondes_. The leading article,
"La Constitution, c'est l'order," is by M. Marie, who was one of the
chiefs of the Provisional Government, and Henri Martin, Gustave
Cazavan, and Paul Rochery, are among the contributors; but the best
attraction of the work to those who do not care for its politics, is
the beginning of a charming novel by Madame Charles Reybaud, the
authoress of Tales of the Old Convents of Paris.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lamartine's reputation declines with every new attempt of his at
money-making. There was never a man capable of doing well a half of
what he advertises. He is writing a romance on the destruction of the
Janizaries, for the _Pays_, another romance for the _Siecle_, and
occasionally gives _feuilletons_ to other journals; he is re-editing a
complete edition of his own works, writing a history of the
Restoration, and a history of Turkey, and has lately begun to edit a
daily paper. He also continues the monthly pamphlet, of between thirty
and forty pages, the _Conseiller du Peuple_, on political matters, and
produces once a month a periodical, _Les Foyers du Peuple_, in which
he gives an account of his travels, with tales and verses.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Paris correspondent of the London _Literary Gazette_ states, that
an Assyrian, named FURIS SCHYCYAC, is at present attracting some
attention in the literary circles. He had just arrived from London,
where, it appears, he translated the Bible into Arabic, for one of the
religious associations. He has accompanied his _debut_ in
Parisian society with a _mudh_, or poem, to Paris, in which he almost
out-Orientals the Orientals in his exaggerated compliments and
gorgeous imagery. Paris, he declares, amongst other things, is the
"terrestrial paradise," the "_sejour_ of houris," and "Eden;" whilst
the people are, _par excellence_, "the strong, the generous, the
brave, the sincere-hearted, with no faults to diminish their virtues."
This master-stroke has opened the Parisian circles to the cunning
Assyrian.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. Leroux has published in Paris a volume of Reminiscences of Travel
and Residence in the United States, with observations on the
Administration of Justice in this country.

