CONTENTS: THIS ISSUE
INTRODUCTION.
Of the revolutions of the age, one of the most interesting and important is that which has taken place in the forms of Literature and the Modes of its Publication. Since the establishment of the Edinburgh Review the finest intelligences of the world have been displayed in periodicals. Brougham, Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Mackintosh, Macaulay, have owed nearly all their best fame to compositions which have appeared first in journals, magazines and reviews; the writers of Tales and Essays have uniformly come before the public by the same means, which have recently served also for the original exhibition of the most elaborate and brilliant Fictions, so that we are now receiving through them by almost every ship from Europe installments of works by Dickens, Bulwer, James, Croly, Lever, Reynolds, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Ellis, and indeed nearly all the most eminent contemporary novelists. So complete is the change, that all mind, except the heaviest and least popular, is likely to flow hereafter through the Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly Miscellanies, which compete with universities, parliaments, churches, and libraries, for ascendency in the government of mankind.
In this country we must keep pace with the movements abroad. It will not answer that we issue literary productions as soon as possible after their completion. The impatient readers demand chapters by chapters, as they are spun from the brain and the heart of the author; facts, upon the instant of their discovery; and suggestions, as they flash from the contact of imagination and reflection.
The International Weekly Miscellany will be a result of efforts to satisfy a plain necessity of the times. It will combine the excellencies of all contemporary periodicals, with features that will be peculiar to itself.
I. A leading object will be to present the public, with the utmost rapidity and at the cheapest possible rate, the best of those works in Popular Literature which are appearing abroad in serials, or in separate chapters. With this view, we print in the first number the initial portions of the brilliant nautical romance now in course of publication in Blackwood's Magazine, under the title of "The Green Hand," by the author of the most celebrated fiction of its class in English literature, "Tom Cringle's Log;" and other works will be selected and carried on simultaneously, as they shall come to us with the stamp of sufficient merit.
II. The foreign periodicals are continually rich in novelettes of from two or three to a dozen chapters, which—being too short for separate volumes—are rarely reproduced at all in this country. Of these the International will contain the choicest selections.
III. Of the Quarterly Reviews the most admirable papers will be presented in full; and those works will in all cases be carefully examined for such valuable and striking passages as will be likely to interest the American reader, to whom the entire articles in which they appear may be unattractive.
IV. The Literary, Religious, Political and Scientific newspapers and magazines will be consulted for whatever will instruct or entertain in their several departments. The leading articles in the great journals, upon Affairs, and Philosophy, and Art, which are now very unfrequently reprinted in America, will appear in the International in such fullness and combination as to display the springs and processes of the world's action and condition.
V. But the work will not be altogether Foreign, nor a mere compilation. In its republications there will be a constant effort to display what is most interesting and important to the American; and in its original portions it will be supported by some of the ablest and most accomplished writers in all the fields of knowledge and opinion.
VI. As a Literary Gazette and Examiner, it is believed that it will equal or surpass any work now or ever printed in the United States. It will contain the earliest announcements of whatever movements in the literary world are of chief interest to general readers; its Reviews of Books will be honest and intelligent; and its extracts, when they can be given in advance of the publication of the works themselves, will be the choicest and most valuable possible. Without cant or hypocrisy, or the influence of any clique of feeble-minded and ambitious aspirants in letters, the International Miscellany will in this respect, the publishers trust, win and preserve the respect and confidence of all who look to published critical judgments as guides for the reading or purchase of books.
With a view to the more successful execution of the design to make the International Miscellany of the first class in Original Periodical Literature, as well as in Selections and Abstracts of what is already before the world abroad, contributors have been engaged to represent the various departments of Science, and to furnish sketches of manners, &c., from other countries, and the different sections of our own; the proceedings of Learned Societies will be noted; History, Biography, and Archæology will receive attention; and in foreign and American Obituary, such a record will be kept as will be of the most permanent and attractive value.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.
