CHAPTER IX

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Violante's first evening at the Lansmeres, had seemed happier to her than the first evening, under the same roof, had done to Helen. True that she missed her father much--Jemima somewhat; but she so identified her father's cause with Harley, that she had a sort of vague feeling that it was to promote that cause that she was on this visit to Harley's parents. And the Countess, it must be owned, was more emphatically cordial to her than she had ever yet been to Captain Digby's orphan. But perhaps the real difference in the heart of either girl was this, that Helen felt awe of Lady Lansmere, and Violante felt only love for Lord L'Estrange's mother. Violante, too, was one of those persons whom a reserved and formal person, like the Countess, "can get on with," as the phrase goes. Not so poor little Helen--so shy herself, and so hard to coax into more than gentle monosyllables. And Lady Lansmere's favorite talk was always of Harley. Helen had listened to such talk with respect and interest. Violante listened to it with inquisitive eagerness--with blushing delight. The mother's heart noticed the distinction between the two, and no wonder that the heart moved more to Violante than to Helen. Lord Lansmere, too, like most gentlemen of his age, clumped all young ladies together, as a harmless, amiable, but singularly stupid class of the genus-Petticoat, meant to look pretty, play the piano, and talk to each other about frocks and sweethearts. Therefore this animated, dazzling creature, with her infinite variety of look and play of mind, took him by surprise, charmed him into attention, and warmed him into gallantry. Helen sat in her quiet corner, at her work, sometimes listening with mournful, though certainly unenvious, admiration at Violante's vivid, yet ever unconscious, eloquence of word and thought--sometimes plunged deep into her own secret meditations. And all the while the work went on the same, under the small noiseless fingers. This was one of Helen's habits that irritated the nerves of Lady Lansmere. She despised young ladies who were fond of work. She did not comprehend how often it is the resource of the sweet womanly mind, not from want of thought, but from the silence and the depth of it. Violante was surprised, and perhaps disappointed, that Harley had left the house before dinner, and did not return all the evening. But Lady Lansmere, in making excuse for his absence, on the plea of engagements, found so good an opportunity to talk of his ways in general--of his rare promise in boyhood--of her regret at the inaction of his maturity--of her hope to see him yet do justice to his natural powers, that Violante almost ceased to miss him.

And when Lady Lansmere conducted her to her room, and kissing her cheek tenderly, said, "But you are just the person Harley admires--just the person to rouse him from melancholy dreams, of which his wild humors are now but the vain disguise"--Violante crossed her arms on her bosom, and her bright eyes, deepened into tenderness, seemed to ask, "He melancholy--and why?"

On leaving Violante's room, Lady Lansmere paused before the door of Helen's; and, after musing a little while, entered softly.

Helen had dismissed her maid; and, at the moment Lady Lansmere entered, she was kneeling at the foot of the bed, her hands clasped before her face.

Her form, thus seen, looked so youthful and childlike--the attitude itself was so holy and so touching, that the proud and cold expression on Lady Lansmere's face changed. She shaded the light involuntarily, and seated herself in silence, that she might not disturb the act of prayer.

When Helen rose, she was startled to see the Countess seated by the fire; and hastily drew her hand across her eyes. She had been weeping.

Lady Lansmere did not, however, turn to observe those traces of tears, which Helen feared were too visible. The Countess was too absorbed in her own thoughts; and as Helen timidly approached, she said--still with her eyes on the clear low fire--"I beg your pardon, Miss Digby, for my intrusion; but my son has left it to me to prepare Lord Lansmere to learn the offer you have done Harley the honor to accept. I have not yet spoken to my lord; it may be days before I find a fitting occasion to do so; meanwhile, I feel assured that your sense of propriety will make you agree with me, that it is due to Lord L'Estrange's father, that strangers should not learn arrangements of such moment in his family, before his own consent be obtained."

Here the Countess came to a full pause; and poor Helen, finding herself called upon for some reply to this chilling speech, stammered out, scarce audibly--

"Certainly, madam, I never dreamed of--"

"That is right, my dear," interrupted Lady Lansmere, rising suddenly, and as if greatly relieved. "I could not doubt your superiority to ordinary girls of your age, with whom these matters are never secret for a moment. Therefore, of course, you will not mention, at present, what has passed between you and Harley, to any of the friends with whom you may correspond."

"I have no correspondents--no friends, Lady Lansmere," said Helen, deprecatingly, and trying hard not to cry.

"I am very glad to hear it, my dear; young ladies never should have. Friends, especially friends who correspond, are the worst enemies they can have. Good night, Miss Digby. I need not add, by the way, that, though we are bound to show all kindness to this young Italian lady, still she is wholly unconnected with our family; and you will be as prudent with her as you would have been with your correspondents--had you had the misfortune to have any."

Lady Lansmere said the last words with a smile, and pressed a reluctant kiss (the step-mother's kiss) on Helen's bended brow. She then left the room, and Helen sat on the seat vacated by the stately unloving form, and again covered her face with her hands, and again wept. But when she rose at last, and the light fell upon her face, that soft face was sad indeed, but serene--serene, as if with some inward sense of duty--sad, as with the resignation which accepts patience instead of hope.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Continued from page 411.

[22] Translation of _Charron on Wisdom_. By G. Stanhope, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury (1729). A translation remarkable for ease, vigor, and (despite that contempt for the strict rules of grammar, which was common enough amongst writers at the commencement of the last century) for the idiomatic raciness of its English.

From Household Words.

CHOICE SECRETS.

"Light a room with spermaceti, anoint your face with the same substance, and you will seem to all beholders to have the head of a sperm whale upon your shoulders." "When you would have men in the house seem to be without heads: take yellow brimstone with oil, and put it in a lamp and light it, and set it in the midst amongst men, and you shall see a wonder." These are two out of a large mass of facts which form a compact body of ancestral wisdom. They lie before us in a venerable volume, whose grave frontispiece is adorned with the portraitures of Alexis, Albertus Magnus, Dr. Reade, Raymond Lully, Dr. Harvey, Lord Bacon, and Dr. John Wecker. John Wecker, Doctor in Physic, first compiled the book, and Dr. R. Read augmented and enlarged it. "A like work never before was in the English tongue." It was printed in the year 1661, for Simon Miller, at the Starre in St. Paul's Church Yard, and it is entitled, "Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature, being the Summe and Substance of Naturall Philosophy, Methodically Digested." The book is one of considerable size and pretension, written by wise doctors in the good old time, two hundred years ago. Let us not be conceited and harp only on the strings provided to our fingers in the nineteenth century. For a few minutes, at least, it will not do us harm to get a little scientific information from our ancestors. We shall glean, therefore, some random facts out of the harvest-field of Doctors Mead and Wecker, selecting, of course, most characteristic, those which our forefathers may call exclusively their own.

The volume opens with scientific information on the subject of Angels and Devils, including, of course, the fact that "Witches kill children, and divers cattle, which we find by various experience, and by relation of others that are worthy to be believed. But if you will say they are mere delusions of the Devil, whereby he makes foolish women mad that are entangled by him, that they believe they do those things which neither they nor the devil can do; if we can so avoid it, we may as well deny any thing else, be it never so evident. "--If you deny that, you may deny any thing--is a phrase not yet dead. Applied two hundred years ago to the experience concerning witches, it has been industriously employed to the present day, and is employed still on behalf of a great many fresh delusions. As for the gentleman, whom truth is said to shame, he claimed his distinct chapter in the minds of old physicians, because, as the book before us has it, he "can cause many diseases, of the reasons whereof we are ignorant. Also he can do this, or that; being subtile, he can easily pass through all parts of the body, which he can bind, pull back, or torment otherwise."

Passing on now, as we follow the march of high philosophy, to secrets of the sun and moon; it may be worth while to understand, as our forefathers taught, that "it is easie to guess at the fortune of every year by the stars, if a man consider twelve, nineteen, eight, four, and thirty." Somebody wants to know what luck he will have in 1853. Let him consider 1841 (twelve years back), let him consider 1834 (nineteen years back), and, for the eight, four, thirty, let him look back to the years 1845, 1849, and 1823. Let him reflect on the nature of his fortune in each of those years, look up his old diaries, combine their results, and that will give him the character of his fate in 1853. Jupiter is somehow at the bottom of this, but we are too modern and ignorant to understand the author's explanation.

Among secrets concerning fire, are those two facts connected with spermaceti and brimstone already stated. Any one living in the country, whom the croaking of the frogs may trouble of a night, will doubtless be glad to hear of a remedy: "Take the fat of a crocodile, and make it up with wax while in the sun, and make a candle of it, and light it in the place where frogs are, and when they see that they will presently cease crying." Where crocodile's fat cannot be had, "the fat of a dolphin" will do. Prescriptions abound, by the use of which men may appear to wear the heads of asses, horses, dogs, or to resemble elephants. There is a receipt also for making "a faire light, that the house may seem all full of serpents so long as the wick doth burn." But we pass over these pleasant methods of illumination, simply remarking, that if our wise ancestors were right, the volume now before us would procure a sudden fortune to the lessees of Vauxhall. By the use of some dozen kinds of cunningly prepared lamps, the Royal Gardens might in good faith be chronicled in its bills as a "scene of enchantment." At one turn of a walk, all visitors would show their heads, and at another, none; in another grove they would be elephants, and in another they would look like angels. The Rotunda might be lighted for a diabolical effect, and the Dark Walk illuminated brilliantly with dolphin's fat, funeral cloth and Azemat, whose light makes every body invisible. This, again, is no bad hint for a country tallow-chandler, who supplies light to the ladies of a solemn village, where he is annoyed by the neglect of any gayeties that would create large orders for composite or sperm: "_To make women rejoice mightily._ Make candles of the fat of hares, and light them, and let them stand awhile in the middle where women are: they will not be so merry as to dance; yet sometimes that falls out also."

"It is a wonder that some report how that the tooth of a badger, or his left foot bound to a man's right arm will strengthen the memory." Boys, who have lessons to learn, may like to know that fact; and teachers, who have idle pupils, must not flog, but feed them upon cresses. "Cresses eaten make a man industrious." Young ladies, who believe in their ancestors, will thank us for repeating their opinion that the use of a ring, which was lain for a certain time in a sparrow's nest, will procure love. Nor need any dread the penalties of matrimony, since the man who carries with him a hartshorn "shall alwaies have peace with his wife:" and also, "the heart of a male quail, carried by the man, and the heart of a female quail, by the woman, will cause that no quarrels can ever arise between them." The man who carries a quail's heart in his pocket may face his wife, and never have to feel his own heart quailing underneath his ribs.

Old Parr dined probably upon serpents, not, as is commonly reported, upon pills. "It is known that stags renew their age by eating serpents; so the phoenix is restored by the nest of spices shee makes to burn in. The pelican hath the same virtue, whose right foot, if it be put under hot dung, after three months a pelican will be bred from it. Wherefore some physicians, with some confections, made of a viper and hellebore, and of some of the flesh of these creatures, do promise to restore youth, and sometimes they do it." If the Zoological Society has proper respect for our ancestors, they will not delay to sow a hot-bed with pelicans' feet. Young shoots of pelican would be much more appropriate beside the gravel-walks than your mere vegetable pelargonium.

In the way of practice of medicine, we moderns say that any thing like scientific principles, on which one can depend, have only been attained in our own lifetime. "Doctors differed," and bumped against each other, only because all alike were feeling through the dark. In our own day there is light enough to keep doctors from differing very grossly,--gross difference springing generally more from the want of knowledge in an individual, than in the profession generally. Although there is yet a vast deal to be learned. In the first century, Asclepiades dubbed the medical system of Hippocrates, "a cold meditation of death." Under Nero there arose a Dr. Thessalus, who taught that Nature was the guide to follow and obey in all diseases; and, therefore, under his system patients were simply to be liberally and rapidly supplied with every thing they fancied. Paracelsus, in the sixteenth century, looked for a patient's symptoms in the stars; so we must not be surprised if the "Secrets in Physic and Surgery," published among the other secrets in this volume now before us, contain odd information. Here is a nice cure for a quartan ague, which might tickle a patient's stomach sooner than his fancy: "Seven wig-lice of the bed, wrapped in a great grape husk, and swallowed down alive before the fit." Another cure is effected when the patient eats the parings of his nails and toes, mingled with wax. There are many remedies against the Plague; but that one which is recommended as "_The Best Thing against the Plague_," is for a man to wash his mouth with vinegar and water before he goes out, drinking also a spoonful of the liquor; then to press his nose and stop his breath, so that "by the vapor and steam held in your mouth, the brain be moistened." In the following prescription we believe entirely: "_For Melancholy._ It is no small remedy to cure melancholy, to rub your body all over with nettles."

