THE

INTERNATIONAL

MONTHLY
MAGAZINE
Of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOLUME II.

DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.

NEW-YORK:

STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY.
FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.
BY THE NUMBER, 25 Cts.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3.

PREFACE.

On completing the second volume of the International Magazine, the publishers appeal to its pages with confidence for confirmation of all the promises that have been made with regard to its character. They believe the verdict of the American journals has been unanimous upon the point that the International has been the best journal of literary intelligence in the world, keeping its readers constantly advised of the intellectual activity of Great Britain, Germany, France, the other European nations, and our own country. As a journal of the fine arts, it has been the aim of the editor to render it in all respects just, and as particular as the space allotted to this department would allow. And its reproductions of the best contemporary foreign literature bear the names of Walter Savage Landor, Mazzini, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Barry Cornwall, Alfred Tennyson, R.M. Milnes, Charles Mackay, Mrs. Browning, Miss Mitford, Miss Martineau, Mrs. Hall, and others; its original translations the names of several of the leading authors of the Continent, and its anonymous selections the titles of the great Reviews, Magazines, and Journals, as well as of many of the most important new books in all departments of literature. But the International is not merely a compilation; it has embraced in the two volumes already issued, original papers, by Bishop Spencer of Jamaica, Henry Austen Layard, LL.D., the most illustrious of living travellers and antiquaries, G.P.R. James, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, A.O. Hall, R.H. Stoddard, Richard B. Kimball, Parke Godwin, William C. Richards, John E. Warren, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary E. Hewitt, Alice Carey, and other authors of eminence, whose compositions have entitled it to a place in the first class of original literary periodicals. Besides the writers hitherto engaged for the International, many of distinguished reputations are pledged to contribute to its pages hereafter; and the publishers have taken measures for securing at the earliest possible day the chief productions of the European press, so that to American readers the entire Magazine will be as new and fresh as if it were all composed expressly for their pleasure.

The style of illustration which has thus far been so much approved by the readers of the International, will be continued, and among the attractions of future numbers will be admirable portraits of Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Halleck, Prescott, Ticknor, Francis, Hawthorne, Willis, Kennedy, Mitchell, Mayo, Melville, Whipple, Taylor, Dewey, Stoddard, and other authors, accompanied as frequently as may be with views of their residences, and sketches of their literary and personal character.

Indeed, every means possible will be used to render the International Magazine to every description of persons the most valuable as well as the most entertaining miscellany in the English language.

CONTENTS:
VOLUME II. DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.

THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

of Literature, Art, and Science.

OUR DIPLOMATIC SERVANTS.

CHARLES B. HADDOCK,
CHARGE D'AFFAIRES FOR PORTUGAL.

[With a Portrait, Engraved by J. Andrews.]

OLD notions of diplomacy are obsolete. The plain, straightforward, and masterly manner in which Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton managed the difficult affairs which a few years ago threatened war between this country and England have taught mankind a useful lesson on this subject. We perceive that the London Times has been engaged in a controversy whether there should be diplomatists or no diplomatists, whether, in fact, the profession should survive; arguing from this case conducted by our illustrious Secretary and Lord Ashburton, that negotiation in foreign countries is plain sailing for great men, and that common agents would do the necessary business on ordinary occasions. We are not prepared to accept the doctrine of the Times, though ready enough to admit that it is to be preferred to the employment of such persons as many whom we have sent abroad in the last twenty years—many who now in various capacities represent the United States in foreign countries. Upon this question however we do not propose now to enter. It is one which may be deferred still a long time—until the means of intercommunication shall be greater than steam and electricity have yet made them, or until the evils of unworthy representation shall have driven people to the possible dangers of an abandonment of the system without such a reason. We design in this and future numbers of the International simply to give a few brief personal sketches of the most honorably distinguished of the diplomatic servants of the United States now abroad, and we commence with the newly-appointed Charge d'Affaires to Lisbon.

Charles Brickett Haddock was born at Salisbury (now Franklin), New Hampshire, on the 20th of June, 1796. His father, William Haddock, was a native of Haverhill, Massachusetts. His paternal grandfather removed from Boston to Haverhill, and married a sister of Dr. Charles Brickett, an eminent physician of that town. The family, according to a tradition among them, are descended from Admiral Sir Richard Haddocke, one of ten sons and eleven daughters of Mr. Haddocke, of Lee, in England. Richard Haddocke was an eminent officer in the Royal Navy. He was knighted before 1678, and returned a member of Parliament the same year, and again in 1685. He died in 1713, and was buried in the family vault at Lee, where there is a gravestone, with brass plates on which are engraved portraits of his father, his father's three wives, and thirteen sons and eleven daughters.

The mother of Dr. Haddock was Abigail Webster, a favorite sister of Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, who, with Sarah, were the only children of the Hon. Ebenezer Webster by his second wife, Abigail Eastman, who survived her husband and all her daughters. Mrs. Haddock was a woman of strong character, and greatly beloved in society. She died in December, 1805, at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two sons, Charles and William, one about nine and the other seven years of age. Her last words to her husband were, "I leave you two beautiful boys: my wish is that you should educate them both." The injunction was not forgotten; both were in due time placed at a preparatory school in Salisbury, both entered Dartmouth College, and without an academic censure or reproof graduated with distinction.

The younger, having studied the profession of the law, married a daughter of Mills Olcott, of Hanover, and after a few years, rich in promise of professional eminence, died of consumption at Hanover, in 1835.

The elder, Charles B. Haddock, was born in the house in which his grandfather first lived, after he removed to the river, in Franklin; though his childhood was chiefly spent at Elms Farms, in the mansion built by his father, and now the favorite residence of his uncle, Daniel Webster,—a spot hardly equaled for picturesque and tranquil beauty in that part of New England. How much of his rural tastes and gentle feelings the professor owes to the place of his nativity it is not for us to determine. It is certain that a fitter scene to inspire the sentiments for which he is distinguished, and which he delights to refresh by frequent visits to these scenes, could not well be imagined. Every hill and valley, every rock and eddy, seem to be familiar to him, and to have a legend for his heart. His earliest distinct recollections, he has often been heard to say, are the burial of a sister younger than himself, his own baptism at the bedside of his dying mother, and the death of his grandfather; and the first things that awakened a romantic emotion were the flight of the night-hawk and the note of the whippoorwill, both uncommonly numerous and noticeable there in summer evenings.

From 1807 he was in the academy during the summer months, and attended the common school in winter, until 1811, when, in his sixteenth year, he taught his own first winter school. It had been his fortune to have as instructors persons destined to unusual eminence: Mr. Richard Fletcher, now one of the justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Justice Willard, of Springfield; the Rev. Edward L. Parker, of Londonderry; and Nathaniel H. Carter, the well-known poet and general writer. It was under Mr. Carter that he first felt a genuine love of learning; and he has always ascribed more of his literary tastes, to his insensible influence, as he read to him Virgil and Cicero, than to any other living teacher. His earliest Latin book was the Æneid, over the first half of which he had, summer after summer, fatigued and vexed himself, before the idea occurred to him that it was an epic poem; and that idea came to him at length not from his teachers, but from a question of his uncle, Daniel Webster, about the descent of the hero into the infernal regions. When a proper impression of its design was once formed, and some familiarity with the language was acquired, Virgil was run through with great rapidity: half a book in a day. So also with Cicero: an oration at a lesson. There was no verbal accuracy acquired or attempted; but a ready mastery of the current of discourse—a familiarity with the point and spirit of the work. In August, 1812, he was admitted a freshman in Dartmouth College. It was a small class, but remarkable from having produced a large number of eminent men, among whom we may mention George A. Simmons, a distinguished lawyer in northern New York, and one of the profoundest philosophers in this country; Dr. Absalom Peters; President Wheeler, of the University of Vermont; Governor Hubbard, of Maine; and Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of Vermont, since so honorably known as the learned translator of Neander, and as being without a superior among American scholars in a knowledge of the profounder German literature. The late illustrious and venerated Dr. James Marsh, the editor of Coleridge, and the only pupil of that great metaphysician who was the peer of his master, was of the class below his, and was an intimate companion in study.

From the beginning of his college life it was his ambition to distinguish himself. By the general consent of his classmates, and by the appointment of the faculty, he held the first place at each public exhibition through the four years in which he was a student, and at the last commencement was complimented with having the order of the parts, according to which the Latin salutatory had hitherto been first, so changed that he might still have precedence and yet have the English valedictory. During his junior year, his mind was first decidedly turned toward religion, and with Wheeler, Torrey, Marsh, and some forty others, he made a public profession. The two years after he left college were spent at Andover, in the study of divinity. While here, with Torrey, Wheeler, Marsh, and one or two more, he joined in a critical reading of Virgil—an exercise of great value in enlarging a command of his own language, as well as his knowledge of Latin. At the close of the second year he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, and advised to try a southern climate for the winter. He sailed in October, 1818, for Charleston, and spent the winter in that city and in Savannah, with occasional visits into the surrounding country. The following summer he traveled, chiefly on horseback, and in company with the Rev. Pliny Fisk, from Charleston home. To this tour he ascribes his recovery. He soon after took his master's degree, and was appointed the first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in Dartmouth College. From that time a change was obvious in the literary spirit of the instruction given at the institution. The department to which he was called became very soon the most attractive in the college, and some of the most distinguished orators of our country are pleased to admit that they obtained their first impressions of true eloquence and a correct style from the youthful professor. He introduced readings in the Scriptures, and in Shakspeare, Milton, and Young, with original criticisms by his pupils on particular features of the principal works of genius, as the hell of Virgil, Dante, and Milton; and the prominent characters of the best tragedies, as the Jew of Cumberland and of Shakspeare; and extemporaneous discussions of æsthetical and political questions, as upon the authenticity of Ossian, the authorship of Homer, the sincerity of Cromwell, or the expediency of the execution of Charles. He also exerted his influence in founding an association for familiar written and oral discussions in literature, in which Dr. Edward Oliver, Dr. James Marsh, Professor Fiske, Mr. Rufus Choate, Professor Chamberlain, and others, acted a prominent part.

He retained this chair until August, 1838, when he was appointed to that of Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy, which he now holds, but, which, of course, will be occupied by another during his absence in the public service—the faculty having declined on any account to accept his resignation or to appoint a successor.

Dr. Haddock has been invited to the professorship of rhetoric in Hamilton College, and to the presidency of that institution, the presidency and a professorship in the Auburn Theological Seminary, the presidency of Bowdoin College, and, less formally, to that of several other colleges in New England.

In public affairs, he has for four successive years been a representative in the New Hampshire Legislature, and in this period was active in introducing the present common school system of the State, and was the first commissioner of common schools, originating the course of action in that important office which has since been pursued. He was one of the fathers of the railroad system in New Hampshire, and his various speeches had the effect to change the policy of the State on this subject. He addressed the first convention called at Lebanon to consider the practicability of a road across the State, and afterward a similar convention at Montpelier. For two years he lectured every Sabbath evening to the students and to the people of the village, on the historical portions of the New Testament. For several years he held weekly meetings for the interpretation of Scripture, in which the ladies of the village met at his house. And for twenty years he has constantly preached to vacant parishes in the vicinity. He has delivered anniversary orations before the Phi Beta Kappa Societies of Dartmouth and Yale, the Rhetorical Societies of Andover and Bangor, the Religious Society of the University of Vermont, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the New England Society of New York; numerous lyceum lectures, in Boston, Lowell, Salem, Portsmouth, Manchester, New Bedford, and other places; and of the New Hampshire Education Society he was twelve or fifteen years secretary, publishing annual reports. The principal periodicals to which he has contributed are the Biblical Repository and the Bibliotheca Sacra. A volume of his Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings was published in 1846, and he has now a work on rhetoric in preparation.

He has been twice married—the last time to a sister of Mr. Kimball, the author of "St. Leger," &c. He has three children living, and has buried seven.

In agriculture, gardening, and public improvements of all kinds, he has taken a lively interest. The rural ornaments of the town in which he lives owe much to him. He may be said to have introduced the fruit and horticulture which are now becoming so abundant as luxuries, and so remarkable as ornaments of the village.

In 1843 he received the degree of D.D. from Bowdoin College. Of Dartmouth College nearly half the graduates are his pupils. While commissioner of common schools, he published a series of letters to teachers and students which were more generally republished in the various papers of the country than anything else of the kind ever before written. Perhaps no one in this country has discussed so great a variety of subjects. His essays upon the proper standard of education for the pulpit, addresses on the utility of certain proposed lines of railway, orations on the duties of the citizen to the state, lectures before various medical societies, speeches in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, letters written while commissioner of common schools, contributions to periodicals, addresses before a great variety of literary associations, writings on agriculture and gardening, yearly reports on education, lectures on classical learning, rhetoric and belles-lettres, and sermons, delivered weekly for more than twenty years, illustrate a life of remarkable activity, and dedicated to the best interests of mankind. Unmoved by the calls of ambition, which might have tempted him to some one great and engrossing effort, his aim has been the general good of the people.

The following extract from the dedication, to his pupils, of his Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings, evinces something of his purpose:

"It is now five-and-twenty years since I adopted the resolution never to refuse to attempt anything consistent with my professional duties, in the cause of learning, or religion, which I might be invited to do. This resolution I have not at any time regretted, and perhaps I may say, I have not essentially violated it. However this may be, I have never suffered from want of something to do."

Professor Haddock's style is remarkable for purity and correctness. His sentences are all finished sentences, never subject to an injurious verbal criticism, without a mistake of any kind, or a grammatical error.

We have not written of Dr. Haddock as a politician; but he is a thoroughly informed statesman, profoundly versed in public law, and familiar with all the policy and aims of the American government. He is of course a Whig. He has been educated, politically, in the school of his illustrious uncle, and probably no man living is more thoroughly acquainted with Mr. Webster's views, or more capable of their application in affairs. It is therefore eminently suitable that he should be on the list of our representatives abroad, while the foreign department is under Mr. Webster's administration. The Whig party in New Hampshire have not been insensible of Dr. Haddock's surpassing abilities, of his sagacity, or his merits. Could they have done so, they would have made him Governor, or a senator in Congress, on any of the occasions in many years in which such officers have been chosen. Considered without reference to party, we can think of no gentleman in the country who would be likely to represent the United States more worthily at foreign courts, or who by his capacities, suavity of manner, or honorable nature, would make a more pleasing and desirable impression upon the most highly cultivated society. Those who know him well will assent to the justness of a classification which places him in the same list of intellectual diplomats which embraces Bunsen, Guizot, and our own Everett, Irving, Bancroft and Marsh.

No. I.—WINGED HUMAN-HEADED BULL.

DR. LAYARD'S RECENT GIFTS FROM NIMROUD.