The recent appearance of some half dozen editions—some of them very beautiful in typography and pictorial illustrations—of The Proverbial Philosophy of Mr. Martin Farquhar Tupper, reminds us of the observation of Dana, that something "resembling poetry" is oftentimes borne into instant and turbulent popularity, while a work of genuine character may be lying neglected by all except the poets. But "the tide of time," says the profound essayist, "flows on, and the former begins to settle to the bottom, while the latter rises slowly and steadily to the surface, and goes forward, for a spirit is in it." We are not without the hope that Richard H. Dana will one day be in as frequent demand as Martin Farquhar Tupper is now.
The merits of this "gentleman of acknowledged genius and sovereign popularity," we have never been able to discover. If oddity were always originality, if quaintness and beauty were synonymous, if paradox were necessarily wisdom, we should be ready to grant that Mr. Tupper is a wise, beautiful and original thinker. But thought, after all, is an affair of mind, and though a man of genius may write what is far more brilliant than common sense ever is, yet no man can utter valuable truth on mortal and prudential subjects, unless he possesses a vigorous and powerful understanding. Now Mr. Tupper's art consists in contriving, not thought, but things that look like thoughts; fancies, in imitation of truths. The Proverbial Philosophy, in fact, appears to us one of the most curious impositions we have ever met with. When you first read one of the aphorisms, it strikes you as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom. But look more closely at it; try to apply it; and you will find that it is merely a trick of words. What flashed upon you as a profound distinction in morals, turns out to be nothing but a verbal antithesis. What was paraded, as a kind of transcendental analogy between things not before suspected of resemblance, discovered by the "spiritual insight" of the moral seer, is in fact no more than a grave clench,—a solemn quibble,—a conceit; arising not from the perfection of mind, but the imperfection of language. Those conceptions, fabricated by Fancy out of the materials that Fancy deals in, and colored by the rays of a poetic sentiment, wear the same relation to truths, that the prismatic hues of the spray of a fountain in the sunshine bear to the gems which it perhaps outshines. It dazzles and delights, but if we try to apprehend it we become bewildered; and finally discover that we were deceived by a brilliant phantom of air. You may admire Mr. Tupper; you may enjoy him; but you cannot understand him: the staple of his sentences is not stuff of the understanding. Take one of Mr. Tupper's and one of Lord Bacon's aphorisms; they flash with an equal bravery. But try them upon the glassy surface of life. Bacon's cut it as if it were air: Tupper's turn into a little drop of dirty water. One was a diamond, the other but an icicle: one was the commonest liquor artificially refrigerated; the other was a crystal in form, but in its substance the pure carbon of truth. If these bright delusions which Mr. Tupper turns out to the wonder and praise of his admirers, were really thoughts, is it to be supposed that he would go on in this way, stringing them together, or evolving one out of the other, as a spider weaves its unending line, or as a boy blows soap bubbles from the nose of a tobacco pipe! Fancies, conceits, intellectual phantoms, may be engendered out of the mind, brooding in self-creation upon its own suggestions: but truth is to be mined from Nature, to be wrung from experience, to be seized as the victor's trophy on the battlefield of action and suffering. The flowers of poetry may bud spontaneously around the meditative spirit of genius, but the harvest of Truth, though, to be reaped by mind, must grow out of Reality.
RICHARD HENRY WILDE AND DANTE.