Book Five contains secrets for beautifying the human body. The following receipt, which comes first, for giving people a substantial look, seems to be somewhat too efficacious to be often tried: "_To make men fat._ If you mingle with the fat of a lizard, salt-petre and cummin and wheat-meal, hens fatted with this meat will be so fat, that men that eat of them, will eat until they burst." A degree of fatness in hens equal to this will never be communicated by our degenerate modern agriculturists. For the hair-dyes, favored by our forefathers, we cannot, however, say much, for we must differ in taste very decidedly. Recipes are given for obtaining, not only black, but white hair, yellow hair, red hair, and "To make your hair seem GREEN." Nobody in these days will use a course of the distilled water of capers to make his hair look like a meadow; and even, if any body among us, too fastidious as we now are, wanted yellow hair, we do _not_ think that he would consent to rub into his head for that purpose honey and the yolk of eggs. There are also in this part of the work some ungallant recommendations of substances, which a man may chew in order that, presently breathing near a lady's cheek, he may discolor it, and so detect her artifice, if she should happen to be painted. Among "secrets for beautifying the body," we cannot but think this also indicative of an odd taste; "If you would change the color of children's eyes, you shall do it thus; with the ashes of the small nut-shells, with oil you must anoint the forepart of their head; _it will make the whites of children's eyes black_; DO IT OFTEN!"

Concerning wine, it is worth knowing, that to cure a man of drunkenness, you should put eels into his wine. Delightful dreams will visit the couch of him who has eaten moderately, for supper, of a horse's tongue, and taken balm for salad. This is "A means to make a man sleep sweetly," which we recommend to the attention of all restless people, who have proper faith in their forefathers. As we have passed over a good many pages, and come to the "secrets of asses," we may put down, _a propos_ to nothing, that "If an ass have a stone bound to his tail he cannot bray."

The following may be tried in a few months by ladies in the country, who rise early on a fine spring morning; they may thus earn the delight of exhibiting to their friends one of the prettiest balloon ascents that any body can conceive: "In May, fill an egg-shell with May-dew, and set it in the hot sun at noon-day, and the sun will draw it up."

The secrets of gardening, known to our forefathers, annihilate all claim in Sir Joseph Paxton to the commonest consideration. They taught how to get the blue roses by manuring with indigo, or green roses by digging verdigris about the roots. They taught the whole art of perfuming fruit, by steeping the seeds of the future tree in oil of spike, or rose-water and musk. If, say our ancestors, you would have peaches, plums, or cherries without any stone, you have only, when the tree is a twig, to pick out all the pith before you set it. To get your filbert-trees to bear you fruit all kernel, you have only to crack a nut, and sow the kernel only, covered with a little wool. And very much more marvellous, in the annals of gardening, is the receipt for getting peach-trees that bear fruit covered with inscriptions: "When you have eaten the peach, steep the stone two or three days in water, and open it gently, and _take the kernal out of it(!)_ and write something within the shell with an iron graver, what you please, yet not too deep, then wrap it in paper and set it; whatever you write in the shell you shall find written in the fruit." Such shrewd things mingled with the more ordinary knowledge of our ancestors upon affairs of gardening.

It will be seen that for many of these "facts" there was a "reason" close at hand. Our forefathers were wise enough to know that every thing required properly accounting for. Thus, for example, in "the secrets of metals:" "Some report that a candle lighted of man's fat, and brought to the place where the treasures are hid, will discover them with the noise; and when it is near them it will go out. If this be true, it ariseth from sympathy; for fat is made of blood, and blood is the seat of the soul and spirits, and both these are held by the desire of silver and gold, so long as a man lives; and therefore they trouble the blood; so here is sympathy."

If a man would prevent hail from coming down, he is to walk about his garden, with a crocodile--stuffed, of course--and hang it up in the middle. Pieces of the skin of a hippopotamus, wherever they are buried, keep off storms. A thunder-storm also can be put to rout by firing cannons at it; "for by the force of the sound moving the air, the exhalations are driven upward." (In the same way, the plague was said to yield before a cannonade.) "Some who observe hail coming on, bring a huge looking-glass, and observe the largeness of the cloud, and by that remedy,--whether objected against, or despised by it, or it is displeased with it; or whether, being doubled, it gives way to the other" (in some way or other one must find out a reason), "they suddenly turn it off and remove it." An owl stuck up in the fields, with its wings spread, served also as a scare-crow to the tempests. As lightning conductor on a roof, it was thought wise to put an egg-shell, out of which a chicken had been hatched on Ascension-day. Thunderbolt stones were said to sweat during a storm, which was not thought a more wonderful "fact" than the perspirations streaming out of glass windows "in winter when the stove is hot." Our ancestors were far too wise to be surprised at any thing.

Secrets of alchemy, magic, and astrology are, of course, very profound; we pass over these and many more; among secrets of cookery we pause, shuddering. Whipping young pigs to death, to make them tender eating, used to be quite bad enough; and some of our own hidden devices in the meat trade are, even now, equally revolting; but here we meet with a device of the wise ancestors, which may, perhaps, stand at the head of all culinary horrors. Remembering that these cooks were also apt at roasting men, we will inflict this illustration on our readers: "_To roast a Goose alive._ Let it be a duck or goose, or some such lively creature; but a goose is best of all for this purpose; leaving his neck, pull off all the feathers from his body, then make a fire round about him, not too wide, for that will not roast him; within the place set here and there small pots full of water, with salt and honey mixed therewith, and let there be dishes set full of roasted apples, and cut in pieces in the dish, and let the goose be basted with butter all over, and larded to make him better meat, and he may roast the better; put fire to it; do not make too much haste, when he begins to roast, walking about, and striving to fly away; the fire stops him in, and he will fall to drink water to quench his thirst; this will cool his heart, and the other parts of his body, and, by this medicament, he looseneth his belly and grows empty. And when he roasteth and consumes inwardly, always wet his head and heart with a wet sponge; but when you see him run madding and stumble, his heart wants moisture, take him away, set him before your guests, and he will cry as you cut off any part from him, and will be almost eaten up before he be dead; it is very pleasant to behold."

Degenerate moderns would most certainly be unable to enjoy such hospitality, and would be cured as thoroughly of any appetite as if their host had employed another of the secrets of our ancestors. "That guests may not eat at table, do this: You must have a needle that dead people are often sewed up in their winding-sheet; and at beginning of supper secretly stick this under the table; this will hinder the guests from eating, that they will rather be weary to sit, than desirous to eat; take it away when you have laughed at them awhile."

Take it away, we must say now to the old book. As we have said, our specimens, drawn from an immense mass of the same kind, do not represent the sole character of the volume. It states, also, a very large number of facts, confirmed and explained in the present day, being a fair transcript of the average standard of opinion among learned doctors upon a great number of things. Have we not made a little progress since those good old times, and would it be a pleasant thing to get them back again? To come home to every man's breakfast-table, we may ask the public to decide between the coffee now made, and the coffee of the good old times. In a somewhat expensive book, addressed only to wealthy readers, Drs. Read and Weckir disclose this secret of good coffee, for the ladies and gentlemen of 1660:--"Take the berry, put it in a tin pudding-pan, and when bread hath been in the oven about half-an-hour, put in your coffee; there let it stand till you draw your bread; then beat it and sift it; mix it thus: first boyl your water about half-an-hour; to every quart of water put in a spoonful of the pouder of coffee; then let it boyl one-third away; clear it off from the setlings; and the next day put fresh water; and so add every day fresh water, so long as any setlings remain. _Often Tryed._"

Authors and Books.

ARTHOR SCHOPENHAUER, of Berlin, has recently published _Parerga und Paralipomena, or little Philosophical Writings_, in which, according to a Leipsic reviewer, "the author asserts that _his_ philosophy is not merely the _only_ advance in that department since the days of Kant, but that _his_ system bears the same relation to all earlier philosophy, that the New Testament bears to the Old. In addition to this, he attempts to solve the problem, how can it be possible that he has ever been as unknown to the literary and scientific world as the Man in the Moon, while the absurdest and most ridiculous theories, such, for example, as those of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, have been so generally accepted. But as he, in spite of the most earnest endeavors, can find no internal ground for this unaccountable blindness of the public, he seeks it in another direction. These impudent sophists, it seems, have had no other ground than simply _that of making money_! With the hocus-pocus of common charlatans they have carried their wares to market, and as _candidates_ and teachers of philosophy generally spring up from the same effort, there resulted an alliance of charlatans whose object it was on the one side to raise themselves to heaven, and on the other to suppress all true thinking, so that the public might be prevented, by a just consideration of their own worthlessness." "Such accusations as those," continues our reviewer, "awaken an unfavorable impression, which is not in the least diminished by continued boasting and grandiloquence, and a clumsy roughness of style, which not unfrequently falls into downright burlesque. The work itself is an odd mixture of actual recollections and arbitrary fancies, of explanations and superstitions, which force us to regret that many really admirable thoughts which occasionally surprise the reader in an assembly of trivialities and paradoxes, must inevitably be lost. Those philosophers certainly provoke sharp criticism when we separate their truly scientific contents from their visions and dispositions, and it would perhaps be more in accordance with the spirit of the age to return more earnestly to _Kant_ than most of the more recent philosophers are accustomed to do. Still nothing is in the least gained for the negative aim of criticism, when the critic makes it such an easy matter to cast away, without further consideration, all of the latest advances in philosophy, because he believes that he has detected errors in their pretended fundamental thoughts, without first ascertaining whether these fundamental thoughts are really the leading principle of the system, and when he on his own side falls into suppositions which have certainly received long since a satisfactory refutation from the later philosophy; as, for example, in the Kantean opposition of things in themselves, and their appearances. The _positive_, with which Herr Schopenhauer believes that he has enriched science, the derivation of united spiritual functions from the will, and the correction of the course of the world, by the idea that the true aim of life is to scorn it, might with greater propriety be classed in the sphere of 'visions and dispositions,' which he so fiercely attacks, than in that of science. The discussions which fill these two volumes, and are spread out over every imaginable subject, even to ghosts, the possibility of whose existence is admitted, have naturally a very varied character, and can only, by a continued polemic, and a fragmentary system of examination harmonizing therewith, be brought into unity."

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The second part of WACHSMUTH'S _Allgemeine Culturgeschichte_ (History of Civilization, for so we venture to translate the word Cultur), which indicates more strictly all referring to those social influences which refine, form, and educate society, has recently appeared. The volume referred to contains _The Middle Ages_, and is highly spoken of for the skilful manner in which the author has treated the influence exerted by the Byzantine and Mohammedan races. Another historical work of importance is the fourth and concluding volume containing the tenth and twelfth books of HAMMER PURGSTALL'S _Life of Cardinal Khlesl_, compiled from contemporary documents. In it we have the last diplomatic acts of the Cardinal, of the intrigues of the Grand Dukes Ferdinand and Maximilian relative to him, and of his consequent arrest and abduction. The eleventh book details his imprisonment in Innspruck and in the Abbey St. Georgenberg, the negotiations with the Pope relative to him, and his delivery to the latter on the 24th October, 1622. In the twelfth we have the details of his residence in Rome, of the part he took in instituting the Propaganda, his return home after an absence of ten years, his subsequent clerical exertions, and his testament. The conclusion gives a parallel drawn between Khlesl, Wolsey, and Ximenes--a description of his personal appearance and an explanation of the exertions of power brought to bear against him, with the final judgment that those truly to blame were the grand dukes and not Khlesl, and that the Cardinal, if not entirely devoid of blame, was still a great character, and one of the most illustrious statesmen of Austria. Another new historical work is the _Laben des Herzogs von Sachsen-Gotha und Altenburg, Freiderich II. Ein Bei trazzur Geschichte Gotha's beim Wechsel d. 17, und 18, Jahrh. Herausgegeben nach dessen Tode von Dr._ AD. MORITZ SCHULZE, _Director d. Burgerschule zu Gotha_ (or Life of the Duke of Saxe Gotha and Altenburg, Frederic the II.) A contribution to the history of Gotha during the changes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Published after the death of the author by Dr. Ad. Moritz Schulze, director of the Citizen School of Gotha, this work appears to be well and warmly, though impartially written.

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In theology, we observe the publication, by ALBERT WESSEL VON HENGEL, of _Commentarius Perpetuus in Prioris Pauli ad Corinthios Epistolae Caput Quintum Decimum cum Epistola ad Winerum, Theol. Lips. Haag._ (Boedeker in Rotterdam). In this book we perceive that the important fifteenth chapter of the Letter to the Corinthians is philologically treated with true Dutch thoroughness and remarkable erudition, but that the results to which he comes are often untenable, and that a satisfactory decision as to the proposed dogmatic questions, such as advanced theological science requires, is not given. The peculiar views of the author as to the aim or object of the chapter have also had an effect on the explanation of many passages. It is asserted, for instance, _a la_ Bush, that Paul does not speak of the resurrection of the body, but that he means by this resurrection the return of all men into life, or immortality; and regarding this, has in view only those who admit Christ, and their future happiness; and that even verse forty-nine contains only a comparison of the _moral_ condition of Christians in this and a better life. Yet notwithstanding this he finds himself compelled to admit, by the fifty-second verse, that the same bodies which we have here on earth, again return to life. By the [Greek: parousia] of Christ (v. 23) he understands _earthly life_, and by [Greek: oi tou Christou en te parousia autou], those Christians who already believed on him while yet on earth, and by the [Greek: telos], not the end of the world with its universal resurrection and judgment, but the resurrection of the later Christians. The oft-repeated [Greek: speiretai] (v. 43) he translates by it is begotten or generated, and understands it as referring to an entry into earthly life, and that the [Greek: choikos] of the forty-seventh verse refers to the earthly _disposition_ or _inclination_, and the [Greek: ex ournou] and [Greek: epouranios] to that of the heavenly.