       *       *       *       *       *

The last _Edinburgh Review_ has an article on COUSIN, in which a
general survey is taken of his life and of his works, of which he has
just completed the publication of a new edition. The _London Leader_
says that the critic ingeniously represents all Cousin's plagiarisms
as the consequences of the progressive and _assimilative_ intellect of
the eclectic chief; that it would be easy with the same facts to tell
a very different story; and correct the reviewer's "mistake," where he
talks of Cousin as the translator of Plato. Cousin's name is on the
title-page; but not one dialogue, the _Leader_ avers, did he
translate; it even doubts his ability to translate one. What he did
was to take old translations by De Grow and others, here and there
polishing the style; and the dialogues that were untranslated he gave
to certain clever young men in want of employment and glad of his
patronage. He touched up their style and wrote the Preface to each
Dialogue, for which the work bears his name! _This_ explains the
puzzling fact that the translator of Plato should so completely
misunderstand the purpose of the dialogue he is prefacing. Gigantic
indeed would be the labors of Cousin--if he performed them himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Walter Savage Landor is now seventy-six years of age. He writes no
more great works, but he is hardly less industrious than a
penny-a-liner in writing upon all sorts of subjects for the journals.
We find his communications almost every week in _The Examiner_, _The
News_, _The Leader_, _Leigh Hunt's Journal_, and other periodicals.
Sometimes he rises to his earlier eloquence, and we hear the voice
that was loudest and sweetest in the "Imaginary Conversations;" but
for the most part his newspaper pieces are feeble and splenetic,
unworthy of him. One of his latest composures has relation to Lord
Lyndhurst, by whose speech against the revolutionary aliens in England
had been excited the ire of the old poet. "In your paper of this day,
April 12," he writes to the editor of _The Examiner_, "I find repeated
an expression of Lord Lyndhurst's, which I am certain will be
offensive to many of your readers. General Klapka, a man illustrious
for his military knowledge, and for his application of it to the
defence of his country and her laws, is contemptuously called _one_
Klapka. The most obscure and the most despicable (and those only) are
thus designated. Surely to have been called by the acclamations of a
whole people to defend the most important of its fortresses is quite
as exalted a distinction as to be appointed a Lord Chamberlain or a
Lord Chancellor by the favor of one minister, and liable to be
dismissed the next morning by another. With all proper respect for the
cleverness of Lord Lyndhurst, I must entreat your assistance in
discovering one sentence he ever wrote, or spoke, denoting the man of
lofty genius or capacious mind. Memorable things he certainly has
said--such as calling by the name of aliens a third part of our
fellow-subjects in these islands, and by the prefix of a _certain_ to
the name of Klapka. It is strange that sound law should not always be
sound sense; strange that the great seal of equity should make so
faint and indistinct an impression. Klapka will be commemorated and
renowned in history as one beloved by the people, venerated by the
nobility; whose voice was listened to attentively by the magistrate,
enthusiastically by the soldier. The fame of Lord Lyndhurst is
ephemeral, confined to the Court of Chancery and the House of Peers;
dozens have shared it in each, and have gone to dinner and oblivion.
Those, and those alone, are great men whose works or words are
destined to be the heirlooms of many generations. God places them
where time passes them without erasing their footsteps. Kings can
never make them. They, if minded so, could more easily make kings.
England hath installed one Chancellor who might have been consummately
great, had there only been in his composition the two simple elements
of generosity and honesty. Bacon did not hate freedom, or the friends
of freedom; and, although he cautiously kept clear of so dangerous a
vicinity, he never came voluntarily forth, invoking the vindictive
spirit of a dead law to eliminate them in the hour of adversity from
their sanctuary."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Rev. Moses Margoliouth, who was once a Jew, and who last year
published a narrative of a journey to Palestine, under the title of "A
Visit to the Land of My Fathers," has just given to the world, in
three octavos, a _History of the Jews in Great Britain_. The book is
insufferably tame and feeble; the author is of the class called in
England "religious flunkies:" a mastiff to the poor and a spaniel to
the proud. His first book was disgusting for its feebleness and
servility, and this is scarcely better, notwithstanding the richness
of its materials and the curious interest of its subject. A good
History of the Jews in England will be a work worth reading.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Ecclesiastical History Society_ have published in London
_Strype's Memorials of Cranmer_, _Heylyn's History of the
Reformation_, and _Field's Treatise of the Church_. Strype and Heylyn
are more familiar than Field, whose work is a sort of supplement to
Hooker's _Polity_. Field resembled his illustrious master and friend
in judgment, temper, and learning. In his own day his reputation was
great. James I. regretted, when he heard of his death, that he had not
done more for him; Hall, in reference to his own deanery of Worcester,
which had been sought for Field, speaks of that "better-deserving
divine," who "was well satisfied with greater hopes;" and Fuller, with
his accustomed humor of thoughtfulness, bestows his salutation on
"that learned divine whose memory smelleth like a _field_ that the
Lord hath blessed."

       *       *       *       *       *

THE LIFE OF WORDSWORTH, by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, has appeared in
London, and with some additions by Professor Henry Reed, of
Philadelphia, will soon be issued by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of
Boston. From what the critics write of it we suspect it is a poor
affair. The _Leader_ says that, "all things considered, it is perhaps
the worst biographical attempt" it "ever waded through." The
_Examiner_ and other leading papers admit its dulness as a biography,
and its worthlessness in criticism, but claim for it a certain value
as a collection of facts respecting the histories of Wordsworth's
different poems. The work indeed professes to be no more than a
biographical commentary on the poet's writings. It does not even
affect to be critical, or to offer any labored exposition of the
principles on which Wordsworth's poems were composed. The author
describes his illustrious relative as having had no desire that any
such disquisition should be written. "He wished that his poems should
stand by themselves, and plead their own cause before the tribunal of
posterity." Strictly, then, the volumes are so exclusively subordinate
and ministerial to the poetry they illustrate, that apart from the
latter they possess hardly any interest. By enthusiasts for the poems
they will be eagerly read, but to any other class of readers we cannot
see that they present attraction. Dr. Wordsworth's part in them,
though small, is not particularly well done; and the poet's part
almost exclusively consists of personal memoranda connected with his
poems dictated in later life, and seldom by any chance refers to any
thing but himself.

