VOLUME IV. AUGUST TO DECEMBER, 1851.

Alred.--_By Elmina W. Carey_, 27

Alexander, Last days of the Emperor.--_A. Dumas_, 233

America, as Abused by a German, 448

American Intercommunication, 461

American Literature, Studies of.--_Philarete Chasles_, 163

American and European Scenery Compared.--_By the late J. F. Cooper_, 625

Anacreon. Twentieth Ode of.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 20

Animal Magnetism. Christopher North on, 27

Ariadne.--_By William C. Bennett_, 315

Autumn Ballad, An.--_By W. A. Sutliffe_, 598

August Reverie.--_By A. Oakey Hall_, 477

Art Expression. 401

Arts among the Aztecs and Indians.--_By Thomas Ewbank._ (Ten Engravings.) 307

_Arts, the Fine._--Monuments to Public Men in Europe and America, 130.--Mosaics for the Emperor of Russia, 130.--Tenarani, the Italian Sculptor, 131.--Group by Herr Kiss, 131.--English and American Portrait Painters, 131--Mr. Pyne's English Landscapes, 131.--Paintings by British Officers in Canada, 131.--Ovation to Rauch at Berlin, 131.--Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne, 131.--Newly-discovered Raphael, 131.--Daguerreotypes, 131.--Letter from Hiram Powers, 279.--Monument to Wordsworth, 279.--Monument to Weber, 279.--Works of Cornelius, 279.--Greenonga's Group for the Capital, 279.--The Twelve Virgins of Raphael, 279.--Tributes by Greece to her Benefactors, 279.--Paul Delaroche, 417.--Winterhalter, 417.--New Scriptures in the Crystal Palace, 417.--London Art-Union, 417.--American Art-Union. 417.--Powers's Eve, 417.--Leutze, 417.--The London Art-Journal on the Engravings of the American Art-Union. 561.--The Philadelphia Art-Union, 561.--The Western Art-Union, 562.--Mr. Healy's Picture of Webster's Reply to Hayne, 562.--Mr. Lentze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, 562--Illustrations of Martin Luther, 562.--Lentze's Washington. 743.--Colossal Statue of Washington at Munich, 703.--Kaulbach's Frescoes, 703.--Cadame's Compositions of the Seasons, 703.--Portraits of Bishop White and Daniel Webster, 703.

_Authors and Books._--The Story of Talns, and the Sardonic Laughter, by Merehlen, 122.--A German Treatise on Free Trade, 122.--Curious Medical Works in Germany, 122.--Weiseler on the Theatre, 122.--Woodcuts of celebrated Masters, 123.--Recent German Poetry, 123.--Venedy's Schleswig-Holstein in 1850, 123.--Souvenirs of Early Germans, 123.--Gutzkow, Reimer, and Gubitz. 123.--Mundi's Macchiavelli and the Course of European Policy, 123.--New German Novels, 124.--Baner's Documents respecting the Monastery of Arnsburg, 121.--Mss. of Peter Schlemil, 124.--Professor O. L. B. Wohl's Poetic and Prosaic Home Treasury, 124.--German opinion of Miss Weber, 124.--Professor Zahn at Pompeii, 124.--Barthohl's History of German Cities, 124.--Cornell on Feurebach, 125.--New Book of the Planets by Ernst, 125.--Waldmeister's Bridal Tour, 125.--German version of George Copyway's Book, 125.--German Survey of American Institutions, 125.--Russian Literature, 125.--Jewish Professors in Austria, 125.--Dumas's new Works, 125.--Madame Reybaud, 125.--New Volume of Thier's History of the Empire, 125.--Mignet's Life of Mary Queen of Scots, 126.--Cormenin on the Revision of the Constitution, 126.--Literary Episodes in the East, by Marcellus, 126.--Victor Hugo. 126.--Madame Bocarme, 126.--Signatures to Articles in the French Journals, 126.--Arago's loss of sight, 126.--George Sand to Dumas, 127.--Vacherot on the Philosophical School of Alexandria, 127.--Mss. of Rousseau, 127.--Unpublished works of Balzac, 127.--M. Nisard, 127.--M. Gautier, 127.--Guizot's History of Representative Government, 127.--Mademoiselle de Belle Isle, 127.--Rev. T. W. Shelton, in Sharpe's Magazine, 127.--Rev. Charles Kingsley, author of Alton Locke, 127.--Bowring's Translation of Schiller, 128.--New English Poems, 128.--New Novel by Warren, 128.--Judge Woodbury's Works, 128.--The North American Review, 128--Life of Judge Story, 123.--Contributions to the History of the West, by Lyman C. Draper, 129.--The Dublin University Magazine on Streets Frontenac, 129.--Mrs. Southworth in England. 129.--Return of Mrs. Mowatt, 129.--Miss Beecher's new Work on the Writings of Women, 129.--Ludwig Feuerback, 268.--August Kopish on the Monument to Frederic the Great, 269.--The _Janus_ Review, 269.--Franz Kugler on the Theatre, 269.--Von Muller's History of the Swiss Confederation, 269.--Memoir of Bretschneider, 269.--Dr. Worth, 269.--Herr Christern's Book Store, 269.--German Periodicals, 270.--The Hungarian Refugees in Turkey, 270.--The Youth of Thorwaldsen, 270.--Old and New Songs and Fables for Children, 270.--Convention of Sclavic Scholars, 270.--German Translation of Milton's Areopagitica, 270.--Eccentricities of German Medical Literature, 271.--German Poems, 271.--Shakspeare in Sweden, 271.--Neander's Lectures, 271.--George Sand and her Husband, 271.--New work by Comte, 271.--Lamartine's New History, 271.--Michelet's _Legendes de la Democratie_, 272.--Guizot's History of Representative Government, 272.--Prudhon's Idea of Revolution, 272.--Miss Martineau and her Master, 272.--Rumored Discoveries of Greek MSS, 272.--Bunsen on the supposed MS. of Origen, 272.--New English Poems, 272.--Herodotus and the Discoveries of Nineveh, 273.--Sir James Stephen's History of France, 273.--J. S. Buckingham, 273.--Mrs. Jamieson, 273.--New Books of Travels, 273.--Dr. Wilkinson and Henry James, 273.--New Novels, 273.--New Books on the Apocalypse, 274.--Finchman on Ship Building, 274.--The Grenville Papers, 274.--Sir W. Parish on Buenos Ayres, 274.--Works of Bishop Whately, 274.--Macaulay's New Volumes, 274.--Poems of Edith May, 274.--Ware's European Capitals, 274.--New Romance by Thomas H. Shreve, 274.--More about American Reviews, 275.--Poem on Woman, by J. W. Ward, 275.--Novellettes of Musicians, 275.--Dr. Huntington's Alban, 276.--Simms's Poetical Works, 276.--Dr. Tyng and Bickersteth, 276.--Mr. Putnam's forthcoming Souvenir Books, 276.--Kitto's Biblical Cyclopedia, 276.--Episodes of Insect Life, 276.--History of Oneida County, 276.--Mrs. Nichols's Poem's, 276.--New Translations of the Bible, 277.--Sale of Dr. Jarvis's Library, 277.--Ik Marvell's New Work, 277.--Mr. Longfellow's New Poem, 277.--Books on the Mechanic Arts, 278.--Dr. Wainwright's Work on Egypt, 278.--Mr. Jefferson's MSS. Work on Grammar, 278.--Dr. Williams on the Lord's Prayer, 278.--Works of John Adams, 278.--Publications of James Munroe, 278.--German Magazines, 403.--German Poets, 403, 405.--Freilegrath, 403.--New edition of Brockhaus' Lexicon, 403.--German View of Lamartine, 403.--Prutz in a Novel, 403.--Stahl on Paris, 404.--Kohler on Ancient Cameos, &c., 404.--Children's Picture Books, 404.--Latin Life of Zumpt, 404.--New work by Robert Remak, 405.--The German Element in English Language, 405.--Count Blumberg on the Higher Classes, 405.--Auerbach's German Evenings, 405.--Gailhabaud's Monuments of Architecture, 405.--A Life Spent in Studying Thrushes, 405.--Gust's Bibliotheca Biographia Lutherana, 405.--New work on Monarchy, 405.--New German Works on the Middle Ages, 406.--Konig and Gelzer on Luther, 406.--The Bible and the Almanac, 406.--Austrian Biographical Dictionary, 406.--New Book by Hans Andersen, 406--Zeise, the Danish Novelist, 407.--Poems of Tegner, 407.--Bohemian Songs, 407.--Italian Histories of To-day, 407.--Bible Plays by Wiese, 408.--Colins on Socialism, 408.--Memoirs by Captain Laconte, 408.--Villemarque's Breton Poems, 408.--Perrymond _vs._ Thiers, 408.--The French Orators, 408.--Histories of the Reformation in France, 408.--M. Guizot, 409.--Jules Janin, 409.--Montbeillard on Spinoza, 409.--Punishment of a Socialist Dramatist, 409.--Marriage of "Bon Gaultier," 409.--Visits to De Quincy and Burns's Sister, 410.--The "Baroness Von Beck," 410.--Thackeray's New Novel, 410.--Literary Pensions in England, 410.--Tributes to James Montgomery, 410.--New editor of the Westminster Review, 410.--New Lives of Mary, Queen of Scots, 411.--Publications of Moore & Co., of Cincinnati, 411.--Rivers of the Bible, 411.--Mexican Documents collected by the Abbe Bourbourg, 412.--Mr. Schoolcraft and the Publishers, 412.--Mr. Simms's New Tragedy, 412.--Dr. Albro's Life of Shepherd, the Puritan, 412.--New Edition of Fielding, 413.--Theory of Human Progression, 413.--The Nile Boat, 413.--Kitto's Bible Illustrations, 413.--Poore's Life of Napoleon, 413.--Indications of the Creator, by George Taylor, 413.--Parkman's History of Pontiac, 413.--De Quiney's Works, 413.--Mrs. Judson, 413.--Hart's Female Prose Writers of America, 414.--Mrs. Lee's Memoirs of Buckminster, 415.--Rochefoucauld, 415.--Dr. Huntington and his Novels, Letters, and Life, 415.--New Works in Press by the Harpers, 415.--By Redfield, do., 416.--New Work by Dr. Boardman, 416.--Carl Immerman's Letters on the Theatre, 551.--Kohl's last book of Travels, 551.--L'Eco d'Italia, 551.--Narcissa Zwichowska, 551.--Baron Baerst on Cooking, 551.--Brinckle's-Butterfly Book, 552.--Stein's History of the Social Movement in France, 552.--Dr. Schleiden's Work on Animalculae, 552.--History of Education, by Kranse, 552.--Handbook of Catholic Pulpit Eloquence, 552.--Popular Songs of Southern Russia, 552.--Hogarth's Works in Germany, 552.--Dr. Andree's Work on America, 553.--Studies of German Lore, 553.--Hase's New Prophets, 553.--Wanderings in Slavonia, 553.--A reply to the Countess Hahn-Hahn's last book, 554.--A Review of Lamartine's Parasite History, 554.--Humboldt's Kosmos, 554.--History of Polish Literature, 554.--Russian Archaeology, 554.--Siegfried Weiss on German Trade Policy, 554.--Periodicals in Asia, 554.--German Translation of Hawthorne, 554.--The German Universities, 555.--New German Poems, 555.--Literary Statistics of Poland, 555.--Work on Russia by Tegoborski, 555.--Ritter's History of Philosophy, 555.--De Flotte on the Sovereignty of the People, 555.--Nineveh, 555.--New Series of Eugene Sue's Mysteries of the People, 556.--Second Part of Michelet's History of the French Revolution, 556.--Julian's History of Porcelain Manufacture, 556.--Felix de Verneihl on the Cologne Cathedral, 556.--Andre Cochat on French Workingmen's Associations, 556.--New edition of George Sand's Works, 556.--Letter from Alexander Dumas, 556.--Alfred de Musset, 557.--Translations of Comte's Philosophy, 557.--Jules Janin's new Romance, 557.--Ferdinand Hiller, 557.--James T. Fields, 557.--New Histories of the Mexican War, 557.--Horace Mann on the Sphere of Woman, 557.--General Morris not guilty of Plagiarism, 558.--Torrey's Translation of Neander, 558.--Translations of Dante, 559.--Alice Carey's Recollections of Our Neighborhood in the West, 559.--Modern Miracles, by Henry Ingalls, 559.--New Novel by Mr. James and Mr. Field, 559.--History of the German Reformed Church, 559.--Professor Hackett's Commentary on the Acts, 559.--The Whale, by Herman Melville, 559.--Mr. Herbert's work on Ancient Battles, &c., 560.--Glances at Europe, by H. Greeley, 560.--Hungary and Kossuth, 560.--Richard B. Kimball, 560.--Mr. Judd's Margaret, 560.--Pendant to Professor Creasy's _Decisive Battles of the World_, 693.--Correspondence respecting the Thirty Years' War, 693.--German collection of English Songs, 693.--German Philologists, 693.--Weil's History of the Califs, 693.--The Germans in Bohemia, 693.--Andree's Work on America, 694.--Works on Spinoza, 694.--New Goethean Literature, 694.--The British Empire in Europe, by Meidinger, 694.--The Play of the Resurrection, 694.--German History of French Literature, 694.--New work on German Knighthood, &c., 694.--German Romanee in the 18th Century, 695.--Madame Blaze de Bury's New Novel, 695.--Richter's History of the Evangelical German Churches, 695.--German Life of Sir Robert Peel, 695.--Zimmermann on the English Revolution, 695.--History of Norway, 695.--Reguly, the Hungarian Traveller, 695.--Political Notabililities of Hungary, 695.--Speeches, &c., by King William of Prussia, 695.--Pictures from the North, 695.--History of the Swiss Confederation, 695.--Bem's System of Chronology, by Miss Peabody, 695.--French Almanacs, 695.--M. Croce-Spinelli's Work on Popular Government, 696.--Works by the Paris Asiatic Society, 696.--Caesar Daly on Parisian Architecture, 696.--Fignier's Modern Discoveries, 696.--The _Annuaire des Deux Mondes_, 696.--Calvin's Inedited Letters, 697.--Lacretelle, 697.--Critical Studies of Socialism, 697.--Memoirs of Mademoiselle Mars, 697.--The Institute of France, 697.--Grille on the War in La Vendee, 697.--History of the Bourgeoisie of Paris, 697.--_Archives des Missions Scientifiques_, &c., 697.--Travels in Africa, 698.--Spirit of New Roman Catholic Literature, 698.--Garcin de Tassy on Mr. Salisbury's Unpublished Arabic Documents, 699.--New Travels in Palestine, 698.--The Abaddie Travellers, 699.--French, English, and American Missionaries, as Scholars, 699.--The Westminster Review, 699.--A Grandson of Robert Burns, 699.--Friends in Council, &c., by Mr. Helps, 699.--New English Announcements, 700.--New Dissenters' College, 700.--Sir Charles Lyell and the "Free Thinkers," 700.--Prof. Wilson, 700.--Miss Kirkland's Evening Book, 700.--Works by Mrs. Lee, 701.--Mr. Boyd's edition of Young's Night Thoughts, 702.--"Injustice to the South," 702.--Splendid American Gift Books for 1852, 703.--New American Works in Press, 703, &c. British Humorists.--_By W. M. Thackeray_, 24

Boker, George II.--_By Bayard Taylor_. (Portrait.) 156

Bohemian Glass. (Six Engravings.) 291

Ballad of Sir John Franklin.--_By George H. Boker_, 473

Bryant, and his Works, William Cullen. (Portrait.) 588

Bull Fight at Ronda, 681

Calvin Colton, Rev., and his Works. (Portrait.) 1

Castle of Belvor: An Incident in the Life of Arago, 41

Count Monte-Leone. (Concluded), 42, 202, 327, 500

China, Our Phantom Ship, 67

Chest of Drawers.--_By an Attorney_, 73

Cicada, The.--_By H. J. Crate_, 164

Charlemagne, Times of.--_By Sir Francis Palgrave_, 169

Calhoun, Private Life of John C.--_By Miss M. Bates_, 173

Copenhagen, 238

Cooper, J. F., Portrait and View of his Residence, _Frontispiece_.