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Among recent books of travel we have _A Journey to Persia and the country of the Koords_, and the preceding sketch, _Souvenirs of the Danube and Bosphorus_, by MORITZ WAGNER. The Journey to Persia contains much curious information and observation of a country but little known to the outer world, while in the Souvenirs we have bitter complaints and merciless revelations relative to the Metternich policy in the East, and the conduct and character of the Austrian diplomatic representative by the Porte. Many curious facts are also given relative to the present condition of Turkey, the personal appearance of the Sultan and divers Constantinopolitan dignitaries and foreign ambassadors. The commendatory characteristic of this work appears to consist in the fact, that the author, unlike the great majority of those who are elevated to constant familiarity with men of high standing and influence, is remarkably independent and unselfish in his views, and invariably speaks bold plain truth, even of individuals in whose power it actually lies to do him very decided injury. No person desirous of being _au courant_ as to the great political world of the present day, should be ignorant of this work.

* * * * *

A work has recently been published at Ratisbon, entitled. _Die Katholischon Missionen, Geschildert aus der Neuzeit, Miteinem Anhange, Zwei Missionen in dem Jahr 1716 und 1718_ (Catholic Missions, Sketched from recent times, with a supplement; Two Missions in the years 1716 and 1718). Of this performance a German review remarks, that it was once believed that the power of the Jesuits was for ever broken, but lo! they again lift their heads in power. "Missions are one of the means by which they act upon the people--a number of Jesuits repair to a certain place, and day after day its inhabitants are preached to, taught, confessions heard, and mass read festally." The book is a eulogium of Catholicism, and especially of the Jesuits, as its truest representatives, with occasional passes at democracy, the unbelievers, the administration, and bureaucracy. It praises Catholicism as the only means whereby the revolution can be restrained; it tells of devotions to the heart of the Virgin Mary and her medals, and of the plenary remission which the missions bring. It exalts the obedience of the Jesuits to their superiors, and praises the principle that they, without any will of their own, should be _perinde ac cadaver_--like a corpse. According to this book, the consequences of these missions are incalculable, and the love bestowed upon them by the Jesuits truly affecting. It well-nigh appears the same as if one were reading Chateaubriand's praises of the _Patres_. Only that history, for the past three hundred years, has given a somewhat strong contrast to this ideal. The best parts of the book are sketches of life in the _Bagnos_ of Toulon and Brest.

* * * * *

At Berlin, the Scientific Society (_Winenschaftlicher Vereins_) have been giving a course of lectures to a large and aristocratic audience, invited by members of the society. Their success has brought out the Evangelical Society, in another course of a more theological and religious nature. In the first-named society, Professor Brandes lately lectured upon the Mormons; but it seems that the majority of the elegant gentlemen and ladies, did not fully appreciate his efforts for their instruction, for want of the necessary elementary knowledge. "When the doctor rose and announced his subject, the question was at once whispered in all parts of the hall," "Who are the Mormons?" The ladies in the most brilliant costume were generally the most eager in this inquiry. But unfortunately they got no satisfaction; the common reply of the gentleman appealed to being, "I am sorry to say I have forgotten." Some, more learned than others, however, assured their lovely companions that the Mormons were an Indian tribe of America, closely connected with, if not directly descended from, the Hurons, so frequently mentioned in Cooper's novels. Another amusing misunderstanding recently occurred in the same course. The lectures are not generally announced before-hand, but one day the newspapers got hold of the subject, and informed all the world that Professor Diterici would read a lecture upon _Pera and the desert festivals_. A great crowd of ladies was the consequence, all agog to hear about the picturesque costumes and strange ways of Pera, the national festivals of the Bedouins, and, perhaps, to have a glimpse at the mysteries of the seraglio. How great was the disappointment of the fashionable auditory when the learned doctor rose and began his discourse upon _Petra, the Fastness of the Desert_. That evening the ladies went home in very ill humor.

* * * * *

A work which political students and legislators may read, with advantage, is the _Wesen und Verfassung der Laadgemeinde_ (Nature and Constitution of the Country Towns, and of the tenure of Real Estate in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, with special regard to the Kingdom of Hanover.) It is by Mr. STUVE, recently the Prime Minister of Hanover, and is interesting, especially as exhibiting the extent to which the principle of local self-government obtains in Germany, and the probabilities and methods of its extension. For its historical view of the organization of the _commune_ or township in Germany, it is very valuable.

* * * * *

The second part of the _System of Ethics_, by IMANUEL HERMANN (not Johann Gottlieb) FICHTE, has recently appeared. The anticipations awakened by the first historico-critical part of the work do not appear to be satisfactorily realized by this second dogmatic division.

* * * * *

Among the most entertaining "books of autobiography must always be reckoned _The Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth_, daughter of Frederic William I., and sister of Frederic the Great of Prussia. They are among the chief sources of the history of the German states during the last century, and they afford the most striking, if not the most pleasing, view we have of aristocratic German manners for the same period. In the London _Literary Gazette_ it is stated that--

"The revelations of the Princess, especially concerning the King of Prussia and his court, if true, are at least not flattering to the Prussian dynasty; and strenuous attempts have for years past been making to represent the 'Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth' as a spurious work, concocted by the enemies of Prussia, for the express purpose of humiliating the descendants of Frederic William I. It so happened, that at the first publication of the book, in 1810, a rival edition was almost immediately given to the world in another part of Germany. The publishers of either book pretended to be in exclusive possession of the original MS. of the unfortunate Princess. These conflicting claims furnished the partisans of the court of Berlin with a very plausible pretext for doubting the genuineness of either. But of late, Dr. Pertz, of Berlin, when engaged in collecting still further proofs of the 'literary imposition' practised by the editors of the two MS., happened to stumble on the original autograph copy of the Princess among the books and papers of the Protonotarius Blanet, at Celle, in Hanover. Herr Blanet had the MS. from Dr. E. Spangenberg, of Celle, who died in 1833, and who bought it from Colonel Osten, who, in his turn, had received the MS. from Dr. Superville, physician to the Princess, to whom it had been presented by that lady. From a paper read by Dr. Pertz, to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, (Berlin: Keimer. London: Williams and Norgate,) it appears that, of the two existing editions, the one published at Brunswick, in 1810, is a copy, though not a faithful or complete one, of the original MS. This copy in particular wants several sheets. At all events, the question as to the genuineness of the 'Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth' is now completely set at rest; for although Dr. Pertz demonstrates at some length that many important phrases and parts of phrases are wanting in the Brunswick edition, he has not ventured to affirm that any phrases or statements have been added by the editor."

* * * * *

A recent book of travels published at Munich is not utterly devoid of interest, though it appears to be far inferior to what we should have expected from the subject. We refer to the _Errimerungen an Italien, Sicilian and Grieohenland aus den Jahren, 1826-1844_ (Recollections of Greece, Italy, and Sicily, in the Years 1826-1844), by HEINRICH FARMBACHER. In company with the king of Bavaria, and as his secretary, Herr Farmbacher travelled twice to Sicily, once to Greece, and frequently through Italy. The descriptions of scenes and events appear in no instance to rise above mediocrity, nor do we find any of that artistic spirit and observation which might have been anticipated from an intelligent attendant of the great royal connoisseur. His anecdotes relative to the monarch himself are rare, trivial, and worthless, for it does not seem to have occurred to the royal secretary that in such a work his master to the general reader is a far more attractive individual than himself. As regards style, the book gives from time to time curious glimpses of that court lackey language so habitual to the upper class _flunkies_ of Herr Farmbacher's description, and which it is impossible for him to entirely suppress even in writing.

* * * * *

The distinguished and lamented orientalist KLAPROTH has left behind him a large map of Central Asia, in four sheets, engraved at Paris by Berthe, the geographer. This map is the product of ten years' researches, and exhibits the topography of those vast regions, with the cities it contains, many of which have hitherto been unknown, and the names of the tribes inhabiting it. The map is based not only upon the explorations of travellers, but on the Chinese maps made by order of the Emperor Kiang-Long, and by missionaries in China and Tartary. It extends on the north to the frontiers of Siberia, including the great lake Balaton; on the south to Hindostan; on the west to the sea of Aral and Persia; and on the east to China.

* * * * *

HAFIS is the title prefixed to a new collection of poems, by G. F. DAUMER, just published at Nuremberg. Daumer is one of the most original writers in the whole scope of the present German literature. His _Evangelium_ is especially worthy of a far greater degree of attention than it has received. It is a volume of brief poems, discussing the gravest questions with as much warmth and freshness of imagination as elevation and beauty of style. In this country Daumer is known but to the few whose acquaintance with German literature extends beyond the classic writers whose names are familiar to all the world. A Catholic critic in Germany says of him, that the epitaph once proposed for the gravestone of Voltaire will suit equally well that of Daumer. It is as follows:

"In poesi magnus, In historia parvus, In philosophia minimus, In religione nullus."

* * * * *

GUTZKOW'S _Ritter vom Geiste_ has just appeared in a second edition in Germany--no trifling success for a romance in nine stout volumes; another German _litterateur_ has also dramatized a part of it. Gutzkow is, beyond dispute, one of the foremost among the living writers of Germany. His collected works, published some years since, in twelve volumes, have lately been increased by a thirteenth, containing several fugitive stories, and one or two plays that he has brought out at various times.

* * * * *

We heard little of Scandinavian literature until the translations of Tegner, Frederica Bremer, Oelenschlager, and Hans Christian Andersen, called our attention to the rich treasures of intellectual activity produced under that cold northern sky. Of course constant additions are being made to this literature. Among its recent productions is a comedy by ANDERSEN, based on a fairy story, called _Hyldemoeer_, which has lately been performed upon the Danish stage with not very brilliant success. It is admitted to be inferior to his stories, as have been his former attempts at dramatic composition. C. MOLBACH announces, at Copenhagen, a Danish translation of DANTE'S _Divina Commedia_; the same author has just published a volume of original poems under the title of _Twilight_. A very industriously-prepared and useful work is J. H. EOSLEN'S _General Literary Dictionary_, from the year 1814 to 1840, of which the thirteenth part has just appeared. In Norway, F. M. BUGGE announces a translation of the _Iliad_ into Norwegian hexameters, to be published by subscription. A Norwegian dictionary, by IWAR AASEN is highly commended.

* * * * *

A very sharp controversy is now being waged by the scholars of Denmark and Schleswig. The Danes resort to philology in order to prove the right of their country to extend its government over the Germans of that Duchy, and the other party meet their onslaught with weapons equally keen, drawn also from the arsenals of dictionaries and grammars. The best of the quarrel hitherto seems to be on the side of the Schleswigers, whose great champion is one Herr Clement, a man of as much learning as talent. In a recent essay, he establishes that the original inhabitants of Schleswig were not Danes but Angles, or Frieslanders, essentially the same race as the original Saxon stock of England. In illustration of this doctrine he adduces an immense list of names of places which are the same in Schleswig and England--as, for instance, Ripen and Ripon, Ellum and Elham, Roedding and Reading, Meldorp and Milthorp, Wilstrup and Wilthorpe, &c., &c. This essay will probably be expanded into a book.

* * * * *

The German critics are discussing with high encomiums a volume of poems by ANNETTE VON DROSTE, a deceased poetess of Westphalia. It is entitled _Das Religioese Jahr_ (The Religious Year), and is inspired with that absolute devotion which lends so great a charm to the poems of Montgomery, the Moravians, and the mystical writers generally.

* * * * *

BYRON'S _Manfred_, with musical accompaniments, by R. Schumann, is about to be produced at the Weimar theatre.

* * * * *

JAHN, the well-known Leipsic professor, is engaged in writing a life of Beethoven.

* * * * *

RICHARD WAGNER, the revolutionist, musical composer, and writer upon aesthetics, has published a new work, entitled _Oper und Drama_ (Opera and Drama), which the German critics fall upon with considerable ferocity. They complain that while he entirely rejects the old form of the opera, he does not indicate what is the new kind of musical drama to be substituted for it. Wagner has also published _Three Opera Poems_, which the same critics cannot but praise for their originality, power, and inspiration. If the music of these operas is adequate to the _libretti_, say they, they are really new and grand productions. This would seem, also, to be proved by the fact that one of them has been brought out at Weimar, through the influence and under the direction of Liszt. The author is living in exile in Switzerland, and is engaged upon a dramatic trilogy with a prelude. He no longer professes to write operas, but musical dramas.

* * * * *

An attempt has been made in Germany to register the enormous number of books and pamphlets which the Germans themselves have published on their two great poets, Goethe and Schiller. A catalogue of the Goethean literature in Germany, from 1793 to 1851, has been published by Balde, at Cassel, and in London by Williams and Norgate. The Schiller literature, from 1781 to 1851, is likewise announced by the same firm.

* * * * *

A very excellent translation of sundry old Scottish and English ballads has just made its appearance at Munich, from the pen of W. DOENNIGER. It contains sixteen Scotch and seventeen English ballads, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, all rendered with great fidelity, and in the true spirit of the original. So successful is the book that a second edition of it is about to appear, with illustrations by Kaulbach, Voltzen, and other eminent artists.

