FOOTNOTES:
[A] The custom of paying members of the House of Commons for the loss of time and travelling expenses, was common in the seventeenth century; constituencies believed such equivalents necessary for the attention to their interests and wishes which a Parliamentary agent was expected to give. In the old Corporation books of provincial towns are many entries for payments to members of Parliament, and in some instances we find them petitioning to Government for disfranchisement, because they could not afford to pay the expenses of a Member.
[B] Marvel's first exposé of Parker's false logic was in 1672, in the poem named above, which was immediately answered by Parker, and re-answered by Marvel, who appears to have had some private threat sent him, as he says his pamphlet is occasioned by two letters; one the published 'Reproof' of him by Parker in answer to his first attack; 'the second, left for me at a friend's house, dated November 3d, 1673, subscribed J. G., and concluding with these words:—If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Dr. Parker, by the Eternal—I will cut thy throat.' This last reply of Marvel's, however, effectually silenced Parker: 'It not only humbled Parker, but the whole party,' says Burnet, for, 'from the king down to the tradesman, the book was read with pleasure.'
[C] 'No stronger satire could be penned than that descriptive of the Court of Charles, in the poem called 'Britannia and Raleigh:'—
'A colony of French possess the Court,
Pimps, priests, buffoons, in privy chambers sport;
Such slimy monsters ne'er approach'd a throne
Since Pharaoh's days, nor so defil'd a crown;
In sacred ears tyrannic arts they croak,
Pervert his mind, and good intentions choak.'
But not only do the courtiers feel the lash, for when Raleigh implores Britannia to urge his duty on the king, and save him from the bad who surround him, she interrupts him with—
'Raleigh, no more! for long in vain I've try'd
The Stuart from the tyrant to divide.'
[D] 'Marvel died in 1678, in his fifty-eighth year, not without the strongest suspicions of having been poisoned; for he was always very temperate, and of an healthful and strong constitution to the last.'
[E] On the death of this rector, however, the monument and inscription was placed on the north wall of the church, near the spot where he is supposed to lie.
A NOVELIST'S APPEAL FOR THE CANADAS.
Among the new English novels is one entitled Ellen Clayton, or the Nomades of the West, by Douglass Huyghue. The author seems to feel for the red men the same regard which the adventurous artist and traveller Catlin has expressed in England, and his work comes in aid of those appeals which Catlin has so often made on their behalf. Such a motive entitles the author to respect, and gives an additional value to the book; while the talent with which it is written, renders it a narrative of unusual interest. In nothing but its theme is it like to any of Cooper's novels. Its incidents and its characters are not similar, and they lack truthfulness quite as much as they lack similarity. We know something of Indian life; in our youth we saw much of it; and we regard Cooper as its faithfulest delineator in literary art. The time at which this romance opens is in the year 1600, when the wars between France and England led to hostilities in Canada, and when an abortive attack was made upon Quebec by the British and colonial army. The hero and heroine are victims to the disasters of that war, and in describing their adventures, Canada, and the condition of its civilized as well as of its wild inhabitants, are vividly presented. The incidents justify the author in making this appeal to his English readers when he reminds them of the associations that should ever be connected with the fortress of Quebec:—
"Men of England, look not coldly upon the interests of that land for the possession of which your fathers fought and bled. Quench not irretrievably the flame of loyalty which burns in many an earnest heart, loath to contract these new ties which the progress of an irresistible destiny would seem to favor, at the sacrifice of affection for the fatherland. The blood of the greatest and wisest nation since the days of the Romans, flows in the veins of the Anglo-Americans, unadulterated by the air of another hemisphere, and stimulated into vigorous action by a necessity for continual exertion, combined with an entire liberty of thought which calls into play every resource of the physical and intellectual man. The sturdy and intelligent race that treads the virgin soil of Canada, can surely claim equality, at the very least, with the denizens of older Europe; cramped as they are for want of room, and enervated by an ultra-civilization that wrongs nature, and has almost taken the sceptre from her hand to put it into that of art. The British colonist enjoys a peculiar exemption from those prejudices, which, for so many ages, have retarded progress, and are successively being overcome by the convictions of a more enlightened era. There is a voice in the woods and mountains of a great solitude that elevates the soul and fortifies it with courage in the time of need. The great torrents and inland seas of that noble country have schooled the generation, nurtured by their side, into a strong conception of freedom, and the right to be justly dealt with, at the hands of those with whom it is connected by the double alliance of kindred predilection. A pernicious, temporizing policy has of late caused such wounds as may not be healed up very easily, we fear. The upright colonist has seen an unprincipled faction permitted to ride triumphant over those whose intentions are honest, and whose loyalty is proven. Let us hope, that ere long something of the chivalrous generosity of other days will pervade the councils of the state, and rouse the stalwart spirit of the Briton to scourge this ignominy from the land; if encouragement be due at all, it surely is to those true-hearted provincials who are avowedly proud of the great people from whence they derive their character, their language, and their laws—and who are as able, as they are willing, to preserve unto their beloved Sovereign the colony their sires won."
This is tolerably good rhetoric, but it is not likely to have much effect when the strong argument and imposing eloquence of statesmen have failed to arrest attention. We see notices of another political novel referring to Canada, which deals more directly, if with less talent, with the disabilities and wishes of the people. It is entitled, The Footsteps of Montcalm, and its hero, descended from a follower of the brave Frenchman, contrasts with his ideal of freedom and happiness, the laws, institutions, habits, and miseries, which he regards as inseparable from the colonial relation. As in the rebellion of 1838, whatever disaffection now prevails in British America, is probably shared much less largely by the English than by the French population. Political, religious, or sectarian novels, however, executed never so cleverly, are but sugared pills at which the appetite revolts as soon as the quality is discovered.
DR. WEBSTER, PRESIDENT OF THE NEW-YORK FREE ACADEMY.
Throughout the world an extraordinary degree of attention has recently been directed to systems and means of Education, and the truth has at length been generally recognized that the stability and glory of nations must depend upon the intelligence and virtue of their inhabitants. In our own country, which is most of all interested in the diffusion of knowledge, unexampled efforts are being made not only for the general improvement of the culture offered in the seminaries, but for that elevation of the laboring classes which, whatever may be said by ambitious feeble-minds, seeking for reputation as reformers of the social system, is really to be found only in a wise development of individual capacities for the strife that has been and must be waged for individual well-being.
There have been many improvements suggested or realized lately in collegiate education. We have been gratified with Professor Sedgwick's admirable treatise on the subject, which, at this time, is receiving in England that consideration to which any thing from the mind of one so distinguished is entitled. In this country we think no one, upon the whole, has written more wisely than Dr. Wayland, whose views are to be illustrated in the future government of the university over which he has so long presided. But we shall not be satisfied until we have a great institution, as much above the existing colleges as they are above the common schools in the wards of the city, to which bachelors of arts only shall be admitted, and to which they, whether coming from Harvard, Oberlin, or Virginia, shall be admitted without charge.
The establishment of the New-York Free Academy is suggestive of many things, and of this among them. We suppose a discussion whether our colleges supply the degree of education suitable to our general condition, could be entertained only by dunces; the point whether they furnish the kind and quality of culture to fit men for efficient and just action, in such public affairs and private occupations as the humblest may be called to in a free state, has been amply discussed, and it is decided against the colleges.