Cooke, Sketch of Philip Pendleton. (Portrait.) 300

Chamois Hunting, 344

Cleopatra's Needle, 367

Cheap Postage System, 370

Country Gentleman at Home.--_By C. A. Bristed_, 389

Cooper, Reminiscences of J. Fenimore.--_By Dr. Francis_, 458

Cooper, Public Honors to the Memory of Mr., 456

Chimes, The.--_By E. W. Ellsworth_, 487

Carlyle's Life of John Sterling, 599

Calcutta: Social, Industrial, Political, 611

Captain and the Negro, The, 646

Crebillon, the French AEschylus, 520

Dramatic Fragments.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 17

Decorative Arts in America, 171

Deserted Mansion, 227

Dirge for an Infant--_By R. S. Chilton_, 487

Death in Youth.--_By H. W. Parker_, 598

Dutch Governors of Niew Amsterdam.--_By J. R. Brodhead_, 597

Drinking Experiences: A Temperance Lecture by "Nimrod," 621

_Deaths, Recent._--General Arbuckle, 139.--Mrs. Thomas Sheridan, 139.--Bishop Carlson, 139.--Sir J. E. Dalzell, 139.--Chevalier Parisot de Guyrmont, 139.--General James Miller, 140.--General Uminski, 140.--Viscount Melville, 140.--Mr. Dyce Sombre, 140.--Bishop Medrano, 140.--The Earl of Shaftesbury, 141.--Mr. Thomas Wright Hill, 142.--Melchior Boisseree, 142.--Christian Tieck, the Sculptor, 142.--Rev. Stephen Olin, D.D., 282.--Baron de Leideni, 282.--Edward Quillinan, 282.--Harriet Lee, 282.--Dr. Julius, 282.--Rev. Azariah Smith, 282.--General Henry A. S. Dearborn, 283.--D. M. Mon, 228, 283.--General Sir Roger Sheafe, 283.--M. Daguerre, (Portrait), 283.--Rev. Dr. Lingard, (Portrait), 285.--Marshal Sebastian, 287.--J. Fenimore Cooper, 428.--Rev. T. H. Gallaudet, 428.--Judge Beverly Tucker, 428.--Levi Woodbury, 429.--General McClure, 429.--Lorenz Ocken, 429.--Count Killmansegge, 430.--H. E. G. Paulus, 430.--Joseph Rusiecki, 430.--John Gottfried Gruber, 430.--The Earl of Clare, 431.--Sir Henry Jardine, 431.--Mrs. Sherwood, 572.--Rev. James H. Hotchkiss, 572.--General Henry Whitney, 572.--Commodore Warrington, 572.--Professor Kidd, 573.--The Earl of Donoughmore, 573.--William Nicol, 574.--Mr. Freeman, the Missionary, 574.--James Richardson, 574.--William Willshire, 574.--J. R. Dubois, 575.--Gustav Carlin, 575.--Archibald Alexander, D. D., 705.--J. Kearney Rogers, M.D., 705.--Rev. Wm. Croswell, D.D., 706.--Granville Sharpe Pattison, M.D., 706.--Mr. Stephens, author of _The Manuscripts of Erdeley_, 706.--Mr. Gutzlaff, the Missionary, 707.--Don Manuel Godoy, the Prince of the Peace, 708.--George Baker, 708.--M. de Savigny, 708.--Archbishop Wingard, 708.--Samuel Beaseley, author of _The Roue_, 708.--H. P. Borrell, 708.--James Tyler, R. D., 708.--Emma Martin, 709.--Yar Mohammed, 709.--Alexander Lee, 710.--Prince Frederick of Prussia, 710.

Exile's Sunset Song.--_By John R. Thompson_, 26

Egypt, The last Joseph in, 185

English in America.--_By the author of "Sam Slick,"_ 186

Egypt under Abbas Pasha,--_By Bayle St. John_, 259

Earthquake in Europe, The Last, 467

Fleischmann, Herr, on Life in America, 158

Fallen Genius.--_By Miss Alice Carey_, 288

Flying Artist, 398

Franklin, Inedited Letter of Dr., 472

Fragments from a New Volume of Poems.--_By Thomas L. Beddoes_, 550

French Flower Girl, The, 641

Fragments of a Poem.--_By H. W. Parker_, 189

Great Fair at Rochester. (Fifteen Engravings.) 438

Gold-Quartz and Society in California, 472

Greenwood.--_By Maunsell B. Field_, 476

Ghost Story of Normandy, 512

Gerard, and the Baron Munchausen, in Africa, M. Jules, 587

German Handbook of America, 598

Gondolettas: Two Songs.--_By Alice B. Neal_, 597

Hahn-Hahn, The Countess Ida, 17

History of a Rose, 117

Huntington, Dr., on Copyright, 308

Heroines of History: Laura.--_By Mary E. Hewitt_, 480

Habits of Frederick the Great, 528

Herman Melville's New Novel of "The Whale," 602

_Historical Review of the Month._--The United States: Elections, &c., 567.--Foreign Relations, 567.--Mexico, 568.--South American States, 568.--Great Britain, 568.--France, Italy, Russia, &c., 569.--The East, &c., 569.--The American Elections, 704.--Kossuth in England, 704.--Europe, and the East, 704.

Imaginary Conversations at Warsaw.--_By Walter Savage Landor_, 98

In the Harem.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 164

Illustrations of Motives, 280

International Copyright, 386

Jules Janin and the Paris Feuilletonistes, 18

Jungle Recollection.--_By Captain Hardbargain_, 110

Jews in China, 264

Jefferson, Mr., on the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Language, 468

Landscapes, Swedish.--_By Hans Christian Andersen_, 20

London, Paris, and New-York, 100

Ladies' Fashions. (Illustrated.) 142, 288, 431, 575, 710

Latham, on the People of the Mosketo Kingdom, 471

My Novel: or, Varieties in English Life.--_By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton_, 80, 243, 371, 534, 688

Moir, David Macbeth.--_By George Gilfillan_, 233

Music.--_By H. W. Parker_, 327

Meeting of the Vegetarians, 402

Newspaper Poets: Charles Weldon, 201

Nauvoo and Deseret: The Mormons. (Six Engravings.) 577

_Noctes Amicitiae._--English Opinions of the "American Department" in the Crystal Palace, 563.--Ridiculous Convention of Women, at Worcester, 563.--Bloomerism in London, 563.--Defenders of the Catholic Practices, 563.--Anecdote of Tom Cook, 563.--Capital Anecdote of Charles XII, 564.--A Superfluous Amount of Name, 564.--G. P. R. James in the Law Courts, 564.--Nursery Rhymes, 564.--The London Printers, 564.--The Japanese and French Civilization, 565.--Extraordinary Suicides in Paris, 565, &c.

October.--_By Alice Carey_, 371

Obelisks of Egypt, 469

Old Man's Death, The.--_By Alice Carey_, 529

Ottoman History, The Three Eras of, 643

Parodies, A Chapter of, 23

Passages in the Life of a Dutch Poet, 65

Phantasy, A.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 169

Paris, Reminiscences of, from 1817 to 1851, 182

Poulailler, the Robber, 216

Questions from a worn-out Lorgnette.--_By O. A. Hall_, 187

Reminiscence, A.--_By Alice Carey_, 360

Remarkable Prophecy, 474

Revolutions in Russia.--_By Alexander Dumas_, 616

Story Without A Name.--_By G. P. R. James, Esq._, (Concluded), 28, 189, 316, 487, 604

Stuart of Dunleath, 119

Sailors, Institutions for, in New-York. (Six Engravings.) 145

Scenes in the Old Dominion (Six Engravings.) 151

Styles of Philosophies.--_By Rev. J. R. Morell_, 180

Shadow of Lucy Hutchinson, 239

Saxe, John G., and his Satires. (Portrait.) 289

Sandwich Islands To-Day. (Two Engravings.) 298

Shadow of Margery Paston, 363

Saint Escarpacio's Bones.--_From the French_, 483

Sonnets: Truth--The Future, 499

Sliding Scales of Despair, 592

Songs of the Cascade.--_By A. Oakey Hall_, 602

Spendthrift's Daughter: In Six Chapters, The, 664

_Scientific Discoveries and Proceedings of Learned Societies._--The British Association, 137.--Asiatic Society, 137.--Paris Geographical Society, 137.--Royal Society of Literature, 137.--Paris Academy of Sciences, 138.--London Royal Institution, 138.--Berlin Academy of Sciences, 138.--Improvements in Photographs, 138.--Colonel Rawlinson on the last Discoveries of Nineveh and Babylon, 426.--New attempts to discover Perpetual Motion, 426.--Document respecting the discovery of Steam Navigation at Venice, 427.--English Athletes, compared with Greek Statues, 427.--Discoveries at Memphis, 427.--Scientific Conventions, 427.--The Russian Academy, 571.--Scientific Congress in France, 571.--Paris Academy of Sciences, 571.--Ethnological Society, 571.

Trot on the Island.--_By C. Astor Bristed_, 54

To the Author of Eothen.--_By Barry Cornwall_, 315

The King and the Outlaw.--_By an Old Contributor_, 482

Verses.--_By R. H. Stoddard_, 22

Visit to the "Maid of Athens," 116

Visit to the late Dr. Lingard.--_By Rev. J. C. Richmond_, 172

Veneer, Fraser's Magazine on English, 306

Visit to the Aberdeen Comb-Works, 856

Vagaries of the Imagination, 638

Veiled Picture: A Traveller's Story, The, 648

Watering Places, A Glance at the. (Fifteen Engravings.) 4

Webster, Noah, LL. D. (Portrait and birthplace.) 12

Waterloo, Tricks on Travellers at, 164

Wives of Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, 241

Wallace, William Ross. (Portrait.) 444

Windsor Castle and its Associations. (Two Engravings.) 585

THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

_Of Literature, Art, and Science._

Vol. IV. NEW-YORK, AUGUST 1, 1851. No. I.

REV. CALVIN COLTON.

Mr. Colton is a man of very decided abilities, voluminous and various in their manifestation, and assiduously cultivated during a long life, in which he has never failed of the curiosity, ambition, and industry of a learner. The untiring freshness and hopefulness of his spirit is shown by his undertaking the study of the French language not more than three or four years ago, and obtaining such a mastery of it as to read with delight its most abstruse authors, and to preach in it with fluency and even with eloquence. It is characteristic of him that he is always earnest, and that he considers whatever he has to do worthy of his best abilities, so that in writing of theology, economy, polity, or manners, he arrays in order for each particular subject all the forces of his understanding, and makes its discussion their measure and illustration. He has been in an eminent degree devoted to literature as a profession, and although he has produced works which may be deemed unfortunate in design or defective in execution, it must be admitted that he is entitled to a highly respectable position as a thinker and as a writer, and that in opinion and in affairs he has exercised a steady and large influence.

He was born in Long Meadow, Massachusetts, graduated at Yale College in 1812, studied divinity at Andover, and in 1815 took orders in the Presbyterian church. For several years he was settled in the village of Batavia in western New-York, but his voice failing in 1826, he became a contributor to several of the principal periodicals occupied with religion and learning, and in the summer of 1831, after an extended tour through the western states and territories, proceeded to London, as a correspondent of the New-York Observer.

In England, he led a life of remarkable literary activity. In 1832 he published a _Manual for Emigrants to America_, which had a large sale among the middling classes; and _The History and Character of American Revivals of Religion_, of which there were two or three editions. In 1833, in a volume entitled _The Americans, by an American in London_, he replied, with an unanswerable display of facts, to the libels on this country by British travellers and reviewers; and published _The American Cottager_, a religious narrative. _A Tour of the American Lakes and among the Indians of the North-West Territory_, in two volumes, and _Church and State in America_, a vindication of the religious character of the country and the voluntary principle for the support of religion, in reply to the Bishop of London, who had endeavored to show that the United States were going back to paganism because the church was not here connected with the state.

Returning to New-York, in 1835, he published _Four Years in Great Britain_, in two volumes, which were soon after reprinted, with some additions, in a more popular form. In 1836 he gave to the public anonymously, _Protestant Jesuitism_, a criticism of the constitution, extreme opinion, and unwise action of many of the benevolent and religious societies; and having taken orders in the Episcopal church, _Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country, and Reasons for preferring Episcopacy_, a work which was much read and the cause of much critical observation in Great Britain as well as in the United States.