* * * * *

The _Augsburg Gazette_ states that the Congregation of the Index has just prohibited all the works of Eugene Sue and Proudhon; also a clerical Turin paper, called the _Buona Novella_; a work on animal magnetism, by Tomasi; a manual for schoolmasters, printed at Asti in 1850; and all the works of Gioberti.

* * * * *

A book to be read by the students of literature and by critics is HETTNER'S _Moderne Drama_, just published at Brunswick. We do not know of a profounder and keener discussion of the principles and laws of dramatic writing, or of more just and striking dramatic criticisms than it contains.

* * * * *

LAYARD'S popular account of his excavations and discoveries at Nineveh has been translated into German by one of the Meissners (not the poet, we believe), and is published at Leipsic.

* * * * *

FRAULEIN FRIEDERIKE FRIEDEMANN has published, at Leipsic, a metrical version of Lord BYRON'S _Corsair_, which is worthy of all commendation. The gloomy hue and passionate vehemence of the original are preserved in the translation with surprising fidelity, and the rhythm is hardly less perfect than in Byron's English itself.

* * * * *

The last number of the _Theologische Quartalschrift_ (Theological Quarterly), published at Tuebingen, by Laupp, contains an interesting paper on the pretended objections to the historical truth of the Pentateuch, by WELTE; the critical historical examination of the xxxi. xxxii. Jeremiah, by REINKE; and the Aloge, with their relations to the Montanists, by HEFELE.

* * * * *

MR. GEORGE STEPHENS, the translator of Tegner's _Frithiof's Saga_, and whose intimate acquaintance with the early literature of Sweden has been shown by the collection of legends of that country which he edited in conjunction with Hylten-Cavallius, and by various works superintended by him for the _Svenska Fornskrift-Salskapet_, (a sort of Stockholm Camden Society,) has removed to Copenhagen in consequence of his having been appointed Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University there. The subject of his first course of lectures was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We have in our possession the MS. translations of some very interesting ancient Swedish poems made by Mr. Stephens some five years ago, and not yet published.

* * * * *

The London _Leader_, socialist and avowedly and industriously infidel, says of EUGENE SUE, not long ago the rage of half the world:

"We have to announce the third and last volume of Eugene Sue's _Fernand Duplessis_, wherein the memoirs of a husband are recounted with a license which only a French public could permit. Perhaps the worst thing in Sue is not his positive passion for what is criminal and odious, so much as the way in which he always contrives to render the good people odious. Much as we reprobate his pictures of vice, we think them less offensive than his pictures of virtue. How a man so essentially vulgar-minded could ever have attained the position he had once!"

* * * * *

M. ALFRED VILLEFORT has published at Paris a treatise on literary and artistic property in an international point of view. It not only discusses the question as a matter of principle, but gives the history of the negotiations and treaties which France has made in that respect with the nations.

* * * * *

Among the pleasant books recently published in France is ARSENE HOUSSAYE'S volume of stories, _Les Filles d'Eve_, very piquant and French in its treatment. A translation is announced in this city by Redfield.

* * * * *

The literary event of the month at Paris is the publication of the third volume of LOUIS BLANC'S _History of the French Revolution_. Of all the works written upon that memorable epoch, none is more marked by originality of thought and power of treatment than this, and we can only hope that the present volume, which we have not yet seen, may prove equal to its predecessors. Its table of contents is as follows: Attitude of Property toward the Revolution, Attitude of the Gospel toward the Revolution, Tableau of the Constituent Assembly, First Labors of the Constituent Assembly, Administration of Necker, People Starving, Treasury Empty, A New Power, Journalism, Faction of the Count de Provence, The Fifteen Complots, The Women of Versailles, The King brought to Paris, The Court at the Tuileries, Municipal and Military Organization of the Bourgeoisie, The Wealth of the Clergy Denounced, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Clergy, The Authority of the Parliaments Discussed, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Parliaments, The Ambition of Mirabeau, Complots of the Luxembourg, New Organization of the Kingdom. The _Leader_ mentions that Mr. Blanc undertakes to _prove_ that Egalite was not at the bottom of those conspiracies with which his name has been associated, but that the real culprit was the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII.

* * * * *

M. EDMOND TEXIER, one of the most fresh and agreeable of that race of literary butterflies, the _feuilletonists_ of Paris, is publishing a large work upon that great capital, which promises to be as readable as its exterior is splendid. It is to be ornamented with some two thousand engravings on wood, representing all the prominent and famous public edifices and places which not only figure so largely in history, but are so splendid in themselves. The title of M. Texier's work is the _Tableau de Paris_. It appears in parts.

* * * * *

The publication of the magnificent work, the _Catacombs de Rome_, for which the French National Assembly voted $40,000, will shortly commence, under the direction of a commission nominated by the Government, consisting of Messrs. Ampere (now in the United States), Ingres, Prosper, Merinice, and Vitel, all members of the Institute. The work will contain exact copies of the architecture, mural paintings, inscriptions, figures, symbols, sepulchres, lamps, vases, rings, instruments, in a word, of every thing belonging to, or connected with, the primitive Christians, which by the most diligent search, exercised during many years, have been brought to light in the catacombs of ancient Rome. Its enormous price, between $250 and $300, will, however, keep it out of the hands of all but the wealthy. Another work on the same subject and of similar character is announced in Rome, under the direction of the ecclesiastical government.

* * * * *

A volume purporting to contain thirty hitherto unpublished Letters of SHELLEY, appeared a few weeks ago from the press of Moxon, in London, edited by Robert Browning. It appears from an article in the _Athenaeum_ that these--letters, and many others recently sold to publishers and autograph collectors, are forgeries. The book referred to is of course suppressed. The _Athenaeum_ inquires:

"From whom did Mr. Moxon buy these letters? They were bought at Sotheby & Wilkinson's, at large prices. From whom did Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson receive them for sale? 'We had them from Mr. White, the bookseller in Pall Mall, over against the Reform Club.' Off runs the gentle man-detective. 'From whom did you, Mr. White, obtain these letters?' 'I bought them of two women--I believed them to be genuine, and I paid large prices for them in that belief.' Such are the words supposed to have been spoken by Mr. White. The two women would appear to have been like the man in a clergyman's band, but with a lawyer's gown, who brought Pope's letters to Curll.

"It is proper to say thus early that there has been of late years, as we are assured, a most systematic and wholesale forgery of letters purporting to be written by Byron, Shelley, and Keats,--that these forgeries carry upon them such marks of genuineness as have deceived the entire body of London collectors,--that they are executed with a skill to which the forgeries of Chatterton and Ireland can lay no claim,--that they have sold at public auctions, and by the hands of booksellers, to collectors of experience and rank--and that the imposition has extended to a large collection of books bearing not only the signature of Lord Byron, but notes in many of their pages--the matter of the letters being selected with a thorough knowledge of Byron's life and feelings, and the whole of the books chosen with the minutest knowledge of his tastes and peculiarities.

"But the 'marvel' of the forgery is not yet told. At the same sale at which Mr. Moxon bought the Shelley letters were catalogued for sale a series of (unpublished) letters from Shelley to his wife, revealing the innermost secrets of his heart, and containing facts, not wholly dishonorable facts to a father's memory, but such as a son would wish to conceal. These letters were bought in by the son of Shelley, the present Sir Percy Shelley--and are now proved, we are told, to be forgeries. To impose on the credulity of a collector is a minor offence compared with the crime of forging evidence against the dead, and still minor as, in one instance, against the fidelity of a woman.

"The forgery of Chatterton injured no one but an imaginary priest; the forgery of Ireland made a great poet seem to write worse than Settle could have written; but this forgery blackens the character of a great man, and, worse still, traduces female virtue.

"Mr. Moxon is not the only publisher taken in. Mr. Murray has been a heavy sufferer, though not to the same extent. Mr. Moxon has printed his Shelley purchases; Mr. Murray--wise through Mr. Moxon's example--_will not_ publish his Byron acquisitions."

These forgeries seem to us to have been very clumsily executed.

* * * * *

The London _Athenaeum_ contains a very interesting letter from Mr. PAYNE COLLIER, in which he gives an account of the discovery of a copy of the second folio edition of Shakspeare, with numerous important corrections of the text, apparently by some learned contemporary actor, whose memory of parts, or access to original MSS., enabled him to restore all the readings vitiated by careless transcription or printing. Mr. Collier has such faith in these _errata_ that he does not hesitate to avow that he would have adopted a large portion of them in his own edition of Shakspeare, had they been known to him when that was printed. Of the several instances he offers, this will serve as a specimen:

"An embarrassment meets us in the very outset of _Measure for Measure_,--where the Duke, addressing Escalus, observes, in the ordinary reading:

"'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am put to know, that your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then, no more remains, But that to your sufficiency as your worth is able, And let them work.'

--The meaning is pretty evident; but the expression of that meaning is obscure and corrupt,--as indeed the measure alone would establish. Various conjectural modes of setting the passage right have been proposed; and perhaps what follows from my corrected folio of 1632 has no better foundation,--but, at all events, it restores both the sense and the metre, and may, for aught we know, give the very words of Shakspeare:

"'Of government the properties to unfold Would seem in me t' affect speech and discourse; Since I am _apt_ to know, that your own science Exceeds (in that) the lists of all advice My strength can give you; Then, no more remains But _add_ to your sufficiency your worth, And let them work.'

--How 'that' in the old editions came to be printed for _add_ and how 'is able' came to be foisted in, most unnecessarily and awkwardly, at the end of the same line, it is not easy to explain. The third line is also much cleared by the substitution of _apt_ for 'put,'--which was an easy misprint: 'Apt to know' is an expression of every-day occurrence."

* * * * *

SIR JAMES STEPHEN, whose excellent _Lectures on the History of France_ have been so well received, proposes to deliver, at Cambridge, a series of twenty lectures on the _Diplomatic History of France during the reign of Louis XIV._, comprising a review of the treaties of Westphalia, of the Pyrenees, of Breda, of the Triple Alliance, of Aix-la-Chapelle, of Nimeguen, of Ryswick, and of Utrecht.

* * * * *

MISS CHARLOTTE VANDENHOFF, whose professional tour in the United States will be remembered by old play-goers, has written a piece under the title of _Woman's Heart_, possessing considerable poetical merits, and herself sustained the character of the heroine in its representation.

* * * * *

MR. CARLYLE, is engaged upon a new work in history, but its subject is not disclosed, nor its extent.

* * * * *

MRS. ROBINSON, who left New-York several months ago to visit her relations in Germany, writes from Berlin to the _Athenaeum_, under date of February 2, as follows:

"A work appeared in London last summer with the following title: _Talvi's History of the Colonization of America_, edited by William Hazlitt, in two volumes. It seems proper to state that the original work was written under favorable circumstances _in German_, and published in Germany. It treated only of the colonization of _New England_: and that only stood on its title-page. The above English publication, therefore, is a mere translation, and it was made without the consent or knowledge of the author. The very title is a misnomer; all references to authorities are omitted; and the whole work teems with errors, not only of the press, but also of translation,--the latter such as could have been made by no person well acquainted with the German and English tongues. For the work in this form, therefore, the author can be in no sense whatever responsible.

TALVI."

From a more recent number of the _Athenaeum_ it appears that Mr. Hazlitt is not himself the translator of the original work; and the responsibility, not only of the translation, but of all the faults charged which might seem more especially editorial, is transferred by him to another. Mr. Hazlitt, we believe, is a son of the great critic of the last age.

* * * * *

There are connected with the newspapers a considerable number of weak-minded and absurd persons, who delight in strange coincidences and the most inconceivable relations, and who, for a certain consciousness they have of their own slight claims to consideration are anxious to find on every occasion, some indication of regard for their vocation, as if credit won by any journalist or writer were portion of a common fund of respectability from which they could draw a dividend. In no other way can we account for the thousand-and-one articles in which the appointments of Dr. LAYARD and Mr. D'ISRAELI have been referred to as "honor," "homage," &c., to literature. Dr. Layard was selected by Lord Granville to be an Under-Secretary of State, because he had shown himself in the admirable manner in which he discharged certain important diplomatic functions in the East, better fitted, in Lord Granville's opinion, than any other person for the new duties to which it was proposed to summon him. Mr. D'Israeli has long been one of the most conspicuous and astute politicians in England, and owes his present office solely to his activity and eminence in affairs. There was as little of "recognition of the claims of literature" in either case, as there was praise of fiddlesticks or Carolina potatoes. It would not be a whit more ridiculous to say that the French people, remembering the happy genius displayed by Napoleon Bonaparte in his "Supper of Beaucaire," chose him to be their emperor.

In the new British ministry are an unusual number of book-makers. The most conspicuous in authorship is the now Right Honorable Benjamin D'Israeli, "the wondrous boy who wrote _Alroy_, in rhyme and prose, only to show how long ago victorious Judah's lion banner rose." Sir Emerson Tennent, Sir Edward Sugden, Lord John Manners, Mr. Whiteside, the Earl of Malmesbury, Lord de Roos, are all known as authors, as well as politicians. The Duke of Northumberland also is favorably known as a zealous promoter of arts and learning.

