LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, PERSONAL MOVEMENTS, Etc.
UNITED STATES.
The literary incidents of the month have not been very noteworthy. James, the English novelist, has been lecturing at Albany to large and interested audiences. He has bought a residence at Stockbridge, Mass., where he will reside, in the immediate neighborhood of Longfellow, the Sedgwicks, and other literary celebrities. A series of valuable lectures upon Art have been delivered before the Artists of New York, in pursuance of a very excellent plan adopted by their Association. The first of the series was delivered by Henry James, Esq., and was an excellent critical exposition of the nature and characteristics of Art. He was followed by George W. Curtis, Esq., in a fine sketch of the condition and prospects of Art on the Continent. The leading idea of his lecture was that Art never promised more abundant results than now.
Congress at its last session appropriated two thousand dollars to commence the purchase of a library for the use of the President of the United States. It is a little singular that a project so eminently useful should have been so long neglected. Its execution has been now undertaken with spirit, under the direction of Mr. Charles Lanman.
The birth-day of Burns was celebrated by a public dinner on the 25th of January at the Astor House, in New York. The poet Bryant was present as a guest, and made a very happy speech, in which he said that the fact that Burns had taken a local dialect, and made it classical and given it a character of universality, was of itself sufficient to stamp him as a man of the highest order of genius.
Mr. Hoe, celebrated for his printing presses, has just completed a new one, having eight cylinders, and thus throwing off eight sheets at each revolution, for the use of the Sun newspaper in New York. He was the recipient lately of a public dinner given to him by the proprietors of the paper, at which several of the most eminent literary celebrities in the country were present as guests. The occasion was one of interest: we hope it may be deemed indicative of a growing disposition to tender public honors to the benefactors, as well as to the destroyers, of their race.
The literary productions of the month will be found noticed in another department of this Magazine. Several works of interest are promised by the leading publishers. The Harpers have in press a volume of traveling sketches, entitled Nile Notes, by an American, which will be found to be one of the best of its kind. It is written with great vivacity and with very marked ability. Many of its chapters are fully equal to Eothen, and the work in its general characteristics is not at all inferior to that spirited and admirable book. The Harpers have also in press a work by Mr. H.M. Field, giving a succinct history of the Great Irish Rebellion with biographical sketches of the most prominent of the Irish Confederates. It will find a wide circle of readers. The Harpers are also about to publish Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor in the Nineteenth Century, made up of his Letters in the London Morning Chronicle upon that subject, revised and extended. These papers reveal a state of things not at all creditable to the English people or to the age in which we live. As originally published in London they excited great attention and have done much toward arousing the public sense of justice to the poor.
Cooper, the novelist, has a work in preparation upon the Social History of this country. It will probably, however, not be published until fall. Mr. Putnam has in progress a new and very elegantly printed uniform edition of his novels. Another New York house promise a complete edition of Joanna Baillie's poems, with a new edition of Elizabeth Barret Browning.
Prof. Agassiz, the celebrated Naturalist, is making a survey of the Florida reefs and keys, in the hope that he may throw some light upon their formation and growth. He is nominally attached to the Coast Survey.
American scholars still continue their valuable contributions to classical learning. Prof. Drisler, of Columbia College, one of the most thorough and accurate linguists in the country, is engaged upon an English-Greek Lexicon, which will be a most valuable aid to the classical student, in connection with similar works by the same author hitherto issued.
In the departments of religious and theological literature, we find indications of renewed activity among the divines of our country. Prof. J. Addison Alexander, of Princeton, has a new critical and exegetical work in the course of preparation. Rev. Dr. Spring will soon publish, through M.W. Dodd, a volume under the title of First Things, a series of lectures designed to set forth and illustrate some of the facts and moral duties earliest revealed to mankind. From Rev. Dr. Condit, of Newark, we are to have a work entitled The Christian Home, setting forth the relations, duties, and benefits of the domestic institution. Rev. H.A. Rowland, author of a work on the Common Maxims of Infidelity, has in press a volume under the title of The Path of Life.
The late Edmond Charles Genet, Embassador from the Republic of France to this country at the close of the last century, left behind him, at his decease, a vast amount of papers, consisting of journals of his life, letters from the prominent statesmen and politicians of this country, and correspondence with his sister, the celebrated Madame Campan. It is understood that members of his family are arranging them with a view to publication. From the close social and political relations which M. Genet, after his dismissal from the embassy, bore to the prominent politicians of the Democratic party, there can be no doubt that these papers, if judiciously edited, will throw much light upon the political history of the period preceding the war of 1812.
It is known by those familiar with current Continental literature, that the wife of Prof. Edward Robinson published, some time since, in Germany, under her usual pseudonym, Talvi, a very full and excellent history of the early Colonization of New England. This work has lately been translated from German into English by William Hazlitt, and published in London. It was published originally at Leipsic in 1847. We presume it will be reprinted here.
Rev. H.T. Cheever's Whale and his Captors has been reprinted in London, with a preface by Dr. Scoresby, who commends it very highly.
EUROPEAN.