Our schools, called colleges, have for the most part been fashioned after the universities of Europe, but they have in all cases been inadequately endowed, and without the internal police which is necessary to their vigorous administration. Nine-tenths of the professors are incompetent, and quite one half of them, in any thing worthy the name of university could claim admission only to the class of freshmen; while those who are capable of a reputable performance of their duties—so uncertain are the revenues of the institutions to which they are attached—are very frequently compelled to modify regulations and relax discipline to such a degree that the colleges become only schools of vice or nurseries of indolence.
The deficiency is of authority. It is useless to talk about courses of study, or any thing else, until the discipline of the schools is as absolute as that of the camp, the factory, or the counting-room. We are inclined to believe that the usefulness of the Military Academy at West Point,—which has furnished so large a proportion of the best civil engineers, lawyers, physicians, and divines, as well as the soldiers who and who alone have conducted our armies to real glory,—we are inclined to believe that this justly celebrated school owes all its triumphs to its rigid laws and independence of popular clamor.
Discipline is every thing. Without it a man is but a fair model in wood, which by it is turned to an engine of iron, and by opportunity furnished with water and fire to impel it on a resistless course through the world. And a man must be governed by others before he will govern himself. The silliness about liberty which is sometimes obtruded into discussions of this subject, is fit for very young children and very old women. There is no desirable liberty but in obedience. The cant about it sometimes illustrates only a pitiable feebleness of intellect, but it more frequently discloses some kind or degree of wilful licentiousness. The "voluntary system" does very well in the churches. It will not do at all in the colleges. St. Paul is always found even with the wisdom of the age in which he is quoted, and he tells us that a youth "differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors." This is the true philosophy. The "sovereign" people who disregard law, and exult when it is outraged at the cost of an unpopular party, have not learned what is necessary to freedom; they are not fit for it; they will destroy its fairest fabrics, if the state does not prepare its children by a thorough discipline for their inheritance. The way is by free schools and free colleges, supported by public taxes. Sects and parties may have as many seminaries as they choose, and with rules of study and conduct so easily to be complied with, and administrations so lax, that the most contemptible idler or the most independent and self-willed simpleton shall see in them nothing to conflict with his habit or temper; but the graduates of these seminaries will not ascend the pinnacles of fame nor direct the affairs of nations: such affairs will be left for those who have learned, with their arithmetic, the self-denial, reverence and obedience, which are the conditions of the application of addition and division in the high mathematics.
In a free college (and the New-York Free Academy is, in all respects, more justly to be considered a college than are most of the schools which confer academical "honors"), in a free college, of which the professors are responsible only to a judicious board of directors, examinations for admissions and for advancements will be rigid and impartial, the administration will be vigilant and firm, the reckless who will not and the imbecile who cannot acquire a good education, will be dismissed for more congenial pursuits, the rich and the poor will be upon an equality, and only desert will be honorably distinguished.
The New-York Free Academy is eminently fortunate in its officers. Horace Webster, LL. D., is, in all respects, admirably fitted for his position as its President. He perfectly understands the indispensableness of thorough organization, and absolute and watchful discipline. Dr. Webster is a native of Vermont, and is of that family which, in various departments, has furnished the country some of its most illustrious names. At an early age, he became a student of the Military Academy, and so has himself experience of the advantages of that system which he advocates, and illustrates in his own administration. He graduated with distinction, and it is properly mentioned as an indication of his standing at West Point that, while he was a cadet of the first class, he was selected by the government of the Academy to be temporarily himself an instructor. In 1818 he joined the army, as a lieutenant, and after passing one year with his regiment, of which the late General Taylor was at that time the Major, he was elected Assistant Professor of Mathematics in the Military Academy, and returned to fulfil for six years, with constantly increasing reputation, both for scientific abilities and for personal character, the duties of that office, which it scarcely need be said are more difficult at West Point than in any other school in America. Among the distinguished gentlemen who were associated with him in teaching or as students during this period, were General Worth, Colonel Bliss, Colonel Thayer, Colonel Mansfield, and Professors Alexander D. Bache, LL. D., Charles Davies, LL. D., E. C. Ross, LL. D., and John Torrey, LL. D. Resigning his commission, he was in 1825 made Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Geneva College, and he filled this place twenty-three years, leaving it in 1848, to accept the Presidency of the New York Free Academy. We conceive that nothing could have invested this school with a higher claim to respect, or challenged for it a larger degree of confidence, than the selection of a man of such experience, capacities, and reputation, to be its chief officer; and for the class of persons likely to come under his instruction, no course of study could be more judicious, no training more admirably adapted, than may be expected from one who has been so long and so successfully engaged in preparing men for the most difficult and important offices. His attainments needed no illustration, and his administrative abilities have been amply vindicated by his government of the Free Academy.
Candidates for admission to the Free Academy must have passed at least one year in the public schools, and they are examined in the common English studies. The standards for admission are not so high as the colleges demand, because the period of instruction is longer. We cannot enter into any particular statement of the courses of study, but it will be interesting if we indicate their character very briefly, and describe the chief teachers. Edward C. Ross, LL. D., the Professor of Mathematics, is, like Dr. Webster, a graduate of the Military Academy, and was many years a successful teacher in that institution and in Kenyon College. He is assisted by G. B. Docherty, A. M., who was formerly the Principal of the Flushing Institute. The course embraces all the studies necessary for the best accomplishment in engineering, and indeed is as thorough and complete as that pursued at West Point, with the modifications appropriate to the prospective pursuits of the pupils. Theodore Irving, A. M., is Professor of History and Belles-Lettres, assisted by Edward C. Marshall, A. M., and G. W. Huntsman, A. M. These gentlemen have experience, and we believe their system of instruction is in some respects original and in every way very excellent. Mr. Irving is a kinsman of "Geoffrey Crayon," and himself master of a pleasing and classical style. Oliver Wolcott Gibbs, A. M., M. D., Professor of Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mineralogy, and Geology, is one of the best practical chemists in this country, having completed his own education under the celebrated Liebig, in Germany, and since in many ways evinced such capacities in this department, as made his selection for the place he occupies almost a matter of course. John J. Owen, D. D., whose scholarship is exhibited in his ably edited series of the classical authors of these languages, is Professor of Greek and Latin, and we neither agree with nor have much respect for those who deprecate the attention demanded in the Academy for such studies. The French, Spanish and German languages are taught by Professors Roemer, Morales, and Glaubensklee, all of whom are known to the public for such talents as are necessary in their positions. Mr. Paul P. Duggan, a painter whose works adorn many of our best collections in art, is Professor of Drawing.
The Free Academy will fulfil the reasonable expectations of its founders. It is admirably designed, and its appointments and administration have thus far been judicious. We lack yet a University: there is no school in America deserving this title; all our colleges should be regarded as gymnasia, sifting the classes of the common schools and preparing their more advanced and ingenious pupils for such an institution; and the Free Academy may be accepted as a model by which they can be reshaped for their less ambitious but more appropriate duties. This is a subject ably and properly treated in Professor Tappan's recent volume on Education, (published by Mr. Putnam,) to which we beg attention.
The whole number of students now attending the Free Academy is three hundred and twenty-nine, of whom one hundred and five were admitted at the last examination, in February. The number for whom the building is designed is about six hundred.
Authors and Books.