* * * * *

The author of _Life in Bombay and the Neighboring Stations_, pays the following testimony to the abilities of the manoeuvring mammas of Bombay: "The bachelor civilians are always the grand aim; for, however young in the service they may be, their income is always vastly above that of the military man, to say nothing of the noble provision made by the fund for their widows and children. We remember being greatly amused, soon after our arrival in the country, at overhearing a lady say, in reference to her daughter's approaching marriage with a young civilian: 'Certainly, I could have wished my son-in-law to be a little more steady; but then it is L300 a-year for my girl, dead or alive!'"

* * * * *

A volume of brilliant French criticism will be published in a few days by Charles Scribner, under the title of _Anglo-American Literature and Manners_, by PHILARETE CHASLES, Professor in the College of France. Mr. Chasles, in a book of five hundred pages, considers the literature and manners of the people of the United States--their institutions, capacity for self-government, actual condition and probable future--with all the sprightly grace of a Frenchman, and with a great deal of cleverness prosecutes his industrious researches from the landing of the Mayflower to the present day. He finds in the United States neither an Utopia, nor a land worthy merely of ridicule. He does not simply condemn, like some travellers, nor give us universal and unreasonable praise, as our egotism and contentment lead us to desire, but takes a fair view of the country, its claims, position, and prospects. In the beginning of his performance he considers that the most essential thing for the founding of a new commonwealth, is moral force; this he finds in the Puritans, who possessed "sincerity, belief, perseverance, courage;" they could "wait, fight, suffer." Their energy, he thinks, comes from their Teutonic or Saxon blood; their indomitable perseverance is a fruit of Calvinism, added to which they are clannish, or mutual helpers one of another. This is the key to the philosophical, political and prophetic portion of his work. The literary part is honest criticism, freely spoken, by the aid of such light as happened to be around him. He begins with the landing of the Pilgrims, speaks of their literature, which, like all other American literature down to the present day, he regards as destitute of originality. Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and others, all lack this quality. The author of the _American Cultivator_ has the most of it; but Franklin is made up of Fenelon, Banyan, and Addison; Edwards partakes of Hobbes, Priestley, and in his better moments of the close reasoning Descartes. He gives us then a politician, a journalist, and a gentleman, "the American Aristocrat" as he calls him, Gouverneur Morris, our minister at Paris during the old revolution. Brockden Brown is characterized as a copyist of Monk Lewis; and he comes then to Washington Irving, but while all the charms of this delightful writer are thoroughly appreciated and minutely described, it is denied that he has originality. "In some square house in Boston, he sees in thought St. James's Park: in reveries he is led through the umbrageous alleys of Kensington--he talks with Sterne--he shakes hands with Goldsmith." "It is a copy, somewhat timid, of Addison, of Steele, of Swift." You would think of him as of "a young lady of good family, a slave to propriety, never elevating her voice, never exaggerating the _ton_, never committing the sin of eloquence;" "a refined continuation of the style of Addison," &c. Nevertheless a dawn of freshness appears in his writings when they treat of forest scenes. This dawn advances into day in Cooper, upon whom we have an admirable critique. The author of _The Spy_, M. Chasles thinks, has a native vigor unknown to Irving. Paulding is dismissed with but very little consideration. Channing occupies the critic longer, but is found to be an unsatisfactory and too general reasoner. Audubon furnishes the most attractive chapter in the book, which closes with what is called the First Literary Epoch of the United States.

The next division is of the _Literature of the People, and the falsely popular Literature of England and the States_. One thoughtful chapter is given to the infancy and future of America; the age and despair of Europe, of emigration, and colonization. Then, the popular movements in France and England are treated of, and the education of the masses. Crabbe, Burns, Elliott, Thomas Cooper and others serve as a text. Popular literature is found to be less anarchical in America than in Europe. We have a chapter on Herman Melville; and then the Americans are viewed through the spectacles of Marryatt, Trolloppe, Dickens, and their exaggerations are noted. The force of public opinion and of the press conclude the section. Our poets have two chapters: I. Barlow, Dwight, Colton, Payne, Sprague, Dana, Drake, Pierrepont; Female Poets; and Street and Halleck. II, Bryant, Emerson, and Longfellow. _Tom Stapleton_, by an Irish Sunday newspaper reporter, and _Puffer Hopkins_, by Mr. Cornelius Matthews, one chapter; Stephens, Silliman, and others represent the travellers; a chapter is dedicated to Arnold and Andre; Haliburton's _Sam Slick_ concludes the criticism; and the book ends with _The Future of Septentrional America and the United States_--what a "Bee" is, how an American village is got up, the aggregative principles of Americans, the Lowell Lectures, Democrats and Whigs--and then, far-seeing prophetic talking, conclude what the author has to say about us.

* * * * *

The well-known school book publishers of Philadelphia, THOMAS, COWPERTHWAIT, & CO., have just published a large duodecimo of five hundred and fifty-eight pages. _The Standard Speaker, containing Exercises in Prose and Poetry, for Declamation in Schools, Academies, Lyceums, and Colleges, newly Translated or Compiled from celebrated Orators, Authors, and Popular Debaters, Ancient and Modern; a Treatise on Oratory and Elocution; and Notes Explanatory and Biographical_--by EPES SARGENT. This book bears abundant evidences of editorial research and labor. The original translations would form a volume of respectable size, and they are all strikingly adapted to the purpose of elocutionary practice. Some passages of fervid eloquence from Mirabeau, Robespierre and Victor Hugo are given. Ancient eloquence is also well represented in new and spirited translations. The department of British Parliamentary oratory, shows extracts from Pym, Chatham, Barre, Wilkes, Thurlow, Grattan, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Curran, Canning, Brougham, O'Connell, Sheil, Macaulay, Croker, Talfourd, Palmerston, Cobden, and many others, and in nine instances out of ten the exercises are compiled originally for this volume. The American department is quite rich, and while the old masterpieces of Patrick Henry, Ames, Randolph, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Hayne, and others are retained, a large number of fresh and striking pieces are introduced from the eloquence of Congress and the American lecture room.

In its dramatic and poetical novelties the work is of course amply supplied. Mr. Sargent's editorial experience here has enabled him to add much that other compilers have entirely overlooked. In the adaptation of the exercises, great discrimination has been shown. They are of the right length, pithy, and calculated to engage the attention of the young. A new and valuable feature of the work is the introduction of notes, biographical and explanatory. In the instances of authors not contemporary the dates of their birth and death are given. An introductory treatise, comprising much practical information on the subject of elocution, gives completeness to the volume. Such is the Standard Speaker; and while it will be found to justify its title in the retention of all the standard specimens of rhetoric suitable for its purposes, it presents in its large proportion of new exercises of a high character, fresh and enduring claims to popularity.

* * * * *

_The Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli_, by RALPH WALDO EMERSON, WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, and JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, published a few weeks ago by Phillips, Sampson & Co., of Boston, are generally praised in the critical journals, but in this country, where the subject was generally known in literary circles, there is a common feeling of surprise at the artistic and successful _exaggeration_ of her capacities and virtues. The book, however, is in parts delightfully written, and the melancholy fate of the heroine gives it a character of romance apart from its merits as a biographical and critical composition. The _Athenaeum_ thus refers to some additional _material_ for her memoirs, which, it strikes us, should have been communicated to the custodians of her reputation at an earlier day:

"We have received permission to state that poor Margaret Fuller, on the eve of that visit to the Continent which was to prove so eventful and disastrous, left in the hands of a friend in London a sealed packet, containing, it is understood, the journals which she kept during her stay in England. Margaret Fuller--as they who saw her here all know--contemplated at that time a return to England at no very distant date;--and the deposit of these papers was accompanied by an injunction that the packet should then be restored with unbroken seal into her hands. No provision was of course made for death:--and here we believe the lady in possession feels herself in a difficulty, out of which she does not clearly see her way. The papers are likely to be of great interest, and were doubtless intended for publication; but the writer had peremptorily reserved the right of revision to herself, and forbidden the breaking of the seals, on a supposition which fate has now made impossible. It seems to us, that the equity of the case under such circumstances demands only a reference to Margaret Fuller's heir, whoever that may be; and with his or her concurrence, the lady to whom these MSS. were intrusted--and who probably knows something of the author's feeling as to their contents--may very properly constitute herself literary executor to her unfortunate friend."

* * * * *

Of BAYARD TAYLOR _The Tribune_ said a few days ago:

"By the Niagara's mail we have had the pleasure of receiving letters from our friend and associate Bayard Taylor,--or as he his known among the Arabs, Taylor Bey,--dated at Khartoum, the chief city of Sennaar, situated at the confluence of the White and the Blue Nile, about half way between Cairo and the Equator. He arrived there on the 12th of January in excellent health and spirits, after a journey on camels across the Nubian Desert, during which he had sundry fortunate adventures, and received every friendly attention from the native chieftains. He was the first American ever seen so far toward Central Africa, and like a good patriot never slept without the stars and stripes floating above his tent. Every where good luck had attended him,--in truth he seems to have been born to it,--but at Khartoum especially he was received with unexpected honors. The governor of the city had presented him with a horse, and had entertained him in a banquet of genuine Ethiopic magnificence, while the commander of the troops had stationed a nightly guard of honor around his tent. In company with Dr. Knoblecher, the venerable Catholic missionary bound for the equatorial regions whom he had overtaken at Khartoum, and of Dr. Deitz, the Austrian Counsel, Mr. Taylor had also attended a banquet at the palace of the daughter of the late king of Sennaar, a very stately and ebon princess, who entertained her guests chiefly upon sheep roasted whole. Others of the first families among the Ethiopian aristocracy had also welcomed the strangers with distinguished civilities. Mr. Taylor expected to reach Cairo on his return about the 1st of April, though we should not be surprised to learn that he had changed his mind, and, in company with the Jesuit mission, plunged still farther into the mysterious country about the equator and the sources of the Nile."

* * * * *

Several new works by our literary women are on the eve of publication. Redfield has nearly ready _Lyra and other Poems_, by ALICE CAREY--a book containing more illustrations of unquestionable genius than any other written by a woman in America; and he will also publish soon, _Isa, a Pilgrimage_, a romance by Miss Caroline CHEESEBRO', which is likely to attract a great deal of attention. Putnam has in press, _The Shield, a Story of the New World_, by Miss FENIMORE COOPER, whose _Rural Hours_, last year, commanded every where so much well-merited praise, and a new story by Miss WARNER, of whose _Wide, Wide World_ (edited in London by a "Clergyman of the Church of England"), a recent number of the _Literary Gazette_ says:

"This American tale has met with extraordinary success across the Atlantic. Within a very short time several large impressions were disposed of, and the sale still continues to be rapid. Of the causes of this popularity, there is one which will rather operate against a similar run of favor on this side of the water. A large part of the book refers to 'the old country,' and American readers eagerly seek what pertains to English life or history. But the book has many merits, apart from the incidents of its scenery and character. The authoress writes with liveliness and elegance; her power of discriminating and presenting character is great; in describing the feelings and ways of young people, she is especially happy, and an air of cheerful piety pervades the whole work. We shall not attempt to give any idea of the story, or of its principal personages, but content ourselves with commending it as a book which will please and instruct others than the young, for whom it is chiefly intended. The authoress seems herself young, and if so, we may expect other works from a spirit so lively and communicative. Who the editor is we have no knowledge, but he has taken liberties with the original not always warranted, and to an extent greater than can be approved without previous consultation. On the whole, however, he has done his part well, and in his prefatory note justly characterizes the merits of the writer, of whom we shall gladly hear more."

Miss Warner's new book is entitled _Queechy_--the name of its scene, we suppose--and it is said to be very different in character from her first production.

* * * * *

Dr. DUNGLISON'S _Medical Dictionary_, of which a new and much enlarged edition has been published by Blanchard & Lea, is one of those professional works which are almost indispensable in a gentleman's library. Every person has sometimes occasion to consult a work of this kind, and there is no other in English so masterly in treatment, or so perspicuous in style. Dr. Dunglison keeps up with all the departments of the literature of his science, and, through his quick, comprehensive, and practical understanding, we have in this volume the best results of the world's experiment and study in medicine down to the beginning of the present half century.

* * * * *

A new and complete edition of the Poetical Works of GEORGE P. MORRIS will be published in October, amply and most elaborately illustrated with engravings after original designs by Robert W. Weir. The distinction of Gen. Morris is, that he is a great song writer. The naturalness, simplicity, unity, and pervading grace of his pieces, do not so much constitute their characteristic, as the exquisite music of their cadences, justifying the praise of Braham, that they sing themselves. The new edition will surpass any other in completeness, and in artistic execution will not be inferior to any volume ever published in the United States.

* * * * *

Mr. C. L. BRACE, who has tasted in person the sweets of Austrian rule, by his imprisonment in Hungary, has in press a book of Hungarian travels, and observations upon the political situation and prospects of that country. The personal history of an American in Hungary, who enjoyed rare opportunities of intimate intercourse with the inhabitants, will be a very valuable addition to our literature, and will make a most readable and seasonable book. Of the quality of Mr. BRACE'S ability, and of the faithfulness of his observation and record, his letters to the New-York _Tribune_ are satisfactory evidence. (Scribner.)