The London Leader destroys the romance of Lamartine's visit to England. It seems, according to that paper, that he did not go for the philosophic purpose of studying the country, but to make bargains for the publication of his History of the Directory, which he offered for five thousand pounds. The publishers, he urged, could issue it simultaneously in England, France, and Germany, and so secure an enormous profit. "Our countrymen," says the Leader, "with an indifference to Mammon worthy of a philosopher, declined the magnificent proposal: and Lamartine returned to France and sold his work to an association of publishers for 12,000 francs, which he hopes to get." He is also to publish a new novel in the feuilleton of the Siècle.
Edmond Texier, a French journalist, has published a very lively history of French journals and journalists. It is a small and unelaborate book, but is exceedingly readable. Political writers in France, it will be remembered, are required to sign their names to their articles. The Vote Universel recently contained a strong essay signed by Gilland. The Attorney-general prosecuted the paper, alleging that the article was written by George Sand, and citing the bad spelling of Gilland's private letters as a proof that he could not have been the writer. Madame George Sand peremptorily denies having written a line of the article, and avers that Rousseau himself, in a single letter in her possession, makes three mistakes in spelling three lines, owing to the difficult and capricious rules of the French language.
Lady Morgan has published a pamphlet on the Roman Catholic Controversy. It is in the form of a letter to Cardinal Wiseman, and is a defense of herself against an attack upon a passage in her book on Italy. In that book she had related a curious anecdote. She said that when Bonaparte entered Italy the enthroned chair of St. Peter, contained in the magnificent shrine of bronze which closes the view of the nave in St. Peter's Cathedral, was brought into a better light and the cobwebs brushed off. Certain curious letters were discovered on the surface, which were deciphered and found to contain the Arabian formula, "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet." Cardinal Wiseman branded this story as "false, foolish, slanderous, and profligate." Lady Morgan gives as her authority for it the eminent savans Denon and Champollion, who saw the inscription, deciphered it, and told its meaning in her presence. Her letter is ably written, and excites attention.—Lady Morgan is said to be the oldest living writer who continues to write: for though Miss Joanna Baillie is some five years, and Rogers perhaps ten years her senior, neither of the latter has touched a pen in the way of authorship for a long time; whereas Lady Morgan, for all her blindness, has, according to the Liverpool Albion, for a good while back, been a regular contributor to one of the London morning journals.
The British government has bestowed a pension of £100 a year upon the widow of the celebrated Belzoni, who died fifteen years ago. The public satisfaction at this announcement is tempered with surprise that the pension was not bestowed fifteen years ago. Mr. Poole, the author of "Paul Pry," and other literary works of a light character, has received a retiring pension of the same amount. Similar pensions have been granted to George Petrie, LL.D., author of "The Round Towers of Ireland," and other antiquarian works; and to Dr. Kitto, editor of the "Pictorial Bible," "Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature," and other works in that department of letters. Dr. Kitto, although deaf from an early age, in consequence of an accident, has traveled over many lands in connection with the Missionary Society.
Letters from Rome announce the death in that city of Mr. Ritchie, the sculptor, of Edinburgh. The circumstances are peculiarly melancholy. It had been the dream of Mr. Ritchie's life to go to Rome; this year he was able to travel, and he arrived in that city in September last, with some friends as little acquainted with the nature of the malaria as himself. With these friends it appears that he made a visit to Ostia; the season was dangerous; the party took no precautions, and they all caught the malaria fever. He died after a few days' illness, and was followed to the grave by most of the English and American artists in Rome.
Austen Henry Layard, whose enterprise has opened a new field for historical research, was born in Paris, March 5, 1817. His father, who was Dean of Bristol, filled a high civil office in Ceylon, between the years 1820 and 1830. The early years of the future explorer of Nineveh were spent in Florence, where he early acquired his artistic tastes and skill as a draughtsman. On returning to England, young Layard commenced the study of law, but his love of adventure rendered this profession distasteful to him, and he abandoned it. In 1839 he left England, with no very definite object in view, visited Russia and the North of Europe, and spent some time in Germany. Thence he took his course toward the Danube, and visited the semi-barbarous provinces on the Turkish frontier, which form the debatable ground between the Orient and the Occident. In Montenegro he passed some time, aiding an active young Chief in his efforts to ameliorate the condition of his subjects. From hence he passed into the East, where he led the life of an Arab of the desert, and acquired a thorough knowledge of the languages of Arabia and Turkey. We next find him in Persia, Asia Minor, and Syria, where he visited almost every spot made memorable by history or tradition. He now felt an irresistible desire to penetrate to the regions beyond the Euphrates, to which history and tradition point as the birth-place of the wisdom of the West. At Constantinople, he fell in with the English Embassador, Sir Stratford Canning, by whom he was encouraged to undertake and carry on those excavations amid the Assyrian and Babylonian ruins, which have conclusively demonstrated that a gigantic civilization had passed away before what we are accustomed to call ancient civilization dawned, a civilization stretching back almost to the days when the ark rested upon Ararat; a civilization which was old when the pyramids were young. And, what is still more remarkable, the relics of this civilization are more perfect and beautiful in proportion to the remoteness of their date, the earlier of these ancient sculptures being invariably the noblest in design, and the most exquisite and elaborate in execution.