A book which we cannot too highly recommend is the Briefe über Humboldt's Kosmos (Letters on Humboldt's Cosmos), published at Leipzic, in two octavo volumes, from the pens of Professor Cotta and Professor Schaller. It is intended to serve as a commentary upon that work, which it is well worthy to accompany. Without attempting an exhaustive treatise on the details of the various topics touched on by Humboldt, the writers have expanded some of the leading points of his work into scientific essays, whose practical utility is none the smaller for an elegant and attractive style, and a genial enthusiasm, of which Humboldt need not be ashamed. The first volume, by Professor Cotta, contains forty letters on the following themes: The enjoyment of nature; matter and forces, growth and existence; natural philosophy; the fixed stars, their parallaxes, groups, movements, nebulæ; double stars, structure of the universe, resisting medium; the solar system; the laws of motion, Kepler and Newton; density of the heavenly bodies; our moon, its orbit, no atmosphere, no water; comets; meteors, and meteoric stones; form of the earth; magnetism; volcanic activity; gas-springs; geysers; internal structure of the earth; history of organisms, their first origin, and developments; the surface, its forms, and their influence on animated life; the gradual rising and sinking of the surface in Sweden; the tides; circulation of water on the earth—springs, cold, warm, mineral, artesian—rivers, seas, ocean currents, evaporation and condensation; glaciers; the atmosphere, climate, weather, winds, storm-clouds; organic life on the earth, its nature, differences, origin of the differences, original production, creation, first appearance; man, his origin, races, forms, phrenology, &c. These letters offer, as we have already said, in a pleasing and attractive form, a condensed and comprehensive view of what is now known with reference to the sciences treated. The letter upon Man is especially interesting. Professor Cotta belongs to those who think the human race to be "the gradual perfection, through thousands of generations," of a lower order of creatures. "The human individual," he says, "even now, in the embryonic state, passes through the condition of various sorts of animals. The most eminent anatomists have shown that before birth we for a time resemble a polypal animal, then for a time a fish, next a reptile, till at last appear the characteristics of a mammalia. This is a fact which bears strongly in favor of our view. The genesis and development of the entire species seem to be here condensed in the growth of the individual." But while setting forth this peculiar view, Professor Cotta, with true German comprehensiveness, takes care to give a fair statement of opposing doctrines, and evinces nothing like a narrow dogmatism. The second volume, like the second volume of the Cosmos, is that which will most interest and delight the general reader. It contains thirty-two letters, mainly on the following subjects: the view of nature in general; the religious view; the various forms of the religious view; the æsthetic view; the inward connection of the æsthetic enjoyment of nature with its artistic representation; the scientific view as empirical science and natural philosophy; the relations of the various views of nature to each other; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Indians; the poetic comprehension of nature among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans; the Christian contemplation of nature; German poetry in the middle ages; Italian poetry; the poetic comprehension of nature in modern times; the representation of nature by painting, and its gradual appearance in the history of art; the physiognomy of plants in connection with the physiognomy of nature in general; description of several plant formations; general outlines of the animal world; history of the physical view of the universe; natural science among the Phenicians, the Greeks, at the time of the Ptolemies, at the time of the Roman Empire, and in the middle ages; natural history of modern times, Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton; the mechanical doctrine of modern physics; the dynamic view of nature; Fichte's doctrine, and the natural philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. This volume, as will be easily understood, gives at once a history of religion, philosophy, art, literature, and science, in their relations to the outward universe. For instance, under the head of natural science among the Greeks, we have among other things an account of the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Plato, and Aristotle; in treating the middle ages, Professor Schaller speaks of the Scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, and Paracelsus. One of the most interesting parts of the whole is that on the poetic view of nature among the Hindoos, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Germans, and Italians, the historical statement being every where illustrated by copious quotations of admirable passages from the poets of those nations. The strictly scientific portions are illustrated by excellent engravings, and are free from mere technicalities. Sold in New-York by R. Garrigue.
The Vestiges of Creation has been translated into German by Charles Vogt, a savan who in late years has become noted as a radical politician. The translation is highly praised. Published at Brunswick.
The translation of Hegel's Aesthetik into French is now nearly completed at Paris, the fourth volume, which is devoted to the consideration of music and poetry, having just been published. One volume more will complete the work. The translator is M. Charles Bénard.
The Human Race and its Origin.—Under the title of Histoire Générale des Races Humaines, M. Eusebe-François de Salles has just published at Paris an elaborate work on Ethnography, for which he had prepared himself by long and careful personal observation of most of the races on the globe, his travels having extended into nearly all climes and regions. He takes the ground of the descent of the entire human family from a single pair, created adult and perfect in mind and body, not by any simple evolution of nature, but by a direct act of the Divine Being. The paradise or home of this pair he places to the north of India and the east of Persia. All the varieties of men now existing he attributes to the influence of climate and circumstances. "The first light of history," he says, "shows us the human family in possession of a language, and of a certain degree of science, the inheritance of the past. Its aptitudes, its passions, and outward circumstances, may increase this inheritance, keep it the same, or diminish it. In peoples enervated by luxury and by doubt, in tribes softened by too favorable a climate, or separated too long from the stronger and better educated masses,—in a family or a couple exiled by a catastrophe, a shipwreck,—we are to seek the origin of the decline into the various degrees of corruption, barbarism, the savage state, and brutality. Imagine a boat from the coast of America, or from the South Sea Islands, cast by a tempest on some unknown shore or some desert island. A few young persons, a few children, alone escape from the shipwreck, knowing imperfectly the language, the arts, and the family traditions of their parents. Such is the origin of the unfortunates sometimes met with, who are ignorant even of the use of fire." Against the spontaneous generation of the human race in several localities he argues at length as an utter absurdity, the point of his argument being, that isolated couples so produced would be unable to resist the inhospitality of nature without miraculous aid, and one miracle, he contends, is more admissable than ten or a dozen. But the chief grounds upon which he labors to establish his doctrine are the similitude of the most ancient traditions among all branches of the human species, the affiliation and analogy of languages, and the identity of organization and equality of aptitudes. He finds similar traditions among the Hebrews, the Chaldeans, the Phœnicians, the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Chinese, the Thibetans, the Scythians, and the Americans. In the theogonies and cosmogonies of the Aztecs of America, he says that the traditions of ancient Asia are plainly to be found, while some vague traces of these primitive narratives are to be found even among the savages of Oceanica, and the most barbarous and miserable negroes of western Africa. To the negroes he devotes perhaps the most careful and learned portion of the work. Starting from the discovery of M. Flaurens as to the pigmentum or coloring matter of the skin, he contends with great force that nothing but the gradual influence of climate, giving a greater and greater intensity to the action of this coloring matter, which exists in every race and every individual, has caused the essential difference between whites and blacks. For, he argues, there is no other difference between them than that of color, all the other features, such as the prominent mouth, the woolly hair, the facial angle, being in no wise exclusively peculiar to the Africans. And so, after having gone over the entire race in detail, proving the identity of organization in every division, M. de Salles concludes that the primitive complexion was olive, somewhat like the color of unburnt coffee, and the original men had red hair. On the affiliation of languages he reasons at great length, with a striking affluence of curious and learned detail. Languages, he remarks, become more and more complicated and perfect as we ascend toward their origin. Next he considers the modifications by which the present races of men have departed from the first family, and in so doing he takes up every people that has ever been known. America, he thinks, was first settled by Mongol emigration, with religious traditions, between the eighteenth and the fifteenth century before our era: then, six or eight hundred years later, there was a second emigration of Hindoo races, with traditions of architecture. With the Bible and the facts of geology as his starting point, he demonstrates the falsity of the Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, and Mexican chronologies. The six days of creation he takes as so many great epochs; the deluge he places at five thousand years before Christ.