From that time Mr. Colton has written very little on any subject intimately connected with religion, but directing his attention to public affairs, has been as conspicuous in the state as he was previously in the church. In 1838 he published _Abolition a Sedition_, and _Abolition and Colonization Contrasted_, in which he contended with equal earnestness and ability that the entire subject of slavery is beyond the limits of the proper action of the national government, and that there is no justification of its discussion, except in the states where slavery is established, or for the wise and really philanthropic purpose of promoting African Colonization. In 1839 he again took up the argument of our social relations with Great Britain, in a work written in Philadelphia, but published in London, under the title of _A Voice from America to England, By an American Gentleman_. The plan was judicious: it was not so much to express opinions as to state facts which should compel opinions in the adverse audience he addressed. While mainly defensive, he was at the same time bravely critical. He contended that in its constitution our government was republican and not democratic, but that the extraordinary force of public opinion among us has made it democratic in fact. A large portion of the work was devoted to the several ecclesiastical polities existing here, which he treated with singular freedom and originality, so that the frequent impertinences of ignorant laymen and obtrusively-meddling women, in the affairs of churches, rendering the clerical profession humiliating and difficult to a person of manly character and cultivation, were stated without any hesitation or attempt at concealment. The entire performance is still attractive for frequent sound observation upon institutions, judicious criticism of manners, happy illustration, and good humor, and its opportune appearance was advantageous to the best fame of the country.

In 1840 he made a more distinct and powerful impression than ever before, by the publication of _The Crisis of the Country, American Jacobinism_, and _One Presidential Term_, a series of tracts under the name of "Junius," which were circulated in all the states by thousands and hundreds of thousands, and were supposed to have had great influence in the overthrow of the democratic administration. In 1842 he edited at Washington a paper called _The True Whig_, and in 1843 and 1844 he brought out a second series, embracing ten publications, still more popular than the first, of the _Junius Tracts_.

In the autumn of the latter year, when the fortunes of the whig party seemed to be entirely broken, when full half the nation felt a personal grief for the defeat of a leader, added to the mortification of political discomfiture, Mr. Colton determined to write the life of the chief he had followed with unwavering admiration and unfaltering activity. Casting aside all other cares, so that his every thought might be given to the work until its completion, he set out for Kentucky, where he was sure of the friendly assistance of Mr. Clay in whatever concerned the investigation of facts. In November, 1844, he reached Lexington, where Mr. Clay laid open to him the stores of his correspondence, and the documentary history of his career. The work was finished in the spring of 1846, and published in two large octavos; and so great was the demand for it, that the first impression of five thousand copies was sold in six months. It is unquestionably an able performance, and from the circumstances under which it was composed and the conclusiveness of some of its arguments it is probable that it will always be regarded as a valuable portion of the material for contemporary political history; but, it appears to me very unequal in execution, and signally unfortunate in design, if considered either as a biography or a history. For the subjective rather than the chronological arrangement of the facts in it there is however this defence, that it rendered the work much more easy of citation, and therefore more valuable as a magazine for partisan controversy. The influence it obtained may be illustrated by reference to a single point: for a quarter of a century the staple of declamation against Mr. Clay, the opposition which thrice cost him the presidency, was his supposed bargain with John Quincy Adams; but since the appearance of Mr. Colton's exposition of this subject any person in an intelligent society would forfeit the consideration given to a gentleman who should repeat the charge.

For several years the attention of Mr. Colton had been more and more attracted to the literature and philosophy of political economy. In 1846 he printed his first work in which it is formally treated, _The Rights of Labor_, in which he asserted, illustrated, and with unanswerable logic vindicated the American doctrine of the privileges and dignity of Industry; and in 1848 he gave to the world his last and most important work, _Public Economy for the United States_. From the formation of the first system of society the subjects embraced in this production have employed the most powerful intellects of all nations. But though illustrated by the liveliest genius and the profoundest reflection, they have not until recently assumed even the forms of science. We cannot tell what formulae of economical truth passed from existence in the lost books of Aristotle. The father of the peripatetic philosophy undoubtedly brought to public economics the severe method which enabled him to construct so much of the everlasting science of which the history goes back to his times; but whatever direction he gave to the subject, by the investigation of its ultimate principles and their phenomena, his successors, and the writers upon it since the revival of learning, have generally been guided by empirical laws, which in an especial degree have obtained in regard to the economy of commerce. Scarcely any of the literature or reflection upon the subject has gone behind the bold hypotheses of free trade theorists, which have been as unsubstantial as the fanciful systems of the universe swept from existence by the demonstrations of Newton. Not only have economical systems generally been made up of unproven hypotheses, but they have rarely evinced any such clear apprehension and constructive ability as are essential in the formation and statement of principles; and down to the chaos of Mr. Mills's last essay there is scarcely a volume on political economy which rewards the wearied attention with any more than a vague understanding of the shadowy design that existed in the author's brain.

In the eminently original and scientific work of Mr. Colton we see economy subjected to fundamental and ultimate methods of investigation of which the results have a mathematical certainty. We have new facts, new reasonings, new deductions; and if the paramount ideas are not altogether original, they are discovered by original processes, and their previous existence is but an illustration of the truth that the instinctive perspicacity of the common mind often surpasses the logical faculty in recognizing laws before they are discovered from elements and relations. Mr. Colton has not rejected the title "_political_ economy" because he proposed to enter a different field, or because the subject and argument have no relation to politics, but chiefly because the term has been so much abused in the rude agitation of what are commonly called politics, that he does not think it comports with the dignity of the theme; and the second part of his title is adopted from a conviction that the economical principles of states _are to be deduced from their separate experience and adapted to their individual condition_. The task which he proposed to himself is, the exhibition of the merits of the protective and free trade systems as they apply to the United States. He expresses at the outset his opinion that the settlement of the question is one of the most desirable, and will be one of the most important results which remain to be achieved in the progress of the country; and we can assure him that the accomplishment of it will be rewarded by the best approval of these times, and an enduring name. The second chapter of his work is a statement of the new points which it embraces. By new points he does not mean that all thus described are entirely original, though many of them are so; but that on account of the importance of the places he has assigned them as compared with those they occupy in other works of the kind, they are entitled to be presented as new. Many of them involve fundamental and pervading principles that have not hitherto appeared in speculations on the subject, but which are destined to an important influence in its discussion. Some of the most prominent are, that public economy is the application of knowledge, derived from experience, to given positions, interests and institutions, for the increase of wealth; that it has never been reduced to a science, and that the propositions of which it has been for the most part composed, down to this time, are empirical; that protective duties in the United States are not taxes, and that a protective system rescues the country from a system of foreign taxation; that popular education is a fundamental element of public economy; that freedom is a thing of commercial value, and that the history of freedom for all time, shows it to be identical with protection.

Recently the renewal of his voice has enabled Mr. Colton to devote more attention to the favorite pursuit of his life, and he is a very frequent preacher, in French or English. He resides in New-York.

A GLANCE AT THE WATERING PLACES.

All the gay world of the cities, and even of the villages and country homes, who can do so, by the first of August are "going," or "gone," as Mr. John Keese says of a last invoice, to the watering places, and other summer resorts, which serve as fairs for the disposal of valueless time and "remainders" of marriageable daughters. With the crowds intent on speculation are a few invalids, a few students of human nature, and the common proportion of mere lookers-on, who have no purpose but to be amused. Times have changed, manners have changed, since Paulding gave us his _Mirror for Travellers_, though Saratoga still maintains the ascendency she was then acquiring, and for certain inalienable natural advantages is likely to do so for a part at least of every season.

New-York is the grand rendezvous: once settled in our hotels, the splendid Astor, the comfortable American, the busy Irving, the gay New-York, or the quiet Union Place or Clarendon, the stranger has little desire to go further, until the last and imperative demands of Fashion compel him to abandon the study of those noble institutions we described in the last _International_, and to forego the observation of those great public works in which the energy of our rich men has flowered, or those appointments of Providence which render New-York a rival of Dublin, Naples, or Constantinople, in scenic magnificence.

Many indeed who come from distant parts of the country, linger all summer in the vicinity of the city, in the hottest days quitting Broadway for a sail or drive, to the Bath House, Rockaway, Coney Island, New Brighton, Long Branch, or Fort Hamilton, where they dine, or perhaps stay over night. At Fort Hamilton, indeed, Mr. Clapp is apt to keep those who venture into his hotel, with its luxurious tables, pleasant rooms, cool breezes from the ocean, and fair sights in all directions, for a much longer time; and every one of these places, in the hot months, has attractions that would make a visitor at the Spas of France, Germany, or Italy, could he wake in them, think he had eluded the watchful guard St. Peter keeps at the gateway of another retirement, to the which, it may be feared, the gay world has far less anxiety to go.

Ascending the Hudson, from the social metropolis of this continent, to which all "capitals" of states or nations, from Patagonia to Greenland, are in some way subject and tributary, the traveller finds the palace in which he rides, continually near embowered pavilions for the public, and clusters of private residences, which but add to their enjoyableness. Cozzens's Hotel at West Point, is perhaps as well known as any house of the same class in the world, and its picturesque situation, as well as the admirable manner in which it is kept, will preserve for it a place in the list of favorite resorts. The Catskill Mountain House, in the midst of grand and peculiar scenery, on the verge of a rock two thousand and five hundred feet above the Hudson--seen with its various fleets at a distance from the long colonnade--is thronged even more than West Point. There are other pleasant houses on the river, and many turn from its various points to visit newer or less crowded places than Saratoga along the lines of the western railroads, as Trenton Falls, Sharon Springs, or Avon, or further still, the towns by the borders of the great lakes.

Saratoga is now for several weeks the gayest scene of all. At the United States Hotel, with its fine grounds, are the leaders of fashion; at Congress Hall, with its clean and quiet rooms and unsurpassed _cuisine_, are representatives of the substantial families that have had grandfathers, and in the dozen or twenty smaller houses about the village are "all sorts and conditions of men," and eke of women. With drives, dinners, flirtations, drinking of drinks, and, once in a long while, imbibitions of a little congress water, all goes merry as a marriage bell--except with ladies of uncertain ages who are disappointed of that blessed music--until the Grand Ball gives signal for departure to other places.

From Saratoga parties go northward to Lake George, (for which region, of the most romantic beauty, they should be prepared by a perusal of Dudley Bean's admirable sketch of its revolutionary history;) and down the Champlain toward Montreal, whence they return by way of the Ontario and Niagara Falls (where our engraver Orr's _Pictorial Guide Book_ is indispensable to the best enjoyment), or go through the glorious hills of northern Vermont and New Hampshire to the White Mountains. All the last grand region has been most truthfully and effectively represented in a small folio volume of drawings from nature, by Isaac Sprague, described by William Oakes, and published in Boston by Crosby & Nichols. We commend the book to summer tourists.

A considerable proportion of the guests who are at Saratoga in the earlier part of the season, proceed to Newport in time for the Fancy Ball which every year closes the campaign there. Newport increases in attractions. Its historical associations, fine atmosphere, beautiful position, and facilities for sea-bathing, fishing, sailing, riding, and other amusements, are continually drawing to its neighborhood new families, whose cottages add much to the beauty of the town, as they themselves to the pleasantness of its society; and for transient visitors no place in the world has better hotels or boarding-houses.

After the season closes at Newport, and from her Ocean House the last unwilling traveller has taken his way, strewn with regrets, many linger at the more quiet summer haunts scattered through New-England and New-York, particularly at the rural and luxurious hotel of Lebanon--a country palace which a king might covet--filled always with good society; or go southward to the Virginia Springs, which have many attractions peculiar to themselves, and with their unique pastimes, their tournaments, field sports, &c., happily vary a summer's life commenced at the more northern watering places.

The South Carolinians have this year seceded from the northern resorts, and those who do not go from Charleston to the up-country or to Georgia, may well be content with Captain Payne's spacious and splendid hotel on Sullivan's Island--the coolest and most agreeable place by the seaside we have visited, north or south, for years. From the south, and indeed from all parts of the country, parties go more and more every year to the Mammoth Cave, (of which we have in store a particular and profusely illustrated account), and up the great rivers and lakes of the west, all along which, first-class hotels, steamboats, &c., render travel as easy and delightful as on the old summer routes in the middle and eastern states.

--Thus we have taken our readers--some of whom haply cannot this season go by other ways--the circuit of the principal scenes of enjoyment to which the denizens of the hot cities are intent to escape through July, August, and September. If any have till this time hesitated where to go, possibly we have aided them to an election: certainly, we have led them cheaply along the fashionable tour.

NOAH WEBSTER.

The above portrait of the author of _The American Spelling-Book_, of which there have been sold thirty millions of copies, and of the _American Dictionary_, of which his publishers have hopes of selling as great a number, is very life-like; it is from a painting by Professor Morse, and the last time we saw the veteran scholar and schoolmaster, he wore the very expression caught by that always successful artist. Noah Webster's is the most universally familiar name in our history; every body, from first to second childhood, from end to end and side to side of the continent, knows it as well as his own; and he who made it so famous was worthy of his reputation.

Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 16th, 1758. He was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Webster, one of the first settlers of Hartford, and afterwards governor of the colony. In 1774 he was admitted to Yale College. His studies were frequently interrupted during the Revolution, and for a time he himself served as a volunteer in the army, with his father and two brothers. He graduated, with honor, in 1778, in the same class with Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Uriah Tracy, and other distinguished men, and immediately opened a school, residing meanwhile in the family of Oliver Ellsworth, afterward chief justice of the United States. He soon commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781; but the poverty and unsettled state of the country prevented any immediate success in the courts, and he resumed the business of instruction in 1782, at Goshen, Orange county, New-York. It was here that he began the preparation of books for the schools. He was led to do so in despondency of success in his profession; but it changed the course of his life. Having exhibited the rude sketch of his initial effort to Mr. Madison (afterwards President), and Dr. Stanhope Smith, Professor in Princeton college, he was encouraged by them to publish the "First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language." The second and third parts of the series soon followed. A generation has not passed since some of these books were occasionally seen in New England. It may be that here and there a copy may still be lurking in the garret of some ancient family, or on the dusty shelves of a collector of antiquities. There is no more striking contrast than that suggested by a comparison of Webster's "Third Part," as it was familiarly styled, with the admirably printed school books now in every family. Webster's were the first school books published in the United States. In 1847 twenty-four million copies of the Spelling Book had been sold, and for several years the demand for it has been at the rate of a million a year.

Dr. Webster did not confine his attention to his own publications; but having learned that a copy of Winthrop's Journal was in the possession of Governor Trumbull, he caused it to be transcribed and published at his own risk. In this way was given to the public one of the most important memorials of our early history, and the first example furnished of printing the documents, and other materials, illustrative of our original experience. Mr. Webster was poor, and the country had never yet evinced any disposition to encourage enterprises of this sort; but he had always a confidence that it was safe to do what was right and necessary, and therefore disregarded in this, as in many other cases, the opinions of his friends that he would incur inevitable loss.

