Chapter 9

Oh! Helen, fair Helen—type of the quiet, serene, unnoticed, deep-felt excellence of woman! Woman, less as the ideal that a poet conjures from the air, than as the companion of a poet on the earth! Woman who, with her clear sunny vision of things actual, and the exquisite fibre of her delicate sense, supplies the deficiencies of him whose foot stumbles on the soil, because his eye is too intent upon the stars! Woman, the provident, the comforting angel—whose pinions are folded round the heart, guarding there a divine spring unmarred by the winter of the world! Helen, soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and brilliant "lord of wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of his life—the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial?—whose sorrows lie remote from thy ken?—whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on the wings of enthusiasm and passion?

And thou thyself, O nature, shrinking and humble, that needest to be courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial atmosphere of holy, happy love—can such affection as Harley L’Estrange may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the petal, wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the storm, and yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love, seekest, though meekly, for love in return; —to be the soul’s sweet necessity, the life’s household partner to him who receives all thy faith and devotion—canst thou influence the sources of joy and of sorrow in the heart that does not heave at thy name? Hast thou the charm and the force of the moon, that the tides of that wayward sea shall ebb and flow at thy will? Yet who shall say—who conjecture how near two hearts may become, when no guilt lies between them, and time brings the ties all its own? Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul! Happiness enough, where even Peace does but seldom preside, when each can bring to the altar, if not, the flame, still the incense. Where man’s thoughts are all noble and generous, woman’s feelings all gentle and pure, love may follow, if it does not precede;—and if not,—if the roses be missed from the garland, one may sigh for the rose, but one is safe from the thorn.

The morning was mild, yet somewhat overcast by tho mists which announce coming winter in London, and Helen walked musingly beneath the trees that surrounded the garden of Lord Lansmere’s house. Many leaves were yet left on the boughs; but they were sere and withered. And the birds chirped at times; but their note was mournful and complaining. All within this house, until Harley’s arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen’s timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common to the Countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident orphan. Lady Lansmere’s very interest in Harley’s choice—her attempts to draw Helen out of her reserve—her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly spoke, or shyly moved, frightened the poor child, and made her unjust to herself.

The very servants, though staid, grave, and respectful, as suited a dignified, old-fashioned household, painfully contrasted the bright welcoming smiles and free talk of Italian domestics. Her recollections of the happy warm Continental manner, which so sets the bashful at their ease, made the stately and cold precision of all around her doubly awful and dispiriting. Lord Lansmere himself, who did not as yet know the views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host. But he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the Countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position—of her comparative humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her gratitude to Harley was made burthensome by a sentiment of helplessness. The grateful long to requite. And what could she ever do for him?

Thus musing, she wandered alone through the curving walks; and this sort of mock country landscape—London loud, and even visible, beyond the high gloomy walls, and no escape from the windows of the square formal house—seemed a type of the prison bounds of Rank to one whose soul yearns for simple loving Nature.

Helen’s reverie was interrupted by Nero’s joyous bark. He had caught sight of her, and came bounding up, and thrust his large head into her hand. As she stooped to caress the dog, happy at his honest greeting, and tears that had been long gathering to the lids fell silently on his face, (for I know nothing that more moves us to tears than the hearty kindness of a dog, when something in human beings has pained or chilled us,) she heard behind the musical voice of Harley. Hastily she dried or repressed her tears, as her guardian came up, and drew her arm within his own.

"I had so little of your conversation last evening, my dear ward, that I may well monopolize you now, even to the privation of Nero. And so you are once more in your native land?"

Helen sighed softly.

"May I not hope that you return under fairer auspices than those which your childhood knew?"

Helen turned her eyes with ingenuous thankfulness to her guardian, and the memory of all she owed to him rushed upon her heart. Harley renewed, and with earnest though melancholy sweetness—"Helen, your eyes thank me; but hear me before your words do. I deserve no thanks. I am about to make to you a strange confession of egotism and selfishness."

"You!—oh, impossible!"

"Judge yourself, and then decide which of us shall have cause to be grateful. Helen, when I was scarcely your age—a boy in years, but more, methinks, a man at heart, with man’s strong energies and sublime aspirings, than I have ever since been—I loved, and deeply—" He paused a moment in evident struggle. Helen listened in mute surprise, but his emotion awakened her own; her tender woman’s heart yearned to console. Unconsciously her arm rested on his less lightly. "Deeply, and for sorrow. It is a long tale, that may be told hereafter. The worldly would call my love a madness. I did not reason on it then—I cannot reason on it now. Enough; death smote suddenly, terribly, and to me mysteriously, her whom I loved. The love lived on. Fortunately, perhaps, for me, I had quick distraction, not to grief, but to its inert indulgence. I was a soldier; I joined our armies. Men called me brave. Flattery! I was a coward before the thought of life. I sought death: like sleep, it does not come at our call. Peace ensued. As when the winds fall the sails droop—so when excitement ceased, all seemed to me flat and objectless. Heavy, heavy was my heart. Perhaps grief had been less obstinate, but that I feared I had cause for self-reproach. Since then I have been a wanderer—a self-made exile. My boyhood had been ambitious—all ambition ceased. Flames, when they reach the core of the heart, spread, and leave all in ashes. Let me be brief: I did not mean thus weakly to complain—I to whom heaven has given so many blessings! I felt, as it were, separated from the common objects and joys of men. I grew startled to see how, year by year, wayward humors possessed me. I resolved again to attach myself to some living heart—it was my sole chance to rekindle my own. But the one I had loved remained as my type of woman, and she was different from all I saw. Therefore I said to myself, ’I will rear from childhood some young fresh life, to grow up into my ideal.’ As this thought began to haunt me, I chanced to discover you. Struck with the romance of your early life, touched by your courage, charmed by your affectionate nature, I said to myself, ’Here is what I seek.’ Helen, in assuming the guardianship of your life, in all the culture which I have sought to bestow on your docile childhood, I repeat, that I have been but the egotist. And now, when you have reached that age, when it becomes me to speak, and you to listen—now, when you are under the sacred roof of my own mother—now I ask you, can you accept this heart, such as wasted years, and griefs too fondly nursed, have left it? Can you be, at least, my comforter? Can you aid me to regard life as a duty, and recover those aspirations which once soared from the paltry and miserable confines of our frivolous daily being? Helen, here I ask you, can you be all this, and under the name of—Wife?"

It would be in vain to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion, tender respect, sympathy, childlike gratitude, that when he paused and gently took her hand, she remained bewildered, speechless, overpowered. Harley smiled as he gazed upon her blushing, downcast, expressive face. He conjectured at once that the idea of such proposals had never crossed her mind; that she had never contemplated him in the character of a wooer; never even sounded her heart as to the nature of such feelings as his image had aroused.

"My Helen," he resumed, with a calm pathos of voice, "there is some disparity of years between us, and perhaps I may not hope henceforth for that love which youth gives to the young. Permit me simply to ask, what you will frankly answer—Can you have seen in our quiet life abroad, or under the roof of our Italian friends, any one you prefer to me?"

"No, indeed, no!" murmured Helen. "How could I!—who is like you?" Then, with a sudden effort—for her innate truthfulness took alarm, and her very affection for Harley, childlike and reverent, made her tremble lest she should deceive him—she drew a little aside, and spoke thus: "Oh, my dear guardian, noblest of all human beings, at least in my eyes, forgive, forgive me if I seem ungrateful, hesitating; but I cannot, cannot think of myself as worthy of you. I never so lifted my eyes. Your rank, your position—"

"Why should they be eternally my curse? Forget them and go on."

"It is not only they," said Helen, almost sobbing, "though they are much; but I your type, your ideal!—I!—impossible! Oh, how can I ever be any thing even of use, of aid, of comfort to one like you!"

"You can, Helen—you can," cried Harley, charmed by such ingenuous modesty. "May I not keep this hand?"

And Helen left her hand in Harley’s, and turned away her face, fairly weeping. A stately step passed under the wintry trees.

"My mother," said Harley L’Estrange, looking up, "I present to you my future wife."

REMINISCENCES OF PRINTERS, AUTHORS, AND BOOKSELLERS IN NEW-YORK.(8)

BY JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., LL. D.

When the great defender of the Constitution delivered the oration at Bunker Hill, he pointed to the just completed monument and exclaimed, "There stands the Orator of the Day." In humble imitation of that significant act, I also, in attempting to illustrate the interests and the meaning of this occasion, would point you, gentlemen, to the fact of your presence here to-night—to the union at one banquet of printers, editors, publishers, authors, and professional men—as the best evidence of the importance and attractiveness of the occasion. The art of printing, among other inestimable blessings, has fused together the most productive elements of society; it has established a vital relation between intellect and mechanics, between labor and thought. I see before me in this assembly those who have achieved enduring literary fame, and those who are the present guides of public opinion. I see them side by side with the men who have just put their thoughts and sentiments into a bodily form and disseminated them on the wings of the press. The association is not only appropriate, but it is honorable to his memory who united in his life the humblest manual toil and the loftiest flights of genius; who both set up types and drew the lightning from heaven, and combined in his own person the practical printer and the scientific philosopher.

By your courtesy, gentlemen, I have been invited to say a few words appropriate to the New York-Typographical Society. It is with unfeigned reluctance that I assume the task. In this presence I behold so many better qualified for the undertaking than myself, that I am apprehensive I shall be able neither to do justice to my theme nor satisfy the expectations which you in your clemency have anticipated. True it is, that in my early life I was connected with your fraternity by more immediate ties than at present exist. Circumstances have modified my career, but I should prove recreant to the best feelings of my heart, turn ingrate to the pleasantest associations of memory, and forget the most efficient causes which have favored my journey thus far to mellow years, were I unmindful of the gratifications I enjoyed while a fellow laborer in your noble pursuits. The press is the representative of the intellectual man on earth; it is the expositor of his cogitative powers; the promulgator of his most recondite labors; the strong arm of his support in the defence and maintenance of his inherent rights as a member of the social compact; the vindicator of his claims to the exalted station of one stamped in the express image of God; it is the charter of freedom to ameliorated man in the glorious strife of social organization, in the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. Hence I have ever cherished the deepest regard for those who have appropriated their time and talents to this vast engine of civilization. I have ever looked upon the vocation as holding the integrity of our highest privileges on earth; freedom of inquiry, freedom of utterance, and the vast behests of civil communion, with the kindred of every nation, and the tongues of every speech.

When I was a boy of ten years of age, I became acquainted with the biography of Franklin. I had purchased at auction a Glasgow edition of his Life and Essays. I had read _Robinson Crusoe_, _George Barnwell_, _The House That Jack Built_, _Æsop’s Fables_, the duodecimo edition of Morse’s _Geography_, and other common publications of the times. No work that I have perused, from that juvenile period of my existence up to the present day, has ever yielded the peculiar gratification which Franklin’s memoirs gave me, and my admiration and reverence for our illustrious sage have through all subsequent inquiry into his actions and services, increased in intensity, in proportion as I have contemplated his wondrous character and his unparalleled achievements. I think I owe something to my mother for this happy appreciation of our Franklin. She was by birth a Philadelphian, and for years, during her residence in Arch street, was favored with opportunities of again and again beholding Dr. Franklin pass her door, in company with Dr. Rush and Thomas Paine. "There," the children of the neighborhood would cry out, "goes Poor Richard, Common Sense, and the Doctor." It is recorded that Franklin furnished many thoughts in the famous pamphlet of _Common Sense_, while Paine wrote it, and Rush gave the title. There is something in the hereditary transmission of the moral and of the physical qualities; yet I have thought that the benevolent schemes of Rush, the intrepid patriotism of Paine, and the honest maxims of Franklin—the topics of daily converse in that day—had some influence in strengthening the principles which my mother inculcated in her children.

You have told me, gentlemen, that you would be gratified with some reminiscences touching New-York—social, literary, personal—of men and books—all having a bearing, more or less immediate, either on the progress of human development, or the character of our metropolitan city. I know not how to satisfy either you or myself. To do justice to the subject would require a different opportunity from the one here enjoyed, and leisure such as I cannot now command.

The locality upon which we are assembled to-night has its associations. We meet this evening on the memorable spot in our city’s early topography denominated the Bayard Farm—a property once in the possession of the affluent Bayards, of him who was companion in his strife with Governor Leisler, and whose death for high treason was the issue of that protracted contest. That he fell a martyr to freedom, our friend Charles F. Hoffman has ably demonstrated. Within a few doors of this place, on Broadway, very many years after, but within my recollection, lived that arch negotiator in public counsels, Talleyrand, the famous ambassador of France to the United States. He published a small tractate on America, once much read, and it was he who affirmed that the greatest sight he had ever beheld in this country, was the illustrious Hamilton, with his pile of books under his arms, proceeding to the court-room in the old City Hall, in order to obtain a livelihood, by expounding the law, and vindicating the rights of his clients.

Here too is the spot where, some short while after, the antics of the Osage tribe of Indians were displayed for the admiration of the belles and beaux of New-York, and on that occasion my old colleague, Dr. Mitchill, gave translations into English of their songs and war-whoop sounds, for the increased gratification of the literary public of that day, when Indian literature stood not so high as in these times of Congressional appropriation, and of Henry Schoolcraft, the faithful and patriotic expositor of the red-man’s excellences. I think I am safe in saying, also, that near these grounds occurred the execution of Young, a play-actor, convicted of murder—a remarkable event in New-York annals, owing to peculiar circumstances which marked his imprisonment in our old jail, now converted into the Hall of Records. There were, about the period to which I now refer, other occurrences of singular influence in those days.

Crowther and Levi Weeks were both confined in this debased prison because of high crimes, and many were incarcerated for debt. There was, nevertheless, an atmosphere of some intellect immolated within its cells; and for the first, and I believe the only time in this country, a newspaper was issued for some months’ duration from its walls, entitled _The Prisoner of Hope_. The Wilberforce impulse of that crisis had much to do with the movement; and no abolition paper of even later dates plead more earnestly in behalf of enslaved humanity, by graphic illustrations and literary talent, than did _The Prisoner of Hope_. At that day, many newspapers had their specific motto, and that of _The Prisoner of Hope_ was in these words:

Soft, smiling Hope—thou anchor of the mind; The only comfort that the wretched find; All look to thee when sorrow wrings the heart, To heal, by future prospect, present smart.

Naturalists tell us that this eligible site was once characterized by the graceful foliage of the pride of the American forests, the lofty plane-tree, the _platanus occidentalis_. It must further increase our interest in the spot, to be assured that through its shades strolled our Franklin, in company with that lover of rural scenery, the botanist Kalm—an occurrence not unlike the interesting one of the excursions of Linnæus with Hans Sloane, in the Royal Gardens, near London. Here, too, the wild pigeon was taken in great abundance; while in the Common (now Park) those primitive inhabitants of the city, the Beekman family, with the old doctor at their head, shot deer and other game in their field sports. But enough at present of the locality where this anniversary is held.

The history of the American periodical press, if given with any thing like fidelity and minuteness, would occupy several hours; it is a noble specimen of our triumphs as a free people, and of our determination so to remain; it has demonstrated the progress of knowledge, and the intrepidity of New-Yorkers, as much as any one series of facts or occurrences we could summon for illustration. Everybody within this hall is aware that William Bradford was the first in time of the newspaper publishers of New-York. His gazette made its earliest appearance in October, 1725, four years after James, the brother of Benjamin Franklin, began the _New England Courant_—this being seventeen years after the commencement of the _Boston News Letter_, the first regular newspaper commenced in North America. I advert to this circumstance because we possess the completed file of that earliest of the journals of our land now in existence. The copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society was presented that institution by the famous antiquary, Dr. Eliot; that in our own Historical Society is the file which was preserved by Professor McKean, of Harvard University, who bequeathed it to the Rev. T. Alden, from whom I purchased it and deposited it where it now remains.

From Franklin’s representations, Bradford was a sorry individual, of low cunning, and sinister; yet I must not deal harshly with him. His, I believe, was the first printing press set up in New-York: he published the laws, and other state papers, and he was the grandfather of Bradford, afterwards Attorney-General of the United States; and as from his loins proceeded Thomas Bradford, the adventurous and patriotic publisher of Rees’s _Cyclopædia_—the most enterprising of the craft, and our greatest patron of engravers—I desire to hold him in grateful memory. Our second newspaper was the _New-York Weekly Journal_, commenced about three years after Bradford’s. John Peter Zenger, its proprietor, was a German by birth, a palatine, and something of a scholar; a man of enlarged liberality, patriotic, and an advocate of popular rights. He attacked the measures of the provincial Governor and Council, was subjected to a prosecution by the officers of the crown, and was brought to trial in 1735, when Andrew Hamilton, the Recorder of Philadelphia, came to this city and successfully defended him. I have before stated that the late illustrious Governor Morris considered the decision of that case in behalf of the press as the dawn of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America. To the ladies now present, the lovers of sweet sounds, it may not be uninteresting to know that the first piano forte (harpsichord) imported into America, arrived in this city for the musical gratification of the family of the noble Zenger.

But I can say at this time little concerning newspapers. Our worthy associate in good works, Edwin Williams, has lately issued a memoir of much value on the subject, to which I must refer you. I regret that his catalogue of early journals is somewhat defective. As he justly observes, our Historical Society is wonderfully rich in these interesting documents. Our most precious treasures in that way are, unquestionably, the Rivington _Royal Gazette_, the old _New-York Daily Advertiser_, containing debates on the State Constitution, the _American Citizen and Republican Watch Tower_, the _New-York Evening Post_, and the _Commercial Advertiser_, through a long series, the _New-York American_, the _Independent Reflector_, containing the patriotic Essays on Toleration, by William Livingston, of New Jersey, and the _Time-Piece of New-York_, replete with invective against the Washington Administration—whose editor, Philip Freneau, verbally assured me that its most vituperative features were from suggestions of Jefferson, during the crisis in our public affairs provoked by Citizen Genet. But I must hasten to other topics.

Among the most conspicuous editors and publishers of gazettes whom I have personally known was Noah Webster, now so famous for his Dictionary. At the time I knew him, some forty years ago, he was in person somewhat above the ordinary height, slender, with gray eyes, and a keen aspect; remarkable for neatness in dress, and characterized by an erect walk, a broad hat, and a long cue, much after the manner of Albert Gallatin, as depicted in the engraving in Callender’s _Prospect Before Us_. If with philologists he is deemed a man of merit, it may with equal justice be said that he is to be recognized by medical men as an author of importance, for his _History of Pestilence_.

Next I may note William Coleman, usually called in earlier days, by his antagonist Cheetham, Field-Marshal Coleman. Mr. Bryant, the able editor of the _Post_, in his biography of the first fifty years of that prominent gazette, has well described him. He was a sensitive man, of great tenacity of opinion, which he cherished by intercourse with many of the leading patriots and politicians who were among us some thirty years ago. He almost leaned on the arm of the inflexible Timothy Pickering, and had, in his younger days, held communion with Hamilton, John Wells and Rufus King. I shall never forget how the death of the immortal Hamilton subdued his feeling. When Gouverneur Morris delivered his felicitous eulogy from the portals of old Trinity Church, over the dead body of the noble martyr, with grief in every countenance, and anguish in every heart, Coleman’s acuteness of feeling paralyzed every movement of his frame, and drowned every faculty of his mind. While on this topic, the decease of Hamilton, I may state an anecdote, the import of which can be readily understood. It was not long prior to the time of his death that the new and authentic edition of _The Federalist_ was published by George F. Hopkins. Hopkins told me of the delicacy with which Hamilton listened to his proposition to print a new edition of these papers. "They are demanded by the spirit of the times and the desire of the people," said Hopkins. "Do you really think, Mr. Hopkins, that those fugitive essays will be read, if reprinted?" asked Hamilton; "well, give me a few days to consider," said he. "Will this not be a good opportunity, Gen. Hamilton," rejoined Hopkins, "to revise them, and, if so, to make, perhaps, alterations, if necessary, in some parts?" "No, sir, if reprinted, they must stand exactly as at first, not a word of alteration. A comma may be inserted or left out, but the work must undergo no change whatever."

A few days had elapsed when, on the next interview, General Hamilton agreed to the reprint, with the express condition that he himself must inspect the revised proofs. Not a word was ever altered. "You think something of the papers?" says Hamilton to the printer. "Mr. Hopkins, let them be issued. Heretofore, sir, I have given the people common milk; hereafter, shortly, sir, I shall give them strong meat." What the Union lost by that fatal duel, the Deity only knows.

Coleman was a writer of grammatical excellence, though occasionally sadly at fault in force of diction. Under the influence of some perverse conceits, he would labor for months to establish a theoretical doctrine, or to elucidate a useless proposition. It was hardly in the power of mortals ever to alter his opinions when once formed. That yellow fever was as contagious as small-pox; that skull-cap (the _scutellaria_) was a specific for hydrophobia; that Napoleon wanted the requisites of a military chieftain, were among the crotchets of his brain. The everlasting tractates which he put forth on these and other subjects, would in the present day of editorial prowess scarcely be tolerated in a chronicle depending on public patronage. Coleman had read extensively on medical topics, and was the principal writer of that able and elaborate Criticism of Miller’s Report on the Yellow Fever in New-York, addressed to Governor Lewis, and printed in the second volume of the _American Medical and Philosophical Register_.

Coleman would underrate the best public services, if rendered by a political opponent. Chancellor Livingston found no quarters with him for his instrumentality in the Louisiana purchase. He would ride a hobby to death. During the many years in which I read the _Post_, I can summon to recollection no contributions on any subject, made to that paper, that ever awakened one half the attention which was enlisted by the felicitous productions of our poet Halleck, and the lamented Dr. Drake, under the names of Croaker, and Croaker & Co.