In our account of this book we have not strictly followed the order of the author. Thus he makes the direct miraculous creation of man the concluding topic of his book, and treats it not without a certain poetic elevation as comports with such an event. We have aimed only to give the outlines of his doctrine, and for the rest recommend those of our readers who are interested in such studies to procure and read the work.
Joachim Lelewel (a name honored by all lovers of liberty,) has just published at Breslau a work on the geography of the middle ages, which is worthy of the warmest admiration. It consists of an atlas of fifty plates, engraved by the hand of the venerable author, containing one hundred and forty-five figures and maps, from eighty-eight different Arabic and Latin geographers of different epochs, with eleven explicative or comparative maps and two geographical essays. The whole work exhibits the most thorough acquaintance and conscientious use of the labors of previous explorers in the same direction. The cost of importing a copy into this country would be about eight dollars.
More new German Novels.—The Siege of Rheinfels, by Gustave von See, is a historical romance, founded on an episode from the wars of Louis XIV., against the German empire. While the Palatinate and the left bank of the Rhine were ravaged by the French armies, the fortress of Rheinfels held out obstinately against a siege which was prosecuted with fury by a much superior force. Amid the scenes of this siege, passes the love-story that forms the kernel of the novel, which is written with originality and talent. The historical part is equally attractive and vraisemblant. A collection of romances under the title of Germania, has appeared at Bremen. It is intended to serve as the beginning of an annual publication. The first number contains seven tales, some of them by well known romance writers. The first is Eine Leidenschaft (A Passion), by Louise von G., and is highly praised by the most reliable critics; it abounds in arch and graceful humor. Spiller von Hauenschildt is the least successful of the contributors in respect to the artistic treatment of his subject. His novel is socialistic. Adolph Hahr and Alfred Meissner are also among the contributors. On the whole the book is a good one.
Leopold Schefer has published lately in Berlin The Bishop's Wife, a Tale of the Papacy, in which the great Napoleon of the church, Hildebrand, figures as the hero. The Germans have never succeeded in the historical novel. With vast resources in materiel, they have always a vagueness, a want of definite interest, of picturesque arrangement, and of sustained and disciplined power. Schefer is a scholar, and his didactic purpose is plain enough, and well enough managed. The Teutonic character has always instinctively revolted against the practice of celibacy, a form of ascetism quite natural, and sometimes perhaps inevitable, as a reaction against the unbridled sensualism of the Africans and Asiatics, but quite out of place in climes so temperate and races so moderate, conscientious, and self-respecting as those of Northern Europe. It needed all the genius and determination of Hildebrand himself to enforce the celibacy of the German clergy, and certainly they have never ceased more or less covertly to revolt against it. It is well understood that, at the present time, there is a very general wish among the Catholics of Germany—more especially of South Germany, where they are not jealous of Protestant encroachments—to have marriage allowed to the parochial clergy; and the clergy themselves are foremost in this tendency, though it may not accord with their interest unreservedly to display it. It has, however, betrayed its existence in various ways, especially in anonymous literary productions, in prose and verse. So general is this feeling, and so profound the conviction that something must be done, that in 1848 it was very generally credited that the Pope was prepared to sanction a relaxation of the laws of the church in this respect. For this belief, however, there could have been no just foundation, since Pius IX. is the reputed author of the official reply, made while he was but a priest, to the Brazilian Archbishop Feijo, upon this very subject, in which it was alleged that such a relaxation of discipline would be an abandonment of the "integrity of the church." Yet without something of the kind, it is thought that a very extensive schism in catholic Germany will be inevitable.
Der Mensch im Spiegel der Natur (Man in the Mirror of Nature), is an excellent little work for popular use, by Mr. E. A. Rossmässler, published at Leipzic, in two neat volumes, with wood-cuts. It sets forth, in the most attractive form, the elementary facts of science, they being ingeniously interwoven into a narrative of the journeys, friendships, and adventures of the author. The work well deserves a translation into English.
A work of extreme interest to geologists is the Gaea Norwegica, edited by Professor Keilhau of the Christiana University, and published at that place. The first volume is just completed. No country of Europe is more important in respect of geological science than Norway, and the labors of Professor Keilhau and his associates are of the most thorough and solid kind. The volume contains 516 pages folio. Cost in America $4.50.
A German nobleman lately wrote to the French Academy, offering to give that body a yearly income of 10,000 francs to be spent in two prizes, one of 5,000 francs for the best essay in defence of Catholicism, and another of the same sum for the best essay in defence of Absolutism. The Academy declined the offer.
A System of Christian Ethics has lately been published at Regensburg, by Dr. Werner, Professor in the Catholic Theological Seminary of St. Polten. The writer holds that all virtue flows from the mystic fountain of regeneration, and is confirmed and supported solely by the sacraments of the church.
Wilhelm Meinhold, author of the Amber Witch, lately the pastor of a parish in Pomerania, is now in Berlin, preparing for admission into the Roman Catholic Church. It is not long since he forfeited his place in the Protestant Church by a street fight, for which, we believe, he was imprisoned.
The College of Rabbis, at Padua, offers 1000 florins ($400) as a prize for the best descriptive and critical work on the political and religious history of the Israelites from the first siege of Jerusalem to the time of the latest writers of the Talmud.
Mrs. Robinson's (Talvi's) History of the Colonization of America, originally published in the German language, has been translated by Mr. William Hazlitt, and printed in London.
Gedichte von Jeanne Marie (Poems by Jeanne Marie) is the title of one of the latest products of the German muse. The authoress is well known and well liked by those readers of German novels who take delight in the genius of authoresses, and think ladies can write as well as men. Jeanne Marie has seen much, felt much, and thought almost if not quite as much as she has seen and felt. Her poetic culture is however still defective, and her stories are better than her lyrics. The latter lack finish and correctness, and abound in mere conceits rather than in genuine poetic images. Where she attempts simply to narrate an event in the ballad style she is more successful.
A book of curious historical interest is now in course of publication in Germany, the first volume of which has already made its appearance. It is the Diary of General Patrick Gorton, who served in Russia during a large part of the seventeenth century, where he attained the highest military rank. He was in the habit of noting every thing that passed around him, or with which he was connected, whether of a political, military, or personal nature. His field of service extended throughout the entire empire, and embraced the most important events in the reign of Peter the Great. He participated in the suppression of the corps of Strelitzes, made two campaigns against the Turks, was active in Peter's reorganization of the army, &c., &c. The first volume comes down to 1678; the remainder will soon follow. As the whole was written without any design of being communicated to the world, it is especially valuable for its glimpses at the domestic habits of the country at that peculiar period.