The peace of 1783 involved the whole country in political agitation, at certain points of which the calmest and wisest well nigh despaired of the republic. At that time the influence of the pen was greater than ever before. It seemed that the decision of principles which were to last for centuries was dependent on the force of a single argument, or the earnestness of one appeal. In this conflict the ambitious and self-relying spirit of Mr. Webster led him to take an active part, and from the peace till the close of Washington's administration, he was an industrious and efficient writer. No period in the history of this country was ever more critical; in none were so many principles subjected to experiment, in none was discussion more able, exhausting, and high-toned.

The first topic which engaged Mr. Webster's attention was the decision of Congress to remunerate the army, then recently disbanded. This measure was violently opposed in all parts of the country. Meetings were held to organize resistance to the law, and two-thirds of the towns of Connecticut were represented in a convention for this purpose. Mr. Webster was then twenty-five years of age, but he contributed to the leading paper of the state a series of essays, signed HONORIUS, which induced a decisive change in the public feeling; and he received for his important services the thanks of Governor Trumbull. In the winter of 1784--5 he published a tract, _Sketches of American Policy_, in which he advanced the doctrine, that to meet the crisis and secure the prosperity of the whole country, a government should be organized that would act, not upon the states, but directly on the people, vesting in Congress full authority to execute its own acts. A copy of this essay was presented by the author to Washington, and it is believed that it contained the first distinct proposal of the new constitution. About the same time, he exerted himself successfully for what was then called an "International Copyright" law between the several sovereign states; and at a later period he spent a winter in Washington, to procure an extension of the period for which a copyright might be enjoyed. In 1785, he prepared a series of lectures on the English language, which he delivered in the larger towns, and in 1789 published, under the title of _Dissertations on the English Language_. In 1787-8, he spent the winter in Philadelphia, as a teacher. The convention called to frame the new constitution was in session during a part of the year, and after its labors were completed, Mr. Webster undertook to recommend the result to the then doubtful favor of the people. This he did in a tract, entitled _An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution_. In the next year he established in New-York _The American Magazine_, but it was unsuccessful. In 1789 he opened a law-office in Hartford, and his reputation, diligence, and abilities, insured business and profits. He was now married to Miss Greenleaf, of Boston, and enjoyed the advantage of one of the most brilliant literary circles of the country, consisting of Joel Barlow, Lemuel Hopkins, John Trumbull, and others who at that time were eminent for their capacities.

But the political excitement of 1793, caused by the proclamation of neutrality, disturbed his plans, and brought him again into the arena of affairs. The sympathy for the new French republic, natural and pardonable as it was, overran all limits of reason. The popularity and influence of Washington were hardly sufficient for the repression of disorder and violence, and an armed espousal of the cause of the French. Mr. Webster was solicited to devote himself to the support of the administration, and means were furnished for the establishment by him of a daily paper in New-York. He accordingly commenced _The Minerva_, and soon after, a semi-weekly, _The Herald_, which ultimately received the names which they now retain, of _The Commercial Advertiser_, and _The New-York Spectator_.

Another agitation soon followed, if possible, still more alarming--that which grew out of Jay's Treaty with England. The discussions to which this gave rise were earnest, often angry and vituperative, but always able, enlisting the most accomplished men of the country. In these discussions Mr. Webster was, as might have been anticipated, remarkably active. A series of papers by him, under the signature of CURTIUS, had an unquestionable influence on the whole nation. They were extensively reprinted and afterwards collected in a volume. Mr. Rufus King said to Mr. Jay, that they had done more than any others to allay the popular opposition to the treaty. During these conflicts, Mr. Webster often encountered as an antagonist the celebrated William Cobbett, at that time conducting a journal in Philadelphia, distinguished alike for ability and for unscrupulous violence.

While Mr. Webster lived in New-York, the yellow fever prevailed in this city and in Philadelphia, and he wrote a minute and comprehensive _History of Pestilential Diseases_, in two volumes, which was published in New-York and in London. It attracted much attention in its time, and was referred to with interest during the subsequent prevalence of the cholera. He also published in 1802 an able treatise on _The Rights of Neutral Nations in time of War_, occasioned by the interference of the French government with the shipping of the world, and its seizure of American vessels, under the proclamation of a blockade. He also published _Historical Notices of the Origin and State of Banking Institutions and Insurance Offices_, a work of authority and popularity.

In 1798 he removed to New Haven, but retained the direction of his paper at New-York for several years. After disposing of his interest in it he devoted the remainder of his life to literary pursuits.

His first work was a _Philosophical and Practical English Grammar_, printed in 1807. It was in many respects original, acute, and excellently fitted for the purposes of instruction. It was, however, only one of the studies for his subsequent and far more important performance. For more than twenty years he had been a close student of the elements and sources of the English language; he had gradually, as his various occupations permitted, accumulated and arranged materials for its exposition, and he now felt himself at liberty to forego all other pursuits and ambitions to devote himself for the remainder of his life to the great labors which have made his name so honorably eminent in the history of the intellectual advances of his country and of the Saxon family. The preparation of a Dictionary, under any circumstances, must be regarded as a very formidable task, involving even for an enthusiast the most dry and wearying researches, unenlivened by any of the pleasing excitements which vary the monotony and relieve the tedium of ordinary literary pursuits. Mr. Webster from the beginning had a just conception of the duties and difficulties before him; he was assured that no superficial study or careless execution would command or in any degree deserve approval, in one who followed in the track of Johnson. He was not disposed to make the work of that great man a basis for his own; to be simply an editor, whose duties should be fulfilled by additions of the new words and new definitions introduced in seventy years; he determined to make a new and altogether original work; to study the English language in the writings of its most distinguished authors, to inquire into its actual usage in conversation and public discourse, not by loosely gathered and ill arranged groups of synonymes, but by a clear and precise statement of meanings, illustrated, whenever it should be necessary, by various instances. In this work, Johnson had made a beginning; he first conceived the plan of defining by descriptions, instead of synonymes; and he had introduced into his larger dictionary quotations from the best authors. But his work, valuable as it was, was imperfect, even in regard to the words current in his time, and which he succeeded in collecting. But, if Johnson had perfectly accomplished his design, the lapse of seventy years of such extraordinary and various activity in every department of human action and aspiration, would have rendered a New Dictionary indispensable. New sciences and arts had been discovered, which, in their manifold applications to industry, had changed or wonderfully augmented the technology and common speech of every class and description of workers. New experiments had been made in governments; new institutions had been introduced; literature had assumed new forms; and speculation, with perfect freedom and gigantic force, had forged new weapons for its new endeavors. The necessity for a new Dictionary of the English language, indeed is, demonstrated in the simple fact that the first edition of Webster's great work contained twelve thousand words not in Johnson; the second, thirty thousand. This statement does not, however, give a just impression of the difference between Johnson and Webster, or of the actual labor which Webster performed. The new definitions, many of which were fruits, not more of patient research than of nice discrimination, the arrangement of these definitions, so as to exhibit the history of words as it had been slowly developed, cost the author an amount of toil which can with difficulty be measured. We hazard little concerning the importance or difficulties of the work, when we quote the remark of Coleridge, that the history of a word is often more important than that of a campaign.

The etymology of the language, was a subject to which he devoted much attention, and in which he made great advances. To qualify himself for tracing the derivations of English words, he studied some twenty languages, and wrote out a synopsis of the leading words of each, and incorporated the chief results of this extraordinary investigation in the very full and instructive statement of words of similar imports, which in the larger Dictionary is prefixed to English words, and which he prepared for the press also, as a separate work, of about half the size of the _American Dictionary_, entitled "_A Synopsis of Words in Twenty Languages_," which is still unpublished.

In 1812, he removed to Amherst, in Massachusetts, where he devoted ten years entirely to these labors. He returned to New Haven in 1822; in the following year he received from Yale College the degree of LL. D., and in the spring of 1824 he proceeded to Paris to consult in the _Bibliotheque du Roi_ some works not accessible in this country, and then went to England and passed eight months in the libraries of the University of Cambridge.

Returning to America, he made arrangements for the publication of his great work, and it finally appeared, near the end of 1826, in an edition of twenty-five hundred copies, in two quarto volumes, which were sold at twenty dollars per copy. An edition of three thousand copies was soon after printed in England.

Dr. Webster was now seventy years of age, and he considered his life-task accomplished; but habits of literary occupation had become fixed and necessary, and after a few months he began to rewrite his _History of the United States for Schools_. In 1840 he published a second edition of the _Dictionary_, in two octavo volumes; in 1843, _A Collection of Papers, on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects_, selected from his various writings in early life; and in 1847 another edition of the _American Dictionary_ appeared, after a thorough revision of it by Professor Goodrich, of Yale College. In this edition very large additions were made, amounting to a fifth of the whole work. There were new words, and new definitions, when needed; careful attention was bestowed on technical terms of science and art; and it was made a general cyclopaedia of knowledge. Yet by employing a finer type, and adopting a close yet clear style of printing, the original work, with all these copious additions, was brought within the compass of a single quarto, which has been styled the finest specimen of book-manufacture ever produced in America. A revised edition of the abridgement was issued at the same time, and both volumes have had a circulation which evinces the general appreciation of their value. Several of the New England states, we believe, have furnished a copy of the quarto Dictionary to every school district within their limits, and the legislature of New-York, during its recent session, passed a law for the distribution of some thousands of copies in the school districts of this state also. Whatever may be said of the Dictionary by Dr. WEBSTER, it will not be questioned by the disinterested scholar that it is one of the most extraordinary and honorable monuments of well-directed intellectual labor of which we have any account in the histories of literature or learning. It is as great an advance from the work of Dr. Johnson, as that was from the wretched vocabularies of the English language which existed before his time; and so accurate and exhausting has been the investigation which it displays that no rival work is likely to take its place until sufficient time has elapsed for the language itself to pass into a new condition.

Much has been said of Dr. Webster's innovations, but for the most part, by persons altogether ignorant of the philosophy of languages in general, as well as of the character and condition of the English language. Dr. Webster attempted, and with eminent success, to reduce the English language to order, and to subject it to the operation of principles. The changes which he made, though in a few instances, necessary for consistency, striking, are much less numerous than is commonly supposed, and even to scholars, with whom the study of languages is not a _specialite_, they would not be very apparent but for the frequent attempts which are made to prejudice the public against the work. An amusing illustration of this fact occurred a few years ago, when, a concerted assault upon the Dictionary having been made, and sustained for some time, a distinguished author who had a new book in the press of the Harpers, was alarmed by intelligence that they intended to adopt for it Webster's orthography. He wrote to these publishers his apprehensions that the success of his performance and his own good reputation could not fail of exceeding injury, if their design should be executed, and begged them to adopt some other work as a medium for the display of the Websterian innovations. The Harpers replied that he might select his own standard; they believed he had, perhaps unconsciously, followed Webster in his _manuscript_, and that the several productions of his which they had published in previous years had all been printed according to Webster's Dictionary, which was the guide used in their printing offices.

The incidents of Dr. Webster's life after the publication of the second edition of his Dictionary, in 1840, were few and unimportant. Indeed, with that effort he regarded his public life as brought to a close. He passed through a serene old age, which was terminated by a peaceful death, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1843, when he was in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

DR. MERLE D'AUBIGNE AND THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

The celebrated German historian, Dr. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, is now in England, and in consequence of certain proceedings growing out of his occupation of an Episcopal pulpit recently, he has published a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning the general subject of the exclusion of continental Protestant ministers from the pulpits of English churches. He is aware that, in consequence of the Act of Uniformity, there are churches which cannot be opened to those ministers, but he hopes that this law of exclusion will be repealed. "It is no longer in harmony with the spirit and the wants of the church in the age in which we live." The Calvinistic historian expresses his conviction that the reestablishment of the Annual Convocation would not reform the Church. The Convocation has been for more than a century deprived of its powers, and it is to Parliament that the question now belongs. He says:

"Why should I not express to you, my lord, a desire which I have long had in my heart? This desire is, that being surrounded by ministers and members of the Church the most enlightened and most devoted to God and to his word, you should digest and present to Parliament a plan, not to _effect_ (_sic_) a reform of the Church, but to _establish the authority_ (_sic_) which should be charged with its reform and government. It seems to me that the best way would be to establish a body similar to that which governs the Episcopal church of America, composed of three chambers, that of the bishops, that of the presbyters, and that of the members of the Church, the two latter being ordinarily united in one. The Americans of the United States have received so much from you (they have received every thing, even their very existence), why should you not take something from them? I am convinced that sooner or later a reform _must_ take place in the government of the Church of England: it is important that it should be done well. I think that there would be some hope of its being accomplished in a good sense, if it were done while you, my lord, are Primate of the Church, and while Victoria is Queen of England."

Every thing seems to tend to an entire revolution in the British ecclesiastical system, and the cooeperation of Dr. Merle and other continental writers with those who are agitating the subject in England--demanding the separation of the church from the state--makes the prospect of such a separation more imminent than it has ever been hitherto.

THE EXILE'S SUNSET SONG.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

BY J. R. THOMPSON.

When from thy side, love, In silence and gloom, Half broken-hearted Fate tore me away, All humbled in pride, love, I thought in my doom, That Hope had departed For ever and aye!

But Fate may not banish From memory's store, That blissful communion Of years that are flown, Nor make yet to vanish The lustre which o'er Our fond thoughts of union, So tenderly shone.

And still o'er the ocean My fancy takes flight, Where oft I see gleaming Thy figure afar; And I think with emotion, That sometimes at night, We watch the same beaming And tremulous star.

The sunsets so golden. That stream round me here, But call up thy shadow The landscape between: And when in the olden Dim season so dear, It tripped o'er the meadow With step of a queen.

As the light of the moon, love, Like snow softly falls, And rests on the mountain, And silvers the sea, That midnight in June, love, My mem'ry recalls, When up to the fountain I clambered with thee.

How sweetly the river Reflected the ray Of moon through the willows Or sun o'er the hill: Does the moonbeam there quiver, The sunset there play, Upon its gay billows As splendidly still?

My spirit is weary-- An exile I grieve, When morn's early voices A glad song proclaim, And the faint Miserere Of nature at eve, To me but rejoices To murmer thy name.

Yet Hope, reappearing, A vision unfolds, Of rapture together In joy's happy reign, When love all endearing The full eye beholds, We'll walk o'er the heather At sunset again.

RICHMOND, Va.

DRAMATIC FRAGMENTS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.

THE GAME OF CHESS.