Nevertheless there are in the volumes many delightful and
characteristic details, much genuine and beautiful criticism (chiefly
in the poet's letters), and occasional passages of fine sentiment and
pure philosophy. Here is Wordsworth's own description of one of his
latest visits to London, and of his appearance at court, in a letter
to an American correspondent:

"My absence from home lately was not of more than three weeks. I took
the journey to London solely to pay my respects to the Queen, upon my
appointment to the laureateship upon the decease of my friend Mr.
Southey. The weather was very cold, and I caught an inflammation in
one of my eyes, which rendered my stay in the south very
uncomfortable. I nevertheless did, in respect to the object of my
journey, all that was required. The reception given me by the Queen at
her ball was most gracious. Mrs. Everett, the wife of your minister,
among many others, was a witness to it, without knowing who I was. It
moved her to the shedding of tears. This effect was in part produced,
I suppose, by American habits of feeling, as pertaining to a
republican government. To see a gray-haired man of seventy-five years
of age, kneeling down in a large assembly to kiss the hand of a young
woman, is a sight for which institutions essentially democratic do not
prepare a spectator of either sex, and must naturally place the
opinions upon which a republic is founded, and the sentiments which
support it, in strong contrast with a government based and upheld as
ours is. I am not, therefore, surprised that Mrs. Everett was moved,
as she herself described to persons of my acquaintance, among others
to Mr. Rogers the poet. By the by, of this gentleman, now I believe in
his eighty-third year, I saw more than of any other person except my
host, Mr. Moxon, while I was in London. He is singularly fresh and
strong for his years, and his mental faculties (with the exception of
his memory a little) not at all impaired. It is remarkable that he and
the Rev. W. Bowles were both distinguished as poets when I was a
schoolboy, and they have survived almost all their eminent
contemporaries, several of whom came into notice long after them.
Since they became known, Burns, Cowper, Mason the author of
'Caractacus' and friend of Gray, have died. Thomas Warton, Laureate,
then Byron, Shelley, Keats, and a good deal later Scott, Coleridge,
Crabbe, Southey, Lamb, the Ettrick Shepherd, Cary the translator of
Dante, Crowe the author of 'Lewesdon Hill,' and others of more or less
distinction, have disappeared. And now of English poets advanced in
life, I cannot recall any but James Montgomery, Thomas Moore, and
myself, who are living, except the octogenarian with whom I began. I
saw Tennyson, when I was in London, several times. He is decidedly the
first of our living poets, and I hope will live to give the world
still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed in
the strongest terms his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far
from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy
with what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the
spirituality with which I have endeavored to invest the material
universe, and the moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit
its most ordinary appearances."

Of the mention of Alfred Tennyson in the foregoing extract the
_Examiner_ remarks, that it is perhaps the greatest stretch of
appreciation or acknowledgment in regard to any living or contemporary
poet in Wordsworth. His mention of Southey's verses is always reserved
and dry. He takes no pains to conceal his poor opinion of Scott's. His
allusions to Rogers are respectful, but cold. His objection to Byron
may be forgiven. There is less reason for his appearing quite to lose
his ordinarily calm temper when Goethe is even named, or for his
extending this unreasoning dislike to Goethe's great English
expositor, Carlyle. Yet we must not omit, on the other hand, what he
says of Shelley. Shelley, he admits (much to our surprise), to have
been "one of the best artists of us all; I mean in workmanship of
style."

       *       *       *       *       *

The London _Standard of Freedom_ remarks of the article on "Some
American Poets" in the last number of _Blackwood_, that "it assumes
more ignorance in England as to American poetry than actually exists."
Our readers will readily believe this when advised that the critic
regards _Longfellow_ as a greater poet than Bryant! whom he classes
with Mrs. Hemans.