For numerous years I have well known Charles Holt, once editor of the _Bee_, during John Adams’s administration, and afterwards of the New-York _Columbian_, during Dewitt Clinton’s gubernatorial career. I am unable to tell you whether he is still among the living. I would estimate his age, if so, as approaching ninety years. He was a lump of benevolence, and a strenuous advocate of the great internal improvement policy of New-York. He comes forcibly to my mind this evening, because in 1798 he wrote a history of the yellow fever in New London, and every now and then I find him quoted in medical books as Dr. Holt, just as his predecessor, who wrote on the yellow fever in Philadelphia, of 1793, stands in bold relief as Dr. Matthew Carey.

Nathaniel Carter is vividly impressed on my recollection; he had very considerable literary taste; was many years editor of the New-York _Statesman_; and after his visit to Europe, published his _Letters_ on his tour, in two large volumes. His merit was only equalled by his modesty. He was strongly devoted to Dewitt Clinton and the Erie Canal; with becoming tenacity he cherished much regard for his eastern brethren, and was the first I think who introduced his personal friend, our constitutional expositor, Daniel Webster, to the Bread and Cheese Lunch, founded by J. Fenimore Cooper, at which sometimes met, in familiar discussions, such minds as those of Chief Justice Jones, Peter A. Jay, Henry Storrs, Professor Renwick, John Anthon, Charles King, John Duer, and others of like intellectual calibre. Carter was of a feeble frame, struggling with pulmonary annoyance, from which he died early. He was little initiated in the trickery of political controversy. His heart was filled with the kindliest feelings of which nature is susceptible.

My acquaintance with the late Colonel Stone, so long connected with the _Commercial Advertiser_, commenced while he was the efficient editor of the _Albany Daily Advertiser_. His devotion to the best interests of the state and country; his extensive knowledge of American history; his patriotic feeling evinced on all occasions in behalf of our injured Aborigines; his biographies of Red Jacket and Brandt; his great political consistency during so many years—all commend him to our kindest and most grateful recollections. That he was cut off at a comparatively early age, was the result of his severe and unremitting literary toils. With a touching patience, he endured an agonizing illness, nor did he cease his useful labors till exhausted nature forbade further efforts.

About the time of the death of Colonel Stone, New-York lost a valuable promoter of its substantial interests by the demise of John Pintard. His career is still fresh in the memories of those who cherish the actions of the benevolent and humane. He was a native of this city (born in 1759), where he passed the greater part of his life, and died in 1844, in his eighty-sixth year. He was connected with the newspaper press in the earlier times of the _Daily Advertiser_. Pintard was well acquainted with nearly all the distinguished public characters at the period of the adoption of our constitution. Possessed of sound attainments by his Princeton College education, the ardor of his patriotism displayed itself by his uniting with a body of his college companions, in a military movement, in the revolutionary contest. He afterwards returned for a while to his _alma mater_, with the approbation of President Witherspoon. He was next appointed a sub-commissioner for American prisoners in New-York, and had frequent intercourse with the notorious Cunningham, the keeper of the Provost; visited the Sugar House, occupied by the unfortunate prisoners of war, in Crown street (now Liberty street); the Dutch Church in Nassau street, the Scotch Church in Little Queen street (now Cedar street), and also the Friends’ Meeting House in Queen street (now Pearl street), near Cherry street, all tilled with the wretched victims of tyranny. He interceded in their behalf with the German General Heister, and with Henry Clinton, the British commander. He became acquainted with Knyphausen, William Smith the historian of New-York, Lord Howe, and others, and he has described, as an eye-witness, the scenes occurring at Washington’s inauguration, in 1789. He was an advocate of the Federal policy of that day, and was a member of our State Legislature when it held its sessions in this city. Time forbids my detailing the objects to which he directed his attention during a long career of usefulness. Several of our important municipal regulations still in force were suggested by him. He was an earnest champion and successful advocate for the incorporation of the Bank of New-York. He was one of the founders of the Tammany Society, in those days made up of gentlemen of all political parties, and the express object of which was to preserve the history and habits of our red brethren. He urged the plan of a Registry of Mortality in this city, and was appointed the first City Inspector. The New-York Historical Society must look upon him as its chief founder. Some of its most precious treasures are fruits of his munificence. He was among the most strenuous, with Bishop Hobart, in establishing and increasing the library of the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, and was not deficient of contributions towards it. He was active with Elias Boudinot in projecting the American Bible Society. The first Bank of Savings mainly originated with him. He revived the Chamber of Commerce after its long repose. He convened the first assemblage of our citizens at the Park; for the purpose of obtaining a public expression of opinion in favor of the Canal policy for connecting the Erie and the Hudson, and this at a period when the spirit of party strife had widely scattered doubts and ridicule on the contemplated movement. In the war of 1812, when paper money in small bills largely became our currency, Mr. Pintard was the person who caused those well-known mottoes, "Mind your own business," "Never despair," "Economy is wealth," and others of a like import, chiefly drawn from Franklin, to surround the designations of the value of the money. He had, I believe, done a like service in our revolutionary times. He carried the measure of having the British names of our streets changed to the modern ones they are now known by. I have noticed these few circumstances concerning him, because I wish it to be impressed on your memories that the editors and proprietors of public journals are often zealous in good measures not necessarily connected with their immediate vocation. Pintard enjoyed an intimacy with booksellers and authors. He and Freneau, a native also of this city, and his contemporary, had often been in close communion, as patriots of the revolution. This essential difference, however, obtained between them. Pintard was a federalist; Freneau an antifederalist. Old Rivington had often a hard time with them. The sordid tory could neither endure the conservative republican principles of Pintard, nor the relentless bitterness of the sarcasm of Freneau. I shall only add that he was a student of many books, and an observer of men in every walk of life. He was of grave thought, yet often facetious in conversation. During forty years of medical practice, I have rarely fell in with one richer in table-talk, or better supplied with topics in life and letters. In his death, he manifested the strength of his religious faith, and resigned his spirit with a benignant composure. But I am forbidden to enlarge on the many excellences and services of the public-spirited John Pintard.

Were we to dwell upon the excellence of a gazette according to its merits, I should have much to say of the _Morning Chronicle_, a paper established in this city in the year 1802. The leading editor was Dr. Peter Irving, a gentleman of refined address, scholastic attainments, and elegant erudition. It exhibited great power in its editorial capacity, and was the vehicle of much literary matter from the abundance and ability of its correspondence. If I do not greatly err, in this paper Washington Irving first appeared as an author, by his series of dramatic criticisms, over the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle. The only poetic writer of whose effusions I now retain any recollection was Miss Smith, the sister of the late Thomas E. Smith. Her pieces were known by the signature of Clara; and in bringing together the effusions of the early female poets, Dr. Griswold, in his praiseworthy zeal in behalf of American literature, might well have increased in value his interesting collection by specimens of the productions of Miss Smith.

The omission, in these reminiscences, of some notice of John Lang, would be so quickly discovered, that I am necessarily compelled to dwell for a moment on the character and services of one who, for a long succession of years, filled a notable place in our newspaper annals. Lang was of Scotch descent, but the place of his birth, I believe, was New-York. For some forty or more years, Lang’s _Gazette_ was recognized as the leading mercantile advertiser, and the patronage which it received from the business world was such as doubtless secured ample returns to its proprietor. The distinction of the paper was unquestionably its attention to the shipping interests of this commercial emporium. As a journal of either political or miscellaneous matter it was sadly deficient. Lang adhered to his "arrivals" as the prominent object of consideration, and the mightiest changes of revolutions, in actions or opinions, found but a stinted record in his widely-diffused journal. Rarely, indeed, did our acknowledged politicians or essayists seek its columns for the promulgation of their ideas, and its editorial displays were generally tormentingly feeble. Nevertheless, it was in this gazette, then under the control of Lang and McLean, that General Hamilton first gave to the public his numbers of _The Federalist_. There is often to be found in one daily issue of the _Post_, the _Courier and Enquirer_, the _Journal of Commerce_, the _Herald_, the _Tribune_, or the _Times_ of these days, more thought, nice disquisition, and real knowledge which awakens the contemplation of the statesman and politician, than the _New-York Gazette_ contained during a twelvemonth; and yet it flourished. The traits of Lang’s character were unwavering devotion to his pursuits; no one could excel him in the kindness of his demeanor; unconscious of the penury of his intellectual powers, he at times, unwittingly became the pliant agent of designing individuals, and from the blunders into which he was led, his baptismal name, John, seemed easily converted into that of Solomon, by which specification much of his correspondence was maintained. He bore the pleasantry with grateful composure.

With a characteristic anecdote I must dismiss the name of Lang. The discussions of a point in chronology, which occurred on the commencement of the present century, awakened some attention with mathematicians and astronomers abroad, and among many with us. The learned and pious Dr. Kunze, after much investigation, addressed a communication on the vexed question to Mr. Lang. He had adverted to the Gregorian style in his letter, and had mentioned Pope Gregory. The faithful _Gazette_ printed the article Tom Gregory: the venerable Doctor hastened to his friend, and remonstrated on the injury he had done him, and requested the _erratum_ to specify, instead of Tom Gregory, Pope Gregory XIII. Again an alteration was made, and the _Gazette_ requested its readers, for Tom Gregory to read Pope Tom Gregory XIII. Only one more attempt at correction was made, when the compositor had its typography so changed that it read Tom Gregory, the Pope. The learned divine, with a heavy heart, in a final interview with the erudite editor, begged him to make no further improvements, as he dreaded the loss of all the reputation his years of devotion to the subject had secured to him. This Dr. Kunze was long a prominent minister of the German Lutheran Church of this city. He was the preceptor in Philadelphia of Henry Stuber, author of the continuation of the life of our Socrates, Dr. Franklin: a work executed with much ability. He was a physician, and a most delectable character. Many years ago, I was so fortunate as to procure some materials for a biography of him, and Dr. Sparks has courteously given them a place in his invaluable edition of Dr. Franklin’s works. Justice to the departed Lang demands that I should add that he was a gentleman of the old school, of great moral excellence, and as a husband and a father most exemplary; deeply devoted to the interests of this city, and evincing a philanthropic spirit on every becoming occasion. He died at an advanced age; but his career was shortened by the great fire, in this city, in 1835. That vast destruction in his beloved New-York was an oppressive weight upon his heart.

Major Noah has so recently departed from among us, and the expectation that his active life will soon find a biographer is so general, that it seems unnecessary on the present occasion to speak at any length concerning him. I knew him well some thirty-five years. In religion a Jew, he was tolerant of all creeds, with equal amenity; his natural parts were of a remarkable order; few excelled him in industry, none in temperance and sobriety. He wrote for many journals, and established several. By his _Travels in Africa_ he became known as an author. His work on the _Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt_ was widely read. He was lively in converse, and a most social companion. His literary compositions, though not always pure in style, often showed a nice sense of the ludicrous and a love of humor. He abounded in anecdote. Mr. Matthews, from his personal knowledge, has not overdrawn the character of Noah. He possessed the organ of benevolence on a large scale. It is to be regretted that by his political vacillations his talents finally lost all influence in public councils and affairs.

We are susceptible of the pleasures and the pains of memory. A retrospect will confirm this declaration on many occasions. It is so in our contemplations of a newspaper; and in no instance have I been more sensible of this than when considering the origin, the career, and the termination of the _New-York American_. Its prominent projector was Johnson Verplanck, a native of this city, of a conspicuous family, whose mental qualities were of a robust order, and whose classical attainments entitled him to distinction. With the countenance and assistance of enlightened associates, he soon acquired for the _American_ a reputation for eminent talents, great independence in opinion, and the most perfect freedom in scrutinizing public acts, and in literary and artistic criticism. Mr. Verplanck was one of the writers of the _Buck Tail Bards_, a satirical poem, of Hudibrastic flavor. He died in 1829. The _American_ fell then into other hands, and for a long succession of years was editorially sustained by one who had often previously enriched its columns with his lucubrations. I allude to Charles King, now President of Columbia College. It was soon demonstrated to the satisfaction of its patrons, that, although under a new government, and its supplies derived from another source, its nutrition was not less wholesome and productive. For many years it claimed the admiration of the conservators of constitutional right and of critical taste. It was conducted with a manly boldness. Its tone gave dignity to political disquisition, though its manner was sometimes dreaded by objects of its animadversion: if its censures were occasionally severe, its approbation was the more highly appreciated: it was a record of historical value; nor can I comprehend why, in this age of universal reading in journalism, its career was closed. Its many volumes must hereafter be ranked with the once famous _National Gazette_ of Robert Walsh, and the _National Intelligencer_ of Gales & Seaton. Its distinguished editor, satisfied that for so long a period he had performed his part in the promotion of sound principles, with singleness of purpose, in behalf of the city, the state and the nation, may have sought that relief from mental care which is often secured by change of occupation. When I cast a thought over the hours I have spent in reading the _American_, I feel as Whitfield has expressed himself on a different occasion, "I am glad, but I am sorry;" glad that I have had so long the pleasure of being informed by its perusal; sorry that the opportunity no longer exists.

In closing this short list of editors, I feel justified in deviating for a moment in my chronology by a word or two on the character and death of one whom I have ever considered the ablest writer we have had in our public journals. He has been already incidentally mentioned. I allude to James Cheetham. He succeeded as editor of Greenleaf’s paper, calling it the _American Citizen_. Cheetham was an English radical; had left Manchester for this country, and was by trade a hatter. His personal appearance was impressive; tall, athletic, with a martial bearing in his walk, a forehead of great breadth and dimensions, and penetrating gray eyes, he seemed authoritative wherever he might be. He arrived in this country at a period of perplexing excitement in the times of Adams’s administration and Jefferson’s entrance into the presidency. He found many to countenance his radicalism, as Tennis Wortman, James Dennison, Charles Christian and others—men whom we might call liberals, both in religion and in politics. Accidental circumstances made me well acquainted with him, so early as the summer of 1803. He was then universally known as the champion of Jefferson, of Governor George Clinton, and of De Witt Clinton. He was a most unflinching partisan writer, and with earnestness asserted the advantages arising from the possession of Louisiana, countenanced Blind Palmer, the lecturer on Deism, and congratulated the public on the return to America of Thomas Paine. He ever remained an active advocate of old George Clinton, but his friendship was suddenly turned into hatred of Paine, and his life of that once prominent but wretched individual demonstrates the rancor of his temper. The murderous death of Hamilton, I think, had a strong influence on him. No sooner had he breathed his last than Cheetham extolled him as the greatest of patriots. Many speak of Cheetham as at times holding the pen of Junius—a judgment sustained by some of his political assaults and essays. He possessed a magnificent library, was a great reader, and studied Burke and Shakspeare more than any other authors. I know nothing against his moral character. His death, however, was most remarkable: he had removed with his family to a country residence, some three miles from the city, in the summer of 1809. A few days afterwards he exposed himself to malaria, by walking without a hat, through the fields, under a burning September sun. He was struck with a complication of ills—fever, congestion of the brain, and great cerebral distress. The malignancy of his case soon foretold to his physician, Dr. Hosack, the uncertainty of his recovery. Being at that time a student of medicine, I was requested to watch him; on the second day of his sickness, his fever raging higher, he betrayed a disturbed intellect. On the night of the third day raving mania set in. Incoherently he called his family around him, and addressed his sons as to their peculiar avocations for life, giving advice to one ever to be temperate in all things, and to another urging the importance of knowledge. After midnight he became much worse, and was ungovernable. With herculean strength he now raised himself from his pillow; with eyes of meteoric fierceness, he grasped his bed covering, and in a most vehement but rapid articulation, exclaimed to his sons, "Boys! study Bolingbroke for style, and Locke for sentiment." He spoke no more. In a moment life had departed. His funeral was a solemn mourning of his political friends.

Paine has been referred too. I have often seen him at the different places of his residence in this city, now in Partition-street, now in Broome-street, &c. His localities were not always the most agreeable. In Partition-street, near the market, a portion of his tenement was occupied for the display of wild beasts. Paine generally sat, taking an airing, at the lower front windows, the gazed-at of all passers by. Jarvis, the painter, was often his visitor, and was fortunate enough to secure that inimitable plaster cast of his head and features, which at his request, I deposited with the New-York Historical Society. While at that work, Jarvis exclaimed, "I shall secure him to a nicety, if I am so fortunate as to get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose." Jarvis thought this bust of Paine his most successful undertaking as a sculptor.

I shall trespass some moments by giving a few reminiscences concerning booksellers and publishers. There are many of this professional order, whose character and influence might justly demand a detailed account. Spence himself would find among them anecdotes worthy consideration in the world of letters. I must, however, write within circumscribed limits. The first in my immediate recollection is Everet Duyckinck. He was a middle-aged man, when I, a boy, was occasionally at his store, an ample and old-fashioned building, at the corner of Pearl-street and Old Slip. He was grave in his demeanor, and somewhat taciturn; of great simplicity in dress; accommodating and courteous. He must have been rich in literary recollections. He for a long while occupied his excellent stand for business, and was quite extensively engaged as a publisher and seller. He was a sort of Mr. Newbury, so precious to juvenile memories in the olden times. He largely dealt with that order of books, for elementary instruction, which were popular abroad, just about the close of our revolutionary war and at the adoption of our Constitution—Old Dyche, and his pupil Dilworth, and Perry, and Sheridan. As education and literature advanced, he brought forward, by reprints, Johnson and Chesterfield, and Vicissimus Knox, and a host of others. His store was the nucleus of the Connecticut teachers and intellectual products, and Barlow and Webster, and Morse and Riggs, found in him a patron of their works in poetry and their school books. Bunyan, Young, Watts, Doddridge and Baxter, must have been issued by his enterprise in innumerable thousands throughout the old thirteen States; and the _English Primer_, now improved into the _American Primer_, with its captivating emendations, as

The royal oak, it was the tree That saved his Royal Majesty;

changed to the more simple couplet—

Oak’s not as good As hickory wood;

and the lines—

Whales in the sea God’s voice obey;

now modified without loss of its poetic fire—

By Washington, Great deeds were done—

led captivity captive, and had an unlimited circulation, for the better diffusion of knowledge and patriotism throughout the land. As our city grew apace, and both instructors and their functions enlarged, he engaged in the Latin classics. Having a little Latin about me, it became my duty to set up at the printing office of Lewis Nicholls, Duyckinck’s reprint of _De Bello Gallico_. The edition was edited by a Mr. Rudd. He was the first editor I ever saw; I looked on him with school-boy admiration when I took him the proofs. What alterations or improvements he made in the text of Oudendorp, I never ascertained. This, however, must have been among the beginnings of that American practice, still prevailing among us, of having in reprints of even the most important works from abroad, for better circulation, the name of some one as editor, inserted on the title-page. Mr. Duyckinck was gifted with great business talents, and estimated as a man of punctuality and of rigid integrity in fiscal matters. He was the first who had the entire Bible, in duodecimo, preserved—set up in forms—the better to supply, at all times, his patrons. This was before stereotype plates were adopted. He gave to the Harpers the first job of printing they executed—whether Tom Thumb or Wesley’s Primitive Physic, I do not know. The acorn has become the pride of the forest—the Cliff-street tree, whose roots and branches now ramify all the land. Duyckinck faithfully carried out the proverbs of Franklin, and the sayings of Noah Webster’s _Prompter_. He was by birth and action a genuine Knickerbocker.

There was, about forty years ago, an individual somewhat remarkable in several respects, whose bookstore was in Maiden Lane—William Barlas. He was by birth a Scotchman, and was brought up to the ministry; but from causes which I never learned, he relinquished that vocation in his native land, and assumed that of a bookseller in this city. He was reputed to be a ripe scholar. He dealt almost exclusively in the classics, and for numerous years imported the editions—_in usum Delphini_, for the students in our schools and colleges. Hardly a graduate among us, of the olden time, can have forgotten him—Irving, Verplanck, John Anthon, and Paulding, can doubtless tell much of him. When, on a large scale, was commenced in Philadelphia, reprints of the Latin and Greek writers, poor Mr. Barlas’s functions were nearly annihilated. I mention him here from his relation to the advancement of learning in my juvenile days. His opinion on the various editions was deemed conclusive; and he controlled the judgment as well as the pocket of the purchaser. He was long in epistolary correspondence with "the friend of Cowper," as some call him—old John Newton of London; and I have often wondered that no enterprise has yet brought forward, in a new edition of the writings of Newton, their correspondence. It is not for me to dwell on the contrast, so striking, between the present period and that to which I have just adverted, when even professors of Colleges were controlled in their opinions of books by the dicta of a bookseller. Such was the fact some forty or fifty years ago. What would be the reply of our Professor Anthon, of Columbia College, to a bookseller who assumed such authority? of him whose love and devotion to the philosophy of the classics has led him already in so many works to spread before the cogitative scholars, of both worlds, the deepest researches of antiquarian disquisition and philological lore, evincing that America is not tardy in a just appreciation of the excellencies of those treasures which enriched a Bentley, a Horseley, a Porson, and a Parr.