It appears that our accomplished and lamented countryman, Richard Henry Wilde, whose "Researches and Considerations concerning the Love and Imprisonment of Tasso" have been made use of with so discreditable a freedom by a recent English biographer of that poet, is—if another pretender prove not less successful—to be deprived also of the fame he earned by his discoveries in regard to Dante. A correspondent of The Spectator, under the signature of G. Aubrey Bezzi, writes as follows:—
"The questions are, what share Mr. Kirkup had in the recovery of the fresco of Giotto in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podesta at Florence, and whether directly or indirectly I have been the means of depriving him, or any of the coöperators in that good work, of the merit due to their labors. I shall best enable those who take an interest in this matter to arrive at a fair conclusion, by giving a short history of the recovery of that beautiful fresco. It was Mr. Wilde, and not Mr. Kirkup, who first spoke to me of this buried treasure. Mr. Wilde, an American gentleman respected by all that knew him, was then in Florence, engaged in a work on Dante and his times, which unfortunately he did not live to complete. Among the materials he had collected for this purpose, there were some papers of the antiquarian Moreni, which he was examining when I called one day, (I had then been three or four months in Florence,) to read what he had already written, as I was in the habit of doing from time to time. It was then that a foot-note of Moreni's met his eye, in which the writer lamented that he had spent two years of his life in unceasing and unavailing efforts to recover the portrait of Dante, and the other portions of the fresco of Giotto in the Bargello, mentioned by Vasari; that others before him had been equally anxious and equally unsuccessful; and that he hoped that better times would come, (verranno tempi migliori,) and that the painting, so interesting both in an artistic and historical point of view, would be again sought for, and at last recovered. I did not then understand how the efforts of Moreni and others could have been thus unsuccessful; and I thought that with common energy and diligence they might have ascertained whether the painting, so clearly pointed out by Vasari, was or was not in existence: several months, however, of wearisome labors in the same pursuit taught me to judge more leniently of the failures of my predecessors. Mr. Wilde put Moreni's note before me, and suggested and urged, that being an Italian by birth, though not a Florentine, and having lived many years in England and among the English, I had it in my power to bring two modes of influence to bear upon the research; and that such being the case I ought to undertake it. My thoughts immediately turned to Mr. Kirkup, an artist who had abandoned his art to devote himself entirely to antiquarian pursuits, with whom I was well acquainted, and who, having lived many years in Florence, (I believe fifteen,) would weigh the value of Moreni's testimony on this matter, and effectually assist me in every way, if I took it in hand. So I called upon him, either that same day or the next; and I found that he, like most other people, had read the passage in Vasari's life of Giotto, in which it is explicitly said, that the portrait of Dante had been painted with others in the Palazzo del Podesta, and was to be seen at the time the historian was writing; but that he had not read, or had not put any confidence in, the note of the Florence edition of Vasari published in 1832—1838, in which it is stated, that the Palazzo del Podesta had now become a prison—the Bargello; that the Chapel had been turned into a dispensa, (it was more like a coal-hole where the rags and much of the filth of the prison was deposited); that the walls of this dispensa exhibited nothing but a dirty coating, and that Moreni speaks of the painting in some published work; the annotator concluding thus—'It is hoped that some day or other we shall be able to see what there is under the coating of the walls.' So everybody hoped that some day or other the thing would be done, but nobody set about heartily to do it; and it is inconceivable to me that Mr. Kirkup, who shows in this letter, if it be his, such jealousy for the credit of the recovery, should have lived so many years in Florence either entirely ignorant of that which every shop-boy knew, or knowing there were chances of bringing such a treasure to light, that he should have never moved one step for that purpose. That Mr. Kirkup took no active part in this matter at any time, is quite proved by two admissions I find in the letter of your correspondent. He first says, 'I remember that the first time I passed to the Bargello to see it, I found Marini on a scaffold,' &c. The fact is, that several months had elapsed between the first presentation of the memorial and the erection of the scaffold, during which Mr. Kirkup admits that he never thought of visiting the place, while I had spent hours and hours there, under not very pleasant circumstances, and had detected raised aureolas and other evidences of old fresco. But he continues—'Marini was permitted to return to the work on account of the government; and at that point Bezzi returned to England. It was some months afterwards that I heard that Marini had found certain figures, and soon afterwards the discovery of Dante himself" (sic.) These two passages sufficiently show the nature of Mr. Kirkup's labors, and how far he was really eager in the pursuit