The researches of no antiquary or traveler in modern times have excited so profound an interest as those of Austen Henry Layard, who has summoned the kings and people of Nineveh through three thousand years to give their testimony against the skeptics of our age in support of the divine revelation. In a former number of The International we presented an original and very interesting letter from Dr. Layard himself, upon the nature and bearing of his discoveries. Since then he has sent to London, where they have arrived in safety, several of the most important sculptures described in his work republished here last year by Mr. Putnam. Among them are the massive and imposing statues of a human-headed bull and a human-headed lion, of which we have engravings in some of the London journals. The Illustrated London News describes these specimens of ancient art as follows:

"No. I. is the Human-Headed and Eagle-Winged Bull. This animal would seem to bear some analogy to the Egyptian sphynx, which represents the head of the King upon the body of the lion, and is held by some to be typical of the union of intellectual power with physical strength. The sphynx of the Egyptians, however, is invariably sitting, whereas the Nimroud figure is always represented standing. The apparent resemblance being so great, it is at least worthy of consideration whether the head on the winged animals of the Ninevites may not be that of the King, and the intention identical with that of the sphynx; though we think it more probable that there is no such connection, and that the intention of the Ninevites was to typify their god under the common emblems of intelligence, strength and swiftness, as signified by the additional attributes of the bird. The specimen immediately before us is of gypsum, and of colossal dimensions, the slab being ten feet square by two feet in thickness. It was situated at the entrance of a chamber, being built into the side of the door, so that one side and a front view only could be seen by the spectator. Accordingly, the Ninevite sculptor, in order to make both views perfect, has given the animal five legs. The four seen in the side view show the animal in the act of walking; while, to render the representation complete in the front view, he has repeated the right fore leg again, but in the act of standing motionless. The countenance is noble and benevolent in expression; the features are of true Persian type; he wears an egg-shaped cap, with three horns and a cord round the base of it. The hair at the back of the head has seven ranges of curls; and the beard, as in the portraits of the King, is divided into three ranges of curls, with intervals of wavy hair. In the ears, which are those of a bull, are pendent ear-rings. The whole of the dewlap is covered with tiers of curls, and four rows are continued beneath the ribs along the whole flank; on the back are six rows of curls, and upon the haunch a square bunch, ranged successively, and down the back of the thigh four rows. The hair at the end of the tail is curled like the beard, with intervals of wavy hair. The hair at the knee joints is likewise curled, terminating in the profile views of the limbs in a single curl of the kind (if we may use the term) called croche cœur. The elaborately sculptured wings extend over the back of the animal to the very verge of the slab. All the flat surface of the slab is covered with cuneiform inscription; there being twenty-two lines between the fore legs, twenty-one lines in the middle, nineteen lines between the hind legs, and forty-seven lines between the tail and the edge of the slab. The whole of this slab is unbroken, with the exception of the fore-feet, which arrived in a former importation, but which are now restored to their proper place.

No. II.—WINGED HUMAN-HEADED LION.

"No. II. represents the Human-Headed and Winged Lion—nine feet long, and the same in height; and in purpose and position the same as the preceding, which, however, it does not quite equal in execution. In this relievo we have the same head, with the egg-shaped three-horned head-dress, exactly like that of the bull; but the ear is human, and not that of a lion. The beard and hair of the head are even yet more elaborately curled than the last; but the hair on the legs and sides of the animal represents that shaggy appendage of the animal. Round the loins is a succession of numerous cords, which are drawn into four separate knots; at the extremities are fringes, forming as many distinct tassels. At the end of the tail, the claw—on which we commented in a former article—is distinctly visible. The strength of both animals is admirably and characteristically conveyed. Upon the flat surface of this slab, as in the last, is a cuneiform inscription; twenty lines being between the fore legs, twenty-six in the middle, eighteen between the hind legs, and seventy-one at the back."

On the subject of Eastern languages, an understanding of which is necessary to the just apprehension of these inscriptions, that most acute antiquary, Major Rawlinson, remarks:

"My own impression is that hundreds of the languages at one time current through Asia are now utterly lost; and it is not, therefore, to be expected that philologists or ethnologists will ever succeed in making out a genealogical table of language, and in affiliating all the various dialects. Coming to the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, we were first made acquainted with them as translations of the Persian and Parthian documents in the trilingual inscriptions of Persia; but lately we have had an enormous amount of historical matter brought to light in tablets of stone written in these languages alone. The languages in question I certainly consider to be Semitic. I doubt whether we could trace at present in any of the buildings or inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia the original primitive civilization of man—that civilization which took place in the very earliest ages. I am of opinion that civilization first showed itself in Egypt after the immigration of the early tribes from Asia. I think that the human intellect first germinated on the Nile, and that then there was, in a later age, a reflux of civilization from the Nile back to Asia. I am quite satisfied that the system of writing in use on the Tigris and Euphrates was taken from the Nile; but I admit that it was carried to a much higher state of perfection in Assyria than it had ever reached in Egypt. The earliest Assyrian inscriptions were those lately discovered by Mr. Layard in the north-west Palace at Nimroud, being much earlier than anything found at Babylon. Now, the great question is the date of these inscriptions. Mr. Layard himself, when he published his book on Nineveh, believed them to be 2500 years before the Christian era; but others, and Dr. Hincks among the number, brought them down to a much later date, supposing the historical tablets to refer to the Assyrian kings mentioned in Scripture—(Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, &c.). I do not agree with either one of these calculations or the other. I am inclined to place the earliest inscriptions from Nimroud between 1350 and 1200 before the Christian era; because, in the first place, they had a limit to antiquity; for in the earliest inscriptions there was a notice of the seaports of Phœnicia, of Tyre and Sidon, of Byblus, Arcidus, &c.; and it was well known that these cities were not founded more than 1500 years before the Christian era. We have every prospect of a most important accession to our materials, for every letter I get from the countries now being explored announces fresh discoveries of the utmost importance. In Lower Chaldea, Mr. Loftus, the geologist to the commission appointed to fix the boundaries between Turkey and Persia, has visited many cities which no European had ever reached before, and has everywhere found the most extraordinary remains. At one place (Senkereh) he had come on a pavement, extending from half an acre to an acre, entirely covered with writing, which was engraved upon baked tiles, &c. At Wurka (or Ur of the Chaldees), whence Abraham came out, he had found innumerable inscriptions; they were of no great extent, but they were exceedingly interesting, giving many royal names previously unknown. Wurka (Ur or Orchoe) seemed to be a holy city, for the whole country, for miles upon miles, was nothing but a huge necropolis. In none of the excavations of Assyria had coffins ever been found, but in this city of Chaldea there were thousands upon thousands. The story of Abraham's birth at Wurka did not originate with the Arabs, as had sometimes been conjectured, but with the Jews; and the Orientals had numberless fables about Abraham and Nimroud. Mr. Layard in excavating beneath the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass of masonry, within which he had discovered the tomb and statue of Sardanapalus, accompanied by full annals of the monarch's reign engraved on the walls! He had also found tablets of all sorts, all of them being historical; but the crowning discovery he had yet to describe. The palace at Nineveh, or Koynupih, had evidently been destroyed by fire, but one portion of the building seemed to have escaped its influence; and Mr. Layard, in excavating in this part of the palace, had found a large room filled with what appeared to be the archives of the empire, ranged in successive tablets of terra cotta, the writings being as perfect as when the tablets were first stamped. They were piled in huge heaps from the floor to the ceiling. From the progress already made in reading the inscriptions, I believe we shall be able pretty well to understand the contents of these tablets; at all events, we shall ascertain their general purport, and thus gain much valuable information. A passage might be remembered in the book of Ezra where the Jews, having been disturbed in building the Temple, prayed that search might be made in the house of records for the edict of Cyrus permitting them to return to Jerusalem. The chamber recently found there might be presumed to be the house of records of the Assyrian kings, where copies of the royal edicts were duly deposited. When these tablets have been examined and deciphered, I believe that we shall have a better acquaintance with the history, the religion, the philosophy, and the jurisprudence of Assyria, 1500 years before the Christian era, than we have of Greece or Rome during any period of their respective histories."

Besides the gigantic figures of which we have copied engravings in the preceding pages, Dr. Layard has sent to the British Museum a large number of other sculptures, some of which are still more interesting for the light they reflect upon ancient Assyrian history. For these, as for the Grecian marbles and Egyptian antiquities, a special gallery is being fitted up.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

DEAN SWIFT'S CHARACTER AND HIS AMOURS.

The name of Swift is one of the most familiar in English history. Of the twenty octavo volumes in which his works are printed, only a part of one volume is read; but this part of a volume is read by everybody, and admired by everybody, though singularly enough not one in a thousand ever thinks of its real import, or appreciates it for what are and what were meant to be its highest excellences. As the author of "Gulliver's Travels," Swift is a subject of general interest; and this interest is deepened, but scarcely diffused, by the chain of enigmas which has puzzled so many of his biographers.

The most popular life of Dean Swift is Mr. Roscoe's, but since that was written several works have appeared, either upon his whole history or in elucidation of particular portions of it: one of which was a careful investigation and discussion of his madness, published about two years ago. In the last number of The International we mentioned the curious novel of "Stella and Vanessa," in which a Frenchman has this year essayed his defense against the common judgment in the matter of his amours, and we copy in the following pages an article from the London Times, which was suggested by this performance.

M. De Wailly's "Stella and Vanessa" is unquestionably a very ingenious and brilliant fiction—in every sense only a fiction—for its hypotheses are all entirely erroneous. Even Mr. Roscoe, whose Memoir has been called an elaborate apology, and who, as might have been expected from a man of so amiable and charitable a character, labors to put the best construction upon all Swift's actions,—even he shrinks from the vindication of the Dean's conduct toward Miss Vanhomrigh and Mrs. Johnson. In treating of the charges which are brought against Swift while he was alive, or that have since been urged against his reputation, the elegant historian calls to his aid every palliating circumstance; and where no palliating circumstances are to be found, seeks to enlist our benevolent feelings in behalf of a man deeply unfortunate, persecuted by his enemies, neglected by his friends, and haunted all his life by the presentiment of a fearful calamity, by which at length in his extreme old age he was assaulted and overwhelmed. On some points Mr. Roscoe must be said to have succeeded in this advocacy, so honorable alike to him and to its subject; but the more serious charges against Swift remain untouched, and probably will forever remain so, by whatever ability, or eloquence, or generous partiality, combated. To speak plainly, Swift was an irredeemably bad man, devoured by vanity and selfishness, and so completely dead to every elevated and manly feeling, that he was always ready to sacrifice those most devotedly attached to him for the gratification of his unworthy passion for power and notoriety.

Swift's life, though dark and turbulent, was nevertheless romantic. He concealed the repulsive odiousness of an unfeeling heart under manners peculiarly fascinating, which conciliated not only the admiration and attachment of more than one woman, but likewise the friendship of several eminent men, who were too much dazzled by the splendor of his conversation to detect the base qualities which existed in the background. But these circumstances only enhance the interest of his life. At every page there is some discussion which strongly interests our feelings: some difficulty to be removed, some mystery to keep alive curiosity. We neither know, strictly speaking, who Swift was, what were the influences which raised him to the position he occupied, by what intricate ties he was connected with Stella, or what was the nature of that singular grief, which, in addition to the sources of sorrow to which we have alluded, preyed on him continually, and at last contributed largely to the overthrow of his reason. On this account it is not possible to proceed with indifference through the circumstances of his life, though very few careful examiners will be able to interpret them in a lenient and charitable spirit.

Mr. Roscoe appears to believe that everybody who regards unfavorably Swift's genius and morals, must be actuated by envy or party spirit, but very few of the later or earlier critics are of his opinion. In the first place, most honorable men would rather remain unknown through eternity than accept the Dean's reputation. As Savage Landor says, he was "irreverential to the great and to God: an ill-tempered, sour, supercilious man, who flattered some of the worst and maligned some of the best men that ever lived." Whatever services he performed for the party from which he apostatized, there is nothing in his more permanent writings which can be of the slightest advantage to English toryism. Indeed, in politics and in morals, he appears never to have had any fixed principles. He served the party which he thought most likely to make him a bishop, and deserted it when he discovered that it was losing ground. He studied government not as a statesman but as a partisan, as a hardy, active, and unscrupulous Swiss, who could and would do much dirty work for a minister, if he saw reason to anticipate a liberal compensation. He however always extravagantly exaggerated his own powers, and so have his biographers, and so has the writer of the following article from The Times, who seems to have accepted with too little scrutiny the estimate he made of himself. The complacency with which he frequently refers to his supposed influence over the ministers is simply ludicrous. He entirely loses sight of both his own position and theirs. Shrewd as he shows himself under other circumstances, he is here as verdant as the greenest peasant from the forest. "I use the ministers like dogs," he says in a letter to Stella, but in reality the ministers made a dog of him, employing him to fetch and carry, and bark, and growl, and show his sharp teeth to their enemies; and when the noise he had made had served their purpose,—when he had frightened away many of their assailants, and by the dirt and stench he had raised had compelled even their friends to stand aloof, they cashiered him, as they would a mastiff grown toothless and incapable of barking. With no more dirty work for him to do, they sent him over to Dublin, to be rid of his presence.

When fairly settled down in a country which he had always hitherto affected at least to detest, he began to feel perhaps some genuine attachment for its people, and on many occasions he exerted himself vigorously for their advantage; though it is possible that the real impulse was a desire to vex and embarrass the administration, which had so galled his self-conceit. Whatever the motive, however, he undoubtedly worked industriously and with great effect, for the benefit of Ireland. His style was calculated to be popular: it was simple, transparent, and though copious, pointed and energetic. His pamphlets, in the midst of their reasoning, sarcasm, and solemn banter, displayed an extent, a variety and profundity of knowledge altogether unequaled in the case of any other writer of that time. But the action of his extraordinary powers was never guided by a spark of honorable principle. The giant was as unscrupulous as the puniest and basest demagogue who coined and scattered lies for our own last election. He would seem to be the model whom half a dozen of our city editors were striving with weaker wing to imitate. He never acknowledged any merit in his antagonists, he scattered his libels right and left without mercy, threw out of sight all the charities and even decencies of private life, and affirmed the most monstrous propositions with so cool, calm and solemn an air, that in nine cases out of ten they were sure to be believed.

Without further observation we proceed with the interesting article of The Times, occasioned by M. Leon de Wailly's curious and very clever romance of "Stella and Vanessa."

"VANESSA." (MISS VANHOMRIGH.)

[From the London Times.]

THE AMOURS OF DEAN SWIFT.

Greater men than Dean Swift may have lived. A more remarkable man never left his impress upon the age immortalized by his genius. To say that English history supplies no narrative more singular and original than the career of Jonathan Swift is to assert little. We doubt whether the histories of the world can furnish, for example and instruction, for wonder and pity, for admiration and scorn, for approval and condemnation, a specimen of humanity at once so illustrious and so small. Before the eyes of his contemporaries Swift stood a living enigma. To posterity he must continue forever a distressing puzzle. One hypothesis—and one alone—gathered from a close and candid perusal of all that has been transmitted to us upon this interesting subject, helps us to account for a whole life of anomaly, but not to clear up the mystery in which it is shrouded. From the beginning to the end of his days Jonathan Swift was more or less mad.

Intellectually and morally, physically and religiously, Dean Swift was a mass of contradictions. His career yields ample materials both for the biographer who would pronounce a panegyric over his tomb and for the censor whose business it is to improve one generation at the expense of another. Look at Swift with the light of intelligence shining on his brow, and you note qualities that might become an angel. Survey him under the dark cloud, and every feature is distorted into that of a fiend. If we tell the reader what he was, in the same breath we shall communicate all that he was not. His virtues were exaggerated into vices, and his vices were not without the savour of virtue. The originality of his writings is of a piece with the singularity of his character. He copied no man who preceded him. He has not been successfully imitated by any who have followed him. The compositions of Swift reveal the brilliancy of sharpened wit, yet it is recorded of the man that he was never known to laugh. His friendships were strong and his antipathies vehement and unrelenting, yet he illustrated friendship by roundly abusing his familiars and expressed hatred by bantering his foes. He was economical and saving to a fault, yet he made sacrifices to the indigent and poor sternly denied to himself. He could begrudge the food and wine consumed by a guest, yet throughout his life refuse to derive the smallest pecuniary advantage from his published works, and at his death bequeath the whole of his fortune to a charitable institution. From his youth Swift was a sufferer in body, yet his frame was vigorous, capable of great endurance, and maintained its power and vitality from the time of Charles II. until far on in the reign of the second George. No man hated Ireland more than Swift, yet he was Ireland's first and greatest patriot, bravely standing up for the rights of that kingdom when his chivalry might have cost him his head. He was eager for reward, yet he refused payment with disdain. Impatient of advancement, he preferred to the highest honors the State could confer the obscurity and ignominy of the political associates with whom he had affectionately labored until they fell disgraced. None knew better than he the stinging force of a successful lampoon, yet such missiles were hurled by hundreds at his head without in any way disturbing his bodily tranquillity. Sincerely religious, scrupulously attentive to the duties of his holy office, vigorously defending the position and privileges of his order, he positively played into the hands of infidelity by the steps he took, both in his conduct and writings, to expose the cant and hypocrisy which he detested as heartily as he admired and practiced unaffected piety. To say that Swift lacked tenderness would be to forget many passages of his unaccountable history that overflow with gentleness of spirit and mild humanity; but to deny that he exhibited inexcusable brutality where the softness of his nature ought to have been chiefly evoked—where the want of tenderness, indeed, left him a naked and irreclaimable savage—is equally impossible. If we decline to pursue the contradictory series further, it is in pity to the reader, not for want of materials at command. There is, in truth, no end to such materials.