* * * * *

Mr. TICKNOR'S admirable _History of Spanish Literature_ by no means fails of the high consideration to which it is entitled from the best critics of Europe. One of the best translations of it is in Spanish, by Don PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS Y DON ENRIQUE DE VEDIA (_con adiciones y notas criticas_), Mr. Ticknor having communicated some notes and corrections to the two translators, who have added from their own store. A second translation is coming out in Germany, also containing important additions, in part from material and suggestions furnished by the accomplished author.

* * * * *

ARVINE'S _Anecdotes of Literature and the Arts_ is an agreeable miscellany; but the neglect of the editor to give credits in cases where he adopts entire pages from well-known books, deserves rebuke. The eighth number has been published by Gould & Lincoln of Boston, and it completes the work.

* * * * *

The work of Mr. STILES, which we have noticed elsewhere in this number of the _International_, we understand, will be published by the Harpers, in two large octavo volumes, about the first of May. It contains a complete history of the revolutionary proceedings in the Austrian empire in 1848. Mr. Stiles witnessed much that he describes. Each section is introduced by an historical survey of the country where the events described occurred. Thus Venice, Prague, and Vienna are brought before the reader in all their past glory and recent political vicissitudes. The Hungarian war is amply chronicled. The work is moderate in tone, authentic, fresh, and abounding in interesting facts. It will be illustrated by engravings, executed in Germany, of the Emperor, Archduke John, Kossuth, and other chief characters.

* * * * *

Dr. A. K. GARDINER, whose clever book about Paris, under the title of _Old Wine in New Bottles_, is well known, has just published a noticeable lecture, delivered before the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the _History of the Art of Midwifery_. It is most conclusive upon the point of the unfitness of women for any of the more delicate and important duties in obstetrics, and is a sufficient argument for the immediate abolition of the so-called "Female Colleges." We recommend it to the attention of readers who feel any interest in the subject.--(Stringer & Townsend.)

* * * * *

Mrs. H. C. CONANT, wife of the learned Professor of Hebrew in the Rochester University, has published (through Lewis Colby, Nassau-street) another of NEANDER'S Commentaries, done into terse and vigorous English--_The Epistle of James Practically Explained_. It is needless to praise the great German, and it will readily be believed, by those who are acquainted with the fine abilities and thorough scholarship of Mrs. Conant, that this translation is in all respects admirable.

* * * * *

We are soon to have a new dramatic poem from Mr. GEORGE H. BOKER, whose _Calaynos_, _Anne Bullen_, and _Ivory Carver and other Poems_, have secured to him very high and well-deserved reputation as a literary artist. We do not think any sonnets written in this country are to be preferred to Mr. Boker's, and his _Ballad of Sir John Franklin_, published a few months ago in this magazine, is full of imagination, and is marked throughout with the nicest skill in execution.

* * * * *

The last work of the late Professor STUART, a _Commentary on the Book of Proverbs_, has been published by M. W. DODD, in a large duodecimo volume. It contains a full account of the principal commentaries written on this book, and the translations and paraphrases made into different languages, with a new version, and exegetical remarks. A memoir of Professor Stuart is in preparation.

* * * * *

Mr. RICHARD B. KIMBALL, the accomplished author of _St. Leger_, leaves New York in a few days for a tour through Europe. No one among our younger authors has risen more rapidly in the public regard, or established a good reputation in literature upon a surer basis. Imagination, scholarship, and profound reflection, characterize nearly all his performances. The admirable story written by him for the present number of the _International_, we believe, is true in every essential but the name of the heroine. It is a reminiscence of Mr. Kimball's student life in Paris, where, for a time, he walked the hospitals with his friend, the well-known Dr. O. H. Partridge, now one of the most distinguished physicians of Philadelphia, who is one of the dramatis personae of _Emilie de Coigny_.

* * * * *

Mr. JOHN P. KENNEDY pronounced, in Baltimore, on the anniversary of the birth of Washington, a very eloquent and wise discourse, in which the state of the nation with respect to possible entanglements in foreign affairs, and implications by needless artificial ties in the vicissitudes of European politics, were treated in a manner worthy of a statesman of the school of the Great Chief. The occasion was also improved in Philadelphia by the Rev. Dr. BOARDMAN, who, in a discourse entitled _Washington or Kossuth_ (published by Lippincott, Grambo, & Co.), discusses the same great subjects in a masterly argument for the observance of the principles of the Farewell Address.

* * * * *

An elaborate attack on the Society of Friends appeared lately in Dublin, and has been republished in Philadelphia, under the title of _Quakerism, or the Story of My Life_. It was written by a Mrs. GREER, the daughter of an eminently respectable Irish Quaker, who was herself connected with the society for forty years, and so had abundant opportunities of becoming familiar with the peculiarities of the system. But the book is vulgar, malignant, and evidently altogether undeserving of credit in regard to facts. The points obnoxious to ridicule are broadly caricatured, and the most distinguished and blameless characters are introduced in the most offensive manner, as if to gratify personal spleen or a disposition to slander.

* * * * *

The Neander Library, recently purchased by the University of Rochester, consists of 4,500 volumes, and the price paid was only $2,300. About 350 of the volumes are large folios, and many of the works in the collection are of the choicest and rarest editions. We observe that an attempt to show that there was even the slightest possible degree of unfairness on the part of the Rochester faculty in obtaining this library, which was much desired by a western college, has most signally failed.

* * * * *

We commend to our readers as the best literary journal in this country, the _To Day_, recently established in Boston by CHARLES HALE, a thoroughly educated and judicious editor.

_Recent Deaths_

WILLIAM WARE was born at Hingham, in Massachusetts, on the third of August, 1797. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from Robert Ware, one of the earliest settlers of the colony, who came from England about the year 1644. His father was Henry Ware, D. D., many years honorably distinguished by his connection with the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the late Henry Ware, jr., D. D., was his elder brother. His only living brother is Dr. John Ware, who also shares of the literary tastes and talents of his family, and has written its history.

William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was on the 18th of December, 1821, settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New-York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called _The Unitarian_, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the title of _Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance_. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston. The romance of Zenobia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circumstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author had been a successful student of the institutions, manners and social life of the age he attempted to illustrate.

Mr. Ware's second romance, _Probus, or Rome in the Third Century_, was published in the summer of 1838. It is a sort of sequel to the Zenobia, and is composed of letters purporting to be written by Piso from Rome to Fausta, the daughter of Gracchus, one of the old Palmyrene ministers. In the first work Piso meets with Probus, a Christian teacher, and is

## partially convinced of the truth of his doctrine; he is now a disciple,

and a sharer of the persecutions which marked the last days of the reign of Aurelian. The characters in Probus are skilfully drawn and contrasted, and with a deeper moral interest, from the frequent discussions of doctrine which it contains, the romance has the classical style and spirit which characterized its predecessor.

Mr. Ware's third work is entitled _Julian, or Scenes in Judea_, and was published in 1841. The hero is a Roman, of Hebrew descent, who visits the land of his ancestors, to gratify a liberal curiosity, during the last days of the Saviour. Every thing connected with Palestine at this period is so familiar that the ground might seem to be sacred to History and Religion; but it has often been invaded by the romancer, and perhaps never with more success than in the present instance. Although Julian has less freshness than Zenobia, it has an air of truth and sincerity that renders it scarcely less interesting.

About the time of the publication of Julian, Mr. Ware was attacked with Epilepsy, while in his pulpit, at Lexington, near Boston, and he suffered all the residue of his life from disease and apprehension; but his illness did not affect his intelligence or its activity, and he continued to devote himself to congenial studies, for several years, chiefly as editor of _The Christian Examiner_. For a short period he was pastor of the Unitarian society at West Cambridge, but the condition of his health did not permit a regular discharge of his functions, for which, indeed, he was scarcely fitted in any thing but a spirit of humility and piety. His tastes and capacities would have secured for him greater triumphs in any department of pictorial or plastic art, to which he was always insensibly drawn by instinct and congenial studies.

In 1848 Mr. Ware passed several months abroad, and after his return he delivered in _Lectures on European Capitals_ the best fruits of his travel. These Lectures have recently been published in a very attractive volume, which has been favorably received in this country and in England. Among his unprinted writings is a series of Lectures on the _Life, Works, and Genius of Washington Allston_. He died on the 19th of February.

The romances of Mr. Ware betray a familiarity with the civilization of the ancients, and are written in a graceful, pure and brilliant style. In our literature they are peculiar, and they will bear a favorable comparison with the most celebrated historical romances relating to the same scenes and periods which have been written abroad. They have passed through many editions in Great Britain, and have been translated into German and other languages of the continent.

* * * * *

JOHN FRAZEE, the sculptor, died at the age of sixty, on the--th of March, at the house of his daughter, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The _Evening Post_ remarks that "he was a man of decided talent for sculpture, but the necessity of employing himself in other occupations, prevented his attaining that skill which, under more auspicious circumstances, would have been within his reach." Mr. Frazee was born in Brunswick, N.J., and in early life was a farmer and stone-cutter. One of his first attempts at sculpture which attracted notice, was a clever female bust, a likeness of one of his own family, exhibited in the gallery of the Academy of Design. He afterwards, at the request of the bar of New-York, was employed in the mural tablet and bust of John Welles, which fills a conspicuous place in St Paul's Church. This production, with others subsequently executed, attracted the attention of the Trustees of the Boston Athenaeum, and at their request, in 1834, he proceeded to Boston, and modelled a series of busts of eminent men in that city--Webster, Bowditch, Prescott, Story, J. Lowell, and T. H. Perkins. Afterwards he went to Richmond, where he produced the likeness of John Marshall, copies of which adorn the Court rooms of New York, New-Orleans, and the Capitol of Virginia. On his return he visited President Jackson, at whose house he executed an inimitable head of that extraordinary man. Among his other productions were heads of General Lafayette, in 1824, De Witt Clinton, John Jay, Bishop Hobart, Dr. Milnor, Dr. Stearns, Nathaniel Prime, George Griswold, Eli Hart, &c. The monument, however, which is destined to perpetuate his fame, is the New York Custom-House. This edifice was commenced in 1834 by another gentleman, who, when he had finished the base, abandoned the work and withdrew his plans. Mr. Frazee was obliged to commence _de novo_, and in 1843 had completed the work. During the erection of the Custom-House, from the dampness of its material and concomitant causes, he contracted a disorder which caused paralysis, from which he never recovered. For several years he held a subordinate post under the Collector. His last effort with the chisel was in giving the finishing touch to the bust of General Jackson, which had remained in his studio seventeen years, without an order for completion. This was in November last, and while assiduously at work, his mallet fell from his hand, and his worn-out body followed it to the floor."

* * * * *

JOHN PARK, M. D., died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 2d of March, aged seventy-eight. He was an active member of the old Federal party in Massachusetts, during the administration of Jefferson and Madison, and exerted a wide and important influence by his well-known journal, _The Boston Repertory_. At a subsequent period, he established a private school for young women, which acquired a celebrity second to that of no similar educational institution in the old Commonwealth. He was distinguished for his cultivated literary tastes, his uncommon purity of character, his fine social qualities, and his cordial and attractive manners. Dr. Park was the father of Mrs. L. G. Hall, wife of the Rev. Dr. Hall, of Providence, the authoress of _Miriam_, and other successful productions, and of Mr. John C. Park, an eminent lawyer in Boston. Mrs. Osgood and several other distinguished literary women were among his pupils.

* * * * *

WILLIAM THOMPSON, of Belfast, the naturalist of Ireland, died in London on the 17th February. Mr. Thompson was born in 1805, and from earliest youth was attached to scientific and literary studies. For the last fifteen years his name has been before the world of science in connection with arduous researches on the natural history of Ireland. The numerous memoirs published by him, chiefly in scientific periodicals, and latterly in the _Annals of Natural History_, of which he was a warm supporter, extend in their subjects over all departments of zoology, and several are devoted to botanical investigations. He was constantly on the watch for new facts bearing on the natural history of his native island, which could boast of no more truly patriotic son. At the meeting of the British Association, at Cork, he read an elaborate report on the _Fauna of Ireland_, since published _in extenso_ in the Association _Transactions_; and it was his intention to communicate a continuation of that report at the Belfast meeting. He did not confine his inquiries to Irish subjects, but added considerably to the natural history of several parts of England and Scotland; and when Professor Forbes proceeded to the AEgean at the invitation of Captain Graves, Mr. Thompson, himself an intimate friend of that distinguished officer, accompanied him, and devoted the short time he was in the Archipelago to zoological observations, since published, chiefly on the migration of birds. His love of ornithology was intense, and the results of his labors in that department are narrated with charming details in the volumes that have been published of his great work on _The Natural History of Ireland_. His name is associated with many discoveries, and numerous species of new creatures have been named after him. His reputation stood equally high on the Continent and in America, and he had been elected an honorary member of several foreign societies. He numbered among his intimate friends and correspondents all the eminent naturalists of the day. His love of the fine arts was second only to his love of science, and for many years he was one of the most active promoters of tasteful pursuits, especially of painting, in Ireland. He was a gentleman of independent means, and of no profession.