George Sand's New Drama.—George Sand's Claudie has had a brilliant fortune at Paris, where it was first performed the second week in January. It is a drama of peasant life, in three acts, in prose. Jules Janin says of it: "The success of Claudie is a true, sincere, and energetic success. It has impassioned the calmest souls; it has calmed the most agitated. This poem is a veritable festival, full of the rustic delights of the country, of the most honorable passions of the human heart, of the noblest sentiments. Add to this, a charm altogether new, a charm both inspired and inspiring, in the style, which is reason and good sense in the most delicious costume. Neither effort nor study is there, but only that simplicity so much sought for in the most precious passages of Daphnis and Chloe translated to the Marivaux by Amyot himself. The piece was listened to with ravishment. There was universal praise among the audience, an inexpressible abundance of tears, of laughter, of gayety, of sighs, of words fitly spoken, of eloquent silence." Of the plot we take the following account from an article by Paul de Musset: From the beginning we feel the air of the country, the harvest, and the sun of August. Farmer Fauveau is preparing to pay the harvesters. His employer, Dame Rose, a young and pretty widow, has just returned from the city, where she had been for a lawsuit. Fauveau, a shrewd but good-natured man, skilfully calls her attention to the sad and agitated air of his son, who is no doubt in love with some one, and with whom can it be except his charming mistress? Dame Rose admits that Sylvain Fauveau is a handsome fellow, and a good and intelligent workman, who would manage affairs with discretion, but he would be jealous of his wife. Jealousy, replies the old man, is a proof of love, and so Dame Rose begins to cherish the idea that Sylvain is in love with her. This is not true, but the old man has said it purposely. He suspects Sylvain of being in love with Claudie, a simple laborer in the harvest field, without a penny, and gaining her living, with no other relative than a grandfather of eighty, who may any day become a charge upon her little earnings. Claudie comes in from work with her grandfather, and they ask for their pay, the harvest being finished, and it being six leagues to their home. They are paid, and Sylvain takes care that they shall receive more than his father intends, and that they shall be invited to the harvest festival. Claudie aids in the preparations, and Sylvain, reproaching her tenderly for working after a day so fatiguing, takes from her the severer part of the duties she has undertaken. But she only replies in monosyllables, and does not turn her eyes from the plates and other utensils she is engaged with. Sylvain, troubled by this, withdraws, murmuring at her coldness and indifference. We soon see the cause of this. A young peasant appears. It is the handsome Denis Ronciat, the beau and cajoler of the village girls, who utters an exclamation of surprise. A brief explanation informs us that Denis was betrothed to Claudie when she was fifteen, that he had deceived and abandoned her like a villain, leaving her a child, which had since died. This explains the gloomy air of Claudie, her indifference to the advances of Sylvain, and her almost fierce determination never to marry. To complete his outrages, Denis boldly avows his intention to marry Dame Rose, and offers money to her he has betrayed, in order to bribe her to silence. The band of harvesters appears, bearing in triumph the last sheaf, adorned with flowers and ribbons. The grandfather, Remy, full of joy, pronounces a discourse of rude and simple eloquence on the beneficence of Providence, and of the sun He causes to shine, after which a collection is proposed in favor of the orator and his granddaughter. Every one gives his offering. Dame Rose puts in a new five-franc piece, the father Fauveau a penny, Sylvain his watch, wishing that it were his heart, a child brings an apple, and finally the last contributor approaches. This is Denis Ronciat: seeing the seducer of his child, the indignation of the old man breaks out, he rejects the offering, and falls as if struck with apoplexy, pronouncing a sort of mysterious malediction, which freezes with horror all who hear it. In the second act Claudie is still at the farm, her grandfather having been sick there for two months. She has been engaged as a servant to the farmer Fauveau, but has not given the least hope to Sylvain, who has been constant in his attentions. Dame Rose, in the mean time, has fallen in love with him, and is astonished that he has not declared himself. Denis Ronciat, seeing his rival preferred, explains to the rich widow why the lover she desires will not present himself, and from vengeance and vanity divulges the secret of poor Claudie. Here we expect a storm of insults and reproaches to fall on the head of the dishonored girl. But, as in the rest of the work, the author has laid aside the ordinary traditions, customs, and conventionalities, to draw from the resources of her own genius. While all are preparing to expel the domestic who has deceived every body by her air of candor and innocence, the old man, whose reason has been wandering, listens. He recalls his recollections, and his presence of mind returns at the critical moment. He rises, throws his arms around his granddaughter, and naively recounts the story of the seduction and abandonment of Claudie: how she believed in Denis, and gave him her heart without distrust; how Denis shamefully abused her confidence, and abandoned her, when duty obliged him more than ever to be faithful. The old man adds that he himself had neither reproached nor cursed her, but that he consoled her, that he took her child upon his knees, and loved it, and despaired when it died. Finally he demands who would presume to be severer toward his child, and feel her wrong more keenly than he. His simplicity, magnanimity, and goodness, overpower all who hear him. A more gentle sentiment than even respect and pity takes possession of every heart. The devotion of the old man raises the fallen girl, and in the admiration he inspires the fault of Claudie is almost forgotten. But it is too late. The old man takes the arm of his daughter, and leads her away with him. When the curtain rises for the last scene, Dame Rose has retained Claudie and her grandfather at the house, a riot in the village having prevented their departure. Denis has come near being stoned to death. Finally he consents to repair his crime by marrying her he has betrayed. He is refused. Then Sylvain offers himself to Claudie, but she says she is unworthy of him, and refuses obstinately. Dame Rose, Fauveau, and even Sylvain's mother, try vainly to change her resolution. The old man at last decides, by saying that he reads her soul, and knows that she loves Sylvain. His authority makes her give a silent consent, and here the curtain falls. Claudie has been brought out in elegant form by a Parisian publisher. Why should not some poet attempt a version into English?
Several new Plays and Operas have lately attracted attention in Paris. Paillasse, in five acts, by MM. Dennery and Marc Fournier, produced at the Gaieté in November, was one of the greatest hits during the latter part of 1850. The character of the conventional French mountebank, Paillasse, the vagabond juggler of fairs and streets, was regarded as one of the finest creations of Frederic Lemaitre, and in one of the Christmas revues a symbol of the piece passed before the eyes of the audience as one of the types of the past year. It has since been brought out in London with quite as much success, Madame Celeste (the quondam star of our Bowery?) in the character of the wife of the mountebank. The musical season at Paris has been signalized by the production of two successful operas. L'Enfante Prodigue of Auber is running a prosperous career at the Académie de Musique. General opinion speaks highly of the music, and the piece appears to be one of the most ingenious of M. Scribe. At the Opera Comique another opera by Scribe and Halevy, La Dame de Pique, has been brought out with success. The libretto, taken from a Russian tale, translated by M. Merimée, is one of the most fantastic Scribe has constructed. It is founded on an old story about the Russian Empress Elizabeth, who had found out the secret of invariably winning at play by means of three cards, of which the Queen of Spades (la Dame de Pique) was one.
M. Combet, a Protestant clergyman of Cevennes, has just published at Paris in three volumes a work of great interest and value, under the title of Histoire de France sous le regne de Henry III. par Mazerai. It comprises a full, conscientious and philosophic account of the French religious civil wars, from the beginning of the Reformation down to the establishment of religious liberty under the Consulate. To the original work of Mazerai, M. Combet has prefixed an elaborate introduction, while he has added in the form of an appendix whatever relates to more recent matters, with copious notes and commentaries. The whole constitutes an invaluable contribution to the history of the modern religious movement.
Some new contributions to the history of labor have just appeared at Paris. The most important is the Histoire de la Classe ouvriere depuis l'esclave jusqu'au Proletaire de nos Jours, by M. Robert (du Var), four volumes. Less general and comprehensive in its aim is Le Livre d'Or des Metiers, Histoire des Corporations ouvrieres, by Paul Lacroix and Ferd. Serre, six volumes. Both these books are written without an intention to establish any special theory or system.
The Rev. G. R. Gleig, author of The Subaltern's Furlough, Saratoga, &c., is now Inspector-General of Military Schools, and lives in London.