Swift was born in the year 1667. His father, who was steward to the Society of the King's Inn, Dublin, died before his birth and left his widow penniless. The child, named Jonathan after his father, was brought up on charity. The obligation due to an uncle was one that Swift would never forget, or remember without inexcusable indignation. Because he had not been left to starve by his relatives, or because his uncle would not do more than he could, Swift conceived an eternal dislike to all who bore his name and a haughty contempt for all who partook of his nature. He struggled into active life and presented himself to his fellow-men in the temper of a foe. At the age of fourteen he was admitted into Trinity College, Dublin, and four years afterward as a special grace—for his acquisitions apparently failed to earn the distinction—the degree of Bachelor of Arts was conferred upon him. In 1688, the year in which the war broke out in Ireland, Swift, in his twenty-first year, and without a sixpence in his pocket, left college. Fortunately for him, the wife of Sir William Temple was related to his mother, and upon her application to that statesman the friendless youth was provided with a home. He took up his abode with Sir William in England, and for the space of two years labored hard at his own improvement and for the amusement of his patron. How far Swift succeeded in winning the good opinion of Sir William may be learnt from the fact that when King William honored Moor Park with his presence he was permitted to take part in the interviews, and that when Sir William was unable to visit the King his protégé was commissioned to wait upon His Majesty, and to speak on the patron's authority and behalf. The lad's future promised better things than his beginning. He resolved to go into the church, since preferment stared him in the face. In 1692 he proceeded to Oxford, where he obtained his Master's degree, and in 1694, quarreling with Sir William Temple, who coldly offered him a situation worth £100 a year, he quitted his patron in disgust and went at once to Ireland to take holy orders. He was ordained, and almost immediately afterward received the living of Kilroot in the diocese of Connor, the value of the living being about equal to that of the appointment offered by Sir William Temple.

Swift, miserable in his exile, sighed for the advantages he had abandoned. Sir William Temple, lonely without his clever and keen-witted companion, pined for his return. The prebend of Kilroot was speedily resigned in favor of a poor curate for whom Swift had taken great pains to procure the presentation; and with £80 in his purse the independent clergyman proceeded once more to Moor Park. Sir William welcomed him with open arms. They resided together until 1699, when the great statesman died, leaving to Swift, in testimony of his regard, the sum of £100 and his literary remains. The remains were duly published and humbly dedicated to the King. They might have been inscribed to His Majesty's cook for any advantage that accrued to the editor. Swift was a Whig, but his politics suffered severely by the neglect of His Majesty, who derived no particular advantage from Sir William Temple's "remains."

Weary with long and vain attendance upon Court, Swift finally accepted at the hands of Lord Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices of Ireland, the rectory of Agher and the vicarages of Laracor and Rathbeggan. In the year 1700 he took possession of the living at Laracor, and his mode of entering upon his duty was thoroughly characteristic of the man. He walked down to Laracor, entered the curate's house, and announced himself "as his master." In his usual style he affected brutality, and having sufficiently alarmed his victims, gradually soothed and consoled them by evidences of undoubted friendliness and good will. "This," says Sir Walter Scott, "was the ruling trait of Swift's character to others; his praise assumed the appearance and language of complaint; his benefits were often prefaced by a prologue of a threatening nature." "The ruling trait" of Swift's character was morbid eccentricity. Much less eccentricity has saved many a murderer in our days from the gallows. We approach a period of Swift's history when we must accept this conclusion or revolt from the cold-blooded doings of a monster.

During Swift's second residence with Sir William Temple he had become acquainted with an inmate of Moor Park very different to the accomplished man to whose intellectual pleasures he so largely ministered. A young and lovely girl—half ward, half dependent in the establishment—engaged the attention and commanded the untiring services of the newly-made minister. Esther Johnson had need of education, and Swift became her tutor. He entered upon his task with avidity, condescended to the humblest instruction, and inspired his pupil with unbounded gratitude and regard. Swift was not more insensible to the simplicity and beauty of the lady than she to the kind offices of her master; but Swift would not have been Swift had he, like other men, returned everyday love with ordinary affection. Swift had felt tender impressions in his own fashion before. Once in Leicestershire he was accused by a friend of having formed an imprudent attachment, on which occasion he returned for answer, that his "cold temper and unconfined humor" would prevent all serious consequences, even if it were not true that the conduct which his friend had mistaken for gallantry had been merely the evidence "of an active and restless temper, incapable of enduring idleness, and catching at such opportunities of amusement as most readily occurred." Upon another occasion, and within four years of the Leicestershire pastime, Swift made an absolute offer of his hand to one Miss Waryng, vowing in his declaratory epistle that he would forego every prospect of interest for the sake of his "Varina," and that "the lady's love was far more fatal than her cruelty." After much and long consideration Varina consented to the suit. That was enough for Swift. He met the capitulation by charging his Varina with want of affection, by stipulating for unheard-of sacrifices, and concluding with an expression of his willingness to wed, "though she had neither fortune nor beauty," provided every article of his letter was ungrudgingly agreed to. We may well tremble for Esther Johnson, with her young heart given into such wild keeping.

"STELLA." (ESTHER JOHNSON.)

As soon as Swift was established at Laracor it was arranged that Esther, who possessed a small property in Ireland, should take up her abode near to her old preceptor. She came, and scandal was silenced by a stipulation insisted upon by Swift, that his lovely charge should have a matron for a constant companion, and never see him except in the presence of a third party. Esther was in her seventeenth year. The vicar of Laracor was on his road to forty. What wonder that even in Laracor the former should receive an offer of marriage, and that the latter, wayward and inconsistent from first to last, should deny another the happiness he had resolved never to enjoy himself? Esther found a lover whom Swift repulsed, to the infinite joy of the devoted girl, whose fate was already linked for good or evil to that of her teacher and friend.

Obscurity and idleness were not for Swift. Love, that gradually consumed the unoccupied girl, was not even this man's recreation. Impatient of banishment, he went to London and mixed with the wits of the age. Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot became his friends, and he quickly proved himself worthy of their intimacy by the publication in 1704 of his Tale of a Tub. The success of the work, given to the world anonymously, was decisive. Its singular merit obtained for its author everlasting renown, and effectually prevented his rising to the highest dignity in the very church which his book labored to exalt. None but an inspired madman would have attempted to do honor to religion in a spirit which none but the infidel could heartily approve.

Politicians are not squeamish. The Whigs could see no fault in raillery and wit that might serve temporal interests with greater advantage than they had advanced interests ecclesiastical; and the friends of the Revolution welcomed so rare an adherent to their principles. With an affected ardor that subsequent events proved to be as premature as it was hollow, Swift's pen was put in harness for his allies, and worked vigorously enough until 1709, when, having assisted Steele in the establishment of the Tatler, the vicar of Laracor returned to Ireland and to the duties of a rural pastor. Not to remain, however! A change suddenly came over the spirit of the nation. Sacheverell was about to pull down by a single sermon all the popularity that Marlborough and his friends had built up by their glorious campaigns. Swift had waited in vain for promotion from the Whigs, and his suspicions were roused when the Lord-Lieutenant unexpectedly began to caress him. Escaping the damage which the marked attentions of the old Government might do him with the new, Swift started for England in 1710, in order to survey the turning of the political wheel with his own eyes, and to try his fortune in the game. The progress of events was rapid. Swift reached London on the 9th of September; on the 1st of October he had already written a lampoon upon an ancient associate; and on the 4th he was presented to Harley, the new Minister.

The career of Swift from this moment, and so long as the government of Harley lasted, was magnificent and mighty. Had he not been crotchety from his very boyhood, his head would have been turned now. Swift reigned; Swift was the Government; Swift was Queen, Lords, and Commons. There was tremendous work to do, and Swift did it all. The Tories had thrown out the Whigs and had brought in a Government in their place quite as Whiggish to do Tory work. To moderate the wishes of the people, if not to blind their eyes, was the preliminary and essential work of the Ministry. They could not perform it themselves. Swift undertook the task and accomplished it. He had intellect and courage enough for that, and more. Moreover, he had vehement passions to gratify, and they might all partake of the glory of his success; he was proud, and his pride reveled in authority; he was ambitious, and his ambition could attain no higher pitch than it found at the right hand of the Prime Minister; he was revengeful, and revenge could wish no sweeter gratification than the contortions of the great who had neglected genius and desert, when they looked to them for advancement and obtained nothing but cold neglect. Swift, single-handed, fought the Whigs. For seven months he conducted a periodical paper, in which he mercilessly assailed, as none but himself could attack, all who were odious to the Government and distasteful to himself. Not an individual was spared whose sufferings could add to the tranquillity and permanence of the Government. Resistance was in vain; it was attempted, but invariably with one effect—the first wound grazed, the second killed.

The public were in ecstasies. The laughers were all on the side of the satirist, and how vast a portion of the community these are, needs not be said. But it was not in the Examiner alone that Swift offered up his victims at the shrine of universal mirth. He could write verses for the rough heart of a nation to chuckle over and delight in. Personalities to-day fly wide of the mark; then they went right home. The habits, the foibles, the moral and physical imperfections of humanity, were all fair game, provided the shaft were tipped with gall as well as venom. Short poems, longer pamphlets—whatever could help the Government and cover their foes with ridicule and scorn, Swift poured upon the town with an industry and skill that set eulogy at defiance. And because they did defy praise, Jonathan Swift never asked, and was ever too grand to accept it.

But he claimed much more. His disordered yet exquisite intellect acknowledged no superiority. He asked no thanks for his labor, he disdained pecuniary reward for his matchless and incalculable services—he did not care for fame, but he imperiously demanded to be treated by the greatest as an equal. Mr. Harley offered him money, and he quarreled with the Minister for his boldness. "If we let these great Ministers," he said, "pretend too much, there will be no governing them." The same Minister desired to make Swift his chaplain. One mistake was as great as the other. "My Lord Oxford, by a second hand, proposed my being his chaplain, which I, by a second hand, refused. I will be no man's chaplain alive." The assumption of the man was more than regal. At a later period of his life he drew up a list of his friends, ranking them respectively under the heads "Ungrateful," "Grateful," "Indifferent," and "Doubtful." Pope appears among the grateful. Queen Caroline among the ungrateful. The audacity of these distinctions is very edifying. What autocrat is here for whose mere countenance the whole world is to bow down and be "grateful!"

It is due to Swift's imperiousness, however, to state that, once acknowledged as an equal, he was prepared to make every sacrifice that could be looked for in a friend. Concede his position, and for fortune or disgrace he was equally prepared. Harley and Bolingbroke, quick to discern the weakness, called their invulnerable ally by his Christian name, but stopped short of conferring upon him any benefit whatever. The neglect made no difference to the haughty scribe, who contented himself with pulling down the barriers that had been impertinently set up to separate him from rank and worldly greatness. But, if Swift shrank from the treatment of a client, he performed no part so willingly as that of a patron. He took literature under his wing and compelled the Government to do it homage. He quarreled with Steele when he deserted the Whigs, and pursued his former friend with unflinching sarcasm and banter, but at his request Steele was maintained by the Government in an office of which he was about to be deprived. Congreve was a Whig, but Swift insisted that he should find honor at the hands of the Tories, and Harley honored him accordingly. Swift introduced Gay to Lord Bolingbroke, and secured that nobleman's weighty patronage for the poet. Rowe was recommended for office, Pope for aid. The well-to-do, by Swift's personal interest, found respect, the indigent, money for the mitigation of their pains. At Court, at Swift's instigation, the Lord Treasurer made the first advances to men of letters, and by the act made tacit confession of the power which Swift so liberally exercised, for the advantage of everybody but himself. But what worldly distinction, in truth, could add to the importance of a personage who made it a point for a Duke to pay him the first visit, and who, on one occasion, publicly sent the Prime Minister into the House of Commons to call out the First Secretary of State, whom Swift wished to inform that he would not dine with him if he meant to dine late?

A lampoon directed against the Queen's favorite, upon whose red hair Swift had been facetious, prevented the satirist's advancement in England. The see of Hereford fell vacant in 1712. Bolingbroke would now have paid the debt due from his Government to Swift, but the Duchess of Somerset, upon her knees, implored the Queen to withhold her consent from the appointment, and Swift was pronounced by Her Majesty as "too violent in party" for promotion. The most important man in the kingdom found himself in a moment the most feeble. The fountain of so much honor could not retain a drop of the precious waters for itself. Swift, it is said, laid the foundations of fortune for upward of forty families who rose to distinction by a word from his lips. What a satire upon power was the satirist's own fate! He could not advance himself in England one inch. Promotion in Ireland began and ended with his appointment to the Deanery of St. Patrick, of which he took possession, much to his disgust and vexation, in the summer of 1713.

The summer, however, was not over before Swift was in England again. The wheels of government had come to a dead lock, and of course none but he could right them. The Ministry was at sixes and sevens. Its very existence depended upon the good understanding of the chiefs, Bolingbroke and Harley, and the wily ambition of the latter, jarring against the vehement desires of the former, had produced jealousy, suspicion, and now threatened immediate disorganization. A thousand voices called the Dean to the scene of action, and he came full of the importance of his mission. He plunged at once into the vexed sea of political controversy, and whilst straining every effort to court his friends, let no opportunity slip of galling their foes. His pen was as damaging and industrious as ever. It set the town in a fever. It caused Richard Steele to be expelled from the House of Commons, and it sent the whole body of Scotch peers, headed by the Duke of Argyle, to the Queen, with the prayer that a proclamation might be issued for the discovery of their libeller. Swift was more successful in his assaults than in its mediation. The Ministers were irreconcilable. Vexed at heart with disappointment, the Dean, after his manner, suddenly quitted London, and shut himself up in Berkshire. One attempt he made in his strict seclusion to uphold the Government and save the country, and the composition is a curiosity in its way. He published a proposition for the exclusion of all Dissenters from power of every kind, for disqualifying Whigs and Low Churchmen for every possible office, and for compelling the presumptive heir to the throne to declare his abomination of Whigs, and his perfect satisfaction with Her Majesty's present advisers. Matters must have been near a crisis when this modest pamphlet was put forth; and so they were. By his intrigues Bolingbroke had triumphed over his colleagues, and Oxford was disgraced. The latter, about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him.

During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils. Before Miss Vanhomrigh had made much progress in her studies she was over head and ears in love, and, to the astonishment of her master, she one day declared the passionate and undying character of her attachment. Swift met the confession with a weapon far more potent when opposed to a political foe than when directed against the weak heart of a doting woman. He had recourse to raillery, but, finding his banter of no avail, endeavored to appease the unhappy girl by "an offer of devoted and everlasting friendship, founded on the basis of virtuous esteem." He might with equal success have attempted to put out a conflagration with a bucket of cold water. There was no help for the miserable man. He returned to his deanery at the death of Queen Anne with two love affairs upon his hands, but with the stern resolution of encouraging neither, and overcoming both.