       *       *       *       *       *

M. COMTE has quitted metaphysics to reform the calendar, but probably
will not succeed better than those who attempted the same thing during
the first French revolution. We find a synopsis of his scheme in the
_Leader_. He proposes that each month shall be consecrated to one of
the great names that represent the intellectual and social progress of
humanity. He specializes the names of Moses, Homer, Aristotle,
Archimedes, Caesar, St. Paul, Charlemagne, Dante, Descartes, Guttenberg
(whom he probably thinks had something to do with the invention of
printing), Columbus and Frederic the Great, as most appropriate for
the designation of the twelve months; recommending, however,
particular fetes for minor heroes in the months under which they may
best be grouped--for Augustin, Hildebrand, Bernard, and Bossuet, in
St. Paul's month; Alfred and St. Louis, in Charlemagne's month;
Richelieu and Cromwell in the month of Frederic the Great, and so on.
Supplying a defect of Catholicism in this respect, he proposes what he
calls "fetes of reprobation" for the greatest scoundrels of
history--for such retrogressive men as Julian the Apostate, Philip II.
of Spain, and Bonaparte, (we don't agree to the classification, unless
he means President Louis Napoleon, who indeed is not a _great_
scoundrel, though disposed to be sufficiently retrogressive.)
According to this new calendar, a follower of Comte, writing a letter
in March, would have to date it as written on such or such a day of
_Aristotle_. We fear the proposal won't do even in France, but this,
at least, may be said for it, that it is as good as the Puseyite
practice of dating by saints' days, besides being novel, and Parisian,
and scientific. Sydney Smith used, in jest of the Puseyite practice,
to date his letters "_Washing Day--Eve of Ironing Day_;" Comte's plan
is better than that of the Puseyites--almost as good as Peter
Plimley's.

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the many books lately printed in England upon the ecclesiastical
controversies, is one entitled _Remonstrance against Romish
Corruptions in the Church, addressed to the People and Parliament of
England in 1395_, now for the first time published, edited by the Rev.
F. Forshall. Biographers of Wycliffe have referred to this tract and
quoted passages in evidence of the Wycliffite heresies; but they
appear to have failed altogether of perceiving its larger scope, or
understanding its political bearing and significance. There can hardly
be a doubt, as Mr. Forshall suggests, that it was drawn up to
influence the famous parliament which met in the eighteenth year of
Richard the Second, and which was a scene of unusual excitement on the
subject of religion from the sudden clash of the old Papal party with
the new and increasing band of patriotic reformers. Wycliffe had then
been dead, and his opinions gradually on the increase, for more than
ten years. The author of the Remonstrance was his friend John Purvey,
who assisted him in the first English version of the Bible, shared
with him the duties of his parish, and attended his death-bed. He was
the most active of the reformers, the most formidable to the
ecclesiastical authorities. Another old MS. from the Cottonian
collection in the British Museum, is the _Chronicle of Battel Abbey,
from 1066 to 1176, now first translated, with Notes, and an Abstract
of the subsequent History of the Establishment_, by Mark Antony Lower.
This is extremely curious, and contains, besides the important
histories of the controversies between the ecclesiastical authorities
and Henry the Second, some very striking exhibitions of manners.

       *       *       *       *       *

The vitality of SCOTT'S popularity is shown by the fact that the
Edinburgh publishers of his _Life_ and _Works_ printed and sold the
following quantities of them during the period from 1st January, 1848,
to 26th March, 1851, viz.: Novels (exclusive of the Abbotsford
edition), 4,760 sets; Poetical Works, 4,360; Prose Writings, 850;
Life, 2,610; Tales of a Grandfather (independently of those included
in the complete sets of the Prose Works), 2,990; and Selections,
4,420. It may serve as a "curiosity of literature" to give a summary
of the printing of the Writings and Life since June, 1829, when they
came under the management of the late proprietor, Mr. Cadell: Waverley
Novels, 78,270 sets; Poetical Works, 41,340; Prose Works, 8,260; Life,
26,860; Tales of a Grandfather (independently of those included in the
complete sets of the Prose Works), 22,190; Selections, 7,550. The
popularity to which the "People's Edition" has attained appears from
the fact that the following numbers, originally published in weekly
sheets, have been printed: Novels, 7,115,197; Poetry, 674,955; Prose,
269,406; Life, 459,291; total sheets, 8,518,849.