Those of our literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical infirmity—his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded him like a halo. He abounded in the gloom and glory of the American Revolution, and published, with portraits, numerous diagrams of the campaigns of the war in the _Military Repository_, a work of great fidelity, in which it is thought he was aided by Baron Steuben and General Gates. As a bibliopolist, little need be said of him. But the curious in knowledge will not overlook him as the first who popularly made known to the English reader the names of Kotzebue and Schiller. Several of the novels and plays of these German authors were done into English by him; and, with William Dunlap, both as a translator and as a theatrical manager, _The Stranger_ and other plays were presented to the cultivators of the drama in New-York long before their appearance in London, or the publication of Thompson’s _German Theatre_. It is a circumstance worthy of notice, that the Rev. Mr. Will, then of this city, added to the stock of our literary treasures, by other translations into the English, such as the _Constant Lovers, &c._, of Kotzebue, before, I believe, any recognized English version appeared abroad. But I must leave this subject for the fuller investigation of the learned Dr. Schmidt professor of German, in Columbia College.

David Longworth’s name is a good deal blended with the progress of American literature during years gone by. He was by birth a New Jerseyman; and the publication of his _City Directory_, for some thirty or more years, gave him sufficient notoriety; while his Shaksperean Gallery introduced him to many of the cultivators of the fine arts, at a period, when Trumbull and Jarvis were our prominent painters. Longworth had been brought up as a printer, at a daily press, but he seems early to have got a taste for copper-plate engraving, accurate printing, and elegant binding. With determined energy he issued an edition of Telemachus, which, for beauty of typography and paper, was looked upon, by the lovers of choice books, as a rich specimen of our art. His _Belles-Lettres Repository_ no less evinced his taste in the _elegantiæ literarum_. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent and advantageous upper case type, waged a war of extermination against almost every capital in the case, and this curious deformity is found in many of his publications, as _british america_, and _london docks_. Even in poetry, of the first word, he tolerated only small letters at the beginning of the lines. His practice, however, found no imitators, though ’tis said that it first began in Paris. His bookstore, at a central situation by the Park, with works of taste classically displayed, afforded an admirable lounge for the litterateurs of that day. Here, when Hodgkinson, and Hallam, and Cooper, and Cooke were at the zenith of their histrionic career in the Park Theatre, adjacent, might be seen a group of poets and prose writers, who, in their generation, added to the original off-spring of the American press—Brockden Brown, Dunlap, Verplanck, Paulding Fessenden, Richard Alsop, Peter Irving, and the now universally famed Washington Irving.

I must note a circumstance of some import on the state of letters among us about those times. Longworth had secured from abroad a copy of the first edition, in quarto, of Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and determined to reprint it; yet, not satisfied with his own judgment, he convened a meeting of his literary friends to settle the matter. The committee, after solemn deliberation, suggested his venturing to reproduce only the introductions to the cantos, as an experiment, in order to ascertain the public taste. Would I speak in terms too strong if I affirmed that since that committee sat, millions of copies of the numerous volumes of Sir Walter Scott have been bought by the reading world in America. My circle of literary acquaintance was a good deal enlarged by the coteries I now and then found at Longworth’s, as he was not backward in seizing opportunities of issuing new works, when from their nature they might excite the appetite of the curious. No publication of his so effectually secured this end, as the _Salmagundi_, in 1807, sent forth in bi-weekly numbers by young Irving and his friend Paulding. When we are apprised that some few of our middle-aged citizens, who sustained the stroke of that literary scimetar so long ago, still survive among us, I think we may argue from strong data for the salubrity of our climate. At Longworth’s, I first saw the youngest dramatic genius of the time, Howard Payne, then about fourteen years old, and who, a short while after, appeared as young Norval on the boards of the theatre. He was editor of the _Thespian Mirror_.

Originally of Ireland, Hugh Gaine, upon his emigration to this country during our colonial dependence, set up in this city in 1753 his Royal Gazette, the _New-York Mercury_. His fame as well as his patriotism is embalmed in the irony of Freneau. It is only as a bookseller that I knew him, in Hanover Square. He was then at a very advanced age. His savings rendered him in due time independent in pecuniary matters. We may safely infer that he was not surpassed in industry, and that he was ever awake to the main chance, when we are assured that at the commencement of his journal, he collected his own news, set up his types, worked off his papers, folded his sheets, and personally distributed them to his subscribers. Franklin had done pretty nearly the same things before. Gaine, who in his after-life was an object of a good deal of curiosity to the citizens of the republic, enjoyed the consideration due to an honest man, and many kindly feelings.

Many as were his merits, and great as was his enterprise, Isaac Collins was most widely known, the latter part of his long career, by his editions of the works on grammar, and other school books, by the prolific Lindley Murray. As in the case of Franklin, his earliest effort of magnitude was the printing Sewell’s _History of the Quakers_. The neatness and accuracy of his printing were familiarly remarked among readers; and these excellencies he displayed in his quarto Bible, the first of that form which was printed in this country in 1790. Collins was a native of Delaware. He projected a weekly paper, the _New Jersey Gazette_, which he published at Burlington during the Revolution, and, some time after, upon strenuous Whig principles. He had authority, like Franklin, for the emission of paper money for the State Government. He removed to this city in 1796, and a few years after this time I knew him. As his career was, many portions of it, like Franklin’s, I had the greater admiration of him. He died in 1817. That he enjoyed the acquaintance of Franklin, of Rittenhouse and Rush, of Livingston of New Jersey, and others of the truest patriots in the great struggles of the country, may be inferred from his profession, his public station, his integrity, and his general character. In the society of Friends he was prominent, and, like Thomas Eddy and Robert Bowne, he was occupied with hospitals, and ever zealous in good works. He did vast service to the city as a printer, and as such he is here introduced.

The oldest inhabitants of our city may well recollect the bookstore of the Swords, Thomas and James. Some sixty years ago they began operations in Pearl-street. They commenced when New-York was little more than a village in population, and when literary projects were almost unknown. They deserve ample notice as most efficient pioneers, in their day, as printers and booksellers, and through a long career they held a high rank; they were assiduous and economical almost to a fault: their integrity was never doubted; their word was as good as their bond. They printed good works in more acceptations of the phrase than one. They did a great service to our scientific enterprise, in issuing the _Medical Repository_, the earliest journal of that kind, in the country. A literary periodical, of many years duration, was also printed by them, called the _New-York Magazine_. It was remarkable for the contributions of a society, self-named the Drone. Brockden Brown, William Dunlap, Anthony Bleucker, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and James Kent (afterwards the great Chancellor), were among the writers. William Johnson, the well-known Reporter, who died recently, was the last survivor of this club. Their store for a number of years was a rendezvous for professional men of different callings—divines, physicians, lawyers, with a sprinkling of the professed authors of those times, as Clifton, Low, Davis, &c. Its theological feature was its strongest; and the interest of episcopacy were here descanted on with the unction of godliness, by such men as Seabury of Connecticut, and Moore of New-York, with good old Dr. Bowden, and Dr. Hawks, my friends Drs. Berrian and McVicker of Columbia College, and the energetic Bishop Hobart, the busiest and most stirring man I ever knew. The Messrs. Swords were largely occupied in printing works on divinity, and were confessed the printers of sound orthodoxy long before "the novelties which disturb our peace" had invoked polemical controversy.

I should do injustice to my feelings were I in this rapid sketch to overlook the late James Eastburn, the founder of the first reading-room on a becoming scale, in this country, and the publisher of the American edition of the Edinburgh and London Quarterly Reviews. He was a gentleman deserving of much estimation, of bland manners, and enthusiastic in his calling. He was curious in antiquarian literature and a great importer of the older authors. Many are the libraries enriched by his perseverance. Consumption wasted his generous frame, and he died at a comparatively early age, to the deep regret of the scholar and the philanthropist.

I should like, before I close this portion of these reminiscences, to awaken recollections of one or two other estimable individuals with whom I was long acquainted—George F. Hopkins and Jonathan Seymour. Hopkins merits a biography; he justly boasted that his edition of Robertson’s Charles V. was the most accurately printed work of the time. He was fastidious almost to a fault in typographical neatness. He printed only works of positive merit. His enterprise led him, now fifty years ago, to urge the craft to render themselves independent of imported types, by establishing type-foundries in the country. There were few indeed among us who knew practically much about the founts of Caslon, the Coryphæus of letter-founders. The Scotch hard-faced letter was then extensively in use. Hopkins induced the immigration to this country of the famous Binney and Ronaldson, whose great skill in the art was soon recognized, and from that era up to the present day competent judges affirm that our Bruce, White, Conner, and others, have accomplished all that is requisite in the type-founding business. Of Jonathan Seymour, it is enough to say, that at one period of his life he was more largely engaged than any of his rivals in printing from manuscripts—so well known and appreciated was his devotion to his calling, and the accuracy of its results. In his death, the art lost one who had given it elevation, and society a man possessed of the qualities of industry, temperance, honesty, and Christian philanthropy in the fullest measure.

Within a few days has departed from among us, at the age of eighty years, a supporter of the press who long contributed to the diffusion of wholesome knowledge. I allude to Thomas Kirk. I shall terminate these notices by a striking occurrence, which involved him in great loss. He had determined, about the year 1801, to give the Christian community an octavo edition, in large type, of the _Book of Common Prayer_, the first of that size from an American press. To secure the utmost accuracy, he engaged, for a pecuniary consideration, the Rev. John Ireland, of Brooklyn, to revise the proofs. When the sheets were worked off, it was ascertained that the copy was an exact reprint, save in one particular. The critical acumen of Ireland had discovered, in the Apostles’ Creed, a "tautological error," in the words, "from thence he shall come." The word "from" was superfluous, ungrammatical, and inelegant, according to Ireland, and, accordingly, it was not in Kirk’s edition. Upon the sale of a few copies the omission was remarked; the fact became known to the bishop of the church; the book was pronounced defective, and the ecclesiastical authorities prohibited its circulation. The whole edition fell a dead weight upon the hands of the well-meaning publisher. I had this anecdote from Mr. Kirk himself, years ago, and he repeated it to me not long prior to his death, in last November.

This allusion to Kirk brings to my mind the notorious John Williams, better known as Anthony Pasquin, under which name he was doomed to everlasting infamy by Gifford, in his satire of the _Baviad and Mæviad_, in judgments afterwards confirmed in a celebrated trial for libel in which the famous Erskine delivered one of his best forensic speeches. Williams was the associate in London of a small but ambitious set of mutual admirers in literature, of whom Mr. Merry and his future wife were the "Della Crusca" and "Rosa Matilda," and all three of these worthies came to New-York about the year 1798. I have an impression that Kirk came at the same time. The character of Williams was infamous, and a large share of his infamy consisted in his ministering to, if not creating, the passion for personal scandal, and setting the example of black-mail collections, in newspapers. In the report of the great case of Williams vs. Faulder, it is said of his paper, called _The World_, that "In this were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified and audacious attacks on all private character which the town first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated for their absurdity—and will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty." After he came to this country he associated himself with the enemies of Hamilton, and published a satire called _The Hamiltoniad_, edited a magazine entitled _The Columbian_, and was a pioneer in that species of journalism which still subsists here upon the most scandalous invasions of private life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway’s lines, "as if all hell were in his eyes, and he in hell." It must not be supposed that I in any degree associate the fame of the worthy Kirk with that of this literary vagabond.

To a suggestion that I might refer to the late William Cobbett, as associated with the periodical press of this country, I may say that I see in it no impropriety. Unquestionably a minute record would include his _Porcupine Gazette_ and his _Weekly Register_; the one an offspring of his juvenile life, the other of his ripened years. I had some personal acquaintance with him at the time of his last residence in New-York. Hazlitt has, in his attractive manner, described him to the life. He was deemed the best talker of his day, and his forcible pen has given us indubitable proofs of his powers in literary composition. It was not unusual with him to make a visit to the printing office at an early morning hour, take his seat at the desk, and after some half dozen lines were written, to throw off MSS. with a rapidity that engaged eleven compositors at once in setting up. Thus a whole sheet of the _Register_ might be completed ere he desisted from his undertaking. I think that in quickness he surpassed even the lamented William Leggett, of the _Evening Post_. The circumstance is certainly interesting in a psychological point of view; and yet may not be deemed more curious than the fact that Priestley made his reply to Lind, quite a voluminous pamphlet, in twenty-four hours, or that Hodgkinson, the actor, was able to peruse crosswise, the entire five columns of a newspaper, and within two hours recite it thus by memory. I visited Cobbett, when his residence was within a couple of miles of this city, in company with a few professional gentlemen. It was in October, and a delightful day. He heard our approach, and came to the door without our knocking. "Walk in, gentlemen—am I to consider this as a visit to me?—walk in and be seated on these benches, for I have no chairs—you may be fatigued—will you have a bowl of milk? I live upon milk and Indian corn—I never drink spirit or wine, and yet I am a tolerable example of English health." And, indeed, he was a most ample specimen of the genuine John Bull. His nearly oval face, and florid countenance, with strong gray piercing eyes and head thickly covered with white hair, closely trimmed; his huge frame, of some two hundred and seventy pounds weight, corresponding abdominal development, and well-proportioned limbs, all demonstrated, with anatomical accuracy, the truth of his observation. His superior intellect seemed roused in all its functions. The United States, England, the reform measures, the union of church and state, and its absurdity, were only a few of the subjects of his caustic remark. "I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed; you have neglected the remains of Thomas Paine; I have done myself the honor to disinter his bones; I have removed them from New Rochelle; I have dug them up; they are now on their way to England; when I return, I shall cause them to speak the Common Sense of the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and State." After some two or three hours we took our leave, with unlimited admiration of his brave utterance and his colloquial talents.

With such a hastily written and imperfect sketch of the newspaper periodical press, of printers, editors, booksellers, and authors, I must close this portion of my present reminiscences. I have depended on a memory somewhat tenacious as my authority, in most instances, having no leisure at command for reference. A volume might be written of pertinent details. Nevertheless, enough has been said to illustrate, in part, the advancement of one species of knowledge in this metropolis. Did we institute a comparative view of the past and present condition of the press, we might be better enabled to announce the existing condition of our city as a Literary Emporium, That it is in accordance with the spirit of the age, seems demonstrable. Abroad, in England, in 1701, when the stamp duty was levied upon every number of a periodical paper consisting of a sheet, the whole quantity of printed paper was estimated at twenty thousand reams annually. Nearly at this period (1704), when the Boston _News Letter_ made its appearance in the American colonies, some two or three hundred copies weekly may have been its circulation. What is the quantity of paper demanded by the present British periodical press, I am unable to state. In this month of January, 1852, it is calculated that there are about three thousand different newspapers and other periodicals printed in this country, the entire issues of which approach the yearly aggregate of four hundred and twenty-three millions of numbers.

When Franklin was a printer it was a hard task to work off over a thousand sheets on both sides in a day, by the hand press. Since his time we have had the Clymer, the Napier, the Ramage, the Adams, and now Hoe’s Lightning press. By this last-named achievement in the arts, so honorable to a son of New-York, and so stupendous in its results to the world at large, twenty thousand papers may be printed in one hour.

If we advert to the instructive fact, of the enormous circulation of many of the journals of New-York, as the _Herald_, the _Sun_, the _Tribune_, the _Times_, the _Express_, the _Mirror_, and others issued daily; if we calculate the copies of the _Observer_, the _Home Journal_, the _Christian Advocate_, and others of the weekly press; the circulation of the monthly and other periodicals; if we look at the Methodist Book Concern, the Tract Society, the American Bible Society, the publications of the Appletons, of Putnam, and of the enterprising booksellers of this city generally, what bounds can we set to the offspring of the typographic art? The _Herald_ and the _Tribune_ in their distinct circulation, consume an aggregate of fifty thousand reams per year. The Harpers, who have thrown John Baskerville, and other eminent typographers of Europe in the shade by the magnitude of their operations, use one hundred reams of paper daily, at six dollars per ream, and make about ten volumes a minute or six thousand a day. On a former occasion I stated to you the agency which Franklin had in bringing forward stereotype plates, as projected by Dr. Colden, in this city, in 1779, and the fact that the art was communicated to Didot in Paris, by Franklin himself. I well remember the anxious John Watts, when he showed me his first undertaking in this branch of labor in New-York, just forty years ago. It was a copy of the Larger Catechism, the one I now hold in my hand. Notwithstanding the doubts of many, he felt confident of its ultimate success, yet suffered by hope deferred. What is now the state of the business in the matter of stereotyping? The Harpers alone—a single firm—have within their vaults plates for more than two thousand volumes.

Need I dwell on the improved appliances in the great art, which enrich the present day, or on the influences now at work on the intellectual man? Justly has it been stated, that the press of a single office in this city issues more matter than the industry of the world, with all its scribes and illuminators, in an entire year, previous the time of Faust. Let us, then, reverence the press, as our Franklin did. Let us cherish its freedom, as the triumph of our fathers, if we love the name of patriot. Let us teach our children to acknowledge it the palladium of our altars and our firesides. Let us recognize it as the Great Instructor, knocking at every door, and rendering every hovel, as well as every palace, a school-house.

Nor is it solely on the score of quantity, that we are to contemplate the measures now in force for the disciplining of intellect, and the rearing the moral edifice of the nation. I have already remarked on the superior ability of the press of our days in comparison with that of the period through which some of us have lived. The same energy which has swelled its dimensions, has increased the excellence of its material. Libraries so abound, knowledge is so diffused, that individuals qualified by scholastic powers, can be called in requisition for the duties of every department a successful journal demands. There is moreover a happier recognition of intellectual merit; reward is higher and more certain; and there exists throughout the community a noble estimation of productive intellect. Instead of a scattered recruit here and there in the ranks of literature, we have armies at command, of well-disciplined men; and the belief is not altogether idle that, in due season, of these armies there will be legions. Lovesick tales and Della Cruscan poetry, have yielded to stately essays on the business of life, in philosophy and in criticism, while the native muse has often stronger claims to our homage than the verses Dr. Johnson has embalmed, and that have made the fame of ancient bards. We no longer gaze at the author as a drone in the hive of industry.

Our youth are taught that a true man may be found among the luxurious and refined as well in the humble avocations of life. Ambitious of a national literature, we honor those who have laid its foundations, in the persons of an Irving, a Prescott, and a Bancroft, a Longfellow, and a Hawthorne. We gratefully remember our historical obligations to Sparks. We feel the dignity of the scholar when we summon to our aid the classical Everett. Mourning with no feigned sorrow the demise of that true son of our soil, the lamented Cooper, we rejoice that a Bryant and a Halleck, a Verplanck and a Paulding, are still left with us. Warm in our feelings, and made happier by the relations of intercourse, we extend the cordial hand to Tuckerman, our classical essayist and poet; to Willis, for his felicitous comments on passing events; to Griswold, for his admirable works in criticism and biography; to Dr. Mayo, for his _Kaloolah_; to Stoddard, for his exquisite poems; to the generous Bethune, the orator and bard; to Morris, for his _Melodies_; to Kimball, for his _St. Leger Papers_; to Clark, for his _Knickerbocker_; to Melville, for _Typee_; to Ik. Marvell, for his _Reveries_; to Ripley, for his fine reviews; to Bigelow, for his book on _Jamaica_; to Bayard Taylor, for his _Views A-Foot_; to Greeley, for his _Crystal Palace_ labors; and to Duyckinck, the son of our old friend, the bookseller, for his _Literary World_. In the name of the Republic, we give our heartiest thanks to our intimate friend, the learned Dr. Cogswell, as we look at the spacious walls of the Astor Library.

The very great length to which I have unconsciously extended these reminiscences, forbids me from dwelling, as my heart and your wishes dictate, upon the most glorious name in American Printing, the immortal Franklin’s. His character and deeds, however, are familiar to you all; and the language of eulogy is needless in regard to one whose fame increases with time, and whose transcendent merits, the constant development of that element he brought under human dominion render daily more evident and memorable. It is related, gentlemen, that when the statues of the Roman Emperors were carried in a triumphal procession, one was omitted, and the name of that one was shouted with more zeal than all the others inspired. So I know it to be with us to-night. The memory of Franklin is too ripe in our hearts to require words; it is a spell that sheds eternal glory on the typographical art; it is the best encouragement of youthful energy; it is revealed in every telegraphic despatch; it hallows the name of our country to the civilized world.

NOCTES AMICÆ.

Of tipsy drollery, a correspondent of the _Evening Post_ (Mr. Bryant himself, we have no doubt), writes: "It is esteemed a mark of a vulgar mind, to divert one’s self at the expense of a drunken man; yet we allow ourselves to be amused with representations of drunkenness on the stage and in comic narratives. Nobody is ashamed to laugh at Cassio in the play of Othello, when he has put an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains. The personation which the elder Wallack used to give us some years ago, of Dick Dashall, very drunk, but very gentlemanly, was one of the most irresistibly comic things ever known. I have a mind to give you a translation of a German ballad on a tipsy man, which has been set to music, and is often sung in Germany; it is rather droll in the original, and perhaps it has not lost all of its humor in being _overset_, as they call it, into English. Here it is:"

OUT OF THE TAVERN, ETC.

Out of the tavern I’ve just stepped to-night Street! you are caught in a very bad plight. Right hand and left hand are both out of place; Street, you are drunk, ’tis a very clear case.

Moon, ’tis a very queer figure you cut; One eye is staring while t’other is shut. Tipsy, I see; and you’re greatly to blame; Old as you are ’tis a terrible shame.

Then the street lamps, what a scandalous sight! None of them soberly standing upright. Rocking and staggering; why, on my word, Each of the lamps is drunk as a lord.

All is confusion; now isn’t it odd? I am the only thing sober abroad. Sure it were rash with this crew to remain, Better go into the tavern again.

This is parodied or stolen by the clever author of the _Bon Gaultier Ballads_, in one of his best pieces.