* * * * *

ROBERT REINICK, deservedly the most popular of recent song writers in Germany, died at Dresden early in February. He was born at Dantzic, in 1805, and was educated an artist, but he never painted more than one picture which attained any considerable reputation. His sketches were, however, remarkable for great delicacy of feeling, and of touch, a genial humor and an endless variety of fancy. But it was his songs that first and most widely made him known to the public. Without any surprising features of genius, they were so natural, so replete with true and happy sentiment, and flowed so sweetly and melodiously in a spontaneous beauty of language, that they were every where taken up, and still remain the intimate favorites of the people, but especially of artists, to whose peculiar life and customs many of them are devoted. One of the most pleasing books ever published in Germany, was his _Songs of a Painter_, which was illustrated with designs from all the prominent artists of Duesseldorf. Its appearance made an epoch in the book trade, and introduced the many splendid illustrated works that have succeeded it. It is some years since we read these songs, but their naivete, tenderness, and frolic humor are still fresh in our memory. Reinick also had a great skill in the writing of story books for children, and illustrating them with his own drawings. One of these, the _Black Aunt_, has been translated into English, and was published in this city some three or four years since. The poet died quite suddenly, and was snatched from a life full of happiness, amid constant artistic activity, and the love of his family, and a boundless circle of friends. All Dresden sorrowed at his death, and his funeral procession seemed to embrace the entire city.

* * * * *

WILLIAM HENRY OXBERRY, comedian, was the son of the once eminent actor Oxberry, and was born in Brownlow-street, Bloomsbury, on the 21st of April, 1808. He was educated at Merchant Tailors' school; and subsequently studied with an artist and in a lawyer's office. At length he was apprenticed to a surgeon: and was asked by Sir Astley Cooper, during an examination, whether, "when he saw his father convulse the audience with laughter, he felt no ambition to tread in his shoes?" No doubt he did, for he soon after made his essay at the Rawstone-street private theatre, in the character of _Abel Day_, which he performed to the _Captain Careless_ of Mr. F. Matthews. His public commencement was deferred till the 17th March, 1825, for the Olympic, in the part of _Sam Swipes_, in "The High Road to Marriage." He remained not long there, but took a situation under Mr. Leigh Hunt, on the _Examiner_. Shortly afterwards he returned to the stage, and went on a provincial tour, and finally appeared in 1832 at the Strand Theatre, as _Fathom_, in "The Hunchback." Since that period he was seen with credit in turn at every theatre in the metropolis. On the 11th December, 1831, he married Ellen Malcombe Lancaster. He also became manager of the English Opera-House, but was not successful. The loss of his wife was a misfortune, and his subsequent career was not prosperous. He died on the 28th of February.

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The REV. CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON, died at Edinburgh, on the 7th of February, aged seventy. He was best known as the author of _Annals of the English Bible and The History of Irish Literature_. He was educated at Bristol, at the college of which Dr. Ryland was president. He intended in early life to accompany Drs. Carey, Marshman, and Ward, to India, when the Baptist Societies' Mission was established in the east; but being prevented by the state of his health he settled in Edinburgh, where he has for nearly half a century been the respected pastor of a Baptist church. In missionary work, both at home and abroad, he always took deep and active interest. He travelled much through Ireland, and knew well the state of the people. His historical narration of the various attempts to educate the Irish in their own tongue is referred to by all who are engaged in Irish education and missions. He visited Copenhagen many years ago in order to obtain the protection of the Danish Government for the Serampore mission. The king granted him an interview, received him cordially, and granted a charter of incorporation. It is from the Serampore press that the Scriptures first began to be issued in the languages of the east, and the names of Carey and the other superintendents of the Serampore mission are memorable in the records of literature as well as of the church. He published in 1845 the _Annals of the English Bible_, an historical account of the different English translations and editions of the Bible, a work of learning and research, lately reprinted in New-York by the Carters.

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The mother of M. Thiers has expired at Batignolles, where she has long resided on a pension allowed her by her son. M. Thiers was the only child of this woman, although his father had other children by a former marriage, one of whom keeps a restaurant in Paris.

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The some time expected death of THOMAS MOORE occurred on the 26th of February, at Sloperton Cottage, near Devizes. Like Southey and Scott, the British Anacreon had for several years before his decease, quite lost his intelligence, and he lingered in seclusion, and in half slumbering unconsciousness, personally well nigh forgotten by the world. His history is little more than a history of his writings. He was deservedly popular in society, for his amiable qualities, and fascinating manners; he shared the intimacy of the greatest men and greatest writers of his age, more prolific of eminent characters than any other since that of Shakspeare, Raleigh, and Sidney; and dividing his time between the quiet charms of domestic ease, and the smiles of the most elevated classes, he may be said to have been a fortunate and happy man. As a song writer, he was doubtless unrivalled. His versification is exquisitely finished, harmonious, and musically toned. The sense is never obviously sacrificed to the sound; on the contrary, he delighted in that species of antithetical and epigramatic turn, which is generally held to excuse some roughness, and to be scarcely compatible with perfect melody of rhythm. In grace, both of thought and diction, in easy, fluent wit, in melody, in brilliancy of fancy, in warmth (but scarcely depth) of sentiment, and even in purity and simplicity, when he chose to be pure and simple, no one has been superior to Moore; but in grandeur of conception, power of thought, and above all, unity of purpose, and a high aim, he was singularly deficient, and these are necessary to the character, not of a sweet minstrel, but of a great poet.

The London _Morning Chronicle_ furnishes a biography of Moore, which we slightly abridge. With him, says the _Chronicle_, is snapped the last tie, save perhaps one, represented by the veteran Rogers, which connects the present generation with the outburst of "all the talents" which signalized the opening of the century. That great kindling of genius--embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy--is becoming more a thing of history than of fact. Year by year, the lights are going out. Wordsworth was the last extinguished before Moore; and now, to all intents and purposes, the great galaxy which poured such a flood of light on the literature of fifty years ago--which extinguished Rosa Matilda fiction and Delia Cruscan poetry--substituted true criticism for technical carping upon philological points, and established new styles in every branch of the _belles-lettres_--this great constellation may now be said to have disappeared. One of the brightest, if not of the largest stars, has long been obscured, and is now quite put out. The fame of Moore is fairly a matter of discussion. It cannot, we believe, be denied that much of his serious and more ambitious verse, founded on promptings of a more luscious and florid fancy than the present tastes incline to admit, and no inconsiderable portion even of his lyric pieces,--refined to attenuation--are less read and admired than they were a score or thirty years ago. A severer and sterner school of poetry has succeeded--one of deeper feeling and more sober thought; and the representatives of those who revelled in _Lalla Rookh_, and delighted in the strains of Mr. Little, now generally address themselves to more staid and philosophic musings. The _Irish Melodies_, too--exquisite as is their word-music--fanciful as is their conception--delightful as is their playfulness, and touching as is their pathos--even the _Irish Melodies_, we believe are declining in popular estimation. The reasons are obvious. In the first place, the _Irish Melodies_ are not particularly Irish; they have grace, sparkling fancy, delicious feeling; but they are too fine-spun to do the work-a-day duty of popular songs. As literary performances, nine-tenths of Burns's are inferior to Moore's; and all Dibdin's are immeasurably beneath them. Yet the probability is that _When Willie Brewed_, and _Poor Tom Bowling_, will be in the full tide of popularity, where _Rich and Rare_, and _Oh Breathe not His Name_, will be unsung and forgotten. In a certain circle, and among people of a certain reading and appreciation, Moore will live as long as the language; but his genius was delicate and acute rather than catholic and strong. He had a rich play of fancy, but none of the soaring imagination of Shelley or Byron. His mind, in fact, was a first-class second-rate. It had no pretensions to stand in the line of the giants of his time. Brightly fanciful, rather than continuously imaginative--teeming with poetic imagery--loving to sparkle along the floweriest paths, and beneath the balmiest skies--revelling always in fays and flowers--in love, and mingled intellectual and sensual pleasures--playful in the extreme, and always ready to stop to make mirth as joyous and as delightful as the passion--his muse, in his great romantic poems, is the incarnation of a charming Epicureanism; and the mirth and jolity could go a long step further. He had wit, which sparkled as brightly as it could cut deeply; and humor, and sense of the ludicrous, which could be as well, if not more effectually applied to living persons and actual things than to the creations of his own fancy; and accordingly we find him loving to turn from the etherealized voluptuousness of _Loves of the Angels_, or the mystic imaginings of the _Epicurean_, to the sharp and brilliant hittings of political and social squibs--the restless satire with which, in the _Fudge Family_ and hundreds of ephemeral but not the less clever lays, he quizzed his political and literary opponents, abolished the Earl of Mountcashell, or shot stinging shafts through the heart of the Benthamites. It is, indeed, far from probable that Moore's political and satiric poetry, little perhaps as he thought of it at the time, will live after his more ambitious works have sunk into that chronic state of classicism, in which books are labelled with an excellent character, and shelved--turned into the category of works without which no gentleman's library is complete, and doomed, not to actual obscurity, but to honorable retirement. The last of his political squibs and short poems were given to the world in the columns of the _Morning Chronicle_; and referred principally to the earlier struggles of the Anti-Corn Law League--the verses having in most cases been suggested by pasting political events.

Thomas Moore died at the ripe age of seventy-two. He was born on the 28th of May, 1780, in Angier-street, Dublin, where his father, a strict Roman Catholic, carried on a grocery and spirit business. As a child, he is said to have been remarkable for personal beauty; but his appearance in after life hardly carried out the promise of infancy. He was short, with a heavy, expressive, but not handsome face, which, however, lightened up wonderfully when conversing or singing his own ballads. He was educated at Dublin, and one of big first noted peculiarities was a fondness and a talent for private theatricals. Taking advantage of the boon, as it was then considered, the young Roman Catholic was entered at Trinity College. He could not, of course, obtain a degree; but some English verses tendered at an examination, in lieu of the usual Latin composition, procured a copy of the _Travels of Anacharsis_, as a reward. The wild times of the Irish rebellion were approaching, and the poet was naturally to be found in the ranks led by the Emmetts and Arthur O'Connor; but his treasonable lucubrations, though, as his own sister remarked, "rather strong," were passed over without any measures against the enthusiastic young champion of liberty. Politics, however, were by no means the only subject of his muse. At the age of fourteen he published poetry in a Dublin magazine, and afterwards composed many semi-burlesque pieces for private representation.

In his twentieth year, giving up republicanism for ever, Moore came to London to study at the Middle Temple, and publish his translations, or rather paraphrases, of _Anacreon_. As may be imagined, he attended much more to the Greek than to Coke upon Lyttleton, and permission, obtained through the friendship of Lord Moira, to dedicate the work to the Prince Regent, was the means of his introduction to those elevated circles in which he was afterwards to move and shine. His _Anacreon_ was highly successful, and was succeeded, in 1801, by _Poems and Songs, by Thomas Little_. Whatever objections may be raised by the present generation to either of these works, there can be no doubt of their vivid play of fancy, their singular grace, even when verging on improprieties, and their exquisite melody of versification. His translations of the _Old Greek Lover_, and of _Women and Wine_, are probably the finest and richest versions of these often rendered songs in the English language--always excepting the rough but thoroughly racy version of the last, by quaint old Mr. Donne.

In the days of the regency, poets came in for patronage, and Mr. Moore, made registrar to the Court of Admiralty at Bermuda--as singularly appropriate an appointment as some we have seen in our own day--went out to the islands, appointed a deputy, took a glance at the United States, and came home again. He then published _Sketches of Travel and Society beyond the Atlantic_--a satiric work in heroic verse, vigorously written, but politically evincing a miserable short-sightedness. Soon afterwards, a savage review in the _Edinburgh_, of a republication of _Juvenile Songs, &c._, led to the celebrated rencontre between Moore and Jeffrey, at Hampstead, when the great critic, as Byron asserted, stood valiantly up:

"When Little's leadless pistol met his eye And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by."

The affair was ultimately arranged, mainly through the intervention of Mr. Rogers, and at his house Moore shortly afterwards made his first acquaintance with Byron and Campbell. The long and affectionate intimacy between Moore and the author of _Childe Harold_, we need here only allude to. Moore had about this time married. His wife was a Miss Dyke, a woman, of strong sense and character, as well as great beauty and amiability. Their children are all dead.

A couple of political satires of no great merit--one setting forth a sober and earnest panegyric upon ignorance--were followed by the famous _Two-penny Post Bag_, a bundle of rollicking satire and humor. It made a great hit. Not so its author's next venture, a farce called the _Blue Stocking_, damned at the Lyceum. Moore's intimacy with Byron and Hunt was broken off by the outspoken tone of the _Liberal_, and especially by the _Vision of Judgment_. Moore thought his friends had gone too far. What would Carlton House say! For if, as Byron said, "Little Tommy dearly loved a lord," with how much more affection did he worship a prince of the blood royal?

The _Melodies_ were his next, and perhaps most popular compositions. Charming as they are, and exquisitely finished as is their lyrical workmanship, we doubt whether they have the stamina and heart-rooted earnestness, which are requisite to make songs immortal. Only the strongest heart and the manliest brain produce offspring to suit all tastes and to last all time.