We played at chess, Bianca and myself, One afternoon, but neither won the game, Both absent-minded, thinking of our hearts Moving the ivory pawns from black to white, Shifted to little purpose round the board; Sometimes we quite forgot it in a sigh And then remembered it, and moved again; Looking the while along the slopes beyond, Barred by blue peaks, the fountain, and the grove Where lovers sat in shadow, back again, With sideway glances in each other's eyes; Unknowingly I made a lucky move, Whereby I checked my mate, and gained a queen; My couch drew nearer hers, I took her hand-- A soft white hand that gave itself away-- Told o'er the simple story of my love, In simplest phrases which are always best, And prayed her if she loved me in return-- A fabled doubt--to give her heart to me; And then, and there, above that game of chess, Not finished yet, in maiden trustfulness, She gave me, what I knew was mine, her heart!

FROM A PLAY.

Alas! I think of you the live-long day, Plying my needle by the little stand, And wish that we had never, never met, Or I were dead, or you were married off, Though that would kill me; I lay down my work, And take the lute you gave me, but the strings Have grown so tuneless that I cannot play; I sing the favorite airs we used to sing, The sweet old tunes we love, and weep aloud! I sought forgetfulness, and tried to-day To read a chapter in the Holy Book; I could not see a line, I only read The solemn sonnets that you sent to me: Nor can I pray as I was wont to do, For you come in between me and the Lord, And when I strive to lift my soul above, My wits are wandering, and I sob your name! And nights, when I am lying on my bed, (I hope such thoughts are not unmaidenly,) I think of you, and fall asleep, and dream I am your own, your wedded, happy wife,-- But that can never, never be on earth!

THE COUNTESS IDA HAHN-HAHN.

We gave in the last _International_ a short notice of "_Von Babylon nach Jerusalem_" (A Journey from Babylon to Jerusalem), by Ida, Countess of Hahn-Hahn, in which she declares her conversion to Christianity and Catholicism. What the Germans themselves think of this work may be gathered from the following brief review, which has just fallen under our notice in the _Central Blatt_. The article is curious, from the "intensely German" style and spirit in which it is written, though we cannot very warmly commend either.

"The above-mentioned work," which contains an account of the conversion of its celebrated authoress to the Catholic belief, says the critic, "presents a sad picture of the complete decay and dissolution of a _void subjectivity_ (a vacant mind).

"The writer falls a sacrifice to her exclusive, aristocratic position in society. Without occupying any place in the world, won and maintained by personal ability, and consequently without a well-grounded moral standard, she wanders like a homeless being from land to land, every where influenced, 'as far as it agreed with her disposition,' by her momentary interests, and thus rendering apparent the barrenness of her soul. But this had been developed at an early period. 'That this feeling (that of joy) was occasionally accompanied by the deepest discontent, appearing as an unearthly _ennui_--and that over it swept the darkest melancholy, will be readily intelligible to every one, for they are the twin sisters of the fortune of this world.' 'And occasionally it was a kind of heroism, in that I sat myself down, and--wrote a romance. Was it finished, I travelled--did I return, I described the tour--was there a time when the book was complete and circumstances did not permit of travelling, I took with raging appetite to reading--and when I no longer wrote, no longer travelled, and could no longer read for any determined purpose--because I had none--I knew not what to do with my time. I could not create illusions, and say to myself, Try this! try that! perhaps the world hath yet somewhat hidden for thee--the call of Knowledge is incessant. No, no! she hath nothing. Well--what then? God? There stood the Word, the One, the Eternal.' Thereupon she reads the greater and lesser catechisms of Luther, the creeds of the evangelic reformed church, and the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent. 'But only the Catholic church hath under roof and proof brought her dogma-buildings to a tower, provided with the lightning-rod of authority.' Thereupon she determines, 'I asked no human being for explanation, information, or counsel--not even myself.' Three months after, on the first day of January, 1850, she wrote to the Cardinal Prince-Bishop of Breslau, to beg of him aid in her entrance to the church.

"The moral vacancy displayed in these quotations corresponds with the shallow manner and half romantic, half French style of the book. Though the first part be written in a fresher and livelier style than the second, there is still not to be found in the whole a single well-determined and clearly-impressed thought, and whenever we imagine that we have hit upon such a thing, straightway we find whirling forth the dust-clouds of an obscure, phrase-laden, highly affected sentimental feeling, which, without any real energy, stirs itself up with repeated 'ohs!' and 'ahs!' and other forced sighs and artificial aids. In place of such thoughts we find a shallow and occasionally insupportably wearisome speech on the ideal of Catholicism, or 'the heathenish abomination in art and literature, which, after the fall of Byzantium was transported thence to Italy, and there received with that love which impels sensuous mortals to joyfully draw into the sphere of his life the new and glittering, because it promises fresh and shining pleasures.'(!) In another place she speaks of the reformers as 'miserable, narrow-minded heads, who should have chosen other ground whereon to exercise their love of quarrelling;' while the second half of her book is confined almost exclusively to the democrats, and the events which took place from 1847 to 1849. In this part the authoress displays the greatest want of intellect, and is sadly wearisome; but her frivolity of manners and morals appears most repulsive in her account of the Reformation. None of the Catholics--not even Cochlaeus himself--has so far degraded himself as to interpret in such a vulgar manner the deeds of the reformers (more particularly Luther's) as is here done by--a lady!

"If the Countess places at the conclusion of her work the words 'Soli Deo Gloria,' this is merely in accordance with a Catholic custom, and by no means meant in earnest, since the work is more particularly adapted to flatter the vanity and self-conceit of its composer, who cannot imagine why she should suffer the disgrace to belong to the German nation. A vain, coquettish self-regard, an affected, aristocratic-noble nonchalance, and a contradicting, heresy-accusing confidence of judgment, meet us on every side, and render us completely opposed to the pretence and moral vacancy of this book."

These are bitter words, and bitterly spoken, when thus applied to a woman. The reader will in their perusal remember that the writer is evidently influenced by a deep feeling against all that savors of conservatism in politics, and shares in an unusual degree the popular German feeling against _emancipiste Frauen_, or women who strive against the bonds which the customs of society have imposed on the sex,--a feeling, which, however creditable it may be when applied to undue extravagances of manners or morals, should be carefully guarded against when it threatens an unconditional restraint of every exertion of feminine genius and talent.

JULES JANIN, AND THE PARIS FEUILLETONISTES.

Jules Janin, whose name, of so constant recurrence in the contemporary history of light literature, artistic criticism, and _feuilleton_, is the Prince Royal of the brilliant court of gifted, tasteful, witty and _spirituel_ writers, who compose the body of Parisian _feuilletonistes_. These are men who write, not because they have any thing especial to say--for their peculiar function is to say nothing, in a pointed and brilliant manner--but because they love leisure and luxury, the opera, pictures, and beautiful ballet girls, and must themselves make the golden lining to their purses, which they can do by the very simple process of weaving the similar lining of their brains into a _feuilleton_. They are often scholars, men of fine cultivation and genius, whose tastes however are so imperious, and who enjoy so much the ease thus facilely achieved, that they accomplish no great work, win no lasting name. Of course the _feuilletonist_ proper is to be distinguished from the author or novelist who publishes a work in the _Feuilleton_, as Lamartine his _Confidences_, and Sue and Dumas and George Sand, their romances. We propose now to follow briefly the sparkling career of JULES JANIN as the type of the life, character, and success of the _feuilletonistes_.

He came to Paris, a Jew: as Meyerbeer, Heine, Grisi, Rachel, and the long luminous list of contemporary artists who have made fame in Paris, are Jews. He supported himself by teaching--doing nothing, but very conscious that he could do something--at all events he could lecture upon the Syrian language, if for a week he could prepare himself. Then he wrote in little theatrical papers, and received twenty-five francs a month. But in 1830 he happily succeeded to his present position in the _Journal des Debats_. He is now a rich man. He gives splendid soirees in his saloons glittering with oriental luxury, and artists and authors bow before him. Like Henry Heine, his contemporary, whom he as much resembles in talent as in manner, he declared now for the Republic and Freedom, now for the Church and King, until his connection with the _Debats_ impressed upon him the conservative seal. He since loudly declaims for public morality--against the prostitution of the press; but his early works were the most licentious of any that have swarmed from the fertile French genius of social protestantism. His first novel, published in 1829, _The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman_, is the history of a prostitute, from the brothel, to the murder of her child, and her execution, garnished with Byronic sentimentalities upon the transitoriness of things temporal.

Jules Janin's next work was one of the most instructive illustrations of the character of French romance at that period when literary feeling and taste seemed to reach the artificial point that is artistically achieved by the melo-dramas of Chatham-street and the Strand. We record it as a literary curiosity, as the work of a "fast" Frenchman, a Parisian Vivian Grey, on a small scale. It is called _The Penitent_, and was published in 1830. It opens with a marriage. The bride, who has been violently dancing, retires, overcome with sleep, and the husband in his rage at her sleepiness smothers her. It is nominally supposed that she has been stricken with apoplexy, but a Jesuit, who meditates many mysteries, understands the whole matter, yet observes the most discreet silence. The young man, who is somewhat conscience-pricked, still persists in profligacy, until he is overwhelmed by remorse, and rushes to the church to receive absolution. He seeks a trusty confessor, and of course finds the old Jesuit; but as he finds it difficult to obtain access to him, makes the acquaintance of a girl, with whom the Jesuit has some kind of relation, and in order to win her to his will, seduces her! Then comes the Jesuit and begins to fulminate excommunications and damnations. But the youth bursts into a passionate strain of repentance, and is told by the old Jesuit, that the difficulty in his case, is a religious one, that in fact the murder was "a circumstance" arising from his irreligious state, and that by genuine repentance the matter will be arranged. _Presto_: The youth repents and enters the church, is made Bishop and proceeds through an endless course of fat capon and Chateau Margaux to an edifying end!

The boldest efforts of young France and young Germany, are feeble by the side of this extraordinary effort. His earlier tales, which are somewhat in the style of Hoffmann, Jules Janin published in the year 1833, under the title of _Fantastic Tales_, and a series of works of less size and importance followed, until the series of papers, half fiction, half fact, which, in the novel form, treated a great variety of historico-literary subjects. His last romance is the _Nun of Toulouse_, written during the revolution of '48. It sparkles with the same sprightly skepticism and spiritual coquetry that distinguished his earlier works, yet he celebrates in it those beautiful times, the "old times," in which the serenity of faith was never ruffled by impertinent thought; and in his recent letters from the Great Exhibition, he indulges in the same strain, and sighs for the magnificence of the monarchy.

But his weekly contributions to the _Debats_, the rapid dashing review of the dramatic novelties and incidents in a metropolis where alone a living drama survives, and which he serves up garnished with the most felicitous verbal graces and the most charming intellectual conceits, every Monday morning--these are the flowers whence the brilliant Jules Janin builds the honey hive of his reputation. He has decreed the fashion of the _Feuilleton_, and the other Parisian critics flash and snap and sparkle, as much like Jules Janin as possible. Their articles are the streak of _light_ in the dimness of the preponderating political literature of the week. They hold high holiday at the bottom of the page, although the history of revolutions, and woes, and the rumors of wars and impending millenniums may throw their sombre shadows along the columns above. They raise their banner of a butterfly's wing, emblazoned with _Vive la Bagatelle_, and march on to the tournament of wit and beauty. They belong to France; their game is the gambol of the exuberance of French genius. They are more than witty, they are _spirituel_; and they have more than talent, they have taste.

In a day of such rapid and facile printing as ours, this department of literary labor was a necessity. Every man who has a conceit and can write, may parade it before the world. In the mass of pleasant common-place, what is _bizarre_ may supplant the symmetrically beautiful. To seize therefore what every man saw, and with nimble fingers to weave a transparent tissue of gorgeous words through which every man's impressions of what he saw look large and graceful and piquant--to sum up a vaudeville in a _bon mot_, and a ballet in a voluptuous trope,--_voila! c'est fait_, you have the recipe of a successful _feuilletoniste_. Hence, the influence of these writers, upon _words_, has been remarkable. The French language, long so precise, is now among the most dissolute of tongues. It reels through the columns of a _feuilleton_, drunk and dim-eyed with expletives and exaggerations and beatified adjectives, so that, fascinated with the casket, you quite forget the jewel. The language of dramatic and operatic criticism in Paris is now inexplicable to any one but an _habitue_. If you should tell John Bull, who wishes to go to the opera, that Alboni's singing is _pyramidale_, he would expect to see the fair and fat contralto sharpened to a point at top,--but, I grant, if you should call it "jolly" or "stunning," he would entirely comprehend that you meant to express your admiration in superlatives.

I must not longer gossip as these gay gossips do, these fanciful _feuilletonistes_, nor seek more deeply to draw the outline of these rainbow bubbles upon the stream of the time, whether it flow turbid or transparent. One cannot live upon sugar and nutmeg, or even upon allspice. But our friends are a literary phenomenon not to be omitted, and if you love the Muses, you will not omit to snuff the azure incense offered weekly by the _feuilletonistes_.

Jules Janin shall show us out of this article as he ushered us in. The Great Mogul of the _Feuilleton_ had purchased a carriage whose luxury, and taste of appointment, and perfection of footman, was unsurpassed in the Champs Elysee. But the gods are jealous and the _feuilletonistes_ have thus the highest authority for jealousy. So, on one evening when the exquisite equipage awaited its master at the grand opera, a crowd of lesser critical luminaries gathered around it, and both reviled and envied the fortunate owner. While they were thus engaged, the great critic came out of the opera house and saw his contemporaries engaged in longing and envious remark. Now tact is the sublimest secret of success--and smilingly Jules Janin advanced cheerily, greeted his friends cordially, and piled into the carriage all of them who lived in his neighborhood.

They naturally reserved the seat of honor for the owner, but this great General seizing the most inimical of all the party who lived in a quarter of the city farthest from his own home, pushed him into the vacant seat, ordered his coachman to set him down first, and then humming the finale of the opera, lighted a cigar and sauntered leisurely down the street. It was like Jules Janin to make his own marriage the subject of a _Feuilleton_. In his case the man and the _feuilletoniste_ are the same.

ODE XX. OF ANACREON.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME DACIER FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY MARY E. HEWITT.

Niobe, maddened by her woes, of yore. The gods in pity turned to marble fair; And wretched Progne, doomed for evermore, Changed to a swallow wings the upper air.

But ah! would Love, whom I, enslaved, obey, By his sweet power transform me, I would be The mirror in thy hand, if thus, alway, Thy gentle eyes would fondly turn on me.

Or, I would be the perfume that reveals Its fragrance 'mid the tresses of thy hair; Or, that soft veil which o'er thy bosom steals, And jealous, hides the ivory treasure there.