The famous Quaker _Anthony Benezet_, was accustomed to feed the rats in the area before his house in Philadelphia. An old friend who found him so engaged, expressed some surprise that he so kindly treated such pernicious vermin, saying, "They should rather be killed and out of the way." "Nay," said good Anthony, "I will not treat them so; thou wouldst make them thieves by maltreating and starving them, but I make them honest by feeding them, for being so fed, they never prey upon any goods of mine." This singular fact is very characteristic. When feeding rats, the benevolent philosopher used to stand in the area, and they would gather round his feet like chickens. One of the family once hung a collar about one of them, which was seen for years after, feeding in the group.

DES CARTES fought at the siege of Rochelle, and after a variety of adventures, established himself in Holland, where he composed most of his works. These abound in singular theories and curious speculations, and their spirit of independence aroused the same spirit wherever they were read. Scholars and theologians vied with each other in battling the new opinions. The followers of Aristotle and the followers of Locke arrayed themselves against him. His novelties even drew the attention of women from their fashions. "The ladies of quality here, of late," says a writer from Paris, in 1642, "addict themselves to the study of philosophy, as the men; the ladies esteeming their education defective, if they cannot confute Aristotle and his disciples. The pen has almost supplanted the exercise of the needle; and ladies’ closets, formerly the shops of female baubles, toys, and vanities, are now turned to libraries and sanctuaries of learned works. There is a new star risen in the French horizon, whose influence excites the nobler females to this pursuit of human science. It is the renowned Monsieur Des Cartes, whose lustre far outshines the aged winking tapers of Peripatetic Philosophy, and has eclipsed the stagyrite, with all the ancient lights of Greece and Rome. ’Tis this matchless soul has drawn so many of the fairer sex to the schools. And they are more proud of the title—Cartesian—and of the capacity to defend his principles, than of their noble birth and blood."

We find in _The Courts of Europe at the Close of the last Century_, by Henry Swinburne, the following illustration of American manners:

"An English officer, Colonel A in a stage to New-York, and was extremely annoyed by a free and enlightened citizen’s perpetually spitting across him, out of the window. He bore it patiently for some time, till at last he ventured to remonstrate, when the other said, ’Why, colonel, I estimate you’re a-poking fun at me—that I do. Now, I’m not a-going to chaw my own bilge-water, not for no man. Besides, you need not look so thundering ugly. Why, I’ve _practised_ all my life, and could squirt through the eye of a needle without touching the steel, let alone such a great saliva-box as that there window.’ Colonel A at last his anger got up, and he spat bang in his companion’s face, exclaiming, ’I beg you a thousand pardons, squire, but I’ve not practised as much as you have. No doubt, by the time we reach New-York, I shall be as great a dabster as you are.’ The other rubbed his eye, and remained _bouche close_."

In support of the hydropathic practice, and in illustration of the effect of cold, we cite an anecdote MIGNET tells of the celebrated French physician Broussais:

"Seized with a violent fever at Nimèguen, Broussais was attended by two of his friends, who each prescribed opposite remedies. Embarrassed by such contradictory opinions, he resolved to follow neither. Believing himself to be seriously in danger, he jumped out of bed in the midst of this raging fever, and almost naked sat down to his escrutoire to arrange his papers. It was in the month of January; the streets were covered with snow. While thus settling his affairs the fever abated, a sensation of freshness and comfort diffused itself throughout his frame. Amazed at this result, Broussais, like a bold theorist as he was, converted his casual forgetfulness into an experience. He boldly _threw open the window_, and for some time inspired the cold winter air that blew in upon him. Finding himself greatly benefited, he concluded that cool drink would be as refreshing to his stomach as cold air had been to his body. He deluged his stomach with cold lemonade, and in less than forty-eight hours he was well again!"

The following amusing anecdote is told in a work recently published in London of Tom Cooke, the actor and musician:

"At a trial in the Court of King’s Bench, June, 1833, betwixt certain publishing tweedledums and tweedledees, as to the alleged piracy of an arrangement of the ’Old English Gentleman,’—an old English air, by the bye—Cooke was subpœnaed as a witness. On his cross-examination by Sir James Scarlet, afterwards Lord Abinger, for the opposite side, that learned counsel rather flippantly questioned him thus: ’Now, sir, you say that the two melodies are the same, but different; now what do you mean by that, sir?’ To this Tom promptly answered, ’I said that the notes in the two copies were alike, but with a different accent, the one being in common time, the other in sixth-eight time; and, consequently, the position of the accented notes was different.’ Sir James—’What is musical accent?’ Cooke—’My terms are a guinea a lesson, sir.’ (A loud laugh.) Sir James (rather ruffled)—’Never mind your terms here. I ask you what is musical accent. Can you see it?’ Cooke—’No.’ Sir James—’Can you feel it?’ Cooke—’A musician can.’ (Great laughter.) Sir James (very angry)—’Now, pray sir, don’t beat about the bush, but explain to his lordship and the jury, who are supposed to know nothing about music, the meaning of what you call accent.’ Cooke—’Accent in music, is a certain stress laid upon a particular note, in the same manner as you would lay a stress upon any given word for the purpose of being better understood. Thus, if I were to say, ’You are an _ass_—it rests on ass; but if I were to say, ’_You_ are an ass—it rests on you, Sir James.’ Reiterated shouts of laughter by the whole court, in which the bench itself joined, followed this repartee. Silence having been at length obtained, the Judge, with much seeming gravity, accosted the chop-fallen counsel thus: Lord Denman—’Are you satisfied, Sir James?’ Sir James (deep red as he naturally was, to use poor Jack Reeve’s own words, had become scarlet in more than name), in a great huff, said, ’The witness may go down!’"

A Portuguese paper gives some statistics which could only be obtained under the spy and secret police system. There are said to be in Portugal 872,634 married couples, of which the present condition is very nearly as follows:—"Women who have left their husbands for their lovers, 1,262. Husbands who have left their wives for other women, 2,361. Couples who have agreed to live separately, 33,120. Couples who live in open warfare, under the same roof, 13,263. Couples who cordially hate each other, but dissemble their aversion under the appearance of love, 162,320. Couples who live in a state of tranquil indifference, 510,132. Couples who are thought by their acquaintances to be happy, but are not themselves convinced of their own felicity, 1,102. Couples that are happy as compared with those that are confessedly unhappy, 131. Couples indisputably happy in each other, 0. Total, 872,634."

The first duel in New England, was fought with sword and dagger, between two servants. Neither of them was killed, but both were wounded. For this disgraceful offence, they were formally tried before the whole company (the first settlers), and sentenced to have their "heads and feet tied together, and so to be twenty-four hours, without meat or drink." Their bravery all exploded in a little while, and they plead piteously to be released, which was finally done by the Governor on their promising better behavior. "Such was the origin," says Dr. Morse, "and such, I may almost venture to say, was the termination of the odious practice of duelling in New England, for there have been very few fought there since."

We are told by Ariosto of a warrior who was so happily gifted that when his arms, his legs, or even his head, happened to be chopped off in battle, he could jump down from his horse and replace the dissevered member. Many modern humbugs are of this description; they are real polipi; chop them into a thousand pieces, and each piece will start up as brisk and as lively as ever. Metaphysical humbugs are the most difficult kind to deal with. Contending with them is like wrestling with spectres; there is not substance enough to catch hold of.

Lately, at a sitting of the Norwegian legislature at Christiana, a petition was presented from the world-known fiddler, Ole Bull, in which he solicited the creation of a national theatre in that town, to receive a subvention from the government, and to which a dramatic school was to be attached. The Assembly voted that the petition should be taken into consideration, and appointed a committee to draw up a report on it. M. Bull has already founded, at his own cost, a theatre in his native town, Bergen. M. Bull visits this country now in search only of pleasure.

AUTHORS AND BOOKS

GUTZKOW’S _Ritter vom Geiste_ (Knights of the Spirit) is at last finished, the ninth volume having made its appearance. It has faults of detail, and there are deficiencies in spots, but as a whole it is praised as eminently successful, and truly a new work. The idea in some respects recalls the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, and the Nathan the Wise of Lessing, but the execution has more force and a larger and more imperious movement than either. The Knights of the Spirit are a body of men who are combined in an order to which they give that name, and this book is their history and that of the order. At the same time there is nothing mystical, supernatural, or merely fantastic about it, though its spirit is humanitary and even socialistic. The scene is in modern times, but though the names of the heroes are German, and the circumstances in which they are placed German, the author has succeeded in producing a truly cosmopolitan romance. The nine volumes are sold in Germany for about $8 00.

HENRY TAYLOR, the author of Philip Van Artevelde, is the subject of an article in the _Grenzboten_. The writer takes him, as the acknowledged first living dramatic poet of England, to be the best illustration of the nature and characteristics of the English drama. This drama is said to be more remarkable for sharply-outlined and detailed characters, than for the invention of exciting and consistent action. The characters in all their peculiarities are first created, and situations are made and arranged for them afterward. The evil of this is, that the whole thus becomes fragmentary, and the particulars outweigh and obscure the general spirit and intention of the piece. Even Shakspeare, with his gigantic genius, was not free from this defect. His Merry Wives of Windsor, for instance, is rich in comic situations and figures, but they are arbitrarily put together, and every scene has the character of an episode; the action does not go forward in a true and consistent course. Now-a-days the evil is worse, because it is the fashion to substitute reflection for natural feeling. Taylor is like those portrait painters who paint the features so carefully as to destroy the general character of the face. His men and women are not alive and genuine. Still their language is grave and noble, their thoughts comprehensive, often striking, and their emotions, though artificial, are elaborated with great insight and knowledge of the world. Compared with the wretched creations of the French romanticists, they are worthy of all praise. The critic then proceeds to analyze Isaac Comnenus, Philip Van Atevelde, and Fair Edwin, setting forth with great fairness the excellencies and faults of each.

A new contribution to an obscure but most interesting part of European history is _Deutschland in der Revolutions periode von_ 1522-26, (Germany, in the Revolutionary Period from 1522 to 26,) by JOSEPH EDMUND JÖRG. The author has had access to a great mass of original and hitherto unused materials, especially diplomatic correspondence and other documents in the Bavarian archives. His view of the subject is very different from that taken by ZIMMERMANN, in his _Peasants’ War_, or by any other writer. He mocks at the idea that this revolution grew out of the evils and oppressions suffered by the people, and finds its most powerful impulse in the passion for innovation that sprung up along with the revival of classical studies in the middle ages.

The antique fashion of presenting poetic works to the public, is revived in Germany with great success. Professor GRIEPENKERL of Brunswick, whose tragedy of Robespierre made a great sensation a year or more since, is now reading his new play of the Girondists to large audiences in the principal cities. He has already been heard at Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden, and Bremen, and proposes to visit other places on the same errand. The play, which is a tragedy of course, is much admired, though it is not thought to be adapted to the stage. The Girondists were not men of action, but orators and thinkers. The final scene in the play is the famous banquet before they were taken to execution. Charlotte Corday is among the characters; the women are said not to be drawn as truly and powerfully as the men.

CARLYLE’S Life of Stirling is criticised in the _Grenzboten_, which calls Carlyle the strangest of all philosophers. This book is said, however, to be, on the whole, clearer and more intelligible than most of his former productions. Still, like most works of the new romantic school in England, of which Carlyle is the chief, it aims rather to give expression to the ideas and abilities of the author, than to do justice to its subject. But it is in Warren’s _Lily and the Bee_, that the school appears in full bloom. This is said to consist mostly of exclamation points, and is written in a sort of lapidary style, that deals in riddles, pathos without object, sentimentality with irony, world-pain, and allusions to all the kingdoms of heaven and earth, without any explanation as to what relation these allusions bear to each other, and with a Titanic pessimism as its predominating tone, which first rouses itself up to take all by storm, and finishes by being soothed into happy intoxication by the odors of a lily. This is better treatment than _The Lily and the Bee_ gets at home.

In the second volume of _Shakspeare as Protestant, Politician, Psychologist and Poet_, by DR. ED. VEHSE—spoken of as being "even more uninteresting than the first," we find the two following extraordinary ideas. Firstly, that Shakspeare followed a theory of physical _temperaments_ in his characters—that Hamlet was a representative of the melancholy or nervous, Othello of the choleric, Romeo of the sanguine, and Falstaff of the phlegmatic. Secondly, that in Falstaff, Shakspeare parodied—himself! Or to give his own words, "We may suppose that Shakspeare’s physical constitution inclined to corpulence, and inspired in him the disposition to the life of a _bon vivant_. His intimacy with the Earl of Southampton may have favored this disposition, since they led for a long time a dissipated tavern-life, and were rivals in love matters!" The work is principally made up of extracts from Shakspeare’s plays, to every which extract we find appended "How admirable,"—"Excellent," and similar aids to those who are not familiar with the English bard.

We commend to the attention of philologists Das _Gothische Runenalphabet_, (or The Gothic Runic Alphabet,) recently published by HERTZ of Berlin. "Before Wulfila, the Goths had an alphabet of twenty-five letters, formed according to the same principles, and bearing nearly the same names as the _Runes_ of the Anglo-Saxons and Northmen, and probably arranged in the same order of succession. _Wulfila_ adopted the Grecian alphabet, which through his modification was received by the Goths to the old twenty-five letters." This is the theory propounded in the work, which is not wanting, as we learn, in instructive information. In connection with this we may notice a book which has been deemed worthy of a modern English republication in elegant style, the often referred to _Scriptural Poems_ of CÆDMON, in Anglo-Saxon, an edition of which, by R. W. BOUTERWEK, with an Anglo-Saxon Glossary, has recently been published by Bædeher of Elberfeldt.

The _Preussische Zeitung_ states that M. HANKE, a learned Bohemian, is publishing, in Prague, a _fac-simile_ of the Gospels on which the Kings of France have always been sworn at their coronation at Rheims. The manuscript volume is in the Slavonian language, and has been preserved at Rheims ever since the twelfth century, but it has only been lately discovered in what language it was written.

The eleventh volume of the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_ inde ab anno Christi 500 usque ad annum 1500 auspiciis societ, aperiendis fontibus serum German medii ævi edid, G. H. PERTZ, has just made its appearance. This work is regarded as a stupendous effort of erudition and historical acumen, even in Germany.

DR. HAGBERG, a professor at the University of Upsal, has just published at Stockholm a version of the complete works of Shakspeare, the first ever made in the Swedish language. It is in twelve thick octavo volumes. The Shaksperian Society of London having received a presentation copy of this translation, has returned a vote of thanks to Dr. Hagberg, accompanied by forty volumes of the Society’s publications, all relating to the great dramatist and the state of dramatic art in his time.

DUNLOP’S _History of Fiction_ has been translated into German by Professor Liebrecht of Liege, and enlarged so as to be much more complete than the original. The version bears the title of _Geschichte der Prosadichtung oder, Geschichte der Romane, Novellen und Mährchen_ (History of Prose Poetry, or History of Romances, Novels and Traditional Tales). It gives a complete account of the most prominent fictions from the Greek romances down to the present day, and is quite as valuable for those who like to take their novels condensed, as for those who make a historical study of literature.

HOLTEI, the German poet, has published a four-volume novel, called _Die Vagabunden_ (The Vagabonds). It is a curious and successful book. It treats of the various classes that get their living by amusing others, not merely of theatrical and musical artists, but of circus-riders, ventriloquists, jugglers, rope-dancers, puppet-showmen, &c. Indeed, actors and musicians are only introduced casually, while the lower classes, if we may so call them, of wandering artists, make up the book; and they make it up not in the form of caricatures or exaggerations, but as genuine living characters, with the faults and virtues that really belong to men of their respective professions The story is a good one, and is varied with all sorts of strange adventures.

In poetry we observe the attractive title of _The Æolian Harp of the World’s Poetry_, a collection of poems of all countries and ages, "dedicated to German ladies and maidens," by FERD. SCHMIDT. Also by the same collector, a Household Treasury of the most beautiful Ballads, Romances, and Poetic Legends of all Times and Nations; by BRUNO LINDNER, _Four Tales_, and from the Countess AGNES SCHWERIN, a new edition of _What I heard from the bird_. Were we confident that the Countess were intimately familiar with English poetry, we should feel half inclined to accuse her of having taken this title from

"High diddle ding, I heard a bird sing."

G. PUSLITZ has "thrown forth," as Bacchus threw the wreath of Ariadne, a "garland of Stories," entitled _What the Forest Tells_. Whether, like the wreath alluded to, it will reach the stars, we must leave our readers or his to decide.

In Science, we observe the publication of a piece of eccentric nonsense such as emanates at the present day only from a weak brother in Germany, or occasionally from a would-be _original_ in New England. The work to which we refer is the _Natur und Geist_ (or _Nature and Spirit_) of DR. JOHANN RIOHERS. In the second volume he attempts to utterly overwhelm, confound, and destroy Newton’s Theory of Attraction, by such an argument as the following. "Let any man jump from a height, in descending he feels no _attraction_ to the Earth. How hasty and absurd therefore is it to attribute the movement in question to such an attraction."

A new collection of German Domestic Legends (_Haus Mährchen_) has been published at Leipzig, by J.W. WOLF, a distinguished German philologist. His Legends closely resemble those collected by Grimm, and, like them, are curious and instructive. He obtained them, one from a Gipsey, others from peasants in the mountain districts, and others from some companies of Hessian soldiers. He remarks that many such ancient legends are yet floating about among the German people, and that they ought to be collected before they are lost.

ZEND AVESTA, or On the things of Heaven and the World beyond the Grave, is the title of a new book in three volumes just published at Leipzig, in German, of course, by GUSTAV THEODOR FECHNOR. The author attempts to prove the possibility, if not the certainty, of a future life of the individual after death. His demonstrations are drawn from the analogies of the natural world. He exhibits a wide acquaintance with nature and with literature, but is not thought to have made any positive additions to psychological science.

Those who are conversant with the curiosities of the Middle Ages, and have read the entertaining history of "_Ye Nigromancer Virgilius_," in which the Mantuan bard lives no longer in the magic of song, but that of literal sorcery, will peruse with pleasure the _Virgil’s Fortleben im Mittelalter_, or The Life of Virgil continued in the Middle Ages, by G. RAPPERT. Of all the wild romantic legends which the romantic time brought forth, none surpass in singularity and interest this singular narration.

TEMPERANCE TALES are produced in Germany as well as elsewhere. JEREMIAS GOTTHELF is the best author who there cultivates this style of composition. His _Dürsli, the Brandy drinker_, has just passed through a fourth edition, and _How five Maidens miserably perished in Brandy_, to a second. Gotthelf has the talent of combining great dramatic interest and artistic freshness of narration, with a moral purpose. Hence the popularity of these little books.

NIEHL’S _Bûrgerliche Gesellschaft_ (Civil Society) is greatly praised by critics, as the most valuable work lately published in Germany, or indeed in Europe, upon the State of Society and the causes operating to change it. Especially good are its pictures of the different classes in Germany, such as the nobility, the peasantry, the industrious middle class, and the proletaries. These pictures are said to have the minuteness and fidelity of daguerreotypes. The chapter on the "proletaries of intellectual labor," gives any thing but a flattering account of the literary classes on the continent. Those classes are held up as in a great measure perverted, empty, and dangerous. Niehl divides Society in Germany into four great classes, namely: the peasantry, the aristocracy, the _bourgeoisie_ or middle class, and the proletariat, or mere laborers for wages. The last he regards as the decaying and corrupting class, a sort of scum in hot effervesence. This is, however, one of the classes that produce social movement; the other is the middle class; the conservative or stationary classes are the peasantry and aristocracy. The learned professions he reckons among the middle class. He makes no distinction between the proletaries who live by the soil, and those who live by working in connection with manufactures and mechanical trades.

Another contribution to Goethean literature is the Correspondence between the great Poet and his intimate friend Knebel, which has just appeared in Germany in two volumes. The letters extend from 1774 to 1832, and contain the free expression of Goethe’s opinions on a great variety of important subjects, as well as many interesting particulars in his personal history, hitherto unknown.

MR. WETZSTEIN, Prussian Consul at Damascus, has returned to Europe, bringing a valuable collection of Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts, which he expects to sell to the Royal Library at Berlin. Of especial value is a history of Persia during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which casts light on several portions of Persian history that have hitherto been obscure.

LONGFELLOW’S _Evangeline_ has been translated into German and published at Hamburg. The name of the translator is not given. The critics find that the poem has a very marked resemblance to Goethe’s Herman and Dorothea.

DR. MAYO’S _Berber_ has been translated into the German by Mr. L. Dubois, and published at Leipzig.

A new and splendid edition of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ has been published at Leipzig, in German. It is curious to see the good old book discussed by the critics as if it were a new production.

German Historical Literature has lately been enriched by numerous valuable works. Among these we notice WENCK’S _Fränkische Reich_ (Frankish Empire), which treats that subject, from A.D. 843 to 861, with instructive thoroughness and philosophical insight; two essays by FICKER, the one on Reinhald von Dassel, the Chancellor of Ferdinand I., and the other on the attempt of Henry VI. to render the German empire hereditary; ARNTHEN’S _History of Carinthia_; RINK’S _Tirol_; PALAZKY’S _History of Bohemia_; MINUTOLI’S _History of the Elector Frederic I._; RIEDEL’S _Ten years of the History of the Ancestors of the Royal House of Prussia_; the _History of Schleswig Holstein_, by GEORGE WAITZ; RUCKERT’S _Annals of German History_; G. PHILIP’S _Outlines of the History of the German Empire and German Law_; GENGLER’S _History of German Law_; the _Coins of the German Emperors and Kings in the Middle Ages_, a large work by CAPPE; the _Celts and Ancient Helvetians_, by J. B. BROZI; and the _Campaigns of the Bavarians_ from 1643 to 1645, by J. HELLMANN; MAYR’S _Mann von Rinn_ (Man of Rinn) deserves special mention. The man of Rinn is Joseph Speckbacher, the hero of the war of 1809 in the Tyrol. His deeds, and those of his countrymen, are here narrated in a style as attractive as the facts are authentic.