Before quitting England he wrote to Esther Vanhomrigh, or Vanessa, as he styles her in his correspondence, intimating his intention to forget everything in England and to write to her as seldom as possible. So far the claims of Vanessa were disposed of. As soon as he reached his deanery he secured lodgings for Stella and her companion, and reiterated his determination to pursue his intercourse with the young lady upon the prudent terms originally established. So far his mind was set at rest in respect of Stella. But Swift had scarcely time to congratulate himself upon his plans before Vanessa presented herself in Dublin, and made known to the Dean her resolution to take up her abode permanently in Ireland. Her mother was dead, so were her two brothers; she and her sister were alone in the world, and they had a small property near Dublin, to which it suited them to retire. Swift, alarmed by the proceeding, remonstrated, threatened, denounced—all in vain. Vanessa met his reproaches with complaints of cruelty and neglect, and warned him of the consequences of leaving her without the solace of his friendship and presence. Perplexed and distressed, the Dean had no other resource than to leave events to their own development. He trusted that time would mitigate and show the hopelessness of Vanessa's passion, and in the meanwhile he sought, by occasional communication with her, to prevent any catastrophe that might result from actual despair. But his thoughts for Vanessa's safety were inimical to Stella's repose. She pined and gradually sunk under the alteration that had taken place in Swift's deportment toward her since his acquaintance with Vanessa. Swift, really anxious for the safety of his ward, requested a friend to ascertain the cause of her malady. It was not difficult to ascertain it. His indifference and public scandal, which spoke freely of their unaccountable connection, were alone to blame for her sufferings. It was enough for Swift. He had passed the age at which he had resolved to marry, but he was ready to wed Stella provided the marriage were kept secret and she was content to live apart. Poor Stella was more than content, but she overestimated her strength. The marriage took place, and immediately afterward the husband withdrew himself in a fit of madness, which threw him into gloom and misery for days. What the motives may have been for the inexplicable stipulations of this wayward man it is impossible to ascertain. That they were the motives of a diseased, and at times utterly irresponsible, judgment, we think cannot be questioned. Of love, as a tender passion, Swift had no conception. His writings prove it. The coarseness that pervades his compositions has nothing in common with the susceptibility that shrinks from disgusting and loathsome images in which Swift reveled. In all his prose and poetical addresses to his mistresses there is not one expression to prove the weakness of his heart. He writes as a guardian—he writes as a friend—he writes as a father, but not a syllable escapes him that can be attributed to the pangs and delights of the lover.

Married to Stella, Swift proved himself more eager than ever to give to his intercourse with Vanessa the character of mere friendship. He went so far as to endeavor to engage her affections for another man, but his attempts were rejected with indignation and scorn. In the August of the year 1717 Vanessa retired from Dublin to her house and property near Cellbridge. Swift exhorted her to leave Ireland altogether, but she was not to be persuaded. In 1720 it would appear that the Dean frequently visited the recluse in her retirement, and upon such occasions Vanessa would plant a laurel or two in honor of her guest, who passed his time with the lady reading and writing verses in a rural bower built in a sequestered part of her garden. Some of the verses composed by Vanessa have been preserved. They breathe the fond ardor of the suffering maid, and testify to the imperturbable coldness of the man. Of the innocence of their intercourse there cannot be a doubt. In 1720 Vanessa lost her last remaining relative—her sister died in her arms. Thrown back upon herself by this bereavement, the intensity of her love for the Dean became insupportable. Jealous and suspicious, and eager to put an end to a terror that possessed her, she resolved to address herself to Stella, and to ascertain from her own lips the exact nature of her relations with her so-called guardian. The momentous question was asked in a letter, to which Stella calmly replied by informing her interrogator that she was the Dean's wife. Vanessa's letter was forwarded by Stella to Swift himself, and it roused him to fury. He rode off at once to Cellbridge, he entered the apartment in which Vanessa was seated, and glared upon her like a tiger. The trembling creature asked her visitor to sit down. He answered the invitation by flinging a packet on the table, and riding instantly away. The packet was opened; it contained nothing but Vanessa's letter to Stella. Her doom was pronounced. The fond heart snapped. In a few weeks the hopeless, desolate Vanessa was in her grave.

Swift, agonized, rushed from the world. For two months subsequently to the death of Vanessa his place of abode was unknown. But at the end of that period he returned to Dublin calmer for the conflict he had undergone. He devoted himself industriously again to affairs of State. His pen had now a nobler office than to sustain unworthy men in unmerited power. We can but indicate the course of his labors. Ireland, the country not of his love, but of his birth and adoption, treated as a conquered province, owed her rescue from absolute thraldom to Swift's great and unconquerable exertions on her behalf. He resisted the English Government with his single hand, and overcame them in the fight. His popularity in Ireland was unparalleled even in that excited and generous-hearted land. Rewards were offered to betray him, but a million lives would have been sacrificed in his place before one would have profited by the patriot's downfall. He was worshiped, and every hair of his head was precious and sacred to the people who adored him.

In 1726 Swift revisited England, for the first time since the death of Queen Anne, and published, anonymously as usual, the famous satire of Gulliver's Travels. Its immediate success heralded the universal fame that masterly and singular work has since achieved. Swift mingled once more with his literary friends, and lived almost entirely with Pope. Yet courted on all sides he was doomed again to bitter sorrow. News reached him that Stella was ill. Alarmed and full of self-reproaches, he hastened home to be received by the people of Ireland in triumph, and to meet—and he was grateful for the sight—the improved and welcoming looks of the woman for whose dissolution he had been prepared. In March, 1727, Stella being sufficiently recovered, the Dean ventured once more to England, but soon to be resummoned to the hapless couch of his exhausted and most miserable wife. Afflicted in body and soul, Swift suddenly quitted Pope, with whom he was residing at Twickenham, and reaching his home, was doomed to find his Stella upon the verge of the grave. Till the last moment he continued at her bedside, evincing the tenderest consideration, and performing what consolatory tasks he might in the sick chamber. Shortly before her death part of a conversation between the melancholy pair was overheard. "Well, my dear," said the Dean, "if you wish it, it shall be owned." Stella's reply was given in fewer words. "It is too late." "On the 28th of January," writes one of the biographers of Swift, "Mrs. Johnson closed her weary pilgrimage, and passed to that land where they neither marry nor are given in marriage," the second victim of one and the same hopeless and consuming passion.

Swift stood alone in the world, and for his punishment was doomed to endure the crushing solitude for the space of seventeen years. The interval was gloomy indeed. From his youth the Dean had been subject to painful fits of giddiness and deafness. From 1736 these fits became more frequent and severe. In 1740 he went raving mad, and frenzy ceased only to leave him a more pitiable idiot. During the space of three years the poor creature was unconscious of all that passed around him, and spoke but twice. Upon the 19th of October, 1745, God mercifully removed the terrible spectacle from the sight of man, and released the sufferer from his misery, degradation, and shame.

The volumes, whose title is found below,[1] and which have given occasion to these remarks, are a singular comment upon a singular history. It is the work of a Frenchman who has ventured to deduce a theory from the data we have submitted to the reader's notice. With that theory we cannot agree: it may be reconcilable to the romance which M. de Wailly has invented, but it is altogether opposed to veritable records that cannot be impugned. M. de Wailly would have it that Swift's marriage with Stella was a deliberate and rational sacrifice of love to principle, and that Swift compensated his sacrificed love by granting his principle no human indulgences; that his love for Vanessa, in fact, was sincere and ardent, and that his duty to Stella alone prevented a union with Vanessa. To prove his case M. de Wailly widely departs from history, and makes his hypothesis of no value whatever, except to the novel reader. As a romance, written by a Frenchman, Stella and Vanessa is worthy of great commendation. It indicates a familiar knowledge of English manners and character, and never betrays, except here and there in the construction of the plot, the hand of a foreigner. It is quite free from exaggeration, and inasmuch as it exhibits no glaring anachronism or absurd caricature, is a literary curiosity. We accept it as such, though bound to reject its higher claims. The mystery of Swift's amours has yet to be cleared up. We explain his otherwise unaccountable behavior by attributing his cruelty to prevailing insanity. The career of Swift was brilliant, but not less wild than dazzling. The sickly hue of a distempered brain gave a color to his acts in all the relations of life. The storm was brewing from his childhood; it burst forth terribly in his age, and only a moment before all was wreck and devastation, the half-distracted man sat down and made a will, by which he left the whole of his worldly possessions for the foundation of a lunatic asylum.

[1] Stella and Vanessa: A Romance from the French. By Lady Duff Gordon. In two vols. Bentley. 1850.

AUTHORS AND BOOKS.

We find in the Deutsche Zeitung aus Böhmen, an account of a visit to the great German satirist and poet Henry Heine, who lives at Paris, where, as is known, he has long been confined to his bed with a lingering illness. We translate the following for the International:—

"It is indeed a painful or rather a terrible condition in which Heine now is and has been for the past year; though the paralysis has made no progress, it has at least experienced no alleviation. He has now lain near two years in bed, and during that time has not seen a tree nor a speck of the blue sky. He cannot raise himself, and scarcely moves. His left eye is blind, his right can just perceive objects, but cannot bear the light of day. His nights are disturbed by fearful torments, and only morphine can produce him the least repose. Hope of recovery has long been given up, and he himself entertains no illusions on that subject. He knows that his sufferings can end only with death. He speaks of this with the utmost composure."

The writer goes on to contradict, as calumnious, the report that Heine had become religious, saying, that he bears his tortures without "the assistance of saints of any color, and by the inward power of the free man." He does not regard himself as a sinner, and has nothing to repent of, since he has but rejoiced like a child, in everything beautiful—chasing butterflies, finding flowers by the way-side, and making a holiday of his whole life. He has, however, often called himself religious, by way of contradiction, and from antipathy to a certain clique who openly proclaim themselves atheists, and under that sonorous title seek to exercise a certain terror on others.

It seems that Heine has lost a great deal of property through various speculators who have persuaded him to join in their schemes. The writer says: "Heine's friends are enraged at many of these individuals, and urge him to attack them publicly, and show them up in their true light. He owes this satisfaction to himself and to us; at the same time it would conciliate many who have not pardoned him the cavalier air with which he has turned off the most respectable notabilities of literature and patriotism, in order to amuse himself in the company of some adventurer." By this love for out-of-the-way characters, the writer thinks that Heine must have collected the materials for a humorous novel, which could equal the best productions of Mendoza, Smollett, or Dickens; his experiences in this line have cost him a great deal of money. We translate the conclusion of the article:—

"We shall be asked if Heine really continues to write? Yes; he writes, he works, he dictates poems without cessation; perhaps he was never in his whole life as active as now. Several hours a day he devotes to the composition of his memoirs which are rapidly advancing under the hand of his secretary. His mind still resembles, in its wonderful fullness and vigor, those fantastic ball-nights of Paris, which, under the open sky, unfold an endless life and variety. There rings the music, there rushes the dance, and the loveliest and grotesquest forms flit hither and thither. There are silent arbors for tears of happiness and sorrow, and places for dancing, with light, full of loud bold laughter. Rockets after rockets mount skyward, scattering millions of stars, and endless extravagance of art, fire, poesy, passion, flames up, showing the world now in green, now in purple light, till at last the clear silver stars come out, and fill us with infinite delight, and the still consciousness of life's beauty. Yes, Heine lives and writes incessantly. His body is broken, but not his mind, which, on the sick bed rises to Promethean power and courage. His arm is impotent; not so his satire, which still in its velvet covering bears the fearful knife that has flayed alive so many a Maryas. Yes, his frame is worn away, but not the grace in every movement of his youthful spirit. Along with his memoirs, a complete volume of poems has been written in these two years. They will not appear till after the death of the poet; but I can say of them that they unite in full perfection all the admirable gifts which have rendered his former poems so brilliant. So struggles this extraordinary man against a terrible destiny, with all the weapons of the soul, never despairing in this vehement suffering, never descending to tears—bidding defiance to the worst. As I stood before that sick bed, it seemed as if I saw the sufferer of the Caucasus bound in iron chains, tortured by the vulture, but still confronting fate unappalled, and there alone on the sea-shore caressed by sea-nymphs. Yes, this is the sick-bed and the death-bed of a great and free man; and to have come near him is not only a great happiness but a great instruction."

Heine has never been well known in this country. The only work by him we have seen in English is his Beitrage zur Deutschen Literatur-Geschichte, translated by Mr. G.W. Haven, and published in Boston, in 1846. It is remarkably clever, and audacious, as the productions of this German-Frenchman generally are. He is now fifty-three years of age, having been born at Dusseldorff, in 1797. As several wealthy bankers, and other persons of substance, in Paris, are related to him, and he has a pension from the French Government, he is not likely to suffer very much from the losses of property referred to in the Zeitung aus Böhmen.

Dr. Otto Zirckel has just published at Berlin a volume called "Sketches from and concerning the United States," which has some curious peculiarities to the eyes of an American. It is intended as a guide for Germans who wish either to emigrate to this country or to send their money here for investment. It begins with a description of the voyage to America and of the East, West and South of the Union; next it describes the position of the farmer, physician, clergyman, teacher, jurist, merchant, and editor, and the chance of the emigrant in each of these professions. It is written with spirit and humor, and a good deal of practical judgment and wisdom are concisely and clearly expressed. The curious part is the advice given to speculators who wish to invest their money here at a high rate of interest. The author seems to think America a perfect Eldorado for money lenders, and his book cannot fail to produce a considerable increase in the amount of German capital employed in this country. The various state and national loans are described correctly, showing that Dr. Zirckel might venture safely into the mazes of Wall Street. The history of repudiation he has studied with care, and the necessity of final resumption of payments even in Mississippi he estimates with justice. He suggests as the safest means of managing matters, that a number of wealthy families should combine their funds and send over a special agent in whom they can confide, to manage the same in shaving notes, speculating in land, lending on bond and mortgage, and making money generally. Thus they can get a high return and live comfortably in Europe on the toil of Americans, all of which will be much more grateful to the capitalists than useful to this country. Better for us to have no foreign capital at all than to have the interest thereon carried away and consumed in Europe.

Emile Silvestre has sent forth a new volume, Un Philosophe sous les Toits.

The work on Aerostation, by Mr. Green, recently published in Philadelphia, has been much noticed in Europe, where—particularly in France—the subject has attracted large attention, in consequence of the death of Gale, (formerly a player at our Bowery Theater,) near Bordeaux, and the recent wicked and ridiculous ascents with horses, ostriches, &c. from the Hippodrome in Paris, and some experiments in ballooning at Madrid. In an interesting paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, for the fifteenth of October, we have an account of numerous theories, experiments, and accidents, constituting an entertaining resumé of the whole matter. Few instances of intrepidity, danger, and escape, excite livelier emotion than the crossing from England to France by Blanchard, and Dr. Jeffries, an American, on the seventh of January, 1785. When, by the loss of gas, the balloon descended rapidly over the channel, and approached near the surface of the sea, after everything had been thrown out, even to their clothes, Jeffries offered to leap into the sea, and by thus lightening the balloon further, afford Blanchard a chance of safety. "We must both be lost as the case is," said he; "if you think your preservation is possible, I am ready to sacrifice my life." The French military ascents are particularly described. Companies of aeronauts were formed and trained, and Bonaparte took one of them with him to Egypt, but the British captured all the apparatus for the generation of gas. The First Consul caused ascents in picturesque balloons to be made on occasions of public rejoicing for victories, in order to strike the imaginations of the Egyptians, and an aerostatic academy was established near Paris. The writer mentions that Lieutenant Gale, like poor Sam Patch, so famous for a similar absurdity, and for a similar and not less miserable end, had drank too much brandy for self-possession in a dangerous predicament. He thinks that the problem of the direction or government of balloons cannot possibly be solved with the mechanical means which science now commands; and that, as they may be usefully employed for the study of the great physical laws of the globe, all experiments should be restricted to the object of advancing science. He dwells on what might be accomplished toward ascertaining the true laws of the decrease of temperature in the elevated regions of the air, of the decrease of density of the atmosphere, of the decrease of humidity according to atmospheric heights, and of the celerity of sound. After all the experiments, and all that has been written upon the subject, we are confident that the direction of a balloon is quite impossible, except by a process which we have never yet seen suggested; that is, by the rapid decomposition of the air in its way, so that a tube extended in the direction in which it is desired to move, shall open continually a vacuum into which the pressure of the common atmosphere shall impel the carriage.