Leopold Ranke, whose "Lives of the Popes of Rome" is familiar to American readers, has lately discovered in the National Library at Paris an important long lost MS., by the Cardinal Richelieu. In the MS. memoirs of the Cardinal, deposited at the Office for Foreign Affairs, an imperfection has existed, in the total absence of a series of leaves from the most interesting part of the collection. These appear to have been found accidentally, by M. Ranke, in a bundle of papers, gathered from some of the old mansions in Saint Germains. It has been a disputed question whether Richelieu was the real author of the works under his name; whether he availed himself of the literary abilities of others, contributing no more from his own resources than here and there an observation or a fact. These disputes have had reference to the Memoirs, the Testament, and the Histoire de la Mère et du Fils; for there seems to be good reason for believing that the books published previous to his political elevation, such as the De la Perfection du Chrétien, the theological tracts, and his political treatise of 1614, were written by him with no more than the ordinary aids of authorship. It is possible that the fragment, discovered by M. Ranke, may afford additional evidence on this curious subject, which was lately debated in the Academy.
Of bad spelling George Sand writes, apropos of some newspaper controversy in Paris, that so far from bad spelling being a proof of want of capacity, she has a letter of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in which there are ten faults of spelling in three lines. Moreover, she assures us, that she herself frequently makes a lapsus pennæ for which a school-boy would be chastised.
Lola Montes has made her debut in the literary arena, by the publication in the feuilleton of a daily newspaper of the first portion of what she calls her "Memoirs:" a quasi-impertinent epistle to the ex-king of Bavaria. Since, the publication has been suspended. It promised merely scandal, without wit.
The Count de Montalembert has been elected a member of the French Academy, in place of M. Droz. The election gives little satisfaction outside the Institute; but the Count is not without eminence as a man of letters. Some of his religious tracts are written with great eloquence and pungency.
The seventh and last volume of the Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis has just been published by the Didots at Paris. It is a perfect repertory of information as to the middle ages, and cannot be dispensed with by any one who aims to study the institutions, history, and monuments of that period.
A complete grammar of the Coptic language has been brought out at Berlin, by Professor Schwartze.
The Italian Revolution.—Books relating to the late revolution in Italy and the events which preceded it are now published in that country in considerable numbers. One by Farini, Lo Stato Romano dall' anno 1815 all' anno 1850, not yet completed, only two volumes having been published, will be found valuable to the future historian. Its author is a constitutionalist, and treats the reign of Pius IX. strictly from that stand-point. His book must therefore be read with discretion. With the third volume, which will soon appear, will be issued a second edition of the first two volumes. Marquis F. A. Gualtiero of Orvieto has just brought out at Florence the first volume of a large work, Gli Ultimenti Rivolgimenti Italiani, Memorie Storiche con Documenti Inediti. This is excellent in respect to the pre-revolutionary events, giving a great variety of information as to persons as well as circumstances, in considerable detail. It is to be followed by an account of the revolution itself, treated of course in the same manner. It hardly need be said that the Marquis must fail to do justice to Mazzini and the republicans. An elaborate and able article reviewing the whole question has lately appeared in the Rivista Italiana, from the pen of Signor Berti. One of the best books yet produced on the revolutionary side is General Pepe's Guerres d'Italie.
We noticed last month the anniversary meeting of the Archæological Institute at Rome. The same society has just published its Annals, or Annual Memoirs, for 1850, a volume of great value and interest. It contains Lanza's report on the excavations at Salona, continued down to the year 1848. An essay is contributed by Canina upon the three temples of Pietas, Spes, and Juno Sospita, on whose ruins is built the church of San Nicola in carcere, new remains of the temples having been discovered in 1848. The statue of Apoxyomenos, found a year since at Trastavere, as well as the series of Amazons in relievo now in the British Museum, which Emil Braun takes to be relics of the famous Mausoleum, are treated at length. A little triangular candelabra, found in the Baths of Titus, is made interesting from the relation of the figures upon it to the worship of Apollo. The series of Etruscan frescoes has been greatly enriched by the pictures in two tombs, one of which was discovered in 1846 by A. Francois, while the other was then for the first time copied and rescued from entire oblivion. These pictures, which, like most monumental works, represent funeral feasts and games, according to Braun, are valuable for a mass of details relating to antique athletic art, which were before unknown. A Pompeiian fresco, representing the twelve gods, hitherto little esteemed, is made the subject of a profound investigation by E. Gerhard. Among the essays on vases, a long one by Welcker deserves especial mention. It discusses all the known representations of the Death of Troilus. The sphere of numismatics is filled by a long essay by Cavedoni on the Roman coins of the time of Augustus. There are also many other articles of no less interest to scholars, antiquaries, and artists.
M. Antoine D'Abbadie received not long ago from President Bonaparte, the decoration of the Legion of Honor, for alleged geographical discoveries in Africa. An "Inquiry" into M. Abbadie's journey has just appeared in London, from the hand of Dr. Charles T. Beke, and it is not impossible that the traveller will turn out a Damburger or a Hunter. Dr. Beke is an Englishman; D'Abbadie, an Irishman by birth, but a Frenchman by name, education and allegiance. The latter professes to have been the first European who ever put foot in the African Kingdom of Kaffa; the former gives reasons for doubting his statements entirely, and does not believe the Frenchman has even been in the country he describes at all.
The great oriental scholar Monsignore Molsa has been appointed to the office of Chief Guardian of the Vatican Library, in the room of M. Laureani, whose melancholy death occurred a few months ago; and the Abate Martinucci has been nominated to fill the office of sub-chief, which is one of very considerable importance, and has hitherto been filled by some of the most eminent of Italian scholars.
We are to have from Paris a hitherto unpublished ode of Piron, the well-known author of La Metromanie. It is entitled Les Confessions de mon Oreiller, (Confessions of my Pillow,) and is considered by connoisseurs to be decidedly authentic. It is signed and headed thus: "To be given to the public a hundred years after my death."
The vacancy occasioned by the death of M. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, in the list of members of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, has been filled by the election of M. Louis Reybaud, the author of Jerome Paturot, and husband of Madame Reybaud, who wrote the charming novels of Le Cadet de Calabriere, Helena, &c.
The sons of Rossi, the distinguished economist, and less distinguished minister of Pius IX., in which capacity he was assassinated, have published the third volume of his Cours d'Economie Politique. It treats of the distribution of wealth, and is marked by the same ability and tendencies as the volumes which preceded it, which were upon the production of riches.
H. Bailliere, the eminent publisher, of Paris, has established a branch of his house at 169 Fulton street, New-York, where American scholars may obtain all the best scientific literature of the time in suitable editions and at reasonable prices.
Of Mr. James Bailey, and the blasphemous rant and fustian and crude speculation which make up his poem of "Festus," which has had such extraordinary popularity among our transcendentalists, and which Shakspeare Hudson so excellently well reviewed in the Whig Review a year or two ago, we think a correspondent of The Tribune speaks justly in the following extract from a letter dated at Nottingham, in England:
"Apropos of Nottingham, I have seen Bailey, the author of 'Festus.' His father is proprietor of the Nottingham Mercury, and the editorial department rests with him. He is a heavy, thick set sort of man; of a stature below the middle size; complexion dark; and, in years about eight and thirty. His physiognomy would be clownish in expression, if his eyes did not redeem his other features. He spoke of 'Festus,' and of its fame in America, of which he seemed very proud. In England, it has only reached the third edition, while eight or nine have been published in the States. You know my opinion of the work. It is as far from being a great poem as the Thames, compared with the Mississippi or the Ohio, is from being a great river. Anxiously, anxiously have I sought one striking original idea in the whole poem (appalling in its length), but to no purpose. The transcendental literature of Germany absorbs all that, at first glance, arrests the attention. Without learning, imagination, or the attraction of a beautiful metre (like that of Tennyson's 'Princess'), I am at a loss to know what has given this poem its notoriety. Not its daring speculation, surely, for it is but a timid compromise between Orthodoxy and Universalism."