In all the States of the German Confederation there are 2,651 booksellers, 400 of whom deal only in their own publications, 2,200 sell books, but do not publish, and 451 keep general assortments of books, and publish also. At Berlin there are 129 booksellers, at Leipzic, 145, at Vienna, 52, at Stuttgard, 50, and at Frankfort, 36. A hundred years ago there were only 31 at Leipzic and 6 at Berlin, and at two fairs held at Leipzic in 1750, only 350 German booksellers’ establishments were represented. No one is allowed in Germany to become a bookseller without a license from the government, and in Prussia the applicant has to pass a special examination.

Those desirous of acquiring languages by wholesale, may try a recent work by Captain J. NEPOMUK SZÖLLÖZY, with which the scholar can learn, according to the Ollendorffian system, French, German, English, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Wallachian and Turkish. Phrases and vocabularies of all the languages are appended.

A second edition of ADOLF STAHR’S _Preussische Revolution_, has appeared in Germany, revised by the author and dedicated to Macaulay. No recent book in Germany has been more successful than this.

MAX SCHLESINGER’S _Wanderings through London_ are announced at Berlin; the first volume is already published. One of the chapters treats of "Linkoln’s-In-Fields."

We learn from the last number of the _Journal Asiatique_, that M. WÖPCKE, a mathematician who devotes himself to Arabic studies, has discovered in some Arabic manuscripts two works purporting to be by Euclid, which have not been preserved in the Greek original, nor are any where referred to as his by ancient mathematical writers. One is a treatise on the lever, and the other on the division of planimetric figures. The authenticity of the two is thought to be perfectly established by collateral evidence.

The Hungarian author. Baron Eötvös, has just published a work called _Ueber den Einfluss der Neuen Ideen auf den Staat_ (On the influence of new ideas upon the State). He argues that the students of social and political science should confine themselves strictly to the method received in the natural sciences, and employed there with such success; first establish what are the genuine experimental phenomena, and then by induction settle the law which produces and governs them.

We expect a treat from MORITZ WAGNER’S _Reise nach Persien und dem Lande der Kurden_ (Journey to Persia and Kurdistan) the first volume of which is advertised in our last files of German papers. Wagner is one of the best of travellers, and we shall look for the book itself with some impatience. The second volume is announced as to appear in three weeks after the first.

The second part of the third volume of HUMBOLDT’S _Kosmos_, has just appeared at Stuttgart. It treats of the heavenly nebulae, suns, planets, comets, aurora borealis, zodiacal light, meteors, and meteoric stones. This completes the uranological part of the description of the physical universe. Humboldt has already begun his fourth volume, and expects to finish it before June next.

KOSSUTH is speculated on by a German bookseller, who advertises a work giving a complete account of his sayings and doings since the capitulation at Vilagos, including his flight to Turkey and his residence there, the negotiations for his release, his journey from Kutahia to England, and his tarry there up to sailing for America, with a portrait.

THE REV. HENRY T. CHEEVER’S _Life in the Sandwich Islands_ (noticed by us lately in the _International_), is reprinted in London, by Bentley, and translated in German for a publisher at Berlin.

SILVIO PELLICO, so famous for his works, his imprisonments and sufferings, is passing the winter in Paris.

The complete works of CLEMENS BRENTANO, have been brought out at Frankfort, in seven volumes.

Two books of travels in Scandinavia have just appeared in Germany. One is the _Bilder aus dem Norden_ (Pictures of the North), by Professor OSCAR SCHMIDT of Jena; and the other _Hägringar_, or a Journey through Sweden, Lapland, Norway, and Denmark, in 1850, by a young author. Professor Schmidt amply repays the reader, which is more than can always be said of the author of _Hägringar_. Both works are, however, especially worthy the attention of those who wish to study the natural history and ethnography of the countries in question.

MADAME VON WEBER, widow of the composer, who has for some years resided at Vienna, has applied to the Emperor of Austria for permission to dispose of the three original MSS. scores of her husband’s operas, _Der Freischütz, Eutryanthe_, and _Oberon_. These were in the Royal Library at Vienna; and she purposes offering them to the three sovereigns of Saxony, Prussia, and England,—in which respective countries they were originally produced. The Emperor has caused the MSS. to be delivered to her.

PROFESSOR NUYTZ, whose work on canon law was recently condemned by the Holy See, has resumed his lectures at Turin. The lecture-room was crowded, and the learned professor was received with loud applause. He adverted to the hostility of the clergy, and to the Papal censures of his work, which censures he declared to be in direct opposition to the rights of the civil power. He expressed his thanks to the ministry for having refused to deprive him of his chair.

A valuable contribution to Italian history is _Die Carafa von Maddaloni, Neapel unter Spanische Herrschaft_ (Naples under Spanish Domination), just published in Germany, by ALFRED VON REUMONT, a member of the Prussian Legation at Florence, who, more than almost any other man, has made a study of the history of that part of Italy, and who in this work has had access to a great mass of new documents. He writes as a monarchist, but his facts may be relied on. The work is in two volumes.

Every body remembers the noise made in New-York some fifteen years since by the revelations of MARIA MONK. We notice a translation of her famous disclosures advertised, with all sorts of trumpet blowing, in our German papers.

An edition of the complete works of KEPLER is preparing in Germany, under the supervision of Prof. FRISCH, of Stuttgart. The manuscripts of the great astronomer, preserved at St. Petersburg, have been examined for the purpose, with rich results. It is also proposed to erect a monument to Kepler at Stuttgart.

Sixteen German books were prohibited in Russia in August last; among them were FONTAINE’S _Poems_, GÖRRE’S _Christian Mysticism_, KUTZ’S _Manual of Sacred History_, SCHMIDT’S _Death of Lord Byron_, KINKEL’S _Truth without Poetry_, and STRAUSS’S _Life Questions_. Of eleven other works, a few pages from each were prohibited; among these was the German version of Lieutenant LYNCH’S _United States Expedition to the Jordan and the Dead Sea_. These works are allowed to enter Russia after having the objectionable pages cut out.

The science of landscape gardening is enriched by a new work of value just published at Leipzig, by RUDOLPH LIEBECK, the director of the public garden in that city. It is called _Die bildenden Garten Kunst in seinen Modernen Formen_ (The Modern Constructive Art of Gardening). It has twenty colored plates.

COTTA, of Stuttgart, is preparing to publish a splendid illustrated edition of Goethe’s _Faust_. The designs are to be by an artist well known in Germany, Engelbert Seibertz. The work is to be published in numbers.

The historical remains and letters of George Spalatin have been published at Weimar. They are a valuable addition to the history of the Reformation.

It is remarkable that the only oriental nation whose literature has much resemblance to ours, and has a direct practical value for us, is the Chinese. For instance, the works of this people upon agriculture abound in practical information, which may be made immediately useful in Europe and America. We noticed, some time since, the treatise on the raising and care of silk worms, translated and published at Paris, by M. STANISLAS JULIEN, which was so warmly welcomed in France as a timely addition to what was there known upon the subject. It seems that this work was but a small portion of an extensive Cyclopedia of Agriculture in use in China, where the science of tilling the soil has in many respects been developed to an astonishing degree of perfection. This cyclopedia, M. Hervey, a French scholar, whose knowledge of the Eastern languages is accompanied by an equally profound love of farming, has undertaken to translate entire. This is a difficult and tedious enterprise, especially on account of the mass of botanical and technical expressions which occur in the work, and of which the dictionaries furnish no explanation. Meanwhile M. Hervey has published some of the results of his studies in a work called _Investigations on Agriculture and Gardening among the Chinese_. He mentions several varieties of fruits, vegetables, and trees, which might advantageously be introduced into France and Algiers; he also analyzes the Cyclopedia, and shows what are the difficulties in translating it.

A remarkable contribution to our knowledge of China, is M. BIOT’s recent translation of the book called _Tscheu-li_. It seems that in the twelfth century before Christ, the second dynasty that had ruled the country, that of _Thang_, fell by its own vices, and the empire passed into the hands of Wu-wang, the head of the princely family of _Tscheu-li_. Wu-wang was a great soldier and statesman; he confided to his brother Tscheu-Kong, a man evidently of extraordinary political genius, the moral and administrative reformation of the empire. He first laid the foundation of a reform in moral ideas by an addition to the Y-King or sacred book, which the Chinese revere and incessantly study, but which still remains an unintelligible mystery for Europeans. Of his administrative reforms a complete record is preserved in the _Tscheu-li_, and nothing could be easier to understand.

When the Tscheus thus came into power, they found in existence a powerful feudal aristocracy, from which they themselves proceeded, and which they must tolerate. Accordingly, they recognized within the imperial dominions sixty-three federal jurisdictions, which were hereditary, but whose rulers were obliged to administer according to the laws and methods of the empire. Having made this concession, they abolished all other hereditary offices, and established instead, a vast system of centralization, such as the world has never seen equalled elsewhere. The administration, according to the _Tscheu-li_, is divided among six ministries, which were also divided into sections, and the executive functions descend regularly and systematically to the lowest official, and include the entire movement of society. The emperor and the feudal princes are restrained by formalities and usage, as well as by the expression of disapprobation; and the officials of every grade by their hierarchical dependency, and by a system of incessant oversight; and finally, the people by proscription, and the education, industrial, as well as mental and moral, which the State dispenses to them. The sole idea in which this astonishing system rests, is that of the State, whose office is to care for all that can contribute to the public good, and which regulates the action of every individual with a view to this end. In his organization, Tscheu-Kong excelled every thing that the most centralized governments of Europe have devised.

The Tscheu family remained in power for five centuries, and was finally broken down by the feudal element they had preserved. But so deep was the impress of Tscheu-Kong upon the nation, that after centuries of revolutions and civil war, it returned to his institutions and principles, and it is by them and in a great degree in their exact forms, that China is now governed.

In form the _Tscheu-li_ is like an imperial almanac of our own times. It is, however, much more complete, because Tscheu-Kong gives in it a mass of detailed instructions, in order to make the officials aware of their duties and the precise limits of their authority. Thus the work affords a quite exact picture of the social condition of China at that time. There is no other monument of antiquity with which it can be compared, except the _Manus_, the Indian book of law. The difference is, that in China the intellectual activity was altogether political, and the public organization altogether imperial and political; while in India the mental activity was metaphysical, and the public organization altogether municipal.

The translation of the _Tscheu_ was not published till after M. Biot’s decease; it was brought out by his father, with the assistance of M. Stanislas Julien.

The library of the famous Cardinal Mezzofanti is about to be sold, and the catalogue is already printed—in Italian, of course. It is one of the most extensive and valuable collection of works in various languages ever made, and it is to be hoped that it may not be disposed of at the sale, but pass all together into some public library—that of some university would be most appropriate. To indicate the contents of the catalogue, we give the titles of the different parts: Books in Albanian or Epirotic, Arabic, Armenian, American (Indian dialects of Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, United States), Bohemian, Chaldaic, Chinese (Cochin-Chinese, Trin-Chinese, Japanese), Danish (Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Laplandic), Hebrew (Antique, Rabbinic, Samaritan), Egyptian, or Coptic-Egyptian and Coptic, Arabic, Etrusean, Phœnician, Flemish, French (Breton-French, Lorraine-French, Provençal), Gothic and Visi-Gothic, and Greek and Greek-Latin, Modern Greek, Georgian or Iberian, Cretian or Rhetian, Illyrian, Indo-oriental (Angolese, Burmese or Avian, Hindostanee, Malabar, Malayan, Sanscrit), English (Arctic, Breton or Celtic, Scotch-Celtic, Scotch, Irish, Welch), Italian (Fineban dialect, Maltese, Milanese, Sardinian, Sicilian), Kurdistanee or Kurdic, Latin, Maronite and Syriac Maronite, Oceanic (Australian), Dutch, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (various dialects), Slavonian (Carniolan, Serbian, Ruthenian, Slavo-Wallachian), Syriac, Spanish (Catalan, Biscayan), Russian, Turkish, Hungarian, Gipsey.

The French historian MICHELET, deprived of his professorship in the College of France, is devoting himself more than ever to literature. His last work, of which an authorized translation has just appeared in London, is _The Martyrs of Russia_.

MICHEL NICOLAS, one of the ablest among the French theologico-ethical writers, has published a translation of the _Considerations on the Nature and Historical Developments of Christian Philosophy_, by Dr. RITTER, of the University of Gottingen.

M. SCHONENBERGER, a music-publisher at Paris, has purchased from the heirs of Paganini the copyright of his works, and is now publishing them, under the editorial supervision of M. ACHILLE PAGANINI, the son of the great violinist. The edition will comprise every thing that he left behind in writing. Hector Berlioz speaks with enthusiasm in the _Journal des Debats_ of the two grand concertos which have just appeared, one of them containing the marvellous rondo of the _campanella_. Berlioz speaks in high praise of Paganini’s genius as a composer. A volume would be required, he says, to indicate the new effects, the ingenious methods, the grand and noble forms which he discovered, and even the orchestral combinations, which before him were not suspected. In spite of the rapid progress which, thanks to Paganini, the violin is making at the present day in respect of mechanical execution, his compositions are yet beyond the skill of most violinists, and in reading them it is hardly possible to conceive how their author was able to execute them. Unfortunately he was not able to transmit to his successors the vital spark which animated and rendered _human_ those astonishing prodigies of mechanism.

M. PHILARETE CHASLES, one of the literary critics of the _Journal des Debats_, has published, at Paris, a book called _Etudes sur la Litterateur et les Mæurs des Anglo-Americanis_, which abounds in those curious blunders that some French authors seem to be destined to when they write upon topics connected with foreign countries. For instance, he makes the pilgrims of Plymouth to have been the founders of Philadelphia, New-York, and Boston. Buffalo he sets down opposite to Montreal, speaks of the puritans of Pennsylvania as near neighbors of Nova Scotia, and extends Arkansas to the Rocky Mountains. At New-York his regret is that a railroad has destroyed the beauty of Hoboken, and at New Orleans he laments that marriages between whites and Creoles are interdicted. Of Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Audubon, and Longfellow, he speaks in terms of just praise, but Willis is not mentioned. Bancroft and Hildreth are mentioned as historians, Prescott is spoken of briefly in connection with his Ferdinand and Isabella, while his other works are not alluded to. To Herman Melville, M. Chasles devotes fifty pages, while Mr. Ticknor has not even the honor of a mention. The author of this work is very far from doing justice either to American literature or to himself.

Five of the nine intended volumes of LAFUENTE’S _General History of Spain_ from the remotest times to the present day, have appeared in Paris.

In Paris a new edition is announced of the best French versions of FENIMORE COOPER’S works—six or eight illustrated volumes.

M. GUIZOT is about to publish a new volume at Paris, with the title of _Shakspeare et son Temps_ (Shakspeare and his Times). It is to be composed of his Life of Shakspeare, and the articles that he has written at various times upon different plays. The only novelty in it is a notice on Hamlet which was prepared expressly for this publication. He regards both Macbeth and Othello as better dramas than Hamlet, but thinks the last contains more brilliant examples of Shakspeare’s sublimest beauties and grossest faults. "Nowhere," says Guizot, "has he unveiled with more originality, depth and dramatic effect, the inmost state of a great soul: but nowhere has he more abandoned himself to the caprices, terrible or burlesque, of his imagination, and to that abundant intemperance of a mind pressed to get out its ideas without choosing among them, and bent on rendering them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected mode of expression, without any regard to their truth and natural form." The French critic also thinks that on the stage the effect of Hamlet is irresistible.

A Capital work on Paris has just been published at Berlin, from the pen of FRIEDRICH SZARVADY, a Hungarian, who has resided for several years in Paris. The titles of the chapters are:—Paris in Paris; Strangers in Paris; Parisian Women; Street Eloquence; the Temple of Jerusalem (the Bourse); Salons and Conversation; Dancing, Song, and Flowers; the Ball at the Grand Opera; Artist Life; the Press; the Feuilleton; History on a Public Square; Lamartine, Cavaignac, Thiers; Louis Bonaparte. Szarvady observes sharply, and writes with as much grace and _esprit_ as a Frenchman. Nothing can be more taking than his pages. They deserve a translation from the German into English.

VILLERGAS, the Spanish historian, who in one of his recent works drew a parallel between Espartero and Narvaez which excited great attention at Madrid and in other parts of Spain, has just been condemned by the court which has charge of the offences of the press, to a fine of twenty thousand reals, or twenty-five hundred dollars, for the sin against public order and private character contained in that parallel.

An interesting and valuable series of articles reviewing historically the systems of land tenure which have prevailed in different countries, is appearing in the _Journal des Débats_ from the pen of M. HENRY TRIANON. The systems of India and China have already been examined.

The termagant wife of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton has just published _The School for Husbands_, a novel founded on the life and times of Moliere. Probably her own husband is shot at in all the chapters.

The books on modern French history would already fill an Alexandrian library, and every month produces new ones. M. LEONARD GALLOIS, a well-known historical writer, announces a _History of the Revolution of February, 1848_, in _five_ large octavos, with forty-one portraits. M. BARANTE’s _History of the Convention_ will consist of six octavos, of which three are published, and the last is accompanied by it biographical sketch of each of the seven hundred and fifty members. The period embraced in this work is from 1792 to 1795, inclusive. There is a new _History of the City of Lyons_, in three octavos, by the city librarian.

The _Letters and unpublished Essays of Count_ JOSEPH DE MAISTRE have been brought out at Paris, in two volumes octavo. The letters show the celebrated author in a new and pleasing light; a tone of genial unreserve prevails in many of them, which those who have become familiar with his brilliant, dogmatic, and paradoxical intellect, in his more elaborate writings, would hardly suppose him capable of. No writer, of this century at least, has more powerfully set forth the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church than he.

The _Political Situation of Cuba_, a volume published in Paris, by Don ANTONIO SACO, is commended in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Don Antonio was one of the most distinguished intelligences and liberals of the precious island: he argues against independence, or annexation to the American Union: he suggests various arrangements by which Spain could safely establish political freedom in Cuba, and he thinks administrative and judicial reforms to counteract the worst ills of her present situation, might be accomplished.

A New edition of SHARON TURNER’s _History of the Anglo-Saxons_ has just appeared in London, with important additions and revision. The first edition of Turner’s History was published in London more than fifty years ago. At the time when the first volume appeared, the subject of Anglo-Saxon antiquities had been nearly forgotten by the British public, although the most venerated laws, customs, and institutions of the nation originated before the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts lay unexamined in archives, and the important information they contained had never been made a part of general history. Mr. Turner undertook a careful and patient investigation of all the documents belonging to the period preserved in the kingdom, and the result of his labors was the work in question, which at once gave rise to an almost universal passion for the records and remains of the Anglo-Saxon people, and called forth general applause from the best minds of England. A good edition of his History was published several years ago by Carey and Hart of Philadelphia, but it is now, we believe, out of print.

The Rev. JOHN HOWARD HINTON, author of a well-known History of the United States, has published, in London, a volume under the title of _The Test of Experience_, in which he has presented a masterly argument for the voluntary principle in matters of religion. The "test of experience" is in this, as in all other things, the best of tests, and the religious institutions of the United States can well bear its application. One of the most noticeable results of the non-interference of the State is pointed out in the following passage:

"To travellers in the United States, no fact has been more immediately or more powerfully striking than the total absence of religious rivalry. Amidst such a multitude of sects, an inhabitant of the old world naturally, and almost instinctively looks for one that sets up exclusive pretensions and possesses an actual predominance. But he finds nothing of the kind. Neither presbyterianism, or prelacy, nor any other form of ecclesiasticism, makes the slightest effort to lift its head above its fellow. And with the resignation of exclusive pretensions, the entire ecclesiastical strife has ceased, and the din of angry war has been hushed; and here, at length, the voluntary principle is able to exhibit itself in its true colors, as a lover of peace and the author of concord. It is busied no longer with the arguing of disputed claims, but throws its whole energy into free and combined operations for the extension of Christianity. The general religious energy embodies itself in a thousand forms; but while there is before the church a vast field to which the activities of all are scarcely equal, there is, also, ’a fair field and no favor,’—a field in which all have the same advantages, and in which each is sure to find rewards proportionate to its wisdom and its zeal. This inestimable benefit of religious peace is clearly due to the voluntary principle."

JUNIUS, since the publication of his Letters, never figured more conspicuously than during the last month. The _Paris Revue des Deux Mondes_ has a very long article on the great secret by M. Charles Remusat, a member of the Institute, well known in historical criticism. He arrays skilfully the facts and reasonings which British inquirers have adduced in favor of Sir Philip Francis, and the other most probable author, Lord George Sackville. He seems to incline to the latter, but does not decide. He pronounces that, on the whole, Junius was not "a great publicist." His powers and influence are investigated and explained by M. de Remusat with acuteness and comprehensive survey. Lord Mahon, in his new volumes, says, "From the proofs adduced by others, and on a clear conviction of my own, I affirm that the author of Junius was no other than Sir Philip Francis." We think not. The London _Athenæum_, last year, we thought, settled this point. It is understood that the editor of the _Grenville Papers_, now on the eve of publication, in London, is in favor of Lord Temple as a claimant for the authorship of Junius. The January number of the _Quarterly Review_ contains an article on the subject.