The Journal des Debats announces for publication two works from the pen of Guizot. The hero of the first is General Monk. Its title is The Downfall of the Republic in England in 1660, and the Reestablishment of the Monarchy: A Historic Study. It may be regarded as new, though part has been published before in the form of articles in the Revue Française. These articles appeared in 1837. M. Guizot has carefully revised them, and added a great deal of new matter. The work is also to be enriched with a number of curious documents never before published, such as a letter from Richard Cromwell to General Monk, and seventy dispatches from M. de Bordeaux, then French Ambassador at London, to Cardinal Mazarin. These dispatches have been found in the archives of the Foreign Office at Paris. The work has a new preface, which the Debats says will prove to be no less important in a political than a historical point of view. The second book is that so well known in this country upon Washington. We do not understand that anything new is added to it. It was in the first place issued as the introduction of the translation into French of Sparks's Life of Washington, which the French journalist says is the most exact and complete work yet published on the war of independence and the foundation of the United States. "Monk and Washington," adds the Debats: "on the one side a republic falling and a monarchy rising again into existence, on the other a monarchy giving birth to a republic; and M. Guizot, formerly the prime minister of our monarchy, now amid the perplexities of our own republic the historian of these two great men and these two great events! Were contrasts ever seen more striking, and more likely to excite a powerful interest?"

This is very well for the Debats. But the omissions by Mr. Sparks—sometimes from carelessness, sometimes from ignorance, and sometimes from an indisposition to revive memories of old feuds, or to cover with disgrace names which should be dishonored; and his occasional verbal alterations of Washington's letters prevent that general satisfaction with which his edition of Washington would otherwise be regarded. We are soon to have histories of the Revolution, from both Sparks and Bancroft, in proper form. The best documentary history is not, as the Debats fancies, this collection of Washington's letters, but Mr. Force's "Archives,"—of which, with its usual want of sagacity or regard for duty, Congress is publishing but one tenth of the edition necessary, since every statesman in our own country, and every writer on American history at home or abroad, needs a copy of it, and from its extent and costliness it will never be reprinted.

The Rabbi Cahen has published at Paris the Book of Job, which concludes his learned version of the Hebrew Bible.

Works on the German Revolution and German Politics.—An excellent book on the Prussian revolution is now being published at Oldenburg. It is from the pen of Adolf Stahr, a writer of remarkable force and clearness. He belongs to the party most bitterly disappointed by the turn affairs have taken in Germany. We mean the democratic monarchists, who labored under the illusion that they might see Prussia converted into a sort of republic with a hereditary chief, like Belgium. They desired a monarchy, with a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and democratic institutions of every kind. Stahr's book breathes all the bitterness of their rage at the success of absolutism in snatching from them every slightest vestige of hope. His book is published serially, four parts having already been issued. As a record of facts it deserves the praise of great industry and lucidity in collection and arrangement, while on every page there glows in suppressed eloquence the indignation of a generous and manly heart. Of course Stahr cannot be called a historian in the usual sense of the term. He is rather a political pamphleteer, maintaining at length the ideas and chastising the foes of his party.

Another and a more permanently valuable work on this subject is the Revolutions-Chronik (Revolutionary Chronicle) of Dr. Adolf Wolff, published by Hempel of Berlin. This is a collection of authentic documents, such as proclamations, placards, letters, legislative acts, &c., connected with the revolution. They are not only arranged in due order, but are combined with a clear and succinct narrative of the events and circumstances to which they relate. We know of no man more competent than Dr. Wolff to the successful execution of so important an undertaking. Without being a partisan, his sympathies are decidedly on the popular side, and the clearness of his judgment cannot be blinded by any of the feints and stratagems in which the period abounded. He is now engaged upon the revolution in Prussia, but intends to treat all the manifestations of the time throughout Germany in the same thorough and reliable manner. His work will be invaluable to future historians of this eventful period; at the same time it reads like a romance, not only from the nature of the events, but from the spirit and keenness of the style.

Two other striking contributions to the history of this stormy epoch have been made by Bruno Bauer, the well known rationalist. Bauer treats the political and religious parties of modern Germany with the same scornful satire and destructive analysis which appear in his theological writings. He delights in pitting one side against the other and making them consume each other. His first book is called the Bürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland, (the Burghers' Revolution in Germany); it was published above a year ago, and attracted a great deal of attention from the fact that it took neither side, but with a sort of Mephistophelian superiority, showed that every party had been alike weak, timid, hesitating, short-sighted, and useless. The New-Catholics of Ronge's school were especially treated with unsparing severity. Bauer has now just brought out his second book, which is particularly devoted to the Frankfort Parliament. In this also the Hegelian Logic is applied with the same result. The author proves that all that was done in that body was worth nothing and produced nothing. There is not a particle of sympathetic feeling in the whole book; but only cold and contemptuous analysis. It has not made very much of an impression in Germany. Both these works, and, indeed, the whole school of ultra-Hegelian skeptics generally, are a singular reaction upon the usual warmth and sentimentality of German character and literature. They are the very opposite extreme, and so a very natural product of the times. For our part we like them quite as well as the other side of the contrast.

Germany is the richest of all countries in historical literature. Nowhere have all the events of human experience been so variously, profoundly, or industriously investigated. Ancient history especially has been most exhaustively treated by the Germans. One of the best and most comprehensive works in this category is that of Dr. Zimmer, the seventh edition of which, revised and enlarged, has just been published at Leipzic. Dr. Zimmer does not proceed upon the hypotheses of Niebuhr and others, but conceives that the writing of history and romance ought to be essentially different. The whole work is in one volume of some 450 pages, and of course greatly condensed. It discusses the history of India, China, and Japan; the western Asiatic States, Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Phœnicia, India, down to the fall of Jerusalem; the other parts of Asia; Egypt to the battle of Actium, with a dissertation on Egyptian culture; Carthage; Greece to the fall of Corinth; Rome under the emperors down to the year 476; and concludes with an account of the literature of classical antiquity.

As we have no manual of this sort in English, that is written up to the latest results of scholarship, we hope to see some American undertaking a version of Dr. Zimmer's book. There is considerable learning and talent in the two octavos on the same subject by Dr. Hebbe, and published last year by Dewitt & Davenport; but we strongly dislike some of the doctrines of the work, which are not derived from a thorough study.

The seventh volume of Professor Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century, and of the Nineteenth till the overthrow of the French Empire, appeared, in translation, in London, on the first of November. Volume eighth, completing the work, with a copious index, is preparing for early publication.

The Discovery of a lost MS. of Jean Le Bel is mentioned in the Paris papers, as having been made by M. Polain, keeper of the Archives at Liège, among the MSS. in the Bibliothèque de Bourgogne, at Brussels. It is on the eve of publication, and will be comprised in an octavo volume, in black letter. This work was supposed to be irretrievably lost. It was found by M. Polain, transcribed and incorporated into a prose Chronicle de Liège, by Jean des Pres, dit d'Ontremeuse. It comprises a period between 1325 and 1340, which are embraced in one hundred and forty-six chapters of the first book of Froissart. It therefore contains only the first part of Le Bel's Chronicle: nevertheless it is a fragment of much importance. Froissart cannot be considered as a contemporary historian of the events recorded in his first book, but Le Bel was connected with the greater portion of them, and was acquainted with them either from personal knowledge or through those who had authentic sources of information.

Monsieur Bastiat, the political economist, (who has shown more economy in the matter of credit for the best ideas in his books, than in anything else we know of,) is not dead, as in the last International was stated. The Courier and Enquirer correspondent says:

"I am glad to say that the report which reached Paris from Italy, of the death of F. Bastiat, a noted writer on political economy, is unfounded. That gentleman is recovering his health, and it is now believed will be able, at the opening of the session, to resume his seat in the Assembly."

Since his return from Italy he has published at Paris a new edition of his latest production, the Harmonies Economiques, in which he has availed himself in so large a degree and in so discreditable a manner of the ideas of Mr. Henry C. Carey, of New Jersey, who, since he first gave to the public the essentials of M. Bastiat's performance, has himself, in a volume, entitled The Harmony of Interests, published some three or four months ago in Philadelphia, largely and forcibly illustrated his just and admirable doctrines. In the Harmonies Economiques M. Bastiat seeks to prove that the interests of classes and individuals in society, as now constituted, are harmonious, and not antagonistic as certain schools of thinkers maintain. Commercial freedom he avers, instead of urging society toward a state of general misery, tends constantly to the progressive increase of the general abundance and well being. In sustaining this proposition M. Bastiat teaches the optimism of the socialists, and holds that injustice is not a necessary thing in human relations, that monopoly and pauperism are only temporary, and that things must come right at last. The powers of nature, the soil, vegetation, gravitation, heat, electricity, chemical forces, waters, seas, in short the globe and all the endowments with which God has enriched it, are the common property of the entire race of man, and in proportion as society advances this common property is more equally distributed and enjoyed. Capital assists men in their efforts to improve this magnificent inheritance; competition is a powerful lever with which they set in movement and render useful the gratuitous gifts of God; the social instinct leads them to make a continual exchange of services; and even now, though the powers of nature enter into these services, those who receive them pay only for the labor of their fellows, not for natural products; and the accumulation of capital constantly diminishes the rate of interest and enables the laborer to derive a greater return from his toil. M. Bastiat also gives a new definition of value, which he says is the relation of two services exchanged. This is all, we believe, that he claims to offer as perfectly new,—the main part of his book appearing as a clearer exposition of the doctrine of Adam Smith. It will be seen that the theory of the book is infinitely superior to that of Ricardo or Malthus; it has borrowed truths from the advanced thinkers of the age; but he would be a bold critic who should affirm that it had not mingled far-reaching errors with them.

M. Romieu's book in defense of despotism, (lately published in France,) sounds as if it had been written for the North American Review, but it never could have been sent to its editor, or it would have been adopted and published by him. It is entitled "The Era of the Cæsars," and its argument is, that history, ancient and modern, and the situation of the contemporary world, prove that force, the sword, or Cæsarism, has ultimately decided, and will prevail, in the affairs of the nations. Representative assemblies, Monsieur Romieu considers ridiculous, and mischievous, and in the end fatal: such, at least, he contends, is the experience of France; and as for the liberty of the press, it means a form of tyranny which destroys all other liberty. At the beginning of the century, M. de Fontanes said what (he thinks) multitudes of the soundest minds would reecho, "I shall never deem myself free in a country where freedom of the press exists." He would convert all journals into mere chronicles, and have them strictly watched. Force, he says, is the only principle, even in governments styled free. He includes Switzerland and the United States. The condition and destinies of France he handles with special hardihood. Cæsarism is here already desired and inaugurated—not monarchy, which requires faith in it, nor constitutional government, which is an expedient and an illusion, but a supreme authority capable of maintaining itself, and commanding respect and submission. Mr. Walsh reviews the work in one of his letters to the Journal of Commerce; and judging from Mr. Walsh's correspondence on the recent attempts to establish free institutions in Europe, we might suspect him of a hearty sympathy with M. Romieu, whom he describes as an erudite, conscientious personage, formerly a prefect of a department, and a member of the Assembly.

The German poet, Anastasius Grün, has just published, at Leipzic a collection of the popular songs of Carinthia, translated from the original. Carinthia, as, perhaps, all our readers are not aware, is one of the southerly provinces of the Austrian empire, on the borders of Turkey; and, during all the wars of Austria with the Moslems, had to bear the brunt of the fighting. And even after peace was concluded the Carinthians kept up a sort of minor war on their own account, being constantly exposed to incursions from the other side of the frontier. Thus for centuries their country was one extended fortification, and the whole population in constant readiness to rush to arms when the signal fires blazed upon the hills. Then every house was a fortress, and even the churches were surrounded with palisades and ditches, behind which the women and children sought refuge with their movables when the alarm came too near. From this period of constant and savage warfare the popular songs of the country date their origin. Curious to say, many of their heroes are borrowed from the traditions and history of neighboring lands. Thus the Servian champion Marko figures a good deal in this poetry, while the figure which has more importance than all the others is a foreign and almost fabulous being, called King Mathias; wherever this mystic personage can be laid hold of and historically identified, he appears to be Mathias Corvin, king of Hungary. The Carinthians attribute to him not only all the exploits of a variety of notable characters, but also the vices of some celebrated illustrations of immorality. Nor is his career accomplished; according to the tradition of the southern Slavonians, King Mathias is not yet dead, but sleeps in a grotto in the interior of Hungary, waiting for the hour of waking, like Frederick the Redbeard in the Kyffhäuser, Charlemagne in the Untersberg at Salzburg, Holger the Dane near Kronburg, and King Arthur in a mountain of his native country. There sits King Mathias with his warriors, by a table under a linden tree. Another song makes him, like Orpheus with Eurydice, go down to hell with his fiddle in his hand to bring thence his departed bride. But he has no better luck than Orpheus; on the way out she breaks the commanded silence by saying a word to her companion, and so is lost forever. These songs are still sung by the Carinthian soldiers at night, around their watch-fires. There are others of more modern origin, but they are weak and colorless compared with these relics of the old heroic time.

Mr. Bryant's delightful "Letters of a Traveler," of which we have heretofore spoken, has been issued by Mr. Putnam in a new and very beautiful edition, enriched with many exquisite engravings, under the title of "The Picturesque Souvenir." It is a work of permanent value, and in the style of its publication is hardly surpassed by any of the splendid volumes of the season.

Dr. Laing, one of those restless English travelers who have printed books about the United States, is now a prominent personage in Australia, where he has been elected a member of the newly instituted Legislature, for the city of Sidney. Upon the conclusion of the canvass he made a speech, after which he was dragged home in his carriage by some of the more energetic of his partisans, the horses having been removed by them for that purpose. He is opposed to the Government.

The History of Liberty, by Mr. Samuel Elliot, of Boston, is examined at considerable length and in a very genial spirit, in the last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes—a review, by the way, in which much more attention appears to be paid to our literature than it receives in the North American. The writer observes, in the beginning, that the two initial volumes of Mr. Elliot's great work, now published, in which the Liberty of Rome is treated, would be a superhuman performance, if Niebuhr, Muller, Heeren, Grote, and Thirlwall, had not written, and compares the work of our countryman with the poem on the same subject by Thomson, the author of "The Seasons." He says:

"Mr. Elliot's work breathes a lofty morality; a grave and masculine reserve; a deep and constant fear of not having done the best. He may be subject,—like other Americans more or less ideologists and system-mongers,—to illusions; but he has the true remedy: his ideal is well placed; he can sympathize fervently with all the pursuits and employments of human activity; he cherishes a profound respect for prudence, and moderation; for an enlarging survey and indulgence of human necessities; for that generosity and virtue which is tender above all of what has life, and seeks to conciliate a complete transformation in the ideas of men. Until now, it would have been difficult to find a thinker who, in judging the Romans, would not have celebrated their inordinate patriotism, as their chief glory. Their heroes were admired precisely for the ardor with which they sacrificed everything—even their children or their conscience—to the interests of country or party. Mr. Elliot, on the contrary, discovers in this heroism only a lamentable deficiency of true virtue and honor; of a sound moral sense and equitable liberality. To our apprehension, a great reform—an historical event—is to be recognized in this new moral repugnance—this new tendency to deem the spirit of party an evil and a danger. Formerly, nothing was conceived to be nobler than to serve your party, without stint or reservation;—nothing more disgraceful than to abandon it even when you could not entertain the same opinions. The condemnation and reversal of this doctrine would be a moral advancement more important for human futurity, than many of the occurrences or the revolutions of the last sixty years, that have made the most noise."

We believe Mr. Elliot's leisure is not to be seriously interrupted by public employments, and trust, therefore, that he will proceed, with as much rapidity as possible, with his grand survey of the advance of Liberty, down even to our own day—which it is not unlikely will conclude a very important era of his subject.

Dr. Bowring, who is now, we believe, British Consul at Canton, was the editor of the last and only complete edition of Jeremy Bentham's works; he has been one of the most voluminous contributors to the Westminster Review, and he is eminent as a linguist, though if we may judge by some of his performances, not very justly so. He translated and edited specimens of the poetry of several northern nations, and it has often been charged as an illustration of his dishonesty, that he omitted a stanza of the sublime hymn of Derzhaven, a Russian, to the Deity, because it recognized the divinity of Christ, as it is held by Trinitarians—the Doctor being a Unitarian. He is sharply satirized, and treated frequently with extreme and probably quite undeserved contempt, in the Diaries and Correspondence of the late Hugh Swinton Legaré.