of this object, both during the time when I was most deeply engaged in it, and also for 'some months' after I had quitted Florence. But to resume: Mr. Kirkup, however ignorant, or culpably negligent, or a little of both, he might previously have been on the subject, yet when I brought it before him, he at once admitted its importance, and made a liberal offer of money, if any should be required, to carry out the experiment. Thus encouraged by Mr. Wilde and by Mr. Kirkup, I sought and found among English, American, and Italian friends and acquaintances, many that were ready to assist the plan. Then it was that I drew up a memorial to the Grand Duke; not because I am an 'advocate,' as your correspondent is pleased to call me, for that is not the case, but simply because, having taken pains to organize the means of working out the common object, the coöperators thought that I could best represent what this common object was. In the memorial, I stated that, according to what Vasari, Moreni, and others had written, it was just possible that a treasure was lying hidden under the dirty coatings of the walls of the dispensa in the Bargello; that a society was already formed for the purpose of seeking with all care for this treasure; that all expenses would be gladly borne by the society; that should anything be found, we would either leave the paintings untouched, or have them removed at our expense to the gallery of the Uffizi, and that we begged of the Grand Duke the necessary sanction to begin our operations. The answer was favorable, and I was referred to Marchese Nerli, and to the Director of the Academy, to make the necessary arrangements. Then the real difficulties began: first, I was put off on account of the precautions that were to be taken in working in a prison; then, the Director was ill, or unavoidably engaged, or absent; I found, in short, that the object was to tire me out, and that I had to contend with the same power that had defeated Moreni and my other predecessors in the attempt. This battle continued many months. I have already spoken too much of my share in the pursuit of this object, and I will not enter into further details—some of them ludicrous—of this contention; but I will say explicitly, that, besides his encouragement, and his repeated offers of money, (which were not accepted because money was not wanted, at least not to any amount, and what was wanted I furnished myself,) Mr. Kirkup did not afford me any assistance. At this stage of the business, I met indeed with a most valuable ally, without whom I believe I should have been beaten; and that was Paolo Feroni, a Florentine nobleman and artist, to whom I have before expressed and now repeat my best acknowledgments. At the end of this long contention against obstacles which often eluded my grasp, the Grand Duke, in consequence of a second memorial I presented to him, issued a decree appointing a commission to carry out the proposed experiments. This commission was composed of two members I had myself proposed, viz. the sculptor Bartolini, and the Marchese Feroni, of myself, of the Direttore of the Edifizi Pubblici Machese Nerli, and of the Direttore of the Accademia delle Arti, the two latter ex-officio: further, the decree declines the proposed voluntary subscriptions, and places at the disposal of the Commissioners a sum of money which proved more than sufficient to cover all the expenses of the restoration of the fresco. The Commissioners employed the painter Marini, and the happy result of his carefulness and ability is now before the world.
"I will now conclude by asserting, that I had nothing to do with what has been said or written at Florence of this recovery, either in the Strenna, or at the meeting of the Scienziati, which was held in 1841, I believe, and at which the fresco of Giotto was naturally a great object of interest. I left Florence in May 1840, before the portrait of Dante was actually uncovered, so that I only saw a portion of the fresco. I have never heard, or read, or said, or written, anything tending to disparage the real coöperation of Mr. Kirkup, or of my late lamented friend Mr. Wilde, or of anybody else in this matter,—nay, that it was at my request that the editor of the English translation of Kugler's Handbook of the History of Painting, published in 1842, has in the preface of that book mentioned Mr. Kirkup as having assisted materially in the recovery. Besides the Marchese Feroni and the artist Signor Marini, there are many disinterested witnesses who have stated, and if called upon will repeat again, all the material points of my narrative; but, better than all, there is now in London an English gentleman, whom I am happy to be allowed to call my friend, who was in Florence part of the time, and saw with his own eyes the share I had in this laborious undertaking, which ought not to have brought this bitter contention upon me: he was an intimate friend of Mr. Wilde, with whom he had a long correspondence on this very subject, after Mr. Wilde's return to America."
We believe Mr. Bezzi is in error as to the incompleteness of Mr. Wilde's Life of Dante. Mr. Wilde, more than a year before his death, informed us that his work was nearly ready for the printer; and at the same time he confided to us for perusal his admirable translations of specimens of Italian Lyric Poets. We hope the descendants of our learned and ingenious friend will place these works, so creditable to his temper, scholarship, and genius, before the world.
GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS.