Or I would be the robe that round thee flows, The zone that circles thee with fond caress; The rivulet that with thy beauty glows, And to its breast enclasps thy loveliness.

Or I were blest those envied pearls to be That closely thus thy swan-white neck entwine; Or e'en to be the sandal, pressed by thee, Were, for thy lover, destiny divine.

SWEDISH LANDSCAPES: BY HERR ANDERSEN.

In the last _International_ we gave some characteristic historical sketches from Hans Christian Andersen's latest and most delightful book, the _Pictures of Sweden_; but the inspiration of nature is more powerful with him than that of history, and he is never so felicitous as when painting the scenery of his native country, though he has certainly indulged, to a greater extent than a sober taste can approve, in that passion for the fantastic and visionary, which has been but too visibly manifested in some of his later and slighter works. Our readers, however, shall judge for themselves. The forests of Sweden and its rivers give the most noticeable features to its landscape. This is how they appeared to Andersen--the forest first:

"We are a long way over the elv. We have left the corn-fields behind, and have just come into the forest, where we halt at that small inn which is ornamented over the doors and windows with green branches for the midsummer festival. The whole kitchen is hung round with branches of birch and the berries of the mountain ash; the oat cakes hang on long poles under the ceiling; the berries are suspended above the head of the old woman who is just scouring her brass kettle bright.

"The tap-room, where the peasants sit and carouse, is just as finely hung round with green. Midsummer raises its leafy arbor every where, yet it is most flush in the forest which extends for miles around. Our road goes for miles through that forest, without seeing a house, or the possibility of meeting travellers, driving, riding, or walking. Come! The ostler puts fresh horses to the carriage; come with us into the large woody desert: we have a regular trodden way to travel, the air is clear, here is summer's warmth and the fragrance of birch and lime. It is an up-and-downhill road, always bending, and so, ever changing, but yet always forest-scenery--the close, thick forest. We pass small lakes, which lie so still and deep, as if they concealed night and sleep under their dark, glassy surfaces.

"We are now on a forest plain, where only charred stumps of trees are to be seen; this long tract is black, burnt, and deserted, not a bird flies over it. Tall, hanging birches now greet us again; a squirrel springs playfully across the road, and up into the tree; we cast our eyes searchingly over the wood-grown mountain side, which slopes so far, far forward, but not a trace of a house is to be seen: nowhere does that bluish smoke-cloud rise, that shows us, here are fellow-men. The sun shines warm; the flies dance around the horses, settle on them, fly off again, and dance as though it were to qualify themselves for resting and being still. They perhaps think, 'Nothing is going on without us: there is no life while we are doing nothing.' They think, as many persons think, and do not remember that time's horses always fly onward with us!

"How solitary is it here! so delightfully solitary! one is so entirely alone with God and one's self. As the sunlight streams forth over the earth, and over the extensive solitary forests, so does God's Spirit stream over and into mankind; ideas and thoughts unfold themselves--endless, inexhaustible, as He is--as the magnet which apportions its powers to the steel, and itself loses nothing thereby. As our journey through the forest scenery here along the extended solitary road, so, travelling on the great high road of thought, ideas pass through our head. Strange, rich caravans pass by from the works of poets, from the home of memory, strange and novel; for capricious fancy gives birth to them at the moment. There comes a procession of pious children with waving flags and joyous songs; there come dancing Menades, the blood's wild Bacchantes. The sun pours down hot in the open forest; it is as if the Southern summer had laid itself up here to rest in Scandinavian forest solitude, and sought itself out a glade where it might lie in the sun's hot beams and sleep; hence this stillness as if it were night. Not a bird is heard to twitter, not a pine tree moves. Of what does the Southern summer dream here in the North, amongst pines and fragrant birches?

"In the writings of the olden time, from the classic soil of the South, are sagas of mighty fairies, who, in the skins of swans, flew towards the North, to the Hyperboreans' land, to the east of the north winds; up there, in the deep still lakes, they bathed themselves, and acquired a renewed form. We are in the forest by these deep lakes; we see swans in flocks fly over us, and swim upon the rapid elv and on the still waters...."

"Woodland solitude! what images dost thou not present to our thoughts! Woodland solitude! through thy vaulted halls people now pass in the summer time with cattle and domestic utensils; children and old men go to the solitary pasture where echo dwells, where the national song springs forth with the wild mountain flower! Dost thou see the procession? Paint it if thou canst! The broad wooden cart, laden high with chests and barrels, with jars and with crockery. The bright copper kettle and the tin dish shine in the sun. The old grandmother sits at the top of the load, and holds her spinning wheel, which complete the pyramid. The father drives the horse, the mother carries the youngest child on her back, sewed up in a skin, and the procession moves on step by step. The cattle are driven by the half-grown children; they have stuck a birch branch between one of the cows' horns, but she does not appear to be proud of her finery; she goes the same quiet pace as the others, and lashes the saucy flies with her tail. If the night becomes cold on this solitary pasture, there is fuel enough; here the tree falls of itself from old age, and lies and rots.

"But take especial care of the fire--fear the fire-spirit in the forest desert! He comes from the unextinguishable pile; he comes from the thunder-cloud, riding on the blue lightning's flame, which kindles the thick, dry moss of the earth: trees and bushes are kindled; the flames run from tree to tree, it is like a snow-storm of fire! the flames leap to the tops of the trees. What a crackling and roaring, as if it were the ocean in its course! The birds fly upward in flocks, and fall down suffocated by the smoke; the animals flee, or, encircled by the fire, are consumed in it! Hear their cries and roars of agony! The howling of the wolf and the bear, dost thou know it? A calm rainy day, and the forest-plains themselves alone are able to confine the fiery sea, and the burnt forest stands charred, with black trunks and black stumps of trees, as we saw them here in the forest by the broad high-road. On this road we continue to travel, but it becomes worse and worse; it is, properly speaking, no road at all, but it is about to become one. Large stones lie half dug up, and we drive past them; large trees are cast down, and obstruct our way, and therefore we must descend from the carriage. The horses are taken out, and the peasants help to lift and push the carriage forward over ditches and opened paths. The sun now ceases to shine; some few rain-drops fall, and now it is a steady rain. But how it causes the birch to shed its fragrance! At a distance there are huts erected of loose trunks of trees and fresh green boughs, and in each there is a large fire burning. See where the blue smoke curls through the green leafy roof; peasants are within at work, hammering and forging; here they have their meals. They are now laying a mine in order to blast a rock, and the pine and birch emit a finer fragrance. It is delightful in the forest."

So say we. It is delightful in the forest; not less so on the torrent-river of Scandinavia:

"Before Homer sang, there were heroes; but they are not known, no poet celebrated their fame. It is just so with the beauties of nature; they must be brought into notice by words and delineations, be brought before the eyes of the multitude; get a sort of world's patent for what they are. The elvs of the North have rushed and whirled along for thousands of years in unknown beauty. The world's great high-road does not take this direction; no steam-packet conveys the traveller comfortably along the streams of the Dal-elvs; fall on fall makes sluices indispensable and invaluable. Schubert is, as yet, the only stranger who has written about the magnificence and southern beauty of Dalecarlia, and spoken of its greatness.

"Clear as the waves of the sea does the mighty elv stream in endless windings through forest deserts and varying plains, sometimes extending its deep bed, sometimes confining it, reflecting the bending trees and the red-painted block-houses of solitary towns, and sometimes rushing like a cataract over immense blocks of rock.

"Miles apart from one another, out of the ridge of mountains between Sweden and Norway, come the east and west Dal-elvs, which first become confluent and have one bed above Balstad. They have taken up rivers and lakes in their waters. Do but visit this place! here are pictorial riches to be found: the most picturesque landscapes, dizzyingly grand, smilingly pastoral, idyllic; one is drawn onward up to the very source of the elv, the bubbling well above Finman's hut; one feels a desire to follow every branch of the stream that the river takes in.

"The first mighty fall, Njupesker's Cataract, is seen by the Norwegian frontier in Semasog. The mountain stream rushes perpendicularly from the rock to a depth of seventy fathoms.

"We pause in the dark forest, where the elv seems to collect within itself nature's whole deep gravity. The stream rolls its clear waters over a porphyry soil, where the mill-wheel is driven, and the gigantic porphyry bowls and sarcophagi are polished.

"We follow the stream through Siljan's lake, where superstition sees the water-sprite swim like the sea-horse, with a mane of green seaweed; and where the aerial images present visions of witchcraft in the warm summer day.

"We sail on the stream from Siljan's lake under the weeping willows of the parsonage, where the swans assemble in flocks; we glide along slowly with horses and carriages on the great ferry-boat, away over the rapid current under Balstad's picturesque shore. Here the elv widens and rolls its billows majestically in a woodland landscape, as large and extended as if it were in North America.

"We see the rushing, rapid stream under Avista's yellow clay declivities; the yellow water falls, like fluid amber, in picturesque cataracts before the copper works, where rainbow-colored tongues of fire shoot themselves upwards, and the hammer's blow on the copper-plates resound to the monotonous, roaring rumble of the elv-fall."

And so on, past the famous fall down which the waters gush, ere they lose themselves in the waters of the Baltic. One glimpse more ere they reach their resting-place. We take them up as they are circling the garden of a trim Swedish manor-house:

"The garden itself was a piece of enchantment. There stood three transplanted beech trees, and they throve well. The sharp north wind had rounded off the tops of the wild chestnut trees of the avenue in a singular manner; they looked as if they had been under the gardener's shears. Golden yellow oranges hung in the conservatory; the splendid Southern exotics had to-day got the windows half open, so that the artificial warmth met the fresh, warm, sunny air of the Northern summer.

"The branch of the Dal-elv which goes round the garden is strewn with small islands, where beautiful hanging birches and fir-trees grow in Scandinavian splendor. There are small islands with green, silent groves; there are small islands with rich grass, tall brakens, variegated bell flowers, and cowslips. No Turkey carpet has fresher colors. The stream between these islands and holmes is sometimes rapid, deep, and clear; sometimes like a broad rivulet with silky green rushes, water lilies, and brown feathered reeds; sometimes it is a brook with a stony ground, and now it spreads itself out in a large, still mill-dam.

"Here is a landscape in midsummer for the games of the river-sprites, and the dancers of the elves and fairies! There, in the lustre of the full moon, the dryads can tell their tales, the water-sprites seize the golden harp, and believe that one can be blessed, at least for one single night, like this.

"On the other side of Ens Bruck is the main stream--the full Dal-elv. Do you hear the monotonous rumble? It is not from Elvkarleby Fall that it reaches hither; it is close by; it is from Laa Foss in which lies Ash Island: the elv streams and rushes over the leaping salmon.

"Let us sit here, between the fragments of rock by the shore, in the red evening sunlight, which sheds a golden lustre on the waters of the Dal-elv.

"Glorious river! But a few seconds' work hast thou to do in the mills yonder, and thou rushest foaming on over Elvkarleby's rocks, down into the deep bed of the river, which leads thee to the Baltic--thy eternity."

We could fill half our number with passages just as beautiful; but will leave the rest of the poet's landscapes till some American publisher brings out the book. We must nevertheless quote one picture of a different kind. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;" and the sorrows of the palace and the cottage alike find their level and their rest in the grave. The "Mute Book" speaks with a moving eloquence to those who can read it aright:

"By the high-road into the forest there stood a solitary farm-house. One way lay right through the farm-yard; the sun shone; all the windows were open; there was life and bustle within, but in the yard, in an arbor of flowering lilacs, there stood an open coffin. The corpse had been placed out here, and it was to be buried that forenoon. No one stood by, and wept over that dead man; no one hung sorrowfully over him. His face was covered with a white cloth, and under his head there lay a large, thick book, every leaf of which was a whole sheet of gray paper, and, between each, lay withered flowers, deposited and forgotten,--a whole herbarium, gathered in different places. He himself had requested that it should be laid in the grave with him. A chapter of his life was blended with every flower! 'Who is that dead man?' we asked, and the answer was, 'The old student from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and himself up to drinking spirits, and, as his health suffered by it, he came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and lodging. He was as gentle as a child when the dark humor did not come over him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day, and look at one plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful rest in the grave!'

"They raised the winding sheet. There was peace in the face of the dead. A sunbeam fell on it; a swallow, in its arrow-flight, darted into the new-made arbor, and in its flight circled twittering over the dead man's head.

"How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters from the days of one's youth, and read them: a whole life, as it were, then rises up, with all its hopes and all its troubles. How many of those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with!

"The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the friend--the friend of his school days--the friend for life. He fixed this leaf on the student's cap, in the greenwood, when the vow of friendship was concluded for the whole life. Where does he now live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign conservatory plant, too fine for the gardens of the North. It looks as if there still were fragrance in it. _She_ gave it to him--she, the lady of that noble garden!

"Here is the marsh-lotus, which, he himself has plucked and watered with salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters! And here is a nettle; what do its leaves say! What did he think on plucking it?--on preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley, from the woodland solitudes; here are honeysuckles from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass. The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead man's head; the swallow again flies past--'qui-vit! qui-vit!' Now the men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse, whose head rests on the 'Mute Book'--preserved--forgotten!"

The book, to those who are not repelled by a certain quaintness of manner from the enjoyment of a work of true genius, will form a permanent and delightful addition to those pictures of many lands which the enterprise and accomplishment of modern travellers is creating for the delight of those whose range of locomotion is bounded by the limits of their own country, or by the four walls of a sick chamber.

Andersen has grown old in years, and with age he has increase of art, but he was never younger in spirit, and his genius never blossomed with more freshness and beauty.

VERSES

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY R. H. STODDARD.

My desk is heaped with niceties From tropic lands divine, But this is braver far than all-- A flask of Chian wine!

Brim up my golden drinking-cup, And reach a dish of fruit, And then unlock my cabinet, And hand me out my lute;

For when these luxuries have fed And filled my brain with light, I must compose a nuptial song, To suit my bridal night!

A CHAPTER OF PARODIES.

Parodies have been much in vogue in almost every age; among the Greeks, Latins, Germans, French, and English, it has been among the commonest of literary pleasantries to turn verses into ridicule by applying them to a purpose never dreamed of by their authors, or to burlesque serious pieces by affecting to observe the same rhymes, words, and cadences. The wicked arts of Charles the Second's time thus made fun of the hymns of the Roundheads, and pious people have since turned the tables by adapting to good uses the profane airs and sensual songs of the opera house. Of the class of puns, parodies have in the scale of art a much higher rank, and occasionally they furnish specimens of genuine poetry. Among the best we have ever seen are a considerable number attributed to Miss Phebe Carey, of Ohio; they are rich in quaint and natural humor, and as a London critic describes them, "wonderfully American." In its way, we have seen nothing better than this reflex of Bayard Taylor's poem of "Manuela."