The _Natural History of the Human Species_, by Lieutenant-Colonel CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH, is the title of a duodecimo volume from the press of Gould & Lincoln of Boston. An American editor (Dr. Kneeland) has added an introductory survey of recent literature on the subject. The whole performance is feeble. The author and his editor endeavor to make out something like the infidel theory of Professor AGASSIZ, which, a year or two ago, attracted sufficient attention to induce an investigation and an intelligent judgment, in several quarters, as to the real claims of that person to the distinctions in science which his advertising managers claim for him. We have not space now for any critical investigation of the work, and therefore merely warn that portion of our readers who feel any interest in ethnological studies, of its utter worthlessness.

An Englishman, Mr. FRANCIS BONYNGE, recently from the East Indies, has come to this country at the instance of our minister in London, for the purpose of bringing before us the subject of introducing some twenty of the most valuable agricultural staples of the East, among which are the tea, coffee, and indigo plants, into the United States. He gives his reasons for believing that tea and indigo would become articles of export from this country to an amount greater than the whole of our present exports. He says that tea, for which we now pay from sixty-five to one hundred cents per lb. may be produced for from two to five cents, free from the noxious adulterations of the tea we import. He has published a small volume under the title of _The Future Wealth of America_, in which his opinions are fully explained and illustrated.

The first volume of a work on _Christian Iconography_, by M. DIDRON, of Paris, opens to the curious reader a new source of intellectual enjoyment, both in the department of ancient religious art, and in the archæology of the early paintings of the Catholic Church. The rich, profuse, and quaint plates of the original work are used in a translation ably made by E.J. Millington, published in London by Bohn, and in New-York by Bangs.

SIR FRANCIS BOND HEAD, so well known in this country as one of the former governors of Canada, and as an author of remarkable versatility and cleverness, has published an agreeable but superficial book on Paris—the Paris of January, 1852—under the quaint title of _A Bundle of French Sticks_; and Mr. Putnam has reprinted it in his new library.

A remarkable book published in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1847, by J. D. NOURSE, under the title of _Remarks on the Past, and its Legacies to American Society_, has just been reprinted in London, with an introduction by D. T. COULTON.

The following works, all of which have promising titles, will soon be published by J. S. REDFIELD: _Men of the Times in 1852_, comprising biographical sketches of all the celebrated men of the present day; _Characters in the Gospels_, by Rev. E. H. Chapin; _Tales and Traditions of Hungary_, by Theresa Pulzky; _The Comedy of Love_, and the _History of the Eighteenth Century_, by Arsene Houssaye; Aytoun’s _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_; _The Cavaliers of England_, and _The Knights of the Olden Time, or the Chivalry of England, France and Spain_, by Henry W. Herbert; _Lectures and Miscellanies_, by Henry James; and _Isa: a Pilgrimage_, by Caroline Chesebro.

_The Westminster Review_ says of ALICE CAREY, whose _Clovernook_ we noticed favorably in the last _International_, that "no American woman can be compared to her for genius;" the Paris _Débats_ refers to her as a poet of the rank of Mrs. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING in England; the literary critic of _The Tribune_ (the learned and accomplished RIPLEY whose judgment in such a matter is beyond appeal) prefers her _Clovernook_ to Miss MITFORD’S _Our Village_, or Professor WILSON’S _Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life_.

MR. DANIEL S. CURTISS has availed himself well of large opportunities for personal observation, in his volume just published under the title of _Western Portraiture, and Emigrant’s Guide_, a description of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, with remarks on Minnesota and other territories. It is the most judicious and valuable book of the kind we have seen.

HERR FREUND, the Philologist, is in London, engaged in constructing a German-English and English-German dictionary upon his new system; and Professor SMITH, the learned editor of the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, announces a dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, the articles to be written by the principal contributors to his previous works.

THE CHRISTMAS BOOKS of the present season in England have not been very remarkable. Mr. DICKENS, in an extra number of his Household Words, printed _What Christmas is to Everybody_; and we have from WILKIE COLLINS, _A New Christmas Story_; by the author of "The Ogilvies," _Alice Learmont, a Fairy Tale of Love_; by the author of "The Maiden Aunt," a pleasant little book entitled _The Use of Sunshine_.

Under the title of _Excerpta de P. Ovidii Nastonis_, Blanchard & Lea of Philadelphia have published a series of selections from a poet whose works, for obvious reasons, are not read entire in the schools. The extracts present some of the most beautiful parts of this graceful and versatile poet.

THE FINE ARTS

The American Art Unions have not been successful in the last year, unless an exception may be made in regard to that of New England, at Boston. The American, at New-York, deferred indefinitely its annual distribution of pictures, on account of the small number of its subscriptions; and the Pennsylvanian, at Philadelphia, by a recent fire in that city has lost its admirably-engraved plates of Huntington’s pictures from the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, the last of which was just completed and placed in the hands of the printer. It will make no distribution.

A Sicilian artist, residing at Naples, has amused himself, and probably pleased his sovereign, by composing a life-sized group, representing Religion supporting King Ferdinand, and guarded by an angel, who places his foot on an evil spirit. On the other side of this group is a child bearing the scales of justice. "How much," writes a correspondent of the _Athenæum_, "the artist is to get for this plaster blasphemy, I know not; but a more impudent caricature (at the present moment) it would be difficult to imagine." Another artist has, however, beaten the Sicilian sculptor quite out. A small bronze group represents Religion triumphing over Impiety and Anarchy. Impiety is represented by a female figure, under whose arm are two books inscribed Voltaire and Luther! Anarchy has taken off her mask, and let fall two scrolls, on which are written _Communismo_ and _Constituto_.

PROFESSOR ZAHN, who has been engaged during a period of more than twenty years in examining the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, has exhibited at Berlin a collection of casts unique in their kind. These are 8,000 in number; and comprise all the remarkable sculptures of the above places, besides those found at Stabiæ, and those of the vast collection of the Museo Borbonico and other museums of the Two Sicilies. The casts from the Museo Borbonico are the first ever made,—the King of Naples having accorded the privilege of taking these copies to M. Zahn alone, in royal recompense for the Professor’s great work on Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A book which all students of art should possess, is DR. KUGLER’S _Geschichte der Kunst_ (History of Art), with the Illustrations (_Bilderatlos_) which accompany it, and which are now being published at Stuttgart. The ancient and modern schools of Art—Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture—are here represented in outlines of their most celebrated and characteristic works. Eleven numbers of these Illustrations have appeared, and the whole work will be completed in the course of the coming year.

In our musical world there have been several noticable facts in the last month. The opera company, perhaps from the utter incapacity of its director, has been divided, and the best portion of it has been singing at Niblo’s Theatre. Jenny Lind’s farewell series of concerts was prevented by intelligence of the death of the great singer’s mother, in Sweden. Catherine Hayes has been successful in several concerts at Tripler Hall, and Mrs. Bostwick, whom the best critics of the city regard as superior to any singer who has appeared among us, except Jenny Lind, has given a second series of her subscription concerts, which were extremely well attended.

A correspondent of the _Athenæum_, writing from Egypt, urges that a few young artists should be sent out with orders to copy all the hieroglyphics on the most important temples, as well as the numerous tablets and fragments which are daily brought to light. "A work pursued with such materials—all theories and arbitrary classification being excluded—would ever remain as a lasting monument, and would reflect great credit on the Government which should order its execution." Less than one-half of the money required for the removal of the Obelisk would amply cover all expenses.

A correspondent of _Kuhne’s Europa_ writes from Dresden that a number of humorous drawings, sketched by the pencil of Schiller, and accompanied by descriptions in his own hand, have been found in the possession of a Swabian family, with whom the great poet became acquainted during his residence at Loschwitz.

In Berlin, M. von Prinz, a pupil of Kiss, the sculptor, is erecting a group which he calls _The Lion-killer_ in imitation of the _Amazon_. Kiss himself is engaged on a set of groups from a fox-hunt, Rauch has almost completed a bust of Humboldt, and statues of General Gneisenau and of _Hope_.

A colossal statue of the Emperor Napoleon, thirty feet high, is to be placed on the top of the Triumphal Arch, at the end of the Champs Elysées, in Paris.

KAULBACH has undertaken to draw a set of sketches for an illustrated edition of Shakspeare, which will shortly be published by Nicolai, At Berlin.

MR. GREENOUGH, is now in New-York, awaiting the arrival of his splendid group for the Capitol, from Italy. He will soon be engaged on his statue of his friend the late Mr. Cooper, to be erected in this city.

HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE MONTH

The extraordinary abilities of Kossuth as orator, hid attractive personal qualities, and grandeur of his propositions, continue to occupy the generous regard of the people of the United States, but the impression which obtained at one time that the national government would in any manner or degree enter into his plans for confining a future contest for the liberty of Hungary exclusively to the two parties most immediately interested, appears to have been very generally given up. This country will continue to encourage and aid oppressed peoples by showing how wisely and efficiently its servants can attend to her own affairs. At the same time it is not to be doubted that citizens in their private capacity may and will do much for the illustrious exile who pleads among us for the means of opposing the oppressors of his nation. Kossuth has been entertained at public banquets since he left New-York by the authorities of Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Annapolis, and Harrisburg; he has been received by the President of the United States, the two houses of Congress, and the legislatures of Maryland and Pennsylvania; and on the 7th of January he dined with the representatives, senators, and other persons connected with the government, at Washington, and Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, William H. Seward, and Stephen A. Douglass, made speeches on the occasion expressive of their personal respect and sympathy, and their anxiety as individuals to see Hungary independent. Mr. Cass indeed went so far as entirely to endorse the doctrine of Kossuth respecting intervention to insure non-intervention. Kossuth is now in the state of Ohio, and he probably will remain in this country long enough—since the French revolution has at least deferred any great and united movement of the European democracy—to visit all the principal cities of the valley of the Mississippi.

But little important business has yet been accomplished in Congress, though numerous bills have been introduced, as is usual in the early weeks of the session. On the morning of the 24th of December, a portion of the capitol, occupied by the national library, was destroyed by fire, with nearly sixty thousand printed volumes, and many MSS., maps, medals, portraits, sculptures, and other works of art.

The legislature of several of the states are now in session. Those of Ohio, Michigan, Mississippi, Wisconsin and California, met on the 5th of January; those of New-York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, on the 7th; those of Maryland and Massachusetts, on the 7th; that of Indiana, on the 8th; those of Virginia and Illinois, on the 12th; that of New Jersey, on the 13th; that of Maine, on the 14th, and that of Louisiana, on the 19th. No great national questions have been prominently before the state legislatures, except that of our foreign relations, with special reference to Hungary, upon which the assemblies in the several states appear to be less conservative than Congress. The most important subject of local administration, is that of the suppression of the sales of intoxicating liquors. The law of Maine, enacted last year, will probably be sustained in that state; in Massachusetts a petition with more than one hundred thousand signatures, has been offered in the legislature for such a law, and similar efforts are being made in New-York and other States.

In Mexico there is a continuance of the imbecility of the government and the agitations of factions. Rumors, constantly varying, in regard to the conduct and prospects of Caravajal, leave us in doubt whether any thing of real importance will grow out of his attempts at revolution in the northern provinces. The administration appears to have acted with decision, but probably with impotence so far as the final result is concerned, in regard to the Tehuantepee railroad contract.

South America presents the usual series of disturbances, with some facts which indicate a prospect of repose; but all such prospects in the Spanish states of this continent are apt to be deceptive. The birthday of Bolivar was celebrated at Caracas on the 28th of October with great public festivities. Treaties between Brazil and Uruguay were formed for alliance, military aid, commerce and navigation, and the mutual surrender of criminals, on the 12th of October. We learn from Buenos Ayres that, through November, Rosas was making great preparations to meet Urquiza. He had established a corps of observation in the direction of Entre Rios to look out for an invasion. A considerable emigration was taking place from Buenos Ayres to Montevideo, mostly of previous residents of the latter city.

In Great Britain the most important recent event is the retirement of Lord Palmerston from the cabinet, in which he held the place of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. This occurred on the 22d of December. The causes of Lord Palmerston’s retirement are a subject of much unsatisfactory speculation, and the fact is generally regretted by the friends of political liberty in Europe. His successor is Lord Granville, a nobleman of manly and liberal character, heretofore connected with the government. It is apprehended that the popular feeling may induce the recall of Lord Palmerston to be the head of a new Ministry. Great Britain has now no envoy resident in the United States, but it is not improbable that Sir Henry Bulwer will return to this country for the final settlement of affairs connected with Central America. It is understood officially that the attack of a British man-of-war on the United States steamer Prometheus, at Greytown, was entirely unauthorized.

The Admiralty have determined not to send another expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, by way of Behring’s Straits. The Plover is to be communicated with each year by a man-of-war—the Amphitrite is the next. The proposed overland expedition of Lieut. Pym has been abandoned.

The English war at the Cape of Good Hope continues with little change, though a few important successes by the English are reported. The war appears to be condemned by a large and respectable portion of the journals and the people at home. In its character and details it continues to resemble our own contest with the Indians in Florida.

The month of December, 1851, witnessed, in FRANCE, the successful accomplishment of a _coup d’état_ not less daring than any that marked the earlier annals of that country. It is asserted that the personal security of the President was menaced with imminent danger, when, on the evening of the 1st of December, he came to the resolution to strike the first blow. The measures he immediately took were, to issue an appeal to the people denouncing the conduct of the Assembly, and declaring it dissolved; a proclamation to the army, telling them that "to-day, at this solemn moment, I wish the voice of the army to be heard;" and a decree "in the name of the French people," of which the articles were—"1. The National Assembly is dissolved; 2. Universal Suffrage is re-established—the law of the 31st May is abrogated; 3. The French people is convoked in its elective colleges from the 14th of December to the 21st of December following; 4. The state of siege is decreed through the first military division; 5. The Council of State is dissolved; 6. The Minister of the Interior is charged with the execution of the present decree." The appeal to the people contained these further propositions; "Persuaded that the instability of power, that the preponderance of a single Assembly, are the permanent causes of trouble and discord. I submit to your suffrages the fundamental basis of a constitution which the Assemblies will develop hereafter—1. A responsible chief named for ten years; 2. The Ministers dependent on the executive alone; 3. A Council of State formed of the most distinguished men, preparing the law, and maintaining the discussion before the legislative corps; 4. A legislative corps, discussing and voting the laws, named by universal suffrage, without the _scrutin de liste_ which falsifies the election; 6. A second Assembly formed of all the illustrious persons of the nation—a preponderating power, guardian of the fundamental pact and of public liberty." At an early hour, on the 2d, these manifestoes were found covering the walls of Paris, and at the same time the principal thoroughfares were filled with troops of the line.

The President had taken precautions that the National Guard should not be called out. The Generals Changarnier, Cavaignac, Bedeau, Lamoricière, Leflo, Colonel Charras, MM. Bazé, Thiers. Brun, the Commissary of Police of the Assembly, and others of the leading heads of parties, were arrested before they had risen for the day. Many members of the Assembly gathered at the house of M. Daru, one of their Vice-Presidents and, having him at their head, proceeded to their ordinary place of meeting, but found access effectually barred by the Chasseurs de Vincennes, a corpse recently returned from Algeria. These men forcibly withstood the entrance of the members, some of whom were slightly wounded. Returning with M. Daru, they were invited by General Lauriston to the Marie of the 10th arrondissement, where they formed a sitting, presided over by two of their Vice-Presidents, M. Vitel and M. Benuist d’Azy (M. Daru having meanwhile been arrested), and proceeded to frame a decree to the following effect: "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is deprived of his functions as President of the Republic, and the citizens are commanded to refuse him obedience; the executive power passes in full right to the National Assembly; the judges of the High Court of Justice are required to meet immediately, on pain of dismissal, to proceed to judgment against the President and his accomplices. It is enjoined on all functionaries and depositaries of authority that they obey the requisition made in the name of the Assembly, under penalty of forfeiture and the punishment prescribed for high treason." While this decree was being signed, another was unanimously passed, naming General Oudinot commander of the forces, and M. Tamisier chief of the staff. These decrees had scarcely been signed by all present, when a company of soldiers entered, and required them to disperse. The Assembly refused to do so, when, after some parley, two commissaries de police were brought, the presidents were arrested, and the whole body of members present, 230 in number, were marched across the city to the barracks of the Quai d’Orsay. The next day they were distributed to the prisons of Mount Valerien, Mazas, and Vincennes; and the generals Cavaignac, Lamoricière, Bedeau, and Changarnier, were sent to Ham. During the day the population viewed the soldiers in the streets merely as a spectacle, and no violent excitement occurred. At ten o’clock on Wednesday morning some members of the Mountain appeared in the Rue d’Antoine, and raised the cry _Aux armes!_ The party they collected immediately began to erect a barricade at the corner of the Rue St. Marguerite. Troops were quickly at the spot, when the barricade was carried, and the representative Baudin was killed. Some other barricades were raised in the afternoon, but as quickly destroyed. General Magnan, the Commander-in-chief of the army of Paris, seeing the day was passed in insignificant skirmishes, now determined to withdraw his small posts, to allow the discontented to gather to a head. On the morning of the 4th it was reported that the insurrection had its focus in the Quartiers St. Antoine, St. Denis, and St. Martin, and that several barricades were in progress. The General deferred his attack until two o’clock, when the various brigades of troops acted in concert. The barricades were attacked in the first instance by artillery, and then carried at the point of the bayonet. There were none which offered very serious resistance, and the whole contest was over about five o’clock. In the evening, however, fresh barricades were raised in the Rues Montmartre and Montorgueil, and others in the Rues Pagevin and des Fosses Montmartre, which were successfully attacked in the night by the officers in command of those quarters. On the 5th the last remains of street-fighting were effectually quelled. The loss to the military in these operations was twenty-five men killed, of whom one was Lieut-Col. Loubeau, of the line, and 184 wounded, of whom seventeen were officers. The number of insurgents killed is unknown, but they are estimated it from two to three thousand, including, unfortunately, many indifferent persons, who were accidentally passing along the boulevards when the soldiery suddenly opened their sweeping fire. The insurgents taken with arms in their hands were carried to the Champ de Mars, and there shot by judgment of court martial. Most of the political prisoners arrested were discharged after a few days, some of the more formidable only being longer detained.

By a decree of the President dated the 2d December, the French people were convoked in their respective districts for the 14th of the month to accept or reject the following _plébiscite_: "The French people wills the maintenance of the authority of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and delegates to him the powers necessary to frame a Constitution on the bases proposed in his proclamation of the 2d December." On that day the voting consequently commenced by universal suffrage; and the President has been re-elected for ten years by a majority greatly exceeding that of his contest with Cavaignac. In Paris, of 394,049 registered voters 197,091 have voted in the affirmative; 95,511, in the negative; and 96,819 abstained from voting. The majority for Louis Napoleon being 191,500. In the provinces he has had a majority of eight to one. The inauguration of the usurper took place in the church of Notre Dame on the 3d of January, and the new order of things has been recognized by all the courts of Europe.

On the 25th of November a French squadron appeared before Salee, to claim satisfaction for an act of piracy committed by the inhabitants of that town. The Caid asked for six days to take the orders of the Emperor of Morocco; and the Caid of Rabat sent a similar evasive reply. The next day the French bombarded the place for seven hours, the fire being returned by both forts of Rabat and Salee. The Admiral, however, confined his chastisement to the latter, which he thoroughly performed, and fired the town in several places. The French fleet arrived at Tangier on the morning of the 29th, when the Consul-General for Morocco and several officers of the squadron landed, and had an interview with the Bashaw of the province, which ended in a satisfactory arrangement, to the great relief of the people of Tangier, who were in consternation at the prospect of sharing the fate of their neighbors.

From Austria we learn the partial amelioration in private business of the financial difficulties. The Emperor published, on the 1st of January, decrees, that whereas the provisions of the constitution were cancelled by the imperial edict of August 20, 1851, the last principles of political right conceded by the constitution are now disavowed. There now exists no political right in the empire. The Austrian government continues to watch with the keenest anxiety the proceedings of the exiled Italians and Hungarians, and by very stringent arrangements in regard to the press, and the interdiction of most foreign journals, keeps the "dangerous classes" in ignorance of the sympathy with which they are regarded from abroad.

The Queen of Spain, by a spontaneous act of her royal clemency, granted a pardon to all such prisoners, made in the last expedition against the Isle of Cuba, as are citizens of the United States, whether they be already in Spain, undergoing the punishments they have incurred, or whether they be still in Cuba. The queen on the 20th of December gave birth to a princess, who is heir to the throne.

From China there are reports that the Emperor has been compelled to resign in favor of the revolutionary general, whose triumphant march through many revolted provinces has, from time to time, been noticed in the last half year. The statement, however, does not appear to be credited by some of the best informed London journals.

The Queen of Madagascar is bent on exterminating Christianity in her dominions, and has long mercilessly persecuted those who prefer the "new religion." In the last outburst of this protracted persecution, four persons were burnt alive; fourteen precipitated from a high rock and crushed to death; a hundred and seventeen persons condemned to work in chains as long as they live; twenty persons cruelly flogged with rods, besides 1,748 other persons mulcted in heavy penalties, reduced into slavery, and compelled to buy themselves back, or deprived of their wives and families. Persons of rank have been degraded, and sent as forced laborers to carry stone for twelve months together to build houses; and, in an endless variety of other ways have the maddened passions of one wicked woman been permitted now for years past to plunge a great country in ruin.