A work on The Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion has lately attracted much and apparently well-deserved attention in England. It is by George Cornewall Lewis, M.P. for Herefordshire, and Under Secretary of State for the Home Department. He is the eldest son of the Right Honorable Sir Thomas Frankland Lewis, Bart., M.P. for Radnor District, was born in London, in 1806, and received his school education at Eton, which he entered in 1819, and where he was a pupil of Doctor Hawtrey, the present head master. The Illustrated London News furnishes the following particulars of his subsequent career:
At Christmas, 1824, he left Eton, and in the following year entered Christ Church, Oxford, where as a student he was one of the few who gave attention to modern languages, and especially German, from which, jointly with Mr. Tufnell, he translated Müller's "Dorians." In 1828 he took his University degree as a first-class man in classics, and a second-class in mathematics. In the same year he entered the Middle Temple, and in 1831 was called to the bar, and joined the Oxford Circuit. He had studied for the bar with no less diligence than at the University; but in consequence of weakness of the chest, was obliged, after his first circuit, to abandon the profession, in which, had health allowed him, his success was certain. In 1835 he was placed upon the commission of inquiry into the relief of the poor, (on the report of which was founded the Irish Poor-law,) and the state of the Church in Ireland; and afterward drew up an able report on the condition of the Irish in Great Britain. In 1836 he was appointed, with Mr. John Austin, a Commissioner to inquire into the Government of the Island of Malta, especially as to its tariff and expenditure. The Commission laid an elaborate report before Parliament, in accordance with the recommendations of which, such reductions were made as rendered the tariff of Malta one of the least restrictive in the world, and materially extended its trade; and they succeeded in establishing the freedom of the press in the island.
In January, 1839, Mr. Lewis was appointed a Poor-Law Commissioner, and held the office until July, 1847; when, determining to enter Parliament, he resigned, and was returned, with Mr. Joseph Bailey, Jr., and Mr. Francis Wegg Prosser, both Conservatives and Protectionists, without opposition, for Herefordshire. In November, 1847, he was appointed joint secretary of the Board of Control, with Mr. James Wilson, M.P. for Westbury, and early in the following year made his first speech in the House, in opposition to a motion for the production of papers in the case of the lately deposed Rajah of Sattara. In April, 1848, Mr. Lewis was appointed Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, and was succeeded in the secretaryship of the Board of Control by the Hon. John E. Elliot, M.P. for Roxburghshire. In his present office Mr. Lewis has served on the Smithfield Market Commission, appointed in November, 1849, which has just brought up its report; and upon that subject, the Irish Poor-Law, and Mr. Disraeli's motion as to local burdens, has spoken in the House. Last year he brought forward a road bill to consolidate the management of highways, and dispose of the question of turnpike trusts and their advances. The bill was not proceeded with last session, and has again been brought forward this year, with reference, however, only to highways. Mr. Lewis has earned reputation as the translator of "Boukli's Public Economy of Athens," which, as well as the "Dorians," has become a textbook, and passed through a second edition; and is known as author of an able essay on the "Use and Abuse of Political Terms," published in 1832; on the "Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages," published in 1835; on "Local Disturbances in Ireland, and the Irish Church Question," in 1836; on the "Government of Dependencies," in 1841; and "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion," in 1849.
ORIGINAL LETTER FROM DR. LAYARD UPON ANCIENT ART, &c.
We present in this number of the International a communication from the most celebrated traveler of the nineteenth century, Austen Henry Layard, upon the sources of Ancient Art. It was addressed by the distinguished author to his friend and ours, Mr. Minor K. Kellogg, the well-known painter, who was for some time with Dr. Layard in the East.