The whole copyrights, stocks, &c., of Scott's works, as possessed for
many years by Cadell, have now been transferred to the hands of
Messrs. Adam and Charles Black. The copyrights and stock have been
acquired by the present purchasers for L27,000, or L10,000 less than
Mr. Cadell paid for copyrights alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING has published a new poem, _Casa Guidi
Windows_, which gives a vivid picture of the tumult and heroism of
Italian struggles for independence, as seen from the poet's windows,
at Florence, with the fervid commentary of her hopes and aspirations.

       *       *       *       *       *

A novel by MRS. CAROLINE LEE HENTZ, published by Mr. Hart, of
Philadelphia, has been dramatized by Mr. Henry Paul Howard, for the
Haymarket Theatre in London, and brought out in a very splendid style,
with J. W. Wallack in the leading character.

       *       *       *       *       *

COLONEL CUNNINGHAM, a son-in-law of Viscount Hardinge, has just
published in London "Glimpses of the Great Western Republic in the
year 1850."

       *       *       *       *       *

We shall look with much interest for the result of the new scheme for
the encouragement of life assurance, economy, &c., among literary men
and artists in England. To bring this project into general notice, and
to form the commencement of the necessary funds, Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, one of its originators, has written and presented to his
associates in the cause, a new comedy in five acts, under the
significant title, _Not So Bad as we Seem_. It was to be produced on
the sixteenth ult., under the management of Mr. Charles Dickens, in a
theatre constructed for the purpose, and performed by Robert Bell,
Wilkie Collins, Dudley Costello, Peter Cunningham, Charles Dickens,
Augustus Egg, A.R.A., John Forster, R. H. Horne, Douglass Jerrold,
Charles Knight, Mark Lemon, J. Westland Marston, Frank Stone, and
others. The tickets were twenty-five dollars each, and the Queen and
Prince Albert were to be present. The comedy is hereafter to be
performed in public; and the promoters of the scheme are sanguine of
its success. Mr. Maclise has offered to paint a picture (the subject
to be connected with the performance of the comedy), and to place it
at the disposal of the guild, for the augmentation of its funds. The
prospects are encouraging.

       *       *       *       *       *

The REV. C. G. FINNEY, so well known in the Presbyterian churches of
this country, has passed some time in London, and an edition of his
_Lectures on Systematic Theology_ has just been published there, with
a preface by the Rev. Dr. Redford, of Worcester, who confesses, that
"when a student he would gladly have bartered half the books in his
library to have gained a single perusal of these Lectures; and he
cannot refrain from expressing the belief, that no young student of
theology will ever regret their purchase or perusal." The book makes
an octavo of 1016 pages.

       *       *       *       *       *

"TALVI," the wife of Professor ROBINSON, will leave New-York in a few
days, we understand, to pass some time in her native country. She will
be absent a year and a half, and will reside chiefly in Berlin. We
have recently given an account of the life and writings of this very
eminent and admirable woman, in the _International_, and are among the
troops of friends who wish her all happiness in the fatherland, and a
safe return to the land of her adoption. We presume the public duties
of Dr. Robinson will prevent him from being absent more than a few
weeks.

       *       *       *       *       *

ALBERT SMITH has dramatised a tale from Washington Irving's "Alhambra"
for the Princess's Theatre--making a burlesque comedy.

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. SOUTHWORTH must be classed among our most industrious writers.
The Appletons have just published a new novel by her, entitled _The
Mother-in-Law_, and she has two others in press--one of which is
appearing from week to week in the _National Era_.

       *       *       *       *       *

DR. SPRING, whose religious writings appear to be as popular in Great
Britain as in this country, and every where to be regarded as among
the classics of practical religious literature, has issued a second
edition of his two octavos entitled _First Things_. In style, temper,
and all the best qualities of such works, the discourses embraced in
this work are deserving of eminent praise. (M. W. Dodd.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Of HENRY MARTIN, whom the religious world regards with a reverent
affection like that it gives to Cowper and Heber, the hitherto
unpublished _Letters and Journals_ have just appeared, and they seem
to us even more interesting than the so well-known Memoirs of his Life
published soon after he died. (M. W. Dodd.)