Mr. Henry Rogers, of Birmingham, has published in London two stout volumes of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review. They are not the best things that ever appeared under the old "buff and blue," though they are neat and very readable. Hitherto Professor Rogers has not been known in literature, except by an edition of the works of Burke. The reviewals or essays in this collection are divided into biographical, critical, theological, and political. The first volume consists principally of a series of sketches of great minds,—in the style, half-biographical, half-critical, of which so many admirable specimens have adorned the literature of this age. Indeed, such demonstrations in mental anatomy have been a favorite study in all ages. Among Mr. Rogers's subjects, are Pascal, Luther, Leibnitz, and Plato, and he promises sketches of Descartes, Malabranche, Hobbes, Berkeley, and Locke. The first article, on Thomas Fuller, may look rather dry at first; but the interest increases, we admire the quaintness of old Fuller, and not less the fine, accurate, and complete picture given of his life, character, and works. In this, as in the other biographical articles, Mr. Rogers tells his story fluently. If he has not the wit of Sydney Smith, nor the brilliance of Macaulay, he has not the prosiness of Alison, nor the bitterness of Gifford. He is witty with Fuller, sarcastic with Marvell, energetic with Luther, philosophical and precise with Leibnitz, quietly satirical with Pascal, and reflective and intellectual with Plato. "Dead as a last year's reviewal" is no longer among the proverbs. Books are too numerous to be read, and people make libraries of the quarterlies,—thanks to the facilities afforded by Mr. Leonard Scott! And reviews, properly written,—evincing some knowledge of the books which furnish their titles, are very delightful and useful reading, frequently more so than the productions which suggest them, of which they ought always to give an intelligible description. And this condition is fulfilled almost always by the reviews published in London and Edinburgh. Our North American sometimes gives us tolerably faithful abstracts, and its readers would be glad if its writers would confine themselves to such labors. But we read an article in it not long ago, under the title of Mr. Carey's "Past and Present," which contained no further allusion to this book, nor the slightest evidence that the "reviewer" had ever seen it. On the other hand, the last number contains a paper on the Homeric question, purporting to have been occasioned by Mr. Grote's History of Greece, but deriving its learning, we understand, altogether from Mr. Mure's History of Greek Literature, a work so extensive that it is not likely to be reprinted, or largely imported.

This custom which now obtains, of reprinting reviewals, we believe was begun in this country, where Mr. Emerson brought out a collection of Carlyle's Essays, Andrews Norton one of Macaulay's, Dr. Furness one of Professor Wilson's, Mr. Edward Carey one of Lord Jeffrey's, &c. several years before any such collections appeared in England.

Respecting the Holy Land, no work of so much absolute value has appeared since Dr. Robinson's, as the Historical and Geographical Sketch by Rabbi Joseph Schwartz, in a large and thick octavo, with numerous illustrations, lately published in Philadelphia by Mr. Hart. Rabbi Schwartz resided in Palestine sixteen years, and he is the only Jew of eminence who has written of the country from actual observation, since the time of Benjamin of Tudela. The learned author wrote his work in Hebrew, and it has been translated by Rabbi Isaac Leeser, one of the ablest divines in Philadelphia. It is addressed particularly to Jewish readers, to whom the translator remarks in his preface, "It is hoped that it may contribute to extend the knowledge of Palestine, and rouse many to study the rich treasures which our ancient literature affords, and also to enkindle sympathy and kind acts for those of our brothers who still cling to the soil of our ancestors and love the dust in which many of our saints sleep in death, awaiting a glorious resurrection and immortality."

Mr. John R. Thompson, the accomplished and much esteemed editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, whose genuine and intelligent love of literature is illustrated in every number of his excellent magazine, has just published a wise and eloquent address on the present state of education in Virginia, which was delivered before the literary societies of Washington College, at Lexington. It discloses the causes of the ignorance of reading and writing by seventy thousand adults in Virginia, and forcibly and impressively urges the necessity of a thorough literary culture to the common prosperity.

A New Play by Mr. Marston, founded on the story of Philip Augustus of France and Marie de Méranie, has been put into rehearsal at the Olympic Theater in London.

The Leipzic Grenzboten notices Mrs. Maberly's new romance of "Fashion" (which we believe has not yet been republished in America) with great praise, as a work of striking power and artistic management. Nevertheless, says the critic, this romance has excited in England as much anger as attention, and this he attributes to the truth with which the authoress has depicted the aristocratic world. He then makes the following remarks, which are curious enough to be translated: "The meaning of the word 'fashion' cannot be rendered in a foreign language. La mode and its tyranny approach somewhat to the sense, but still it remains unintelligible to us Germans, because we have no idea of the capricious, silly, and despotic laws of fashion in England. They do not relate, as with us, to mere outward things, as clothes and furniture, but especially to position and estimation in high society. In order to play a part on that stage it is necessary to understand the mysterious conditions and requirements which the goddess Fashion prescribes. High birth and riches, wit and beauty, find no mercy with her if her whimsical laws are not obeyed. In what these laws consist no living soul can say: they are double, yes three-fold, the je ne sais quoi of the French. The exclusiveness of English society is well known, a peculiarity in which it is only excelled by its copyist the American society of New York and Boston. But it is not enough to have obtained admission into the magic circle: there, too, fashion implacably demands its victims, and to her as to Moloch earthly and heavenly goods, wealth, and peace of soul, are offered up."

John Ruskin, who has written of painting, sculpture and architecture, in a manner more attractive to mere amateurs than any other author, will soon publish his elaborate work, "The Authors of Venice." Notwithstanding his almost blind idolatry of Turner, and his other heresies, Ruskin is one of the few writers on art who open new vistas to the mind; vehement, paradoxical, and one-sided he may be, but no other writer clears the subject in the same masterly manner—no other writer suggests more even to those of opposite opinions.

The first two volumes of Oehlenschlager's Lebens Erinnerungen have appeared at Vienna, and attract more observation than anything else in the late movements in the German literature. The poet's early struggles give one kind of interest to this work, and his friendship with illustrious litterateurs another. Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller, the Schlegels, Steffens, Hegel, and other representatives of German thought, pass in succession through these pages, mingled with pictures of Danish life, and criticisms on the Danish drama. Like most German biographies, this deals as much with German literature as with German life.

Gustave Planche, a clever Parisian critic, has in the last number of La Revue des Deux Mondes, an article on Lamartine's novels and Confessions, issued within the year. He spares neither the prose nor poetry of the romantic statesman. He classes the History of the Girondists with the novels. On the whole he thinks there is less of fact, or more of transmutation of fact, than in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley series: as in Scott's Life of Napoleon there was less of veracity than in any even of his professed fictions founded upon history. These romancists are never to be trusted, except in their own domains.

Prosper Mérimée, known among the poets by his Theatre de Clara Gazul, and who by his Chronique du Temps de Charles IX. and Colomba, was entitled to honorable mention in literature, has written a very clever book about the United States—the fruit of a visit to this country last year—which an accomplished New-Yorker is engaged in translating. His last previous performance was a Life of Pedro the Cruel, which has been translated and published in London, and is thus spoken of in the Literary Gazette:—

"The subject hardly yields in romantic variety, strange turns of fortune, characters of strong expression, and tragedies of the deepest pathos, to anything created by the imagination. Within the period and in the land which was marked by the fortunes of Pedro of Castile, the scene is crowded with figures over which both history and song have thrown a lasting interest. The names of Planche of France, Inez de Castro of Portugal, Du Guesclin,—the Black Prince, the White Company—belong alike to romance and to reality. The very 'Don Juan' of Mozart and Byron plays his part for an hour as no fabulous gallant at the court of Seville; Moors and Christians join in the council or in the field here, as well as in the strains of the Romancero; and the desperate game played for a crown by the rival brothers whose more than Theban strife was surrounded by such various objects of pity, admiration or terror, wants no incident, from its commencement to its climax, to fill the just measure of a tragic theme. One more striking could scarcely have been desired by a poet; yet M. Mérimée, who claims that character, has handled it with the judgment and diligence of an historian."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest living American writer born in the present century, has just published, through Ticknor, Reed and Fields, a volume for juvenile readers, in the preface to which he says:

"It has not been composed without a deep sense of responsibility. The author regards children as sacred, and would not for the world cast anything into the fountain of a young heart that might embitter and pollute its waters. And even in point of the literary reputation to be aimed at, juvenile literature is as well worth cultivating as any other. The writer, if he succeed in pleasing his little readers, may hope to be remembered by them till their own old age—a far longer period of literary existence than is generally attained by those who seek immortality from the judgments of full grown men."

An attentive correspondent of the International, at Vienna, mentions that letters have been received there from the eccentric but daring and intelligent American, Dr. Mathews, formerly of Baltimore, who, some years since, assumed the style of the Arabs, with a view to discovery in Northern and Central Africa. We hope to obtain further information of Dr. Mathews, respecting whose adventures there has not hitherto been anything in the journals for several years.

Professor G.J. Adler, of the New York University, the learned author of the German and English Dictionary, is now printing a translation which he has just completed, of the Iphigenia in Taurus, by Goethe. Of the eighteen that remain of the sixty to ninety plays of Euripides, the Iphigenia at Tauri is one of the most remarkable. When Goethe returned from Italy, his spirit was infused with the love of ancient art, and his ambition tempting him to a rivalry of its masters, he selected this subject, to which he brought, if not his finest powers, his severest labor; and the drama of Iphigenia—which is in many respects very different from that of Euripides,—is, next to Faust, perhaps the noblest of his works. We are not aware that it has hitherto appeared in English. The forthcoming translation, (which is in the press of the Appletons,) strikes us very favorably. It is exact, and is generally flowing and elegant.

The Official Paper of China has a name which means the Pekin Gazette. It is impossible to ascertain when its publication was first commenced, but it seems to be the oldest newspaper in the world. There is a tradition that it began under the Sung dynasty in the latter part of the tenth century. It is originally a sort of handbill, containing official notices, posted up on the walls of the Capital and sent in manuscript to provincial officers. At Canton it is printed for the public at large and sold. It appears every other day in the form of a pamphlet of ten or twelve pages. It consists of three parts; the first is devoted to Court news, such as the health and other doings of the Imperial family; the second gives the decrees of the Sovereign; the third contains the reports and memorials of public functionaries made to the imperial government on all subjects concerning the interests of the country. The decrees are concise in style; the reports and memorials are the perfection of verbiage. The former have the force of laws, the Emperor being both legislative and executive. As a record of materials for history the Gazette is of little value, for a little study shows that lies are abundant in it, and that its statements are designed as much to conceal as to make known the facts. Since the English war the number of documents published relating to affairs with foreign nations is very small. Something is given respecting the finances, but that too, is of very little value.

Mr. Williams, who wrote "Shakspeare and his Friends," &c., has just published a novel entitled "The Luttrells." It was very high praise of his earlier works that they were by many sagacious critics attributed to Savage Landor. His novels on the literature of the Elizabethan age evince taste and feeling, and his sketches of the Chesterfield and Walpole period in "Maids of Honor," are happily and gracefully done. "The Luttrells" has passages occasionally more powerful but hardly so pleasing as some in the books we have named. In mere style it is an improvement on his former efforts. In the early passages of the story there is nice handling of character, and frequent touches of genuine feeling.

The fifth volume of Vaulabelle's Histoire de la Restauration, a conscientious and carefully written history of France and the Bourbon family, from the restoration in 1815 down to the overthrow of Charles X., has just been published at Paris. It receives the same praise as the preceding volumes. M. Vaulabelle it may be remembered was for a brief period, in 1848, General Cavaignac's Minister of Education and Public Worship.

Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B., R.N., &c., whose presence in New York we noted recently, is now in Texas, superintending the settlement of a large party of first class English emigrants. A volume supplemental to his "Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang," illustrative of the zoology of the expedition, has been published in London by Arthur Adams, F.L.S.

M. Guizot, it is said, is going back to his old profession of editor. He is to participate in the conduct of the Journal des Debats, in which, of course, he will sign his articles. We do not always agree with M. Guizot, but we cannot help thinking him, upon the whole, the most respectable man who for a long time has been conspicuous in affairs in France.

The sixth and concluding volume of the life and correspondence of Robert Southey, edited by C.C. Southey—illustrated with a view of Southey's Monument in Crosthwaite Church, and a view of Crosthwaite, from Greta Hill—was published in London, early in November, and will soon be reissued by Harpers.

Somebody having said that Bulwer had lost his hearing, and was in a very desponding way in consequence, he has written to the Morning Post to say he is by no means deaf, but that if he were he should not much despond on that account, "for the quality and material of the talk that's going is not calculated to cause any great regret for the deprivation of one's ears."

The second volume of the Count de Castelnau's Expedition into the Central Regions of South America, under the auspices of the French government, has just been published in Paris.

An eminent diplomatist of France has just published two volumes of most interesting revelations drawn from his own note-books and personal knowledge. We allude to the Etudes Diplomatiques et Litteraires of Count Alexis de Saint Priest. On the partition of Poland especially, it casts an entirely new and conclusive light. M. Saint Priest shows that apart from the internal anarchy and weakness of Poland, the catastrophe was the work not of Russia as has been commonly supposed, but of Frederic the Great of Prussia. Russia had no interest in dividing Poland; in fact she was already supreme in that country; and besides, her policy has never been that of an active initiative,—she waits for the fruit to fall, and does not take the trouble of shaking the tree herself. The great criminal then in this Polish affair was Prussia, and the cause was the historic antagonism between Germany and Poland. M. Saint Priest sketches the character of Frederic with the hand of a master. "We shall see him," he says in approaching that part of his subject, "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient, ardent and calm, full of passion yet perfectly self-possessed, capable of embracing the vastest horizon and of shutting himself up for the moment in the most limited detail, his eyes reaching to the farthest distance, his hand active in the nearest vicinity, approaching his aim step by step through by-paths, but always gaining it at last by a single bound. We shall see him employing the most indefatigable, the most tenacious, the most persevering will in the service of his idea, preparing it, maturing it by long and skillful reparation, and imposing it on Europe not by sudden violence, but by the successive and cunning employment of flattery and intimidation. And finally, when all is consummated, we shall see him succeed in avoiding the responsibility and throwing it altogether upon his coadjutors, with an art all the more profound for the simplicity under which its hardihood was concealed, and the indifference which masked its avidity. To crown so audacious a maneuver, he will not hesitate to declare, that "since he has never deceived any one, he will still less deceive posterity! And in fact he has treated them with a perfect equality: he made a mock of posterity as well as of his contemporaries." With regard to the part of France in the division of Poland, M. Saint Priest attempts to prove that the French monarchy could not prevent the catastrophe; but that it was in the revolutionary elements then fermenting in France and opposed to the monarchy, that Frederic found his most powerful allies. Of course he defends the monarchy from blame in the matter, and we shall not undertake to say that he is wrong in so doing. Certainly the downfall of Poland cannot be regarded as an isolated event, but as a part of the great series of movements belonging to the age, in which causes the most antagonistic in their nature often cooperated in producing the same effect. M. Saint Priest further reasons that the providential mission of Poland was to oppose Turkey and Islamism, and when the latter ceased to rise the former necessarily declined. But our space will not permit us to follow this interesting work any farther. The careful students of history will not fail to consult it for themselves.