In 1848, Mr. Layard visited England for a few months, where, notwithstanding the monthly attacks of an aguish fever contracted in the damp apartments which he was obliged to inhabit while prosecuting his excavations at Nimroud, he prepared for the press the two volumes of his Nineveh and its Remains, executed the drawings for the hundred plates, and a volume of inscriptions in the cuneiform character for the British Museum.
The last survivor of Cook's voyage, a sailor named John Wade, is said to be now begging his bread at Kingston-on-Thames. He is within a few months of completing his hundredth year, having been born in New York in May, 1751. He was with Cook when he was killed on the Island of Hawaii; and is said to have served at the battles of Cape St. Vincent, Teneriffe, the Nile, Copenhagen, Camperdown, and Trafalgar.
An interesting collection of sketches, by members of the Sketching Society has been opened to the public. This society numbers among its members the two Chalons, Bone, Christall, Partridge, Stump, Leslie, Stanfield, and Uwins. What gives to the present collection a unique interest is that they are entirely impromptu productions, three hours being the limit allowed for their completion. At each meeting of the society the president announces a subject, and the drawings are made on the spot.
Sir Roger de Coverley's chaplain is familiar to the recollection of all. He has lately found an imitator. The Vicar of Selby announced a few weeks since, that he should that day commence reading the sermons of others, as there were many productions of the ablest divines which were altogether unknown to his parishioners; and he thought the time spent in writing so many new sermons might be more usefully employed in other matters connected with his profession. He then proceeded to read a sermon which he said he had heard preached at the University with great effect.
Professor Owen, in 1840, had submitted to him for examination, a fossil body, which he was enabled to identify as the tooth of some species of whale. It was subsequently discovered that certain crags upon the coast of Suffolk, especially one at Felixstow, contained an immense quantity of fossils of a similar character, which examinations, undertaken by Owen and Henslow, showed to be rolled and water-worn fragments of the skeletons of extinct species of mammals, mostly of the whale kind. This discovery has been shown by a recent trial in the English courts, to be of immense pecuniary value. A Mr. Lawes took out a patent for the manufacture of super-phosphate of lime, as a substitute for bone-dust, for agricultural purposes, by applying sulphuric acid to any mineral whatever, known or unknown, which might contain the phosphate of lime. It was found that these fossil remains contained of this from 50 to 60 per cent., and Mr. Lawes undertook to extend his patent so as to include the production of the super-phosphate from them. In this he was unsuccessful, the court deciding that he could not claim a monopoly of all the fossil remains in the country. It was shown on the trial, that an income of more than $50,000 a year has been derived from the use of this phosphate.
A number of classical works of decided interest have recently been published; among them are: Platonis Opera Omnia. This new edition of Plato is edited by Stallbaum, whose name is a sufficient guarantee for the faithful editorial care bestowed upon it. It is in one volume, small folio, uniform with the edition of Aristotle by Weisse, and that of Cicero by Nobbe.—Lachmann's edition of Lucretius supplies a want which has been long felt of a good critical edition of the philosophical poet. The volume of the text is accompanied by a critical commentary in a separate volume.—The second part of the second volume of Professor Ritschl's edition of Plautus containing the "Pseudulus," has appeared. The editor has the reputation of being the best Plautinian scholar in Germany. He has spent years in the preparation of this edition, having undertaken an entirely new recension of the works of the great dramatic poet.—Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum. This important work, under the editorial charge of the veteran Böckh, with whom is associated Franz, is rapidly approaching completion. The third part of the third volume is published. A fourth part, which will complete the work, is promised speedily.
From the press of the Imperial Academy at St. Petersburgh has appeared the first volume of a collection of Mohammedan Sources for the History of the Southern Coasts of the Caspian Sea. The volume contains 643 pages of the Persian text of the history of Tabaristan, Rujan, and Massanderan, by Seher-Eddin, edited, with a German introduction, by Bernhard Dorn, Librarian of the Imperial Library. It gives a history, commencing with the mythical ages and ending with the year 1476, of the various dynasties which have ruled those regions, which have scarcely been brought within the light of authentic history, but to which we must look for the solution of many interesting problems in relation to the progress and development of the race. The editor promises forthwith a translation of the history, with annotations.
Professor Heinrich Ewald, of Göttingen, has just put forth a translation of and commentary upon the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, marked by that free dealing with the sacred text characteristic of the Rationalistic school. He proposes to himself the task of separating what he supposes to be the original substance of the evangelical narrative from subsequent additions and interpolations—"to free the kernel from the Mosaic husk." The author had intended to delay the publication of this commentary until after the publication of his History of the Jews; but he thought he perceived in the present state of religion in Germany, and especially in the alarming decline of the religious element among the masses of the people, a call upon him to furnish an antidote—such as it is. In the preface he takes occasion to make some severe criticisms upon the politics of the day, and in particular those of Prussia.