       *       *       *       *       *

MRS. SIGOURNEY has published a volume entitled _Letters to my Pupils,
with Narrative and Biographical Sketches_. It embraces reminiscences
of her experience as a teacher, and we have read none of her prose
compositions that are more suggestive or more pleasing. (Robert Carter
& Brothers.)

       *       *       *       *       *

A _Life of Algernon Sydney_, by G. Van Santvoord (a new author), has
been published by Charles Scribner. To describe the history and
writings of this noble republican was a task worthy of an American
scholar. Mr. Van Santvoord has performed it excellently well.

       *       *       *       *       *

BAYARD TAYLOR and R. H. STODDARD have new volumes of poems in the
press of Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston, and that house has never
published original volumes of greater merit, or that will be more
popular.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE POEMS OF WILLIAM P. MULCHINOCK, in one volume, lately published by
Mr. Strong, Nassau-street, appear to have been received with singular
favor by the critics. Mr. Mulchinock has remarkable fluency, and a
genial spirit. His book contains specimens of a great variety of
styles, and some pieces of much merit.

       *       *       *       *       *

TICKNOR & CO. have published a novelette entitled _The Solitary_, by
Santaine, the author of "Picciola." It is of the Robinson Crusoe sort
of books--better than any other imitation of Defoe.

       *       *       *       *       *

The _Pocket Companion, for Machinists, Mechanics, and Engineers_, by
OLIVER BYRNE, is a remarkable specimen of perspicuous condensation. In
a beautiful pocket-book it embraces for the classes for whom it is
designed the pith of two or three ordinary octavos.

       *       *       *       *       *

Among the new volumes of poems is one of Dramatic and Miscellaneous
Pieces, by CHARLES JAMES CANNON, published by Edward Dunigan. Mr.
Cannon is a writer of much cultivation, and, in his dramatic poems,
especially, there are passages of much force and elegance.

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. JOHN E. WARREN, whose pleasant letters from the south of Europe
were a chief attraction of some of the early numbers of the
_International_, has in the press of Putnam, to be published in a few
days, _Paria, or Scenes and Adventures on the Banks of the Amazon_. He
saw that magnificent but little known country under such peculiar
advantages, and he writes with such spirit and so natural a grace,
that we may promise the public one of the most delightful books of the
season in "Paria." Here is a specimen, from the opening chapter.

     "The shades of evening were gathering fast upon the waters,
     when the little bark, in which we had safely crossed the
     wide expanse of ocean, now quietly anchored in the mighty
     river of the Amazons. Through the rich twilight we were able
     to discern the white sandy shore, skirting a dense forest of
     perennial luxuriance and beauty. Gentle zephyrs, fraught
     with the most delightful fragrance from the wilderness of
     flowers, softly saluted our senses; while occasionally the
     plaintive voices of southern nightingales came with mellowed
     sweetness to our ears. The moon, unobscured by a single
     cloud, threw an indescribable charm over the enchanting
     scene, reflecting her brilliant rays upon the placid surface
     of the river, and shrouding the beautiful foliage of the
     forest in a drapery of gold. Innumerable stars brightly
     glittered in the firmament, and the constellation of the
     'Southern Cross' gleamed above us like a diadem. All around
     seemed to be wrapped in the most profound repose. Not a
     sound disturbed the silence of the interminable solitude
     save the hushed and mournful notes of evening birds, the
     distant howling of prowling jaguars, or the rustling of the
     wind through the forest trees. Nature appeared to us, for
     the first time, in her pristine loveliness, and seemed
     indeed, to our excited imagination, to present but a dreamy
     picture of fairy land.

     "At an early hour in the morning we weighed anchor, and with
     a fresh breeze and strong tide rapidly moved up the noble
     river, gliding by the most beautiful scenery that fancy can
     conceive. The nearly impenetrable forest which lined the
     shore was of a deep emerald green, and consisted of
     exceedingly lofty trees, of remarkably curious and grotesque
     figures, interlaced together by numerous vines, the
     interstices of which were filled up with magnificent
     shrubbery

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