It was in 1812 that Moore determined to write an Indian poem. Mr. Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, accompanied the poet to the Messrs. Longman, and through his intervention the great sum of 3,000 guineas was settled on as the price of a piece of which not one word was yet written. Moore then retired to Mayfield Cottage, a desolate place in Derbyshire, and after a long and hard struggle with a coquettish muse--after a three years' retirement--he sent forth _Lalla Rookh_. Its success was immense; the poem ran rapidly through several editions, and Moore's fame stood upon a higher and surer pedestal than ever. The tales were the triumph of poetic lusciousness; but not a few old judges stigmatized their taste by preferring Fadladeen and his criticisms, even to the Fireworshippers, or the tribulations of the Peri. We need hardly say that the judgment of these tough critics has now a far greater number of adherents than it once commanded.

After a continental tour, Moore wrote the clever and popular _Fudge Family_. In the following year he met Byron in Italy, and then the latter intrusted to him his memoirs for publication. These memoirs Moore sold to Murray for two thousand guineas; but, as is well known and a good deal regretted, the purchase money was refunded, and the papers regained, and destroyed. Pecuniary difficulties connected with the misconduct of his Bermuda deputy, about this time, compelled Moore to seek a temporary refuge in Paris, and there he led a pleasant social life, such as he loved, and composed the _Loves of the Angels_, which is not much more than an elaborate and carefully wrought repetition of all his previous love-and-flower poetry. The whole thing is dreamy, lulling, and beautiful, but vague and misty. The words tinkle like falling fountains, and the essence of the closing fancy floats about one like perfume; but this enervating species of composition is far from high or true poetry, and accordingly the work is now far oftener alluded to than it is read. In Paris he occupied the same hotel for a long time with his intimate friend Washington Irving.

In 1825 Moore paid a visit to Scott, who pronounced the Irish melodist the "prettiest warbler" he had ever heard. One evening Scott and his guest visited the theatre at Edinburgh. Soon after their unmarked entrance, the attention of the audience, which had been engrossed by the Duchess of St. Albans, was directed towards the new comers; and, according to a newspaper report, copied and published by Mr. Moore in one of his last prefaces, considerable excitement ensued. "Eh!" exclaimed a man in the pit, "eh, yon's Sir Walter, wi' Lockhart and his wife; and wha's the wee body wi' the pawkie een? Wow, but it's Tarn Moore, just." "Scott, Scott! Moore, Moore!" immediately resounded through the house. Scott would not rise; Moore did, and bowed several times, with his hand on his heart. Scott afterwards acknowledged the plaudits of his countrymen; and the orchestra, during the rest of the evening, played alternately Scotch and Irish airs.

Soon after this period, Moore was established, by the kind offices of his old and stanch friend the Marquis of Lansdowne, in Sloperton Cottage, where he passed the remainder of his days, and where he ended them. It was here that he commenced his career as a biographer, and produced successively the memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Lord Byron, and Sheridan. The two latter are well known and highly appreciated. It was in the previous year that the poet first came out as a prose writer in the _Memoirs of Captain Rock_, a bitter and unfair account of--or rather commentary on--the English government of Ireland, and a curious instance of warped and twisted views in a man of the world like Moore, almost unavoidable in an Irishman writing of his country. His next serious work--he continued his squibs and sparkles of occasional verse--was the _Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion_--in which he attempted to show that the doctrines and practises of the Roman Catholic Church date from the apostolic period. The last of his prose works, and that which has attained a greater sale, we believe, than any of them, was the romance of _The Epicurean_. Here Moore's style, always too florid, is occasionally redeemed by passages of eloquence and natural feeling. There is much out-of-the-way learning in the book, but a pompous and cumbrous ornament overlays every thing. The book had great success, but of what Mr. Carlyle calls the "wind-bag" nature. The wind inside was very highly perfumed, and sighed with very pleasing murmurs, but it was only wind, and, as such, will ooze out presently, and the Epicurean bag will be little regarded.

From this time political and social squibs were the only literary occupations to which Mr. Moore devoted himself until, gradually and fitfully mental darkness came down on him. Of critical estimates of Moore, we have seen none to which we more perfectly agree, than one (sometimes attributed to Richard H. Dana, but) written by Professor Edward T. Channing, for the _North American Review_ soon after that Review was established.

The best edition of Moore's works ever published in this country, is the very beautiful one in octavo, from the press of the Appletons, embracing all the revisions, introductions, notes, &c., of the author's recent ten volume edition, printed in London.

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The well-known artist, SAMUEL PROUT, died in London on the 10th of February. The _Athenaeum_ remarks that he was long and popularly known by a style of Art which he may be said to have originated,--and to the influence of his example may be ascribed the distinctive character and the successes of the English school of painters of architectural subjects. Born at Plymouth about the year 1784, like his townsmen distinguished in art, he owed little to the patronage of his native town, unless their share in the praises which he ultimately commanded may be counted to them as encouragement. In the metropolis his first patron, was Mr. Palser, the printseller, who used to take all his water color drawings at low prices, and had a ready sale for them. When Mr. Prout had arrived at distinction, he never omitted grateful mention of the advantages he had derived from the acquaintance and transactions. Mr. Prout early gained the notice of the late Mr. Ackermann; and the many drawing-books for learners, and other prints which he undertook for that gentleman, soon gave currency to his name. His transcripts of Gothic architecture at home it is superfluous to commend; and when the allied armies had made it safe to venture to the Continent, he was among the earliest of the English to travel there. His love of the picturesque was gratified amid the new and remarkable combinations of form which met his eye at Nuernberg and in many of the adjacent cities. He was among the first English artists to add to what had been already made known of Venice by Canaletto. Nor must it be forgotten that he was among the first when Senefelder's newly discovered process was imported to try his hand at it. The powers of the art of Lithography, though its processes may have been improved and amplified since,--were never better exhibited than in Mr. Prout's broad and vigorous touch. The _Landscape Annual_ is another record of his powers. Other books of the class testify to his unwearied industry and graphic skill. For many years suffering from ill-health, Mr. Prout, in convalescent intervals, labored cheerfully at the vocation which he had so illustrated in better times.

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The venerable Dr. MURRAY, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, died at his residence in that city on the 25th of February. The death of this excellent prelate, whose life has been a model of Christian forbearance in a country where such an example is invaluable, the journals say is deeply regretted by moderate men of all the religious denominations of the country.

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Dr. M'NICHOLAS, titular Bishop of Achonry, died about the middle of February. He was regarded as one of the ripest scholars among the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland, and belonged to the advanced school of "educationists."

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The London papers announce the death of Mr. HOLCROFT, son of the more famous Thomas Holcroft, the dramatist,--who was for many years connected with the press, and, perhaps, in that capacity most prominently known as the musical and dramatic critic of one of the leading daily papers.

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M. BENCHOT, the editor of Voltaire's works, lately died at Paris. He devoted thirty years to studies preparatory to the execution of his undertaking, which he finally completed in 1834. He also published in 1811 a laborious work on French bibliography, which is still a standard manual.

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JOHANN KOLLAR, Professor of Slavonian antitiquities at the University of Vienna, died on January 24th, last, in his sixtieth year. He was born at Mursotz, in Hungary, and was educated as a Protestant clergyman; he was appointed Professor in 1849. He contributed greatly to the intellectual movement of recent years among the Austrian and Prussian Slavonians. His literary reputation was first established by _Slavy dcera_ (The Daughter of Fame) a lyrical epic poem, published in 1824. His ideal end was the creation of an independent Slavonic literature, which should preserve his race from the ever increasing influence of German culture, by which he foresaw that it must be absorbed, unless it could be aroused to a development strictly its own. During the Hungarian war he remained an adherent of the Austrian side. He leaves two nearly finished works; the one is _Slavonic Italy in Early Times_; the other is upon Slavonic Mythology, and is entitled _The Gods of Retra_. They are written in the Bohemian or Tschechic language.

* * * * *

The widow of VON KOTZEBUE, the author of _The Stranger_ and _Pizarro_ (the former of which still keeps possession of the German provincial stage), who was assassinated at Mannheim by the student Sand, died at Heidelberg, on the 4th of February, at the age of 73. She was Kotzebue's third wife, and had lived for many years in strict retirement.

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BARON KRUDENER, Russian Minister in Stockholm since 1844, died early in February.

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M. LUCAS DE MONTIGNY, the adopted son of Mirabeau, died in Paris, early in February. On his death-bed Mirabeau took him in his arms, and called on his friends to protect him. He left him all his papers and correspondence, and some years ago M. Lucas compiled from them eight volumes of _Memoires Biographiques_ of _le grand homme_. He naturally entertained a profound veneration for the memory of his benefactor; and, it is said, spent not less than 100,000 francs ($20,000), of his private fortune, in buying up letters and documents calculated to cast dishonor upon it. These papers he of course destroyed, and it does not appear that he left behind him any calculated to throw new light on the character or career of the tribune.

* * * * *

Belgian journals announce the death of a M. SMITS, a great compiler of statistics, and a poet: two vocations rather dissimilar. He wrote three tragedies, called _Marie de Bourgogne_, _Jeanne de Flandre_, _Elfrida, ou la Vengeance_, which were applauded by his countrymen; also several poems on different subjects, and especially on the rising of the Spaniards and Greeks for liberty.

* * * * *

DR. EYLERT, first Bishop of Prussia, died a short time since at Potsdam, aged eighty-two. He was the author of several works on theology, and on the sciences. For a long time he was a member of the Ministry of Public Worship and Instruction.

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VICTOR FALCK, a distinguished French ornithologist, has just died at Stockholm.

_Ladies Fashions for April._

[Illustration: LA VIVANDIERE]

The spring has brought to the several departments of fashion the usual amount of changes, but at our last advices there were many points of some consequence undecided, as for example, the length of dresses, which some authorities make greater than ever in recent years, and others less, by a few inches. Among the chief novelties we notice _La Vivandiere_, which, with various styles of the _gilet_, or waist, has been introduced into New-York by Bulpin of Broadway. The waistcoat will remain in vogue. The Parisiennes, who had begun to turn it into ridicule, still patronize it; and the provinciales need not fear to adopt it. But some conditions are necessary in order to render it becoming and stylish. The figure of the wearer should be thin, tall, and sylph-like; all others should avoid the style. Rounded, white shoulders appear to much more advantage in toilette Pompadour than in toilet Louis XIII. The corsage Louis XIII., and the waistcoat accord so well together that they are scarcely ever separated. However, some bodies a basquines are made to be worn without the waistcoat. They are then trimmed with velvet or ribbon bands, which cross the chest and fasten with buttons; the chemisette being composed of frills of English point or Valenciennes, separated by embroidered insertion.

[Illustration: INFANT'S STRAW BEDFORD HAT.]

[Illustration: THE BATEMAN CAP.]

[Illustration: THE CLEMENTINE RIDING HAT.]

[Illustration: THE ST. NICHOLAS CAP.]

[Illustration: BOY'S STRAW BRUSSELS HAT.]

[Illustration: MISSES LEGHORN HATS.]

The recent fine bright weather has brought out many very elegant spring bonnets. The most fashionable are of Leghorn, which, during the approaching season, is likely to recover the favor it enjoyed some years ago. The shape of new Leghorn bonnets is elegant and becoming--the brim is wide and circular, and the crown gently sloping backwards. The _bavolet_ at the back is made of the Leghorn itself, instead of being composed of silk or ribbon, as in bonnets of straw or other materials. The favorite style of trimming Leghorns is with fancy straw, tastefully intermingled with velvet or ribbon, of some dark rick color. On one side may be placed a small ostrich feather, of the color of the Leghorn, or shaded in the hues of the bird of Paradise. As the season advances, flowers will be employed for trimming these bonnets. Genin has introduced a great variety of new and fanciful styles from the recent Paris modes, for children, and for ladies' riding dresses. They are of Leghorn, felt, and beaver, all of which will be in vogue through April, and they are generally very tasteful and elegant.

[Illustration]

In the above figure we have a _Promenade or Carriage Costume_, of rich figured silk; the sleeves open at the ends, with under sleeves of white muslin; with a Leghorn bonnet, trimmed with fancy straw and violet-colored ribbon, tastefully intermingled; on one side a Leghorn colored feather, waving spirally. Under-trimming, loops of narrow ribbon in various shades of violet; and gloves of pale yellow kid. The _taffetas d'Athenes_ is appropriate for ball dresses, and obtains generally; the ground is white, blue, or pale pink, brochees in silk of all colors in wreaths, or bouquets, forming undulating festoons round the bottoms of the triple skirts. The upper skirt is flowered over in small designs to the waist, as is also the body and sleeves. The _taffetas flore_ has a white ground, covered with small bouquets of wild field flowers. The _taffetas rose_ has wreaths of large roses, brochees in white silk round each skirt, and rose-buds over the top skirt and body. This toilet should be accompanied with a coiffure, of a wreath of white roses, fixed behind by a bow and long floating ends of satin ribbon, forming an elegant evening toilette for a bride. The manteaux, with hoods, continue in fashion; they are generally made of cloth. The mantelet-echarpe has been cited for its elegance and taste. It is more dressy than the manteaux, marking the waist, and descending in front in square ends. Sorties de bal, are very fanciful. Some of white cachemire, trimmed with beads, silk, and jet, with magnificent lace or deep fringe. Others of white or pink satin, edged with ruches of guipure lace, or rouleaux of marabouts. They have hoods and large Venetian sleeves.