MARTHA HOPKINS.

A BALLAD OF INDIANA.

From the kitchen, Martha Hopkins, as she stood there making pies, Southward looks along the turnpike, with her hand above her eyes; Where along the distant hill-side, her yearling heifer feeds, And a little grass is growing in a mighty sight of weeds.

All the air is full of noises, for there isn't any school, And boys, with turned-up pantaloons, are wading in the pool; Blithely frisk, unnumbered chickens cackling for they cannot laugh, Where the airy summits brighten, nimbly leaps the little calf.

Gentle eyes of Martha Hopkins! tell me wherefore do ye gaze On the ground that's being furrowed for the planting of the maize? Tell me wherefore down the valley, ye have traced the turnpike's way, Far beyond the cattle pasture, and the brick-yard with its clay?

Ah! the dog-wood tree may blossom, and the door-yard grass may shine, With the tears of amber dropping from the washing on the line; And the morning's breath of balsam, lightly brush her freckled cheek,-- Little recketh Martha Hopkins of the tales of spring they speak.

When the summer's burning solstice on the scanty harvest glowed, She had watched a man on horseback riding down the turnpike road; Many times she saw him turning, looking backward quite forlorn, Till amid her tears she lost him, in the shadow of the barn.

Ere supper-time was over, he had passed the kiln of brick, Crossed the rushing Yellow River and had forded quite a creek, And his flat-boat load was taken, at the time for pork and beans, With the traders of the Wabash, to the wharf at New Orleans.

Therefore watches Martha Hopkins--holding in her hands the pans, When the sound of distant footsteps seems exactly like a man's; Not a wind the stove-pipe rattles, nor a door behind her jars, But she seems to hear the rattle of his letting down the bars.

Often sees she men on horseback, coming down the turnpike rough, But they come not as John Jackson, she can see it well enough; Well she knows the sober trotting of the sorrel horse he keeps, As he jogs along at leisure with his head down like a sheep's.

She would know him 'mid a thousand, by his home-made coat and vest; By his socks, which were blue woollen, such as farmers wear out west; By the color of his trousers, and his saddle, which was spread By a blanket which was taken for that purpose from the bed.

None like he the yoke of hickory, on the unbroke ox can throw, None amid his father's corn-fields use like him the spade and hoe; And at all the apple-cuttings, few indeed the men are seen, That can dance with him the polka, touch with him the violin.

He has said to Martha Hopkins, and she thinks she hears him now, For she knows as well as can be, that he meant to keep his vow, When the buck-eye tree has blossomed, and your uncle plants his corn, Shall the bells of Indiana usher in the wedding morn.

He has pictured his relations, each in Sunday hat and gown, And he thinks he'll get a carriage, and they'll spend a day in town; That their love will newly kindle, and what comfort it will give, To sit down to the first breakfast, in the cabin where they'll live.

Tender eyes of Martha Hopkins! what has got you in such scrape, 'Tis a tear that falls to glitter on the ruffle of her cape, Ah! the eye of love may brighten, to be certain what it sees, One man looks much like another, when half hidden by the trees.

But her eager eyes rekindle, she forgets the pies and bread, As she sees a man on horseback, round the corner of the shed. Now tie on another apron, get the comb and smooth your hair, 'Tis the sorrel horse that gallops, 'tis John Jackson's self that's there!

Here is one scarcely less happy upon Mr. Willis's "Better Moments:"

WORSER MOMENTS.

That fellow's voice! how often steals Its cadence o'er my lonely days! Like something sent on wagon wheels, Or packed in an unconscious chaise. I might forget the words he said When all the children fret and cry, But when I get them off to bed, His gentle tone comes stealing by-- And years of matrimony flee, And leave me sitting on his knee.

The times he came to court a spell, The tender things he said to me, Make me remember mighty well My hopes that he'd propose to me. My face is uglier, and perhaps Time and the comb have thinned my hair; And plain and common are the caps, And dresses that I have to wear-- But memory is ever yet With all that fellow's flat'ries writ.

I have been out at milking-time Beneath a dull and rainy sky, When in the barn 'twas time to feed, And calves were bawling lustily-- When scattered hay, and sheaves of oats, And yellow corn-ears, sound and hard, And all that makes the cattle pass With wilder richness through the yard-- When all was hateful, then have I, With friends who had to help me milk, Talked of his wife most spitefully, And how he kept her dressed in silk; And when the cattle, running there, Threw over me a shower of mud, That fellow's voice came on the air, Like the light chewing of the cud-- And resting near some spreckled cow, The spirit of a woman's spite, I've poured a low and fervent vow, To make him, if I had the might, Live all his life-time just as hard, And milk his cows in such a yard.

I have been out to pick up wood When night was stealing from the dawn, Before the fire was burning good, Or I had put the kettle on The little stove--when babes were waking With a low murmur in the beds, And melody by fits was breaking Above their little yellow heads-- And this when I was up perhaps From a few short and troubled naps-- And when the sun sprang scorchingly And freely up, and made us stifle, And fell upon each hill and tree The bullets from his subtle rifle-- I say a voice has thrilled me then, Hard by that solemn pile of wood, Or creeping from the silent glen, Like something on the unfledged brood, Hath stricken me, and I have pressed Close in my arms my load of chips, And pouring forth the hatefulest Of words that ever passed my lips, Have felt my woman's spirit rush On me, as on that milking night, And, yielding to the blessed gush Of my ungovernable spite, Have risen up, the wed, the old, Scolding as hard as I could scold.

And in the same vein "The Annoyer," in which is imitated one of the most delicate pieces of sentiment and fancy which Willis has given us:

THE ANNOYER.

"Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever."--SHELLEY.

Love knoweth every body's house, And every human haunt, And comes unbidden, every where, Like people we don't want. The turnpike roads and little creeks Are written with love's words, And you hear his voice like a thousand bricks In the lowing of the herds.

He peeps into the teamster's heart, From his Buena Vista's rim, And the cracking whips of many men Can never frighten him. He'll come to his cart in the weary night, When he's dreaming of his craft; And he'll float to his eye in the morning light, Like a man on a river raft.

He hears the sound of the cooper's adz, And makes him too his dupe, For he sighs in his ear from the shaving pile As he hammers on the hoop. The little girl, the beardless boy, The men that walk or stand, He will get them all in his mighty arms Like the grasp of your very hand.

The shoemaker bangs above his bench, And ponders his shining awl, For love is under the lap-stone hid, And a spell is on the wall. It heaves the sole where he drives the pegs, And speaks in every blow, 'Till the last is dropped from his crafty hand, And his foot hangs bare below.

He blurs the prints which the shopmen sell, And intrudes on the hatter's trade, And profanes the hostler's stable-yard In the shape of a chamber-maid. In the darkest night, and the bright daylight, Knowing that he can win, In every home of good-looking folks Will human love come in.

The next is from Poe's "Annabel Lee:"

SAMUEL BROWN.

It was many and many a year ago, In a dwelling down in town, That a fellow there lived whom you may know By the name of Samuel Brown; And this fellow he lived with no other thought Than to our house to come down.

I was a child and he was a child, In that dwelling down in town, But we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Samuel Brown-- With a love that the ladies coveted, Me and Samuel Brown.

And this was the reason that, long ago, To that dwelling down in town, A girl came out of her carriage, courting My beautiful Samuel Brown; So that her high-bred kinsman came And bore away Samuel Brown, And shut him up in a dwelling-house, In a street quite up in town.

The ladies, not half so happy up there, Went envying me and Brown; Yes! that was the reason, (as all men know, In this dwelling down in town,) That the girl came out of the carriage by night Coquetting and getting my Samuel Brown.

But our love is more artful by far than the love Of those who are older than we-- Of many far wiser than we-- And neither the girls that are living above, Nor the girls that are down in town, Can ever discover my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Samuel Brown.

For the morn never shines without bringing me lines From my beautiful Samuel Brown; And the night is never dark, but I sit in the park With my beautiful Samuel Brown. And often by day, I walk down in Broadway, With my darling, my darling, my life, and my stay, To our dwelling down in town, To our house in the street down town.

The two poems that have been most parodied in this country are the "Woodman spare that tree," of General Morris, and Poe's "Raven." There have been an incredible number of burlesques of the former, and of the latter we have seen a collection of seventeen, some of which are scarcely less clever than the original performance.

THE BRITISH HUMORISTS: DESCRIBED

BY MR. THACKERAY.

In the last _International_, we gave sketches of the first and second of the series of lectures Mr. Thackeray is now delivering in London, a series which we may regard with more interest because it is to be repeated in Boston, New-York, and other American cities. The subjects of the lectures already noticed were SWIFT, CONGREVE, and ADDISON. The third lecture was upon

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

"Having," says the _Times_, "to deal with a personage whose character was any thing but perfection, Mr. Thackeray started with a good-humored declamation against perfection in general. A perfect man would be intolerable--he could not laugh and he could not cry, neither could he hate nor even love, for love itself implied an unjust preference of one person over another, which was so far an imperfection. The interest which a man takes in the progress of his own boy at school, while he is indifferent about other boys who are probably better and more clever, his choice that a death should occur in his neighbor's house rather than in his own, and various traits of a similar kind, are all so many manifestations of selfishness, and therefore so many removes from perfection.

"After this preface, Mr. Thackeray discoursed upon Steele's career at school. At the Charter-house he distinguished himself as a good-natured _mauvais sujet_--idle beyond the average mark. By his scholastic acquisitions he gave little satisfaction to his masters, and was flogged more frequently than any boy in the school. Moreover, he was in debt to all the vendors of juvenile delicacies in the neighborhood; and, if any boy came to school with money to lend, Dick Steele was certain to appear as the person to borrow. These facts, given with much minuteness, were followed by an assertion on the part of the lecturer that he had no authority for them whatever. It was an admitted truth that 'the child is the father of the man,' and on this principle he felt he had a right, from his intimate knowledge of Captain Steele, to deduce what sort of a personage Master Dicky Steele was likely to be.

"This bit of mock biography gave the key-note to the entire lecture. While Mr. Thackeray admitted that Steele was a far less brilliant man than any who had formed the subjects of the preceding discourses, and far less entitled to admiration than Addison, he spoke of him in a tone of warmer affection than he had displayed when talking of the great Joseph. He dilated with unction on Steele's many follies and vices--his strange medley of piety and debauchery, his inordinate love of dress, his insensibility as to the duty of meeting pecuniary obligations; he even read an ill-natured description by John Dennis, remarking that it was substantially true, but at the same time he constantly kept before the minds of his hearers the kindliness of Steele's heart. He did not call upon them to worship him as a moral being or as a talent, aware that many others much more deserved such honor, but he exhorted them to love him as a friend: 'If Steele is not a friend, he is nothing.'

"The great number of letters which Steele wrote to his wife, and which are still extant, furnished Mr. Thackeray with much of the knowledge he possessed as to the character of his hero. With these he could pursue him through every variety of joy and sorrow, difficulty and triumph, and, as they were evidently written for none but her to whom they were addressed, he could be sure that the writer spoke from his own heart. On the literary productions of Steele, Mr. Thackeray dwelt very little, but he pointed out in them this peculiarity, that the author showed a reverence for woman unknown to his contemporaries. Swift hated women just as he hated men; Congreve regarded them as so many fortresses to be conquered by a superior general; even Addison sneered at them with a gentle sneer; but Steele really spoke of them in a tone of affectionate respect, and this gives a charm to his comedies not to be found in more brilliant productions.

"Mr. Thackeray took occasion to illustrate by these extracts the characteristic differences of Swift, Addison, and Steele. He had already drawn a ludicrous picture of the relative positions of Steele and Addison, remarking that the latter had been through life to the former what a 'head boy' is to an inferior boy at school. Now by Swift's poem on the 'Day of Judgment'--an extract from the _Spectator_, containing Addison's reflections in Westminster Abbey--and a passage from Steele, he showed how the subject of Death was treated by the three writers. Swift's poem savagely treats as fools all who pretend to know any thing beyond the grave, including the teachers of the several sects. Addison's tone was kinder, but, while he was benevolent in his skepticism, he came to nearly the same result as the ferocious Dean. Steele, on the other hand, was content to remember, as his first grief, the death of his father, when he was five years old, and the dignified sorrow of his mother.

"By way of an additional comical apology for the foibles of Steele, Mr. Thackeray concluded his lecture by remarking on the atrocities of the age when poor Dick lived,--an age when young ladies, at dinner, actually put their knives into their mouths. The social peculiarities of the period he illustrated by a sort of summary of Swift's _Polite Conversation_, which led up to an ironical praise of the nineteenth century, as a century whose anomalies are unknown."

The fourth lecture on the humorists was of Prior, Gay, and Pope, Mr. Thackeray choosing to consider Pope, who was not a humorist, but a wit, the greatest humorist of all:

MATHEW PRIOR.

"Prior he characterizes as the foremost of lucky wits, abounding in good nature and acuteness. He loved--he drank--he sang. Some verses at Cambridge first rendered him an object of notice, and by the 'City Mouse and Country Mouse,' which, jointly with Montague, he wrote against Dryden, and which, Mr. Thackeray ironically asserted, all his hearers knew, of course, by heart, he gained the post of Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague, in accordance with the usage then prevalent of rewarding a talent for correct alcaics or biting epigrams with important diplomatic appointments. However, his fortune was but transient, since he fell with his patron Montague. As a poet, Mr. Thackeray praised Prior highly, calling him the most charming of English lyrists, and comparing him with Horace on one side and Moore on the other. At the same time he referred to a certain statement that Prior, after he had spent the evening with the first men of the day, would retire to Long-acre to smoke a pipe with two very intimate acquaintances--a soldier and his wife--adding that many of his writings seemed to be under the influence of his Long-acre friends."

JOHN GAY.

"Gay was pointed out as a remarkable instance of kindliness and good humor, gaining the love even of the most savage wits of the day, and incurring the hatred of none. The ferocious giant Swift loved him as the Brobdignag loved Gulliver, and was afraid to open the packet which contained the tidings of his death. This kindliness is an especial feature in Gay's writings, even in his _Beggars' Opera_, and as Rubini was said to have, 'une larme dans la voix,' so was there in all that Gay produced a tone of the gentlest pathos. This peculiarity he illustrated by reading the well known story of the two devoted lovers struck dead by lightning. As for Gay's life, it was easy enough. He failed, indeed, to make his fortune, but he led a comfortable existence with his noble patrons the Duke and Duchess of Queensbury, living like a little round French _abbe_, eating and drinking well and growing more melancholy as he increased in fat."