Mary Lowell Putnam, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Lowell of Boston, and sister of James Russell Lowell, the poet, is the author of an annihilating reviewal, in the last Christian Examiner, of Mr. Bowen on the Hungarian Struggle for Independence. The Tribune contains a resumé of the controversy, in which it had itself been honorably distinguished, and furnishes the following sketch of Professor Bowen's antagonist:

"Without any ambition for literary distinction, leading a life of domestic duties and retirement, and pursuing the most profound and various studies from an insatiate thirst for knowledge, this admirable person has shown herself qualified to cope with the difficulties of a complicated historical question, and to vanquish a notorious Professor on his own ground. The manner in which she has executed her task (and her victim) is as remarkable for its unpretending modesty as for its singular acuteness and logical ability. She writes with the graceful facility of one who is entirely at home on the subject, conversant from long familiarity with its leading points, and possessing a large surplus of information in regard to it for which she has no present use. If she exhibits a generous sympathy with the cause of the oppressed, she does not permit the warmth of her feelings to cloud the serenity of her judgment. She conducts the argument with an almost legal precision, and compels her opponent to submit to the force of her intellect."

Harvard would certainly be a large gainer if Mrs. Putnam could succeed Mr. Bowen as professor of History, or,—as the libeller of Kossuth fills so small a portion of the chair,—if she could be made associate professor; but to this she would have objections.

In Leipsic a monument has been erected by the German agriculturists to Herr Thaer, who has done so much amongst them for agricultural science. It consists of a marble column nine feet high, on which stands the statue of Thaer, life size. It is surrounded by granite steps and an iron balustrade. The column bears the inscription, "To their respected teacher, Albert Thaer, the German Agriculturists—1850."

A New Novel by Bulwer Lytton is announced by Bentley, to appear in three volumes. Dickens, having completed his "David Copperfield," will immediately commence a new serial story. Thackeray, it is rumored, has a new work in preparation altogether different from anything he has yet published. The Lives of Shakspeare's Heroines are announced to appear in a series of volumes.

"Sir Roger de Coverly: By the Spectator," is one of the newest and most beautiful books from the English press. It is illustrated by Thompson, from designs by Frederick Tayler, and edited with much judgment by Mr. Henry Wills. The idea of the book is an extremely happy one. It is not always easy to pick out of the eight volumes of the Spectator the papers which relate to Sir Roger de Coverley, when we happen to want them. Here we have them all, following close upon each other, forming so many chapters of the Coverley Chronicle, telling a succinct and charming story, with just so much pleasing extract from other papers as to throw light upon the doings of Sir Roger, and enough graceful talk about the London of Queen Anne's time (by way of annotation) to adapt one's mind completely to the de Coverley tone of sentiment. The Spectator—we mean the modern gazette of that name—says of it:—

"The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is a creation which, in its way, has never been surpassed; never perhaps equaled except by the Vicar of Wakefield. The de Coverley establishment and the Vicar's family have a strong general likeness. They are the same simple-minded, kind-hearted English souls, in different spheres of society. The thirty papers of the Spectator devoted to Sir Roger and his associates, now that we have them together, form a perfect little novel in themselves, from the reading of which we rise as we rise from that of Goldsmith, healthier and happier. There never was so beautiful an illustration of how far mere genuine heartiness of disposition and rectitude of purpose can impart true dignity to a character, as Sir Roger de Coverley. He is rather beloved than esteemed. He talks all the way up stairs on a visit. He is a walking epitome of as many vulgar errors as Sir Thomas Browne collected in his book. He has grave doubts as to the propriety of not having an old woman indicted for a witch. He is brimful of the prejudices of his caste. He has grown old with the simplicity of a child. Captain Sentry must keep him in talk lest he expose himself at the play. And yet about all he does there is an unassuming dignity that commands respect; and for strength and consistency in the tender passion Petrarch himself does not excel him. Sir Roger's unvarying devotion to his widow, his incessant recurrence to the memory of his affection to her, the remarks relating to her which the character of Andromache elicits from him at the play, and the little incident of her message to him on his death-bed, form as choice a record of passionate fidelity as the sonnets of the Italian. How beautiful, too, is that death-scene—how quietly sublime! Let us add that the good Sir Roger is surrounded by people worthy of him. Will. Wimble, with his good-natured, useless services; Captain Sentry, brave and stainless as his own sword, and nearly as taciturn; the servant who saved him from drowning; the good clergyman who is contented to read the sermons of others; the innkeeper who must needs have his landlord's head for a sign; the Spectator and his cronies: and then, and still, the Widow!"

Mr. William W. Story, to whose sculptures we have referred elsewhere, is engaged in the preparation of a memoir of his father, the great jurist.

The Life of John Randolph, by Hugh A. Garland, has been published by the Appletons in two octavos. It is interesting—as much so perhaps as any political biography ever written in this country—but the subject was so remarkable, and the materiel so rich and various, that it might have been made very much more attractive than it is. Mr. Garland's style is decidedly bad—ambitious, meretricious and vulgar—but it was impossible to make a dull work upon John Randolph's history and character.

The Best Edition of Milton's Poems ever published in America—a reprint of the best ever published in England—that of Sir Edgerton Brydges, has just been printed by George S. Appleton of Philadelphia, and the Appletons of New York. It is everything that can be desired in an edition of the great poet, and must take the place, we think, of all others that have been in the market. We are also indebted to the same publishers for an admirable edition of Burns, which if not as judiciously edited as the Milton of Sir Edgerton Brydges, is certainly very much better than any we have hitherto possessed.

The Keepsake: a Gift for the Holidays, is one of the most splendid—indeed is the most richly executed annual of the season. We have not had leisure to examine its literary contents, but they are for the most part by eminent writers. In unique and variously beautiful bindings, "The Keepsake" is desirable to all the lovers of fine art.

Gray's Poems, with a Life of the author by Professor Henry Reed, has been published by Mr. Henry C. Baird, of Philadelphia, in a volume the most elegant that has been issued this year from the press of that city. The engravings are specimens of genuine art, and the typography is as perfect as we have ever seen from the printers of Paris or London.

The Rev. Duncan Harkness Weir, a distinguished alumnus of the university and author of an essay "On the tenses of the Hebrew verb," which appeared in "Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature" for October last, has been elected Professor of Oriental Languages, in the College and University of Glasgow, in room of the late Dr. Gray.

Douglass Jerrold announces a republication of all his writings for the last fifteen years, in weekly numbers, commencing on the first of January next—"a most becoming contribution to the Industry of Nations Congress of 1851."

The Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, a nephew of William Wordsworth, has nearly completed the memoirs of the poet, which will be reprinted, with a preface by Professor Henry Reed, by Ticknor, Reed and Fields, of Boston.

The Fine Arts.

Schwanthaler's Bavaria, and the Theresienwiese at Munich.—On the western side of Munich several streets converge in a plain which is the arena of the great popular festival that takes place every October. Around this plain, which is called the Theresienwiese, as well as around the whole district in which the city is placed, the land rises some thirty or forty feet. Near the spot where the green waters of the Iser break through this ridge, King Louis founded the Hall of Fame, which is to transmit to posterity the busts of renowned natives of the country. This edifice is in Doric style, and with its two wings forms a court-yard, opening toward the city. In the center of this court is placed upon a granite pedestal, thirty feet high, a colossal statue of bronze, fifty-four feet high, representing Bavaria, to which we have several times referred in The International—our European correspondence enabling us to anticipate in regard to subjects of literature and art generally even the best-informed foreign journals.

The Hall of Fame will not be completed for some years, but the statue is finished, and was first exposed to view on the 9th of October. The execution of this statue was committed by King Louis to Schwanthaler, who began by making a model of thirteen feet in height. In order to carry out the work a wooden house was erected at the royal foundry, and a skeleton was built by masons, carpenters, and smiths, to sustain the earth used in the mould for the full-sized model. This was begun in 1838, and ere long the figure stood erect. The subsequent work on the model occupied two years. The result was greatly praised by the critics, who wondered at the skill which had been able to give beauty as well as dignity to a statue of so large dimensions. It holds up a crown of oak-leaves in the left hand, while the right, resting upon the hip, grasps an unsheathed sword twined with laurel, beneath which rests a lion. The breast is covered with a lion's skin which falls as low as the hips; under it is a simple but admirably managed robe extending to the feet. The hair is wreathed with oak-leaves, and is disposed in rich masses about the forehead and temples, giving spirit to the face and dignity to the form. Such was the model, and such is the now finished statue. But the subsequent steps in its completion are worthy of a particular description.

The model was in gypsum, and the first thing done was to take a mould from it in earth peculiarly prepared for the reception of the melted metal. The first piece, the head, was cast September 11th, 1844. It weighs one hundred and twenty hundred-weight, and is five or six feet in diameter: the remainder was cast at five separate times. When the head was brought successful out of the mould, King Louis and many of the magnates of Germany were present. The occasion was in fact a festival, which Müller, the inspector of the royal bronze foundry and probably the first living master of the art of casting in bronze, rendered still more brilliant by illuminations and garlands of flowers. Vocal music also was not wanting, as the artists of Munich were present in force, and their singing is noted throughout Germany. Since last July workmen have been constantly engaged in transporting the pieces of bronze weighing from 200 to 300 cwt. to the place where the statue was to be erected. For this purpose a wagon of peculiar construction was used, with from sixteen to twenty horses to draw it. On the 7th of August the last piece, the head, was conveyed; it was attended by a festal procession. The space within the head is so great that some twenty-eight men can stand together in it. The body, the main portions of which were made in five castings, weighs from 1300 to 1500 cwt., and has a diameter of twelve feet; the left arm, which is extended to hold the wreaths, from 125 to 130 cwt.; its diameter is five feet, and the diameter of its index finger six inches. The nail of the great toe can hardly be covered with both a man's hands. A door in the pedestal leads to a cast-iron winding stairway which ascends to the head, within which benches have been arranged for the comfort of visitors, several of whom can sit there together with ease. The light enters through openings arranged in the hair, whence also the eye can enjoy the view of the city and the surrounding country with the magical Alps in the background. The entire mass of bronze, weighing about 2600 cwt., was obtained from Turkish cannon lost in the sea at Navarino and recovered by Greek divers. The value of the bronze is about sixty thousand dollars. The sitting lion has a height of near thirty feet. It was cast in three pieces, and completes the composition in the most felicitous manner.

The statue having been completed, the final removing of the scaffolding around it and its full exposure to the public took place on the 9th of October. This was a day of great festivity at Munich and its vicinity. A platform had been erected directly in front of the statue for the accommodation of King Maximilian and his suite. The festivities began with an enormous procession of carriages, led by bands of music and bearing the representatives of the different industrial and agricultural trades, with symbols of their respective occupations. As they passed before the King's platform each carriage stopped, saluted his majesty, and received a few kindly words in reply. The procession was closed by the artists of Munich. The carriages took their station in a half circle around the platform. Soon after, accompanied by the thunder of cannon, the board walls surrounding the scaffold were gradually lowered to the ground. The admiration of the statue (which by the way is exactly fifty-four feet high), was universal and enthusiastic. All beholders were delighted with the harmony of its parts and the loveliness of its expression notwithstanding its colossal size. The ceremonies of the day were closed with speeches and music; the painter Tischlein made a speech lauding King Louis as the creator of a new era for German art. A very numerous chorus sung several festive hymns composed for the occasion, after which the multitude dispersed.

The Dominican Monastery of San Marco at Florence has for centuries been regarded with special interest by the lovers of art for the share it has had in the history of their favorite pursuit. Nor has its part been of less importance in the sphere of politics. The wanderer through its halls is reminded not only of Fra Angelico da Fièsole and Fra Bartolommeo, to whose artistic genius the monastery is indebted for the treasures which adorn its halls, refectory, corridors, and cells, but of Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo his great descendant, of Savonarola, and the long series of contests here waged against temporal and spiritual tyranny. The works of Giotto and Domenico Ghirlandajo are likewise to be found in the monastery, and there also miniature pictures of the most flourishing period of art may be seen ornamenting the books of the choir. Every historian who has written upon Florence has taken care not to omit San Marco and its inhabitants.

We are glad to announce that a society of artists at Florence has undertaken to give as wide a publicity as possible to the noblest productions of art in this monastery. A former work by the same men is a good indication of what may now be expected from them. Some years since they published copies of the most important pictures from the collection of the Florentine Academy of Art. They gave sixty prints with explanations. Among engravings from galleries this was one of the best, containing in moderate compass a history of Tuscan art from Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto. The new work, which has long been in preparation but has been delayed by unfavorable circumstances, will now be carried through the press without delay. Its title is, San Marco Convento dei Padri Predicatori in Firenze illustrato e inciso principalmente nei dipinti del B. Giovanni Angelico. Antonio Parfetti, the successor of Morghen and Garavaglia as professor of the art of engraving on copper at the Florentine Academy, has the artistic supervision of the enterprise. Father Vincenzo Marchese, to whom the public are indebted for the work well known to all students, on the artists of the Dominican order, is to furnish a history of the monastery, a biography of Fra Angelico, together with explanations of the engravings. Everything is thus in the most capable hands. The execution of the copperplates leaves nothing to be desired. The draughtsmen and engravers having had the best preparatory practice in the above-mentioned series from the Academy, have fully entered into the spirit of the originals; both outlines and shading are said by the best critics to combine the greatest delicacy with exactness, and to reproduce the expression of feeling which is the difficulty in these Florentine works, with tact and truth. As yet they have finished only the smaller frescoes which adorn almost every cell; but they will soon have ready the larger ones, which will show how this painter, whose sphere was mainly the pious emotions of the soul, was also master of the most thrilling effects. The same is proved by the powerful picture of the Crucifixion in the chapter hall, with its heads so full of expression, a selection from which has just been published by G.B. Nocchi, who some years since issued the well-known collection of drawings from the Life of Jesus in the Academy. The impression of the frescoes on Chinese paper has been done with the greatest care. Forty plates and forty printed folio sheets will complete the work, which is to be put at a moderate price. These illustrations of San Marco will be universally welcomed with delight by the admirers of the beautiful, for there the painter who most purely represented Christian art passed the greater part of his life, leaving behind him an incomparable mass of the most characteristic and charming creations.

Mr. William W. Story, who some time since abandoned a lucrative profession to devote himself to art, has recently returned from Rome, where he had been practicing sculpture during the past three years. Mr. Story, we understand, has brought home with him to Boston several models of classical subjects, the fruits of his labors abroad, which are spoken of in the highest terms by those who have had the privilege of inspecting them. Mr. Story is the only son of the late Justice Story of Massachusetts. Before going abroad he had distinguished himself by some of his attempts at sculpture, one of which was a bust of his father, which he executed in marble. A copy of this work has been purchased or ordered by some of his father's admirers in London, to be placed in one of the Inns of Court. Mr. Story also made himself known by a volume of miscellaneous poems, published in 1845. It is his intention, we learn, to return to Italy in the spring.

Les Beautes de la France is the title of a splendid new work now publishing at Paris. It consists of a collection of engravings on steel, representing the principal cities, cathedrals, public monuments, chateaux, and picturesque landscapes of France. Each engraving is accompanied by four pages of text, giving the complete history of the edifice or locality represented. What is curious about it is that the engravings are made in London, for what reason we are not informed.

The first exhibition of paintings, such as is now given annually by our academies, was at Paris in the year 1699. In September of that year, at the suggestion of Mansart, the first was held in the Louvre. It consisted of two hundred and fifty-three paintings, twenty-four pieces of sculpture, and twenty-nine engravings. The second and last during the reign of Louis XIV. was opened in 1704. That was composed of five hundred and twenty specimens. During the reign of Louis XV., from 1737, there were held twenty-four expositions. That of 1767 was remarkable for the presence of several of the marine pieces of Claude Joseph Vernet. During the reign of Louis XVI., from 1775 to 1791 there were nine expositions. The Horatii, one of the master pieces of David, figured in that of 1785. His first pieces had appeared in that of 1782. The former Republic, too, upon stated occasions "exposed the works of the artists forming the general commune of the arts." It was in these that David acquired his celebrity as a painter which alone saved his head from the revolutionary axe. The Paris exhibition will this year commence on the fifteenth of December.