There has been a serious Mussulman riot at Bombay, occasioned by the Parsee editor of an illustrated newspaper, in each number of which is given a life and portrait of some remarkable historical character, having published—in the series (next to one of Benjamin Franklin)—a life and portrait of Mahomet. Both are said to have been unexceptionable according to European ideas, but the whole Mussulman population (145,000 in number) considered their faith insulted and outraged by the publication, holding it sacrilege and idolatry to imagine and print any likeness whatever of so sacred a personage.

The Wahabees, who inhabit the interior and highland portion of Arabia, have pillaged the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, destroying the mosques, sacking the cities, and carrying off numbers of women and children into the desert. It is supposed to be in revenge for the punishment inflicted on them thirty years ago, when they had conquered the same cities.

The Turkish government has introduced the culture of cotton in the vicinity of Damascus, with seed procured from the United States. It is successful.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES AND PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES.

In London, among the scientific questions of a practical kind much discussed, is that of a patent process for contracting the fibres of calico, and of obtaining on calico thus prepared colors of much brilliancy. It is regarded by chemists as likely to lead to valuable results. In the British Association, it was described as the discovery that a solution of cold but caustic soda acts peculiarly on cotton fibre, immediately causing it to contract; and although the soda can be readily washed out, yet the fibre has undergone a change. Thus, taking a coarse cotton fabric, and acting upon it by the proper solution of caustic soda, this could be made much finer in appearance; and if the finest calico made in England—known as one hundred and eighty picks to the web—be thus acted on, it immediately appears as fine as two hundred and sixty picks. Stockings of open weaving assume a much finer texture by the condensation process; but the effect of the alteration is most strikingly shown by colors: the tint of pink cotton velvet becomes deepened to an intense degree; and printed calicoes, especially with colors hitherto applied with little satisfaction—such as lilac—come out with strength and brilliancy, besides producing fabrics finer than could be possibly woven by hand. The strength, too, is increased by this process; for a string of calico which breaks with a weight of thirteen ounces when not soaked, will bear twenty ounces when half condensed by the caustic soda.

At a recent meeting of the Paris _Academy of Sciences_, M. YVART read an important practical Memoir on the production of Wool, in the Merino race. He teaches that the only means of obtaining fine wool—taking into account the weight of the sheep’s body,—is the employment of races of small size. When the skin is very delicate, it secretes less of wool than when it is otherwise;—the fineness of the wool is proportioned to that of the skin. Those countries in which the winter is long or cold, or where the sheep remains in the fold the greater part of the year, and does not lie on ploughed lands, are especially suited to the production of the finest and most elastic wools, those chiefly sought after for manufacture of cloth.

Experiments on the application of electro-magnetism as a motive power, have been made with some striking results in Paris, as well as in this country. M. Dumont, in a paper on the subject submitted to the _Female Academy_, states, "that if in the production of great power the electro-magnetic force is inferior to that of steam, it becomes equal to it, and perhaps superior in the production of small power, which may be subdivided, varied, and introduced into employments or trades requiring but little capital, and where the absolute value of the mechanical power is less essential than the facility of producing instantaneously and at pleasure the power itself. In this point of view electro-magnetic power comes to complete, not to supersede, that of steam."

In the papers of the celebrated Lalande, recently presented to the Paris _Academy of Sciences_, by M. Arago, there is a note to the effect that so far back as the 25th of October, 1800, he and Burckhardt were of opinion, from calculations, that there must be a planet beyond Uranus, and they occupied themselves for some time in trying to discover its precise position. This is a very curious fact for astronomers.

RECENT DEATHS.

JOEL R. POINSETT, LL.D., long distinguished in society and in affairs, died at his residence in Statesburg, South Carolina, on the 12th of December. The first American ancestor of Mr. Poinsett came to this country from Soubisi, near Rochelle, in France, soon after the revocation of the edict of Nantz. His father was a physician, and served in the Revolution under Count Pulaski. He himself was born at Charleston on the second of March, 1779, and, after having passed some time at the school of the Rev. Timothy Dwight (afterward President of Yale College), at Greenfield, Connecticut, he was sent, at the close of the Revolution, to England, to complete his studies, and for the advantages of foreign travel. Returning in 1800, when he was twenty-one years of age, he commenced the study of law in the office of Mr. Desaussure, afterwards Chancellor of South Carolina, Before his admission to the bar, he again embarked for Europe, extending his travels to Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, and the northern countries of the continent. At St. Petersburg he became acquainted with the Emperor Alexander, soon after his accession, and was received by him with marked partiality, and often questioned respecting the peculiar institutions of this country. On one occasion, after he had been expatiating at large on the advantages of America, the Czar exclaimed, "Were I not an emperor, I would be a republican." Declining the offer of a place in the service of the Emperor, he commenced a tour into the East, travelling through Persia and Armenia, and, returning to Europe, resided for some time in its principal capitals. On the breaking out of difficulties between the United States and Great Britain, in 1808, he returned to his own country, and applied to Mr. Madison for a commission in the army. Owing to some objections by the Secretary of War, he did not obtain the commission, but was sent by the President to South America, to ascertain the result of the revolutions which had recently occurred in that quarter. While in Chili, he heard of the declaration of war between England and America. Embarking in the frigate Essex, to return to this country, with a view to enter the army, he was made a prisoner on the surrender of that vessel to the British by Commodore Porter. The British Commander refused to allow his return home with the rest of the prisoners, regarding him as a dangerous enemy of England, and he therefore determined to cross the continent to the Atlantic. He passed the Andes in the month of April, when they were covered with snow, and, after great difficulties, reached Buenos Ayres. He succeeded, in a Portuguese vessel, in reaching Madeira, where, on his arrival, he learned that a treaty of peace had been concluded. Soon after he reached South Carolina, he was elected to the Legislature of that State, in which he devoted himself chiefly to the establishment of a system of internal improvements. In 1821 he was elected to Congress, from the Charleston District, and was twice re-elected to that body. In 1822, he was sent to Mexico, by President Monroe, to obtain information with regard to the government under Iturbide. He performed this mission with signal success. Foreseeing the speedy downfall of the imperial administration, he gave his advice against all connection with it, on the part of this country. He had scarcely returned home, when Iturbide abdicated the throne. Soon after the election of Mr. Adams, which he had strongly opposed, Mr. Poinsett was again appointed Minister to Mexico, whore he remained until the summer of 1829. His important services in this period are amply detailed in a memoir of his political life, in the first volume of the _Democratic Review_, and were warmly approved in the first annual message of President Jackson. On returning to the United States, he devoted himself to the pursuits of private life, in South Carolina. When the States Rights controversy broke out, he again engaged in political affairs, and became a prominent advocate of the principles of the Union party, as opposed to Nullification. In 1836, he was nominated by his friends as a candidate for the State Senate, and was elected with but little opposition. On the formation of Mr. Van Buren’s cabinet, Mr. Poinsett accepted the office of Secretary of War. On the election of Gen. Harrison he retired to his home in South Carolina, where he devoted himself to those literary pursuits which formed the pleasure of his life; and thence he issued, only two years ago, those stirring appeals against secession, which were among the most powerful influences for the preservation of the endangered peace of the Union at that period. Mr. Poinsett received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Columbia College in this city, and he was a member of many learned societies in this country, and in Europe. Besides his _Notes on Mexico_, written soon after his last return from that country, he published several addresses, was a large contributor to the _Southern Quarterly Review_ and other periodicals, and furnished some important papers to the Paris Geographical Society, and other learned associations abroad and at home.

MOSES STUART, D.D., of the Theological Seminary at Andover, died at his residence in that town on the 4th of January, in the seventy-second year of his age. He was born in Wilton, Conn., March 16, 1780; was graduated at Yale College in 1799; and was a tutor in that institution from 1802 to 1804. After having studied the profession of the law, he turned his attention to theology, and in 1806 was ordained pastor of the Central Congregational church in New Haven. He was called to the Professorship of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary in 1810, and continued for nearly forty years to discharge its important duties. Professor Stuart was a man of great natural abilities, honorable principles, and a strong will; for a long period he occupied the first place among cultivators of sacred learning in this country; and though younger men, with larger opportunities, have recently attained to greater eminence, no one in the same field has ever exercised a more important and advantageous influence. His first considerable work was a _Hebrew Grammar_, published in 1823. It scarcely deserves comparison with the more celebrated performance of Gesenius, of which Professor Stuart himself gave to the public a translation, more than twenty years after the publication of his own work; but for some time after its original appearance it was the best Hebrew Grammar in the English language. In 1825 he was associated with Professor Robinson in the production of a _Greek Grammar of the New Testament_; in 1827 he published his _Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews_; in 1829 his _Hebrew Chrestomathy_, and in 1830 his _Course of Hebrew Study_. His Commentary on the Hebrews, was received as an accession to the body of permanent theological literature. It was spoken of in England as "the most valuable philological aid" that had been published "for the critical study of that important, and in many respects difficult book;" and the late Dr. Pye Smith, one of the first biblical, theological, and classical scholars in Great Britain, stated, that he felt it to be his duty to describe it as "the most important present to the cause of sound biblical interpretation that had ever been made in the English language." In Germany also it secured for Professor Stuart the highest consideration; and it continues in all countries to be regarded as one of the noblest examples of philological theology and exegetical criticism. In 1832 Professor Stuart published another great work of a similar character: his _Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans_. It was distinguished for a profoundness of research, for an intensity and minuteness of philological labor, and a singleness of purpose to arrive at the meaning of the apostle, without regard to any preconceived or partisan opinions, which obtained for it a regard as an authority equal to that awarded to its predecessor. In 1845 he published a _Commentary on the Apocalypse_; a profoundly learned and critical work, in which the interpretation of this difficult book varies much from that which has been most generally received. In the same year he also gave to the church a _Critical History and Defence of the Old Testament Canon_. His devotion to biblical criticism continued to the close of his life, and we believe, his last use of the pen was in the correction of the concluding sheets of a volume of Commentaries.

In his later years Professor Stuart entered into political controversies, and was particularly distinguished for his defence of the policy of Mr. Webster, in a pamphlet entitled _Conscience and the Constitution_. He also ventured very injudiciously into the field of classical criticism, in an edition of _Cicero_, which was sharply reviewed by Professor Kingsley of Yale College; and he lost reputation in his more legitimate sphere by a controversy with Professor Conant, of Madison University, growing out of his translation of the _Hebrew Grammar of Gesenius_. It is not to be denied that in measuring his strength against that of these accomplished scholars, he was signally unfortunate.

In his personal character he was simple, sincere, enthusiastic, brave, and religious. He was well entitled to the great respect in which he was held by the church. He had been ordained for high services, and he had accomplished them. Every duty of which he was capable was finished, and he could have added nothing to his good reputation if his years had been prolonged.

WILLIAM GRIMSHAW, born in Ireland in 1781, but nearly all his life a resident of this country, where he was for many years well known as a writer, died near Philadelphia on the 8th of January. Besides editing and rewriting a considerable portion of Baine’s _History of the Wars growing out of the French Revolution_, he was the author of Histories of Great Britain, France, and several other countries, which for a long time were very generally used as text-books in schools, and he also wrote _The American Chesterfield_, _The Ladies’ Lexicon_, and numerous smaller volumes, which were creditable to his abilities. His reading was extensive, and his knowledge of events during his lifetime, particularly in British affairs, was minute and accurate. His mind lost none of its vigor with the approach of age, and in his fine countenance, and imposing figure, there were no appearances of decay. His love of reading continued to the last, and within a year he frequently employed his pen on such subjects as he took an especial interest in.

NICHOLAS GRAN DE DIEU SOULT, Marshal General of France, Duke of Dalmatia, &c., died on the 26th of December, at his chateau of Soult Berg, near the place where he was born. We have given in another part of this magazine an estimate of his character. The Paris _Pays_ furnishes us a brief abstract of his history. He was born at St. Amand (Tarn), March 29, 1769. His father, who was a notary, seeing that he had no taste for his own profession, allowed him to enter the army. The future Marshal of France entered the Royal Regiment of Infantry in 1785, where he was soon remarked by his aptitude for the functions of instructor. He was made non-commissioned officer in 1790, and then passed rapidly through the intermediate grades, until he reached that of Adjutant-General of the Staff, when General Lefebvre attached him to his own service with the grade of Chief of Brigade. In that quality he went through the campaigns of 1794 and 1795 with the army of the Moselle, and owed to his talents, as well as to his republican principles, a rapid promotion. Successively raised to the rank of General of Brigade, and then to that of General of Division, he took part in all the campaigns of Germany until 1799, when he followed Massena into Switzerland, and thence to Genoa, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. Set at liberty after the battle of Marengo, and raised to the command of Piedmont, he returned to France at the peace of Amiens, and was named one of the four Colonels of the Guard of the Consuls. When the Empire was proclaimed, in 1804, he was nominated Marshal of France, and during the campaign which terminated in Austerlitz, held the command of the fourth corps of the grand army. After the conquest of Prussia and the battle of Eylau, Marshal Soult solicited and obtained the command of the second corps of the army of Spain, with which he overran Galicia and the Austrians, and passed into Portugal, where he fought the memorable battle of Oporto. Forced to abandon that city, when delivered up by treason to the English, he effected into Galicia a bold and perilous retreat, which did the greatest honor to his energy and presence of mind. Being named Commander-in-Chief of the army of Spain, he marched to the succor of Madrid, menaced by the Anglo-Spanish army, and his movement was crowned with full success. He continued in this command until March, 1813, when he was appointed in Saxony to the command-in-chief of the Imperial Guard. The disasters of Vittoria decided Napoleon to again confer on Marshal Soult the command of the French troops in Spain. The point then was to defend the menaced frontier of France. Forced to fall back on Toulouse, he there terminated by a brilliant engagement, due to most able strategic arrangements, the fatal campaign of 1814. On the announcement of the event at Paris he signed a suspension of arms, and adhered to the reëstablishment of Louis XVIII., who presented him with the Cross of St. Louis, and called him to the command of the 13th military division, and then to the Ministry of War (Dec. 3, 1814). On March 8th, learning the landing from Elba, he published the order of the day which is so well known, and in which Napoleon is treated more than severely. On March 11th he resigned his portfolio as Minister of War, and declared for the Emperor, who, passing over the famous proclamation, raised him to the dignity of Peer of France and Major General of the Army. After Waterloo, where he fought most energetically, the Marshal took refuge at Malzieu (Lozere) with General Brun de Villeret, his former aid-de-camp. Being set down on the list of the proscribed, he withdrew to Dusseldorf on the banks of the Rhine, until 1819, when a Royal ordinance allowed him to return to France. He then went to live with his family at St. Amand, his native place, and on his reiterated representations his marshal’s baton, which had been withdrawn from him, was restored. Charles X. treated Marshal Soult with favor, creating him knight of his orders, and afterward making him Peer of France. After the revolution of July, 1830, the declaration of the Chamber of Deputies of August 9th excluded him from that rank, but he was restored to it four days later by a special nomination of Louis Philippe, who soon after appointed him Minister of War. We shall not follow Marshal Soult through the acts of his administrative career. He always showed himself devoted to the constitutive principles of the Government of July. He was twice named President of the Council of King Louis Philippe, who elevated him to the dignity of Marshal General, of which Turenne had been the last possessor. Since the revolution of February, Marshal Soult has lived on his estate, in the midst of his family, and almost forgotten in our present political agitations.

KARL FRIEDERICH RUNGENHAGEN, late Royal Director of Music at Berlin, was born in that city on September 27, 1778. His father was a merchant. In 1801 he became member of the Singing Academy, and studied under Zetter. In 1814 he wrote the songs for a melo-drama, which was not successful. In 1815 he became director of the Singing Academy, with Zetter; most of his religious music was composed after this time. In 1825 he was appointed to the post of Royal Music Director, and in 1833, after Zetter’s death, he became sole conductor of the Singing Academy. His influence has been considerable upon the culture of music in Germany. Carl Maria Von Weber was his friend, and Lortzing was one of his pupils. He died at Berlin on the 22d of last December.

The journals of Moscow announce the death of the Armenian Archbishop, MICHAEL SALLANTIAN, the most distinguished writer of Armenia at the present day. He was born at Constantinople in 1782, and educated at the Armenian monastery at Venice. He died at the age of sixty-nine at Moscow, where he had been professor of theology and literature for sixteen years before his elevation to the Archbishopric.

DR. GRAEFE, one of the most eminent veterans of European philology, died suddenly at St Petersburg on November 30th. He was born at Chemnitz, in Saxony, in July, 1780, but went to Russia in 1810, to assume the professorship of Greek at the Academy of St. Petersburg.

The Russian General, Kiel, has died in Paris. He was employed by the Emperor Nicholas in directing works of art in the Russian empire.

HERR MEINHOLD, author of the _Amber Witch_, died in Germany in December.

J. W. M. TURNER, the greatest of English artists, and the hero of Mr. Ruskin’s brilliant book entitled _The Modern Painters_, died in London on the 20th of December, at the age of 77. He had always a reluctance to have his portrait taken, but the engraving accompanying this article—from a sketch made without his knowledge—is said, by the _Illustrated London News_ to be remarkably like him. It is understood that by his will he has left a million dollars (£200,000) for the purpose of founding an institution for the relief of of decayed artists, and has given it also the chief part of his pictures, to adorn the building which is to be occupied by it. The _Times_ says, "although it would be out of place to revive the discussions occasioned by the peculiarities of Mr. Turner’s style in his later years, he has left behind him sufficient proofs of the variety and fertility of his genius to establish an undoubted claim to a prominent rank among the painters of England. His life had been extended to the verge of human existence; for although he was fond of throwing a mystery over his precise age, we believe that he was born in Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, in the year 1775, and was, consequently, in his 76th or 77th year. Of humble origin (he was the son of a barber), he enjoyed the advantages of an accurate rather than a liberal education. His first studies, some of which are still in existence, were in architectural design; and few of those who have been astonished or enchanted by the profusion and caprice of form and color in his mature pictures, would have guessed the minute and scientific precision with which he had cultivated the arts of linear drawing and perspective. His early manhood was spent partly on the coast, where he imbibed his inexhaustible attachment for marine scenery and his acquaintance with the wild and varied aspect of the ocean. Somewhat later he repaired to Oxford, where he contributed for several years the drawing to the _University Almanac_. But his genius was rapidly breaking through all obstacles, and even the repugnance of public opinion; for before he had completed his 30th year he was on the high road to fame. As early as 1790 he exhibited his first work, a water-colored drawing of the entrance to Lambeth, at the exhibition of the Academy, and in 1793 his first oil painting. In November, 1799, he was elected an associate, and in February, 1802, he attained the rank of a Royal Academician. We shall not here attempt to trace the vast series of his paintings from his earlier productions, such as the "Wreck," in Lord Yarborough’s collection, the "Italian Landscape," in the same gallery, the _pendant_ to Lord Ellesmere’s "Vanderwelde," or Mr. Munro’s "Venus and Adonis," in the Titianesque manner, to the more obscure, original, and, as some think, unapproachable productions of his later years, such as the "Rome," the "Venice," the "Golden Bough," the "Téméraire," and the "Tusculum." But while these great works proceeded rapidly from his palette, his powers of design were no less actively engaged in the exquisite water-colored drawings that have formed the basis of the modern school of "illustration." The "Liber studiorum" had been commenced in 1807, in imitation of Claude’s "Liber veritatis," and was etched, if we are not mistaken, by Turner’s own hand. The title-page was engraved and altered half-a-dozen times, from his singular and even nervous attention to the most trifling details. But this volume was only the precursor of an immense series of drawings and sketches, embracing the topography of this country in the "River Scenery" and the "Southern Coast"—the scenery of the Alps, of Italy, and great part of Europe—and the ideal creations of our greatest poets, from Milton to Scott and Rogers, all imbued with the brilliancy of a genius which seemed to address itself more peculiarly to the world at large when it adopted the popular form of engraving. These drawings are now widely diffused in England, and form the basis of several important collections, such as those of Petworth, of Mr. Windus, Mr. Fawkes, and Mr. Munro. So great is the value of them that 120 guineas have not unfrequently been paid for a small sketch in water-colors; and a sketch-book, containing chalk-drawings of one of Turner’s river tours on the continent, has lately fetched the enormous sum of 600 guineas. The prices of his more finished oil paintings have ranged in the last few years from 700 to 1,200 or 1,400 guineas. All his works may now be said to have acquired triple or quadruple the value originally paid for them. Mr. Turner undoubtedly realized a very large fortune, and great curiosity will be felt to ascertain the posthumous use he has made of it. His personal habits were peculiar, and even penurious, but in all that related to his art he was generous to munificence; and we are not without hope that his last intentions were for the benefit of the nation, and the preservation of his own fame. He was never married, he was not known to have any relations, and his wants were limited to the strictest simplicity. The only ornaments of his house in Queen Anne-street were the pictures by his own hand, which he had constantly refused to part with at any price, among which the "Rise and Fall of Carthage" and the "Crossing the Brook," rank among the choicest specimens of his finest manner.

"Mr. Turner seldom took much part in society, and only displayed in the closest intimacy the shrewdness of his observation and the playfulness of his wit. Every where he kept back much of what was in him, and while the keenest intelligence, mingled with a strong tinge of satire, animated his brisk countenance, it seemed to amuse him to be but half understood. His nearest social ties were those formed in the Royal Academy, of which he was by far the oldest member, and to whose interests he was most warmly attached. He filled at one time the chair of Professor of Perspective, but without conspicuous success, and that science has since been taught in the Academy by means better suited to promote it than a course of lectures. In the composition and execution of his works, Mr. Turner was jealously sensitive of all interference or supervision. He loved to deal in the secrets and mysteries of his art, and many of his peculiar effects are produced by means which it would not be easy to discover or to imitate.