ALEXANDER POPE.

"For a guaranty of Pope's merits, Mr. Thackeray especially referred to the _Rape of the Lock_ and the _Dunciad_. He insisted on his claims to admiration as a great literary artist, always bent on the perfection of his work and gladly adopting the thoughts of others if they would serve to complete his own. This peculiarity of carefulness was early shown in the fact that Pope began by imitation. The five happiest years of his life were devoted to the study of the best authors, especially poets, and the intellectual enjoyment was heightened by the feeling that genius was throbbing in his heart and awakening within him dreams of future glory. He too should sing--he too should love. Of love, indeed, Pope did not make a great deal, and as his addresses to Lady Wortley Montague were a failure, so was his first amour a sham love for a sham mistress. A particular pleasure in reading the works of Pope consists in the fact that they bring the reader into the very best company--a company whose manners are, to be sure, a little stiff and stately, and whose voices are pitched somewhat beyond the ordinary conversation key, but there is something ennobling about them. _Apropos_ of this peculiarity, Mr. Thackeray took occasion to dwell with great unction on the advantages of high society, and said, for the benefit of any young hearer who might be present, 'Young hearer, keep company with your betters.' Addison, as we have seen, is Mr. Thackeray's moral hero. He considers, however, that he has one great blemish in his dislike of Alexander Pope. The young poet was too conscious of his own powers to be a mere attendant at the Court of King Joseph, and King Joseph did not like this independence. The support given by the Addison _clique_ to Tickell's translation of Homer might naturally enough be construed by the Pope faction as proceeding from an ungenerous wish to depreciate their chieftain's version, and they might easily suppose that what was emulation in Tickell was envy in Addison. The verses which Pope wrote on this occasion and sent to Addison, had the satisfactory effect that the great Joseph was civil ever afterwards. But still Mr. Thackeray surmised that their sting was never forgotten, and that the saintly Addison might be painted as a Sebastian, with this one arrow sticking in him.

"The causes that led to the writing of the _Dunciad_ were laid down, chiefly with a view of justifying the author, though Mr. Thackeray admitted that Pope's arrows are so sharp, and his slaughter so wholesale, that the reader's sympathies are often enlisted on the side of the devoted inhabitants of Grub-street. The vile jokes and libels that were aimed against the illustrious poet, and the paltry allusions to his personal defects, were brought forward as sufficient motives; and the lecturer dwelt with admiration on the personal courage which the "gallant little cripple" displayed when the indignant dunces threatened him with corporeal chastisement. At the same time, he declared it his conviction that the _Dunciad_ had done the greatest possible harm to the literary profession. Prior to its publication there were great prizes for literary men in the shape of government appointments and the like; but Pope, a lover of high society--a man so refined that he kept thin while his friends grew fat--hated the rank and file of literature, and if there was one point in his assailants on which he dwelt with savage partiality, it was their abject poverty. He it was who brought the notion of a vile Grub-street before the minds of the general public; he it was who created such associations as author and rags--author and dirt--author and gin. The occupation of authorship became ignoble through his graphic descriptions of misery, and the literary profession was for a long time destroyed.

"Pope's well known affection for his mother, on which Mr. Thackeray feelingly expatiated, and the love which his friends entertained for him, were introduced as a sentimental relief in describing the character of a man whose career Mr. Thackeray compared to that of a great general, obtaining his end by a series of brilliant conquests."

HOGARTH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING.

"In his fifth lecture," says the _Leader_, "Mr. Thackeray dwelt at great length on Hogarth, and pointed out how much of his success lay in the simple conventional morals of his works; gave a graphic analysis of the _Marriage a la Mode_ and the _Idle and Industrious Apprentices_; and humorously set forth Hogarth's pretensions to the sublime in historical painting. Smollett was dismissed in a few pleasant paragraphs. Fielding called out the hearty admiration of the author of _Vanity Fair_; and amidst the panegyric there were some admirable passages, notably one on the scorn and hatred Richardson and Fielding unaffectedly felt for each other, and the sincerity which may animate even the most contemptuous criticism. The opinions Thackeray stamps with his authority, we constantly find open to question; but it is not as a Course of Criticism that these Lectures have their inexpressible charm, and it would be possible for a man to dissent _in toto_ from the views put forth, while at the same time he held them to be among the most delightful lectures he ever listened to."

STERNE AND GOLDSMITH.

In the sixth and last lecture of the course, Mr. Thackeray's subjects were Sterne and Goldsmith. He stigmatized severely all Sterne's relations with women, showed up the sham sensibility which wept through his writings, dwelt on the perilous thing it was to make a market of one's sorrows, and sell the deepest experiences of one's life at so much per volume, and wound up with an emphatic condemnation of the pruriency of Sterne's writings, contrasting that pruriency with the purity of Dickens. All the generosity, sweetness, and improvidence of Goldsmith's Irish nature were earnestly and genially presented.

This course of lectures has been described as "a review of the humorists, by their master," but Mr. Thackeray is not a humorist--at least humor is not his distinguishing quality; he is a cold satirist, sneering at humanity, and in all his writings never exhibiting a spark of the genial fire which should commend an author to the affections of his readers. Gentlemen may be amused by him--he may be even punctilious and sincere in the observance of all honorable conduct--but judging him by his works, he is one of the last men living whom any person with the instincts of a gentleman would admit to his friendship. Some of his books are amazingly clever, but others, as the _Kickleburys on the Rhine_, are but unredeemable vulgarity. He has been taken up very much by the snobs--a class somewhat remarkable for misapprehensions of their real relations--and we find the snobs of this country as well as of England lauding the satirist as an enemy of their own peculiar caste. This is a mistake: Mr. Thackeray has painted to the life the sentimental snob, indeed, but he is himself a chief of a different and far less endurable class in this division of the race--_the snob cynical and supercilious_.

ALRED.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY ELMINA WALDO CAREY.

Do you remember, Alred dear, The peach-tree's cool and ample shade, Where first our hearts learned love and fear, And vows of constancy were made?

The peach-tree stands there, now as then, Its shadow just as dim and mild, And over all the sacred glen The vines of strawberries run wild.

Still all about the water's edge Beds of green flags in beauty lie, And, sloping towards the elder-hedge, Are fields of graceful waving rye.

But, Alred dear, not by our feet Will the round clover-heads be pressed, For years must pass before we meet In that dear valley of the west.

Sometimes my heart is filled with fear, Yet if not, Alred, in that land, 'Tis bliss to know, in some bright sphere You'll wait to take my trembling hand.

CHRISTOPHER NORTH ON ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

The July number of _Blackwood's Magazine_ has a long paper under the title of _What is Mesmerism?_ in which the question is discussed with ingenuity, apparent candor, and occasional eloquence. The editor, however, does not altogether agree with his contributor, and adds to the article the following postscript. Undoubtedly a large proportion of the "professors of magnetism" are mere mountebanks, and the pretenders to clairvoyance may in all cases probably be set down as knaves, or as very ignorant or feeble-minded persons. Nevertheless, we cannot quite agree with Professor Wilson in all his propositions:

WHAT IS MESMERISM?

"It must be admitted that our excellent correspondent has set forth the claims of 'Adolphe' and 'Alexis,' and similar interesting abstractions, to the powers of omnipresence and omniscience, with great candor and becoming gravity. We are sorry that we cannot follow what many of our readers may consider so excellent an example. We have no faith in those dear creatures without surnames: we have no faith in animal magnetism, either in its lesser or in its larger pretensions; but we have an unbounded faith in the imbecility, infatuation, vanity, credulity, and knavery of which human nature is capable. And we are of opinion that there is not a single well-authenticated mesmeric phenomenon which is not fully explicable by the operation of one or more of these causes, or of the whole of them taken in conjunction.

"The question in regard to mesmerism is two-fold: _first_, how is the mesmeric prostration to be accounted for? and _secondly_, how is it to be disposed of? It may be accounted for, we conceive, by the natural tendencies just recited, without its being necessary to postulate any new or unknown agency; it may be disposed of by the influence of public opinion, which would very soon put a stop to these pitiable exhibitions, and very soon extinguish the magnetizer's power and the patient's susceptibility, if it were but to visit the performers with the contempt and reprobation they deserve. A few words on each of these heads may not be out of place, as a qualifying postscript to the foregoing letter, which, in our opinion, treats the mesmeric superstition with far too much indulgence.

"I. The existence of any physical force or fluid in man or in nature, by which the mesmeric phenomena are induced, has been distinctly disproved by every carefully conducted experiment. _No person was ever magnetized when totally unsuspicious of the operation of which he was the subject._ This is conclusive; because a physical agent, which never does, _of itself_ and unheralded, produce any effect, is no physical agent at all. Then, again, let certain persons be prepared for the magnetic condition, and aware of what is expected of them, and the effects are equally produced, whether the intended influence be exerted or not. It seems simply ridiculous to postulate an _odylic_ (we should like to be favored with the derivation of this word) fluid to account for phenomena which show themselves just as conspicuously when no such fluid is or can be in operation.

"But it is argued by some of the advocates of mesmeric influence, that their agent, though perhaps not physical, is at any rate moral--that the will, or some spiritual energy on the part of the mesmerist, is the power by which his victims are entranced and rendered obedient to his bidding. Here, too, all the well-authenticated cases establish a totally different conclusion. They prove that the will or spiritual power of the mesmerist has _of itself_ no ascendency or control whatsoever over the body or mind of his victim. Every well-guarded series of experiments has exhibited the mesmerist and his patient at cross-purposes with each other--the patient frequently doing those things which the mesmerist was desirous he should not do, and not doing those things which the operator was desirous he should do. As for the buffoonery begotten by mesmerism on phrenology, this exhibition can scarcely be expected to provoke much astonishment, or credence, or comment, except among professional artists themselves--

'Like Katterfelto, with their hair on end, At their own wonders, _wondering for their bread_!'

"The true explanation of mesmerism is to be found, as we have said, in the weakness or infatuation of human nature itself. No other causes are at all necessary to account for the mesmeric prostration. There is far more craziness, both physical and moral, in man than he usually gives himself credit for. The reservoir of human folly may be in a great measure occult, but it is always full; and all that silliness, whether of body or mind, at any time wants, is _to get its cue_.

"These general remarks are of course more applicable to some individuals than they are to others. In soft and weak natures, where the nervous system is subject to cataleptic seizures, mental and bodily prostration is frequently almost the normal condition. Such of our readers as may have frequented mesmeric exhibitions must have observed a kind of _semi-humanity_ visible in the expression and demeanor of most of the subjects whom the professional operators carry about with them. These poor creatures are at all times ready to imbibe the magnetic stupefaction, because it is only by an effort that they are ever free from it. There is always at work within them an occult tendency to self-abandonment--an unintentional proclivity to aberration, imitation, and deceit, which only requires a signal to precipitate its morbid deposits. This constitutional infirmity of body and of mind furnishes to the mesmerist a basis for his operations, and is the source of all the wonders which he works.

"It is only in the case of individuals who, without being fatuous, are hovering on the verge of fatuity, that the magnetic phenomena and the mesmeric prostration can be admitted to be in any considerable degree real. Real to a certain extent they may be; marvellous they certainly are not. Imbecility of the nervous system, a ready abandonment of the will, a facility in relinquishing every endowment which makes man _human_--these intelligible causes, eked out by a vanity and cunning which are always inherent in natures of an inferior type, are quite sufficient to account for the effects of the mesmeric manipulations on subjects of peculiar softness and pliancy.

"In those persons of a better organized structure, who yield themselves up to the mesmeric degradation, the physical causes are less operative; but the moral causes are still more influential. In all cases the prostration is self-induced. But in the subjects of whom we have spoken, it is mainly induced by physical depravity, although moral frailties concur to bring about the condition. In persons of a superior type, the condition is mainly due to moral causes, although physical imbecility has some share in facilitating the result. These people have much vanity, much curiosity, and much credulity, together with a _weak_ imagination--that is to say, an imagination which is easily excited by circumstances which would produce no effect upon people of stronger imaginative powers. Their vanity shows itself in the desire _to astonish others_, and get themselves talked about. They think it rather creditable to be susceptible subjects. It is a point in their favor! Their credulity and curiosity take the form of a powerful wish _to be astonished themselves_. Why should they be excluded from a land of wonders which others are permitted to enter? The first step is now taken. They are ready for the sacrifice, which various motives concur to render agreeable. They resign themselves passively, mind and body, into the hands of the manipulator; and by his passes and grimaces, they are cowed pleasurably, bullied delightfully, into _so much_ of the condition which their inclinations are bent upon attaining, as justifies them, they think, in laying claim to the _whole_ condition, without bringing them under the imputation of being downright impostors. _Downright_ impostors they unquestionably are not. We believe that their condition is frequently, though to a very limited extent, _real_. We must also consider, that, in a matter of this kind, which is so deeply imbued with the ridiculous, a mesmeric patient may, and doubtless often does, justify to his own conscience a considerable deviation from the truth, on the ground of waggery or hoaxing. Why should an audience, which has the patience to put up with such spectacles, not be fooled to the top of its bent?

"II. How, then, is the miserable nonsense to be disposed of? It can only be put a stop to by the force of public opinion, guided of course by reason and truth. Let it be announced from all authoritative quarters that the magnetic sensibility is only another name for an unsound condition of the mental and bodily functions--that it may be always accepted as an infallible index of the position which an individual occupies in the scale of humanity--that its manifestation (when real) invariably betokens a _physique_ and a _morale_ greatly below the average, and a character to which no respect can be attached. Let this announcement--which is the undoubted truth--be made by all respectable organs of public opinion, and by all who are in any way concerned in the diffusion of knowledge, or in the instruction of the rising generation, and the magnetic superstition will rapidly decline. Let this--the correct and scientific explanation of the phenomena--be understood and considered carefully by all young people of both sexes, and the mesmeric ranks will be speedily thinned of their recruits. Our young friends who may have been entrapped into this infatuation by want of due consideration, will be wiser for the future. If they allow themselves to be experimented upon, they will at any rate take care not to disgrace themselves by yielding to the follies to which they may be solicited both from within and from without; and we are much mistaken if, when they know what the penalty is, they will abandon themselves to a disgusting condition which is characteristic only of the most abject specimens of our species."

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME.[1]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.