H. F. Clinton has published in London the concluding volume of his Fasti Romani: the civil and literary chronology of Rome and Constantinople from the death of Augustus to the death of Heraclius. The first volume, containing the chronological tables, was published in 1845, and formed a continuation of the Fasti Hellenici, by the same author. It came down to the death of Justin II., a. d. 578. The present volume continues the tables from the latter date to the death of Heraclius, a. d. 641; but the greater part of it consists of a series of learned dissertations on various points connected with the civil and literary history of the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Captain J. D. Cunningham, author of the "History of the Sikhs," who was dismissed from his political situation at Bhopal, by orders of the Court of Directors, for having published an official correspondence, without the permission of his immediate superiors, has been recalled to public employment by the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie having just appointed him general superintending engineer in the north-western provinces.
Mr. Hepworth Dixon, author of "Howard and the Prison-World of Europe," has published in London a Life of William Penn, which will be republished immediately by Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia.
The Literary Women of England were never so active as now. Mrs. Crowe has commenced in The Palladium magazine a new novel entitled Estelle Silvestre. Miss Anne G. Greene has published the third volume of her Lives of the Princesses of England; Mrs. David Ogilvy, Traditions of Tuscany; Mrs. Gordon, Musgrave, a Story of Gilsland Spa; Maria de la Vaye, Eugenie, the Young Laundress of the Bastille; Mrs. Norton, a new poem; the author of "Olivia," Sir Philip Hetherington; Mrs. Ward, Helen Charteris, or Sayings and Doings in a Cathedral Town; Mrs. Hubbach, niece of the celebrated Miss Austen, The Wife's Sister, or the Forbidden Marriage; Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, forming the conclusion of her series illustrating Sacred and Legendary Art; the authoress of "Mary Powell" has commenced in Sharpe's Magazine a new work of the same description, under the title of The Household of Sir Thomas More.
Miss Martineau began on the first of February, a serial work under the title of "Half a Century of the British Empire; a History of the Kingdom and the People, from 1800 to 1850." It will be in six volumes, and it is intended to present, in handsome octavos at a rate of extraordinary cheapness, a connected narrative of the most important era in the history of the modern world. The work of Macaulay professes to be "the history of England from the accession of King James the Second down to the time which is within the memory of men still living." "Half a Century of the British Empire," will chiefly deal with events and states of society during a period in which many of our contemporaries have lived and acted.
The correspondence of Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington, British Minister at Vienna in 1694, has just been published by Murray in London, having recently been discovered in the library of the Suttons, at Kilham. There is not much absolute value in their contents, historically speaking; but the letters supply several striking and some amusing illustrations of characters already known in history, and are a contribution really important to the history of manners and society at the seventeenth century. The non-official letters are in this respect most curious and entertaining.
Pensions of £100 a year each have been granted in England to Mrs. Belzoni, the aged widow of the celebrated traveller; and to Mr. Poole, the author of Paul Pry, and of many contributions to periodical literature, who is a great sufferer from bodily infirmities.
Captain Medwin, whose book about Byron was once read by every body, and who for some time resided in this country, turns up in Holland, after an oblivion of several years. He contributes to the last number of the New Monthly an article entitled, Hawking at Loo.
John Clare, the peasant poet, sometimes called the "rural Burns," is now in the Lunatic Asylum at Northampton. There is much sweetness in some of poor Clare's verses, of which four volumes appeared many years ago. We believe he was among the proteges of Southey. His complaints to visitors of the madhouse are commonly of the injustice done to him by the public in not recognizing him, instead of Scott and Byron, as the author of "Marmion" and "Don Juan," and in refusing him the honor of having gained the battle of Waterloo. Clare was the writer, though not generally known as such, of the lines, "Here we meet too soon to part"—which, set to one of Rossini's most beautiful airs, were some time exceedingly popular.
A new volume of the writings of De Quincey has just been published by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. It contains, with other admirable papers, those "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth," "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," "Joan of Arc," and "Dinners, Real and Reputed." These works of one of the greatest of living authors, have never before been collected, and the publishers confer a most acceptable benefit by their edition of them. We have from the same house a copy of the best English version of "Faust," that of Hayward.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is publishing a complete collection of his Poems and Dramas. This edition will include several pieces not hitherto published, and those that have appeared before will receive the author's last corrections and revision. Each volume will be illustrated with an appropriate vignette title; and the first will contain, in addition, a portrait, from a painting by Maclise.
One of the most delightful books in natural history that we have ever seen is "Episodes of Insect Life," recently published in England, and now in the press of Mr. Redfield, in this city. It is divided into three "scenes," representing spring, summer, and autumn, and is profusely and skilfully illustrated. It is even more entertaining than Lord Brougham's Dialogues on Instinct, which we had regarded as the pleasantest work in such studies.
Dr. Achilli, whose imprisonment in the Roman Inquisition is a familiar story, has published "Dealings with the Inquisition, or Papal Rome, her Priests and her Jesuits; with Important Disclosures." It is an autobiography.
Samuel Bailey, whose "Essays on the Pursuit of Truth and on the Progress of Knowledge," "Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions," &c., have been largely read in this country, has just published a volume entitled, "The Theory of Reasoning, with Comments on the Principal Points of Scholastic Logic."
Major Poussin's "United States, their Power and Progress," a translation of La Puissance Americaine, by Edmund L. Du Barry, U. S. N., has been published in a large octavo of about five hundred pages, by Lippencott, Grambo, & Co., of Philadelphia. We take the opportunity to give some account of the author.