The largest specimen of Enamel Painting probably in the world, has recently been completed by Klöber and Martens at Berlin. It is four and a half feet high, and eight feet broad, and it is intended for the castle church at Wittenberg. The subject is Christ on the Cross, and at his feet, on the right, stands Luther holding an open bible and looking up to the Savior; and, on the left, Melancthon, the faithful cooperator of the great reformer. The tombs of both are in this church, and it is known that to those who, after the capture of the town, desired to destroy these tombs, the emperor, Charles V., answered, "I war against the living, not against the dead!" It was to the portal of this church that Luther affixed the famous protest against indulgences which occasioned the first movement of the Reformation. The king has caused two doors to be cast in bronze, with this protest inscribed on them, so that it will now be seen there in imperishable characters.

The original portrait of Sir Francis Drake wearing the jewel around his neck which Queen Elizabeth gave him, is now in London for the purpose of being copied for the United Service Club. Sir T.T.F.E. Drake, to whom it belongs, carried to London at the same time, for the inspection of the curious in such matters, the original jewel, which, beyond the interest of its associations with Elizabeth and Drake, is valuable as a work of art. On the outer case is a carving by Valerio Belli, called Valerio Vincentino, of a black man kneeling to a white. This is not mentioned by Walpole in his account of Vincentino. Within is a capital and well-preserved miniature of Queen Elizabeth, by Isaac Oliver, set round with diamonds and pearls.

The Family of Vernet—the "astonishing family of Vernet"—is thus referred to by a Paris correspondent of the Courier and Enquirer:

"History, probably, does not show another instance of so remarkable a descent from father to son, through four generations, of the possession, in an eminent degree, of a special and rare talent. Claude Joseph was born in 1714, and was the son of a distinguished painter of his day, Antoine Vernet. He excelled all his contemporaries in sea pieces. His son, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, was, after David, one of the first painters of the empire, excelling especially in battle scenes. His Rivoli, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, and his twenty-eight plates illustrative of the campaign of Bonaparte in Italy, have secured a very high reputation for A.C.H. Vernet. The greatest living French painter—perhaps it may be truly said, the greatest painter of the day—is Horace Vernet, son of the last named. He was born in 1789 in the Louvre. He, like his father, excels in battle scenes and is remarkable for the vivacity and boldness of his conceptions. He is now covering the walls of the historic gallery at Versailles with canvas, which will cause him to descend to posterity as the greatest of his family. None of your readers who have visited Versailles, but have stood before and admired till the picture seemed almost reality, his living representations of recent military events in Africa. His last admirable picture of Louis Napoleon on horseback will, it is stated, be one of the greatest attractions of the approaching exposition."

M. Leutze is expected home from Germany in the spring. He left Philadelphia, the last time, nearly ten years ago. He will accompany his great picture of "Washington crossing the Delaware." Powers's statue of Calhoun, with the left arm broken off by the incompetent persons who at various times were engaged in attempting to recover it, upon being removed from the sea under which it had lain nearly three months was found as fresh in tone as when it came from the chisel of the sculptor. It has been placed in the temple prepared for it in Charleston. Mr. Ranney has completed a large picture representing Marion and his Men crossing the Pedee.

Kaulbach, according to a letter from Berlin in the November Art Journal, was to leave that city about the middle of October, in order to resume for the winter his duties as Director of the Academy of Munich. The sum which he will receive for his six great frescoes and the ornamental frieze, will be 80,000 thalers (12,000l. sterling) and this is secured to him, as the contract was made before the existence of a constitutional budget.

Homer's Odyssey furnishes the subjects for a series of frescoes now being executed in one of the royal palaces at Munich. Six halls are devoted to the work; four of them are already finished, sixteen cantos of the poem being illustrated on their walls. The designs are by Schwanthaler, and executed by Hiltensperger. Between the different frescoes are small landscapes representing natural scenes from the same poem.

If we credit all the accounts of pictures by the old masters, we must believe that they produced as many works as with ordinary energy they could have printed had they lived till 1850. The Journal de Lot et Garonne states that in the church of the Mas-d'Agenais, Count Eugène de Lonley has discovered, in the sacristy, concealed beneath dust and spiders' webs, the 'Dying Christ,' painted by Rubens in 1631. The head of Christ is said to be remarkable for the large style in which it is painted, for drawing, color, and vigorous expression.

A picture painted on wood, and purchased in 1848 at a public sale in London, where it was sold as the portrait of an Abbess by Le Brozino, has been examined by the Academy of St. Luke at Rome, to whose judgment it was submitted by the purchaser, and unanimously recognized as the work of Michael Angelo, and as representing the illustrious Marchesa de Pescara, Victoria Colonna.

The National Academy of Design has resolved, that the entire body of artists in this city should be invited to assemble for social intercourse, in the saloons of the Academy, on the first Wednesday evening of every month, commencing in December, and continuing until the season of the annual exhibition.

The French President has presented to the Museum of the Louvre David's celebrated painting of Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Alps. This work was for many years at Bordentown, New Jersey, in possession of Joseph Bonaparte.

The Art Journal for November contains an engraving on steel of the marble bust by Mr. Dunham of Jenny Lind. This bust, we believe, was recently sold in New York, by Mr. Putnam, for four hundred dollars.

Herman's series of pictures called Illustrations of German History, which gained great praise in Southern Germany some two years since, are now being engraved on steel at Munich, and will soon be published.

Music and the Drama.

THE ASTOR PLACE OPERA

WE have watched with interest the attempts which have been made for several years to establish permanently the Italian opera in New York. Although we disapprove of some of the means which have been used to accomplish this object, yet, upon the whole, those who have been efficient in the matter, both amateurs and artists, are entitled to the hearty commendation of our musical world. To the enterprising Maretzek belongs the palm, for his energy, liberality, and discrimination, in bringing forward, in succession, so many great works, and so many artists of superior excellence. No man could have accomplished what has been accomplished by Maretzek, without a combination of very rare endowments. Let the public then see to it that one who has done so much for the cultivation and gratification of a taste for the most refining and delightful of the arts, does not remain unappreciated and unrewarded. Of the last star which has been brought forward by M. Maretzek, the musical critic of The International (who has been many years familiar with the performances of the most celebrated artists in London, Paris, St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and who, it is pertinent to mention, never saw M. Maretzek or Mlle. Parodi except in the orchestra or upon the stage) gives these opinions.

As an artist, Parodi ranks among the very best of Europe. Notwithstanding so few years have elapsed since her first appearance upon the stage, she has attained a reputation second only to that of Grisi and Persiani. We have often had the pleasure of listening to both of these last-named celebrities, in their principal rôles, and have dwelt with rapture upon their soul-stirring representations. We have also listened to the Norma and the Lucrezia Borgia of Parodi, and have been equally delighted and astonished. Her excellences may be briefly summed up as follows: With an organ of very great compass and of perfect register, she combines immense power and endurance, and a variety and perfection of intonation unsurpassed by any living artist. When she portrays the softer emotions—affection, love, or benevolence—nothing can be more sweet, pure, and melodious, than her tones; when rage, despair, hate, or jealousy, seize upon her, still is she true to nature, and her notes thrill us to the very soul, by their perfect truthfulness, power, and intensity of expression. If gayety is the theme, no bird carols more blithely than the Italian warbler. What singer can sustain a high or a low tone, or execute a prolonged and varied shake, with more power and accuracy than Parodi? What prima donna can run through the chromatic scale, or dally with difficult cadenzas, full of unique intervals, with more ease and precision than our charming Italian? Who can execute a musical tour de force with more effect than she has so recently done in Norma and Lucrezia?

Persiani has acquired her great reputation by husbanding her powers for the purpose of making frequent points, and on this account she is not uniform, but by turn electrifies and tires her audience. She passes through the minor passages, undistinguished from those around her, but in the concerted pieces, and wherever she can introduce a cadenza or a tour de force, she carries all before her. Parodi is good everywhere—in the dull recitative, and in the secondary and unimportant passages. Her magnificent acting, combined with her superb vocalization, enchain through the entire opera.

Grisi, like Parodi, is always uniform and accurate in her representations, and upon the whole should be regarded as the queen of song; but with these exceptions we know of no person who deserves a higher rank as a true artist than Parodi. As yet she is not sufficiently understood. She electrifies her hearers, and secures their entire sympathies, but they have still to learn that silvery and melodious tones, and cool mechanical execution, do not alone constitute a genuine artist or a faultless prima donna. When the public understand how perfectly Parodi identifies herself with the emotions and passions she has to portray,—when they appreciate the immense variety of intonations with which she illustrates her characters, and the earnestness and intensity with which she throws her whole nature into all she does—then she will be hailed as the greatest artist ever on this continent, and one of the greatest in the world.

Mrs. E. Oakes Smith's new tragedy called "The Roman Tribute," has been produced in Philadelphia for several nights in succession, with very decided success. The leading character in this play, a noble old Roman, is quite an original creation. He is represented as a mixture of antique patriotism, heroic valor, sublime fidelity, and stern resolution, tinged with a beautiful coloring of romance which softens and relieves his more commanding virtues. Several feminine characters of singular loveliness are introduced. The play abounds in scenes of deep passion and thrilling pathos, while its chaste elegance of language equally adapts it for the closet or the stage. It was brought out with great splendor of costume, scenery, proscenium, and the other usual accessories of stage effect, and presented one of the most gorgeous spectacles of the season. We are gratified to learn that the dramatic talent of this richly-gifted lady, concerning which we have before expressed ourselves in terms of high encomium, has received such a brilliant illustration from the test of stage experiment. Mrs. Oakes Smith's admirable play of "Jacob Leisler" will probably be acted in New York during the season.

LEIGH HUNT UPON G.P.R. JAMES.

I HAIL every fresh publication of James, though I half know what he is going to do with his lady, and his gentleman, and his landscape, and his mystery, and his orthodoxy, and his criminal trial. But I am charmed with the new amusement which he brings out of old materials. I look on him as I look on a musician famous for "variations." I am grateful for his vein of cheerfulness, for his singularly varied and vivid landscapes, for his power of painting women at once lady-like and loving (a rare talent,) for making lovers to match, at once beautiful and well-bred, and for the solace which all this has afforded me, sometimes over and over again, in illness and in convalescence, when I required interest without violence, and entertainment at once animated and mild.

HERR HECKER DESCRIBED BY MADAME BLAZE DE BURY.

WE have heretofore given in the International some account of Madame Blaze de Bury, and have made some extracts from her piquant and otherwise remarkable book, "Germania."[2] Looking it over we find considerable information respecting Herr Hecker, who, since his unfortunate attempt to revolutionize Germany, has lived in the United States, being now, we believe, a farmer somewhere in the West. According to the adventurous Baroness, Hecker was the first man in Germany to declare for revolution. He was born, near Mannheim, in 1811; he took a doctor's degree in the University of Heidelberg, followed the profession of the law, and was elected a member of the Lower House in his 31st year. Thenceforth he was active in opposition. He possessed all the chief attributes of a popular leader, and his person was graceful and commanding, his temperament ardent, his eloquence impassioned. Although the Grand Duke Leopold was the "gentlest and most paternal of sovereigns," according to Madame de Bury, still there were many radical defects in the constitution of Baden. Against these defects Hecker waged war, and with some success, which instigated him to further efforts against the government. At length he was beaten on a motion to stop the supplies, and he retired into France disgusted with his countrymen. After some time he returned impregnated with the reddest republicanism. He found sympathy in Baden, and when the revolution broke out in Paris, he resolved to raise the standard of Republicism in Germany. In April, 1848, he set out for Constance, with four drummers and eight hundred Badeners. He and they, extravagantly dressed and armed, proceeded unopposed, singing "Hecker-songs," and comparing their progress to the march of the French over the Simplon! They arrived at Constance, and called the people to arms, but the people would not come. The slouched hats and huge sabers of the patriots did not produce the desired impression, and then it rained. In short, the movement failed. Finally, having beaten up all the most disaffected parts of the country for recruits, Hecker arrived at Kandern with twelve hundred men. Here Gagern met him with a few hundred regular troops. Hecker attempted to gain them over with the cry of "German brotherhood," but Gagern kept them steady until he fell, mortally wounded, on the bridge. Then there was a slight skirmish; both parties retreated, and act the first of the drama closed. Meanwhile the Vor Parlament had been summoned, and the National Assembly of Frankfort had met in the Paulskircke, to the number of four hundred deputies; their self-constituted task was simply to reform all Germany. Frankfort was stirring and joyous upon this occasion, as it had used to be in former days, when within its walls was elected the Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Bells were rung, cannon fired, triumphal arches raised, green boughs and rainbow-colored banners waved, flowers strewn in the streets, tapestries hung from windows and balconies, hands stretched forth in greeting, voices strained to call down blessings; all that popular enthusiasm could invent was there, and one immense cry of rejoicing saluted what was fondly termed the "Regeneration of Germany." The tumults, the misery, the bloodshed, and the disappointment that followed, until the Rump of this "magniloquent Parliament" sought shelter at Stuttgardt, are fresh in our memory.

[2] Germania: its Courts, Camps, and People. By the Baroness Blaze de Bury. London: Colburn.

Hecker, having done his utmost to "agitate" his country, and having failed "to inspire a dastard populace with the spirit of the ancient Roman people," as Madame expresses it, he fled to America. But his name was still a tower of strength to his Red brethren and the Freicorps of the Schwartzwald and the Rhine. In Western Germany a year ago last summer his return was enthusiastically expected by the revolutionary army. "When Hecker comes," said they, "we shall be invincible." He came: his followers crowded round him and implored him at once to lead them on to victory! "Victory be d—d," was the reply of the returned exile; "go home to your plows and your vines and your wives and children, and leave me to attend to mine." Hecker had only come to Europe for his family, and he returned almost immediately to America. Meanwhile the war blazed up for a little while and then expired, leaving behind it the Deutsche Verwirrung[3] as it now presents itself in Germania.[4]

[3] Literally, the German entanglement.

[4] Hecker seems to have been a sincere enthusiast; and it is always observed by his friends that he renounced ease and comfort for the cause that he espoused. We append a single verse from one of the "Hecker songs" that were in 1849 in the mouth of every Badish republican:—

"Look at Hecker wealth-renouncing,
O'er his head the red plume waves,
Th' awakening people's will announcing,
For the tyrant's blood he craves!
Mud boots thick and solid wears he,
All round Hecker's banner come,
And march at sound of Hecker's drum."

Original Poetry.

THE GRIEF OF THE WEEPING WILLOW.

ROUND my cottage porch are wreathing
Creeping vines, their perfume breathing
To the balmy breeze of Spring.
Near it is a streamlet flowing,
Where old shady trees are growing;
But of one alone I sing.

O'er the water sadly bending,
With the wave its leaflets blending,
Stands a lonely willow tree.
And the shadow seems e'erlasting,
That its boughs are always casting
O'er the tiny wavelets' glee.

Oft I've wondered what the sorrow,
That ne'er know a gladsome morrow,
In the mourner's heart was sealed;
But no bitter wail of sadness,
Nor low tone of chastened gladness,
Had the willow tree revealed.

When the breeze its leaves was lifting;
When the snows were round it drifting,
Seemed it still to grieve the same.
Round its trunk a vine is twining,
But its tendrils too seem pining
For a hand to tend and claim.

Type of love that bears life's testing,
They earth's rudest storms are breasting;
Harmed not—so together borne;
And like girl to lover clinging,
Passing time is only bringing
Strength for every coming morn.

Of one summer eve I ponder,
When I musing chanced to wander
By the streamlet's margin bright.
Moonbeams thro' the leaves were streaming,
And each leaping wave was gleaming
With a paly, astral light.

O'er me hung the weeping willow;
Mossy bank was balmy pillow,
And in slumber sweet I dreamed:
Dreamed of music round me gushing,
That as winds o'er harp-strings rushing,
E'er like angel's whisper seemed.

Oh, those low-breathed tones of sorrow;
Would that mortal tongue could borrow
Power to sing their sweetness o'er;
Here and there a sentence gleaming,
Soon my spirit caught the meaning
That the mournful numbers bore.

Sleeper, who beneath my shade,
Hath thy couch of dreaming made;
Listen as I breathe to thee
All my mournful history.
Childhood, youth, and womanhood,
Have beneath my branches stood;
And of each as pass thy slumbers,
Speak my melancholy numbers.