"We hope that the Society of Arts or the British Gallery will take an early opportunity of commemorating the genius of this great artist, and of reminding the public of the prodigious range of his pencil, by forming a general exhibition of his principal works, if, indeed, they are not permanently gathered in a nobler repository. Such an exhibition will serve far better than any observations of ours to demonstrate that it is not by those deviations from established rules which arrest the most superficial criticism that Mr. Turner’s fame or merit are to be estimated. For nearly sixty years Mr. Turner contributed largely to the arts of this country. He lived long enough to see his greatest productions rise to uncontested supremacy, however imperfectly they were understood when they first appeared in the earlier years of this century; and, though in his later works and in advanced age, force and precision of execution have not accompanied his vivacity of conception, public opinion has gradually and steadily advanced to a more just appreciation of his power. He is the Shelley of English painting—the poet and the painter both alike veiling their own creations in the dazzling splendor of the imagery with which they are surrounded, mastering every mode of expression, combining scientific labor with an air of negligent profusion, and producing in the end works in which color and language are but the vestments of poetry. Of such minds it may be said in the words of Alastor:

"Nature’s most secret steps He, like her shadow, has pursued, where’er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke; or where the starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold—the varying roof of heaven And the green earth—lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder...."

THE LATE J. W. M. TURNER

BASIL MONTAGU, an eminent philosophical and legal writer, was the illegitimate son of the well-known statesman, John fourth Earl of Sandwich, many years First Lord of the Admiralty, by the unfortunate Miss Margaret Reay, who was assassinated, in 1779, by her affianced lover, the Rev. Mr. Hackman. The tragic affair, which excited immense interest at the time, and which gave rise to various romantic stories, is to be found in most series of judicial investigations, and especially in a collection of celebrated trials recently published. It appears that Margaret Reay was the daughter of a stay-maker in Covent-garden, and served her apprenticeship to a mantuamaker. Having attracted the attention of Lord Sandwich, he treated her from that period until her assassination, with the greatest tenderness and affection. He introduced to her a young ensign of the 68th Regiment, then in command of a recruiting party at Huntingdon, in the neighborhood of the mansion of the Montagues. Mr. Hackman from the first moment was desperately in love with her, and his passion increased with the daily opportunities afforded by invitations he received to Lord Sandwich’s table. With the object of continuing his attentions, and the hope of ultimately engaging her affections, he quitted the army, and, taking orders, obtained the living of Wiverton, in Norfolk. That Miss Reay had given him some encouragement, is proved by the tenor of their correspondence; but prudential motives induced her afterwards to refuse the offer of his hand, and to intimate a necessity for discontinuing his visits. Stung by this unexpected termination of his long-cherished expectations, Hackman’s mind became unsettled; on the 7th of April, 1779, he was occupied all the morning in reading Blair’s _Sermons_; but in the evening, as he was walking towards the Admiralty, he saw Miss Reay pass in her coach, accompanied by Signora Galli. He followed, and discovered that she alighted at Covent-garden Theatre, where she went to witness _Love in a Village_. He returned to his lodgings, armed himself with a brace of pistols, went back to the theatre, and when the performance was over, as Miss Reay was stepping into her coach, he took a pistol in each hand, one of which he discharged at her, and killed her on the spot, and the other at himself, but it did not take effect. He then beat his head with the butt of the pistol, to destroy himself, but was, after a struggle, secured and carried before Sir John Fielding, who committed him to Bridewell, and he was shortly after tried at the Old Bailey, before the celebrated Justice Blackstone, found guilty, and hanged at Tyburn on the 19th of the month.

Basil Montagu was born in 1770, and received his education at the Charter House. He was called to the English bar by the Society of Gray’s Inn, the 19th of May, 1798, and soon obtained considerable practice as a conveyancer. It was, however, by his legal authorship and reporting that he became particularly distinguished in the profession. His various works and reports on the subject, principally of the Law of Bankruptcy, were of high estimation and lasting utility. In 1801, he produced his _Summary of the Law of Set Off_, with an Appendix of Cases, argued and determined in the Courts of Law and Equity, in one volume, octavo; in 1804-5, in four volumes, _A Digest of the Bankrupt Laws_, with a Collection of the Statutes and of the Cases, which reached three editions, and brought him into immediate notice and considerable practice; and, some time afterward, he printed a pamphlet on Bankrupts’ Certificates. His fame in this branch of forensic learning procured him the appointment of a Commissioner of Bankruptcy. Mr. Montagu wrote also on philosophical subjects. Among his productions of this tendency were _Thoughts of Divines and Philosophers; Selections from Taylor, Hooker, Bishop Hall, and Bacon_. He edited an edition of Lord Bacon’s works, in seventeen volumes. Another bent which his mind took, placed him by the side of Romilly and Mackintosh in the cause of Humanity. He had in his nature an abhorrence of depriving any living thing of life, and with regard to his own diet he totally abstained from animal food. This led him to bestow his active attention towards putting a stop to capital punishment. In 1809 he published _Opinions of Different Authors on the Punishment of Death_. The work was so well received, that he added a a second and third volume to it. In 1811, when the important question occupied Parliament, he edited _The Debates on a Bill for Abolishing the Punishment of Death for Stealing in a Dwelling House_. In 1815 he reprinted a tract originally published in 1801, called _Hanging not Punishment enough for Murderers_. Mr. Basil Montagu, who had some years ago been made a Queen’s counsel, died at Boulogne on the 27th of November, in the eighty-second year of his age.

REAR-ADMIRAL HENRY GAGE MORRIS, entered the navy at the early age of twelve, and served as midshipman throughout the French and American wars. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, April 2, 1793. He was engaged at the capture of the French frigate _Sybille_, in 1783, and at the attack on Martinique, in 1793. He was promoted to post rank August 12, 1812, and was made rear-admiral in 1847. He died at Beverley, 24th ult. aged eighty-two. Admiral Morris was younger brother of the late Captain Amherst Morris, being second son of Colonel Roger Morris, a member of the Governor’s Council at New-York, by Mary, daughter of Frederick Phillipse, of this city. This family of Morris is one of great antiquity, deriving its descent from Elystan Glodrydd, a famed chieftain of Wales in the eleventh century.

MR. SAPIO the once celebrated tenor singer, was born in London, in 1792. In his early life he was page to Queen Caroline, consort of George IV. He made his first appearance on the metropolitan stage at Drury Lane, the 1st December, 1824, as the _Seraskier_, in the "Siege of Belgrade," and he soon attained and long preserved a high vocal reputation. He died in obscurity, in London, about the end of November.

One of the most distinguished chiefs of the war of Greek independence, General JATRAKO, is just dead at Athens. He was one of the primates of Marna; his family, as his name indicates, have for many generations back been famous for their hereditary medical talents, and the tradition exists among them that a branch of their family formerly passed from Sparta to Italy, translated their name into Medici, and gave rise to the celebrated family of that name.

PRIESSNITZ, the celebrated founder of hydropathy, died at Graefenberg on the 26th of November, at the age of fifty-two. In the morning of that day Priessnitz was up and stirring at an early hour, but complained of the cold, and had wood brought in to make a large fire. His friends had for some time believed him to be suffering from dropsy of the chest, and at their earnest entreaty he consented to take a little medicine, exclaiming all the while, "It’s of no use!" He would see no physician, but remained to the last true to his profession. About four o’clock in the afternoon of the 26th he asked to be carried to bed, and upon being laid down he expired! In early life he received serious injury in the chest from an accident, and he used to say himself that his constitution was bad; that nothing but his own mode of life and his own "cure" would have sustained him. It is not known what attempts will be made to carry on the establishment at Graefenberg, which was in full activity at the moment of his death. The most probable conjecture is, that his eldest daughter and her husband (a Hungarian of property) will carry it on, with the aid of some physician who has studied Priessnitz’s method. This may succeed to a certain extent, for the place and neighborhood are admirably adapted for taking the water-cure, and the _prestige_ of Priessnitz’s name, as well as the tradition of his practice, will long survive him: but the attraction which brought patients, not only from the neighboring cities, but from the remotest parts of the world, is gone. It is not exactly known what amount of property Priessnitz left, but it is supposed to be nearly £100,000. When it is considered how small, compared to that given to other physicians, was the remuneration he received from his patients, and that thirty years ago, Priessnitz was a poor peasant, this fortune gives some measure of his immense success.

GEORGE DUNBAR, the distinguished Professor of Greek Literature in the University of Edinburgh, died on the 6th of December, at his residence in that city. The natural decay attending even an otherwise green old age has been for some years aggravated by a virulent internal malady, which at the commencement of the present season compelled him to relinquish his academic duties. He was born at the village of Caldingham, in Berwickshire, in 1774. In early life he labored as a gardener, but an accidental lameness, which lasted throughout his subsequent life, incapacitated him from active bodily employment. His attention was then devoted to literature. He soon became a scholar, and in truth a ripe and good one. Going to Edinburgh, he readily obtained, on proof of his acquirements, a tutorship in the family of Lord Provost Fettes. Having been shortly after selected as assistant to Professor Dalziel, he was appointed, on that professor’s death, to the Greek chair in the Edinburgh University, in 1805. The duties of this responsible position he discharged most zealously and ably. The published works of Professor Dunbar are well known. The _Collectanea Minora_, the _Collectanea Majora_, and the _Greek Grammar_, have all had great reputation. His chief production—massive in every sense—the main object of his life of learned toil, was his Greek Lexicon, which was given to the world with his name in 1840.

MR. HENRY LUTTRELL, one of the ornaments of a society of what may be termed conversational wits, died on the 19th of December, at the advanced age of eighty-six. He was the friend and companion, _hand impari passu_, of Jeckyll, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, Alvanley, Sydney Smith, and others of that brilliant school, and of which the Misses Berry, Rogers, Moore, and but a few others, are still left. A correspondent of the _Times_ says: "He charmed especially by the playfulness and elegance of his wit, the appropriateness and felicity of illustration, the shrewdness of his remarks, and the epigrammatic point of his conversation. Liveliness of fancy was tempered in him with good breeding and great kindness of disposition; and one of the wittiest men of his day, he could amuse and delight by the keenness of playful yet pungent sallies, without wounding the feelings of any one by the indulgence of bitterness and ill-nature."

English journals notice with expressions of regret the death in Philadelphia of R. C. TAYLOR, on the 26th of October, aged sixty-two. Mr. Taylor emigrated in the year 1830, being previously well known as a Fellow both of the Antiquarian and of the Geological Societies. He had published a work of great care and research while resident in his native county, Norfolk, _Index Monasticus for East Anglia_; and had made some useful explorations into the fossil remains on the coast of Norfolk. In America he wrote for various philosophical societies, and published, in 1848, his work on the Statistics of Coal, by which alone he was much known to the public of this country.

The Royal University of Berlin has lost by death since Christmas, MM. Lachmann, Stuhr, Jacobi, Erman, and Dr. CHARLES THEODORE FRANZ, who died at Breslaw early in January, at the untimely age of forty-five. For eleven years Dr. Franz occupied the chair of Classical Philology in the University of Berlin. He is the author of a variety of works: in the first rank of which stand his Criticisms on the Greek Tragic Poets, and his several collections of Greek and Latin inscriptions before unpublished. The London Morning Chronicle remarks that the continent never before lost so many great scholars in one year as in 1851.

WILLIAM JACOB, F.R.S., a profound writer on science and agriculture, was born in 1762. His work, _An Inquiry into the Precious Metals_, has been held in high estimation. His other principal productions were _Considerations on the Price of Corn_; _Tracts on Corn-Laws_; and a _View of Agriculture in Germany_. Mr. Jacob, who was formerly Comptroller of Corn Returns in the Board of Trade, died on the 17th of December, at his residence in London, aged eighty-eight.

MR. PAUL BARRAS, died in Paris from wounds received in the contests between the people and the military, on the second day of the usurpation of Louis Napoleon. M. Barras resided in New-York about twenty years, and was engaged here as a teacher of his native language, and as a correspondent of one of the Parisian journals. He was an amiable man, of considerable talents, and enthusiastic in his attachment to Republicanism. He wrote several articles on American subjects in the _Revue de Paris_.

LADIES’ FASHIONS FOR FEBRUARY.

In matters of fashion there have been very few changes since our last publication. We are in the midst of the gay season, but its modes, until disturbed by the approach of spring, were fixed before the holidays, and for the most part have already been reported. The Paris journals, we may remark, however, dwell much on the unusual ascendency of black, in furs, velvets, cloths, and other heavy stuffs, for walking and carriage dresses, and on the greater demand than in recent winters for every species of embroidery.

In the first of the above figures, representing a promenade costume, we have a high dress of rich silk; the skirt has plaided tucks woven in the material; it is long, and very full. Manteau of velvet, very richly embroidered; a broad black lace is set on round the shoulders in the style of a cape, and the cloak is embroidered above it. Capote of white silk, of a very elegant form, with deep bavolet or curtain; a droop of small feathers on the left side.

The second figure, or visiting costume, of heavy silk, with four flounces, and corresponding waistcoat. The waistcoat now takes the first place in a lady’s toilette, and may be considered a triumph of luxury and elegance, reviving every description of embroidery, and forcing the jewellers to be constantly bringing out some novelty in buttons, &c. It is made very simple or very richly ornamented: for instance, those of the most simple description are made either of black velvet, embroidered with braid, and fastened with black jet buttons, or of cachemire; and a pretty style, of straw color, embroidered in the same colored silk, and closed with fancy silk bell buttons, whilst a few may be seen in white, quilted and embroidered with oak leaves and rose-buds. The rich style of waistcoat being covered with embroideries, and being closed up the front with buttons of brilliants. As a general rule, the waistcoat is made high up the throat, round which is a fall of lace, or opens _en cœur_, having a _fichu à plastron_ of embroidery, worn under. The waistcoat has also two pockets.

FOOTNOTES

1 The large outer porch of Cowley’s house had chambers above it and beneath the window in front a tablet was affixed, upon which was inscribed the epitaph "upon the living author" which Cowley had written for himself, whilst living in retirement here, commencing

"Hic, O Viator, sub lare parvulo, Couleius hic est conditus hic jacet."

It is represented in its original condition in the two views we have engraved.

2 Some additional rooms have been added to the house by the same occupant, who has, however, religiously preserved all the old rooms, which still exhibit the "fittings" that existed in Cowley’s time. The bed-chambers are wainscotted with oaken panels. The staircase is a very solid structure, with ornamental balusters, leading toward the small study in which the poet wrote,—a little back room, about five feet wide, looking upon the garden. It may be distinguished in our back view of the house, by a figure placed at the window. Cowley ended his life in this house at the early age of forty-nine.

3 Brayley, in his History of Surrey, states that Cowley accompanied by his friend Dean Spratt, having been to see a "friend," did not set out for his walk home until it was too late, and had drunk so deep, that they both lay out in the fields all night; this gave Cowley the fever that carried him off. Brayley’s authority for this slander (which is not borne out by the poet’s previous course of life), is "Spence’s Anecdotes."

4 Life and Letters of Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Dane professor of law at Harvard University. Edited by his son, William W. Story. Two vols. Boston: Little & Brown, 1851.

5 As an example of the gravity and formality with which proceedings in matters of this nature were conducted, even as late as the end of the sixteenth century, take the subjoined palinode or recantation of a Flemish ecclesiastic, who had been guilty of the offence of doubting the evection, or bodily transport through the air, of witches and wizards. The original may be found in Delrio, at the end of the Appendix, in his 5th book:—

"I Cornelius Loseus Gallidius, born in the town of Gouda, in Holland, now, by the command of the renowned and illustrious Lord Nuncio Apostolic, the Lord Octavius Bishop of Tricaruis, arrested and detained in the Imperial Monastery of St. Maximin, near Treves, on account of certain tracts ’On True and False Witchcraft,’ rashly and presumptuously by me written, published, and sent to be printed at Cologne, without the perusal or permission of the superiors of this place: whereas I am informed for certain that in the aforesaid books, and also in certain of letters on the same subject, sent clandestinely to the clergy and senate of Treves, and others, for the purpose of impeding the course of justice against witches and magicians, there are contained many articles which are not only erroneous and scandalous, but also suspected of heresy, and savoring of sedition: I therefore hereby revoke, condemn, reject, and repudiate, as if they had never been said or asserted by me, the said articles, as seditious and temerarious, contrary to the common judgment of learned theologians, to the decision and bulls of the supreme Pontiffs, and to the practice, and statutes, and laws of the magistrates and judges, as well as of this Archdiocese of Treves, as of the other provinces and principalities, in the order in which the same are hereunto annexed.

"1. _Imprimis._ I revoke, condemn, reject, and hold as disproved, what both in words and writing I have often and to many persons pertinaciously asserted; and what I would have had taken as the head and chief ornament of my disputations, to wit, that what is written touching the corporeal evection or translation from place to place of witches and magicians, is to be held as a vain superstition and figment, as well because that opinion savors of heretical pravity, as because it partakes of sedition, and so also savors of the crimes of _lese majesté_. 2. In the second place, I revoke what I have pertinaciously, but without solid reasons, alleged against the magistracy, in letters secretly sent to several, that is to say, that the course of procedure against witches is erroneous and fantastical: asserting, moreover, that those witches were compelled by the severity of torture to confess acts that they had never done; that innocent blood was shed by a cruel judicature; and that by a new alchemy gold and silver were extracted from human blood. 3. Thereby, and by the like assertions, partly diffused by private oral communications among the vulgar, partly by various letters addressed to both branches of the magistracy, imputing to superiors and judges the exercise of tyranny towards the subjects. 4 And consequently, inasmuch as the most reverend and illustrious Archbishop and Prince Elector of Treves not only permits witches and magicians to be subjected to deserved punishment in his diocese, but has also ordained laws regulating the mode and cost of the procedure against witches, thereby with inconsiderate temerity tacitly insinuating the charge of tyranny against the said Elector of Treves. 5. _Item._ I revoke and condemn these following conclusions, to wit, that there are no such beings as sorcerers, who renounce God and worship the Devil, who bring on tempests, and do the work of Satan and such like, but that all these things are dreams. 6. Moreover that magic is not to be called sorcery, nor its practisers to be deemed sorcerers, and that that that place of Exod. xxii, (’Ye shall not suffer sorcerers to live’) is to be understood of those who slay with material poison, naturally administered. 7. That no contract exists or can exist between man and the demon. 8. That demons do not assume bodies. 9. That the life of Hilary, written by St. Jerome, is not authentic. 10. That the demon cannot carnally know mankind. 11. That neither demons nor witches can excite tempests, rain, hail, &c., and that what is alleged in that behalf is mere dreams. 12. That spirits and forms can be seen by mankind separate from matter. 13. That it is rash to assert that whatever demons can do magicians can also by the help of demons. 14. That the assertion that the superior demon can expel the inferior is erroneous and derogatory to Christ.—Luke xi. 15. That the Popes in the bulls do not allege that magicians and sorcerers perpetrate such acts as above mentioned.

"All these and the like, my assertions, with my many calumnies, falsehoods, and sycophancies, petulantly, indecorously, and mendaciously expressed against the magistracy, as well secular as ecclesiastical, wherewith my writings on witchcraft abound, I hereby expressly and deliberately condemn, recant, and reject, earnestly beseeching pardon of God and my superiors, and faithfully promising that henceforth I will not, either by word of mouth or by writing, by myself or others, in any place where I shall happen to be, teach, promulgate, or assert the same or any of them. If I shall do to the contrary, I subject myself thenceforth and henceforth to the pains of the law against relapsed heretics, recusants, seditious misdemeanants, and convicts of _lese majesté_, to the pains of libellous sycophants publicly convicted, and also to those enacted against perjurers. I submit myself also to arbitrary correction at the pleasure of the Archbishop of Treves, and of the other magistrates under whom I shall happen to live, and who may be certified of my relapse or violated undertaking, that they may punish me according to my deserts, in name, fame, goods, and body. In testimony of all which I have, with my proper hand, subscribed this my recantation of the aforesaid articles, in presence of the notary and witnesses."

"(Signed,) Cornelius Loseus Gallidius."

"Attestation.—These presents were done in the Imperial Monastery of Saint Maximin Without, near Treves, in the abbatial chamber, there being then present the Venerable and Excellent Lord Peter Binsfeldt, Bishop of Azof, Vicar-General of the Most Reverend Lord Archbishop of Treves, our Most Gracious Lord in matters spiritual; Reiner, Abbot of the said monastery; Bartholomew Bodegem, Reader of either Law in the Ecclesiastical Court of Treves; George Helffenster, Doctor of Sacred Theology, Dean of the Collegiate Church of St. Simon, in the city of Treves; and John Golmann, Doctor of Laws, Canon of the said Church, and Seal-Bearer of the Court of Treves, &c.; in the year of our Lord 1592, Treves style, on Monday, the 15th day of the month of March, in presence of me, the Notary underwritten, and of Nicholas Dolent, and Daniel Major, the Amanuensis and Secretary respectively of the Reverend Lord Abbot, trustworthy witnesses specially called and required hereto.

"Subscribed, Adam Tecton, Notary.

"Compared with the original and found to agree, by me, the under-written Secretary of the town of Antwerp.

S. Kieffel."

6 Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads.

7 Continued from page 109.

8 We are indebted to Dr. Francis for a revised copy, with additions, of his very interesting address here printed, which was delivered at the Printers’ Banquet in New-York on the 16th of January.