My Dear Friend:
I frequently wish that you were here with me; I could find you subjects which would astonish you. However, I suppose you are desirous of hearing something about my proceedings. When I said that the arts may have passed from Egypt into Greece, I merely alluded to the popular opinion, without adhering to it. It is not altogether improbable that they came from another source. Phœnicia was too much of a trading province to devote any great attention to the higher branches of the arts, and I am not aware of any monuments existing which can be traced to that people, and show a very high knowledge of architecture or sculpture. The designs we have on their early coins, and particularly if the coins called "the unknown of Celicia," and those belonging to cities on the southern coast of Asia Minor, were introduced by the Phœnician colonists, evidently show that Phœnicia had borrowed from the Assyrians and not from the Egyptians. Indeed, as their language and written character (for the cuneiform, you must remember, appears only to have been a monumental character, perhaps Semetic, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt), coincided with those of the Assyrian, it is most probable that their sympathies were with that people.
I assume that the language of the two nations was the same; this may have been the case at one period, but whether throughout the existence of the Assyrian empire, may be doubtful. At any rate, I believe the real Assyrians and the Phœnicians, like all the nations occupying Syria and Mesopotamia, to have been of the pure Semetic stock. I regret that I have not time to make you a sketch of a bas-relief. A specimen of this kind would at once show you how much nearer allied the arts of Greece are with those of Assyria, than with those of Egypt. One thing appears now to be pretty certain—that all Western Asia, Persia, Susiana, Media, Asia Minor, &c. were fundamentally indebted to Assyria for their knowledge of the arts. Persepolis is a mere copy of an Assyrian monument, as far as the sculpture and ornaments are concerned, with the addition of external architecture, of which, as far as I am yet able to judge, the Assyrians appear to have been almost entirely ignorant.
There is no reason, therefore, to reject altogether the supposition that the Arts may have been transmitted from Assyria, through Phœnicia, into Greece, or, indeed, that the Arts may have passed into that country through Asia Minor. The Assyrians, in the extreme elegance and taste displayed in their ornaments, in their study of anatomy, and in their evident attempts at composition, had much in common with the Greeks. I think artists will be surprised when they see the collection of drawings I have been able to make, and that one of the results of the discoveries at Nimroud will be new views with regard to the early history of the arts.
When I first came here, all the Arabs around told me that Nimroud was built by Athur, or Assur, and that it was the ancient capital of Assyria. Great faith may generally be placed in such traditions in the East. In Mesopotamia, and in the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, it is astonishing how names have been preserved, even when, during Greek, Roman, or other dominion, other cities were built on the site and named anew. The new names have long been lost, and the old are this day to be found in the mouth of the Bedouin. I need only mention Tadmor and Harran. In a religious point of view, there is no doubt that much important information may be expected from a careful investigation of the monuments of Assyria. During my labors, without being able to devote much thought or attention to the subject, I have been continually struck with the curious illustrations of little understood passages in the Bible which these records afford. In an historical and archæological point of view, I know nothing more interesting and more promising than the examination of the ruins of Assyria. One of the vastest empires that ever existed—the power of whose king extended, at one period, over the greater part of Assyria—whose advance in civilization and knowledge is the theme of ancient historians—disappeared so suddenly from the face of the earth, that it has left scarcely a trace, save its name, behind. Even the names of its kings are not satisfactorily known, and out of the various dynastic lists preserved, we are unable to select one worthy of credit. As to their deeds, we have been in the most profound darkness, and were it not for the record of their strength and greatness which we find in the Scriptures, we should scarcely credit the few traditions which the Greeks have preserved to us. After the lapse of two thousand five hundred years, a mere chance has thrown their history in our way, and we have now their deeds chronicled in writing and in sculpture.
Were I much given to the explanation of such things by a reference to superhuman interference, I should be inclined to think that the Almighty had designedly kept these monuments buried in the Earth, until the time had arrived when man had sufficient leisure and knowledge to discover the contents of records, written in an unknown character, that He might prove to them how great was the power which He so suddenly destroyed, and how fully the prophecies upon the subject were fulfilled. Had these sculptures and inscriptions remained above ground, they would have utterly disappeared long ere any records could have been made of their former existence. Had they been casually discovered before the present century, they would most probably have been used for cement in the construction of the walls of a city. In fact, the moment for their discovery has, in every way, been most propitious. However, I will not enter into such speculations, but leave them to those who are that way inclined. A. H. L.