Guillaume Tell Poussin was born in the autumn of the year 1796 in the department of the Seine and Oise, in France. His father was a painter of some celebrity, who has left many fine works in the galleries of Versailles and Rouen. Introduced, while a child, to the favor of Napoleon, it was ordered by a special decree that, as a descendant of the great Nicholas Poussin, whose works are among the chief glories of French art, William Tell Poussin should be educated at the imperial school of Rouen. There he spent seven years, and passed his examination for admission to the Polytechnic school. He entered this national academy of engineering, and in 1814, while yet a youth, distinguished himself by his patriotic spirit, which prompted him to join his comrades in the defence of the walls of Paris against an invading enemy. He was wounded at the village of Aubervilliers, in an attack against the combined force of British and Russian troops who occupied that position; and after the surrender of Paris his feelings were so excited that he could not bring himself to acts of submission to the Bourbon family, but was arrested on account of his opinions, and released only on the intervention of powerful friends. He soon embarked for America, and arrived at New-York in November, 1815, having for recommendation his ardent desire to be useful and a decided love of liberty. After a short residence in New-York he proceeded to Philadelphia, where he expected to meet with some encouragement in his profession as an engineer. Here he became acquainted with Mr. Fairman, the engraver, and worked for him a few months with advantage, boarding meanwhile at a French house, into which the landlady received him in consideration of the devotion of his leisure to the instruction of her children. The next spring he removed to Washington, where he had heard that he could be profitably employed in the rebuilding of the capitol, which the British army had destroyed in the late war. He now worked as an architect for about a year, when, several leading senators and representatives having become acquainted with him, and, taking a particular interest in him for his earnest and manly character and the remarkable abilities he had evinced as an engineer, in the incidental opportunities presented by his employment as an architect, they signed a petition to President Madison for his admission to the corps of Topographical Engineers, which was then to be organized, and he was at once transferred to the United States Army. A short time after, General Bernard, whom Mr. Crawford, the American Minister at Paris, had engaged to be the chief of the Topographical Engineers, arrived in Washington, and assuming his office proceeded to the necessary preparations for that survey of the physical resources of our territory for national defence, and for tracing the lines required to form a complete base of operations in time of war, on the assailable portions of our frontier, for which the service had been instituted. Before leaving France, General Bernard had received especial recommendations from the friends of young Poussin to look after his interests, and when they met, therefore, their acquaintance was made on the most intimate and agreeable terms on both sides. Upon the application of General Bernard to the Secretary of War, Poussin was attached to his person as an aid-de-camp, and left Washington with him for a military reconnaissance of the coast on the Gulf of Mexico, and of the delta of the Mississippi. They spent a year and a half upon their important duties, in New Orleans and its vicinity, regardless of the dangers of that climate, and in 1817 returned to the seat of government and submitted to the President a particular and elaborate memoir of their operations. It was upon this first report, presented by the Executive, on the Military Defences of the United States,—a report drawn up in a very large degree by the hand of M. Poussin, and illustrated throughout with his discovery and suggestion,—that Congress, by an almost unanimous vote, authorized the erection of the great line of our military defences, adopting the recommendations of the commissioner without even the slightest alteration. The Board of Military Engineers entered subsequently on the yearly execution of their important duty of examining the coast previous to determining the actual sites and descriptions of the works of defence which they afterwards delineated. The young topographical engineer continued in his arduous scientific labors, and thus contributed largely in the perfecting of that great national scheme. It was in these military operations, and afterwards in the surveys for roads and canals, which, under the supervision of a Board of Internal Improvements, where confided to a portion of the same officers, assisted by civil engineers, that Poussin rendered himself so efficient as a practical and scientific surveyor, and became so perfectly familiar with all the internal resources of our extensive country, which he had thus most remarkable opportunities to study and appreciate, by crossing it in all directions, and, in fact, by visiting every state, and by following up and down every valley and river of the eastern half of the continent. Few men have had such occasion of studying de visu the extent and resources of the republic; and the intelligent readers of the volume before us will acknowledge, that few persons have shown themselves more conversant with its astonishing advancement. His first publication was a description of the works to which he had contributed, under the title of "A History of the Internal Improvements of the United States;" his second, an account of all the railroads in this country, which had considerable influence in developing in Europe a disposition toward our policy in this respect, and entitles Major Poussin to the gratitude of all lovers of rapid and safe communication. It was reproduced in Belgium and Germany, and has long been a textbook upon its subject in those countries, as well as in France. His third work was the one now translated, La Puissance Americaine, in which he has displayed, most emphatically, his admiration of our institutions, and offered them as examples to communities aspiring after rational liberty. It may be said of it, that it is the American system rendered popular by practical and convincing illustrations.
Major Poussin returned to France early in 1832, in the hope to coöperate in rendering popular in his own country some of the political institutions of the United States, to which he always attributed our great prosperity; but he was not fortunate enough to be admitted to active official life. He employed himself in his profession of surveyor, and superintended several important public works, and frequently in pamphlets and in contributions to the journals, labored for the dissemination of American ideas. At last, when the Revolution of February, 1848, broke out, he was chosen, with the greatest unanimity by the Provisional Government, to be the Representative of Republican France near the Government of the United States. It was deemed the highest compliment of which France was capable, that she sent as her minister the citizen most conversant with our affairs, and most eminent for admiration of our institutions. His arrival in this country, and the misunderstanding with the cabinet at Washington, which resulted in his recall by President Bonaparte, cannot have been forgotten by the observant reader. We believe that few who have carefully studied the conduct of Major Poussin in that affair, will be disposed, in the slightest degree, to censure him, while the entire history will readily be consigned to oblivion by the American who is in any degree sensitive upon the subject of our national honor.
Guillaumin et Cie, the well known Parisian publishers, are about to add to their Collection des Principaux Economistes several American works in this department. One volume, at least, will be devoted to Henry C. Carey's masterly compositions, with a preface and commentaries; another volume will be given to the Free Trade party, and will embrace the best things of Mr. Walker, Mr. Raguet, Mr. Cardozo, Henry Middleton, Dr. Wayland, &c.; and essays by Mr. Phillips, Horace Greeley, and other Protectionists, will probably constitute another. The Collection now embraces Quesnay, Turgot, Dupont Nemours, Le Tronne, the Says, Galliani, de Montyon, Condillac, Lavoisier, Adam Smith, Hume, Ricardo, Malthus, Bentham, and a dozen more. The only American name in the list is that of Franklin quoted in the first volume of the Melanges, edited by Daire and Molinari.
Joseph Gales, of the National Intelligencer, has lately published several leading articles of such compactness and completeness, such weight and dignity, as distinguish only the greatest compositions in philosophy and upon affairs. The intellectual force acting through the press of this country is habitually underrated. There are a dozen journals here which may be advantageously compared with any in Europe, with the single exception of the Times. It would perhaps seem invidious to point them out, from the greater number that are conducted with ability and energy; but it will not be objected by any one who has the right to express an opinion in the case, if we say that Mr. Gales is of the first rank of public men who have ever influenced or illustrated the course of events by written eloquence or argument. The leading articles from his hand which in the last twenty-five years have appeared in the National Intelligencer, would fill many volumes; and if collected and so submitted to one view, they would astonish by their variety, by the extraordinary resources of information which they evince, by their soundness of logic, elevation of sentiment, and uniform adaptation to their several purposes. If they lack the pungent wit, and fiery energy of phrase, and adroitly venomous spirit of "Junius," they have, with their nobler calmness and uniform candor, a far wider sweep, a subtler apprehension of consequences, and a more statesmanlike aim and capacity. The diction of "Junius" was calculated to arrest attention, by its glitter and strength, and by its freshness; for it was in style, after all, that he was most creative, and since his style has by imitation become familiar, it is for the mystery of their authorship only that his works have continued eminence. As materials for history, and as suggestive guides of policy, we have in American literature very few works so important as the leading articles of Joseph Gales would constitute, fitly arranged, and illustrated by such notes as he could readily furnish, necessary now on account of the time since some of them were originally printed.
The Rev. Henry T. Cheever's "Whale and his Captors," (published last year by the Harpers,) has been reprinted in London under the title of "The Whaleman's Adventures in the Northern Ocean," with a highly and justly commendatory introduction by the Rev. W. Scoresby, D.D. F.R.S. We have great pleasure in recording evidences of the popularity of such works as Mr. Cheever's. They have a manly as well as a Christian spirit, and are needed to counteract the influences of the many infidel books in which the effects of the Christian civilization in the Island World are systematically misrepresented. We learn that Mr. Cheever is now engaged upon "The Autobiography of Captain Obadiah Conger," who was fifty years a mariner from the port of New-York. He is editing the MS. of the deceased sailor for the Harpers.
Mr. Job R. Tyson, whose careful researches respecting the colonial history of Pennsylvania have illustrated his abilities and his predilections in this line, is about to proceed to Europe, for the consultation of certain documents connected with the subject, preparatory to the publication of his "History of the American Colonies," a work in which, doubtless, he will not be liable to the reproach of histories written by New-Englanders, that they exaggerate the virtues and the influence of the Puritans. Mr. Tyson is of the best stock of the Philadelphia Quakers, and the traditional fame of his party will not suffer in his hands.
Mr. Henry James, the author of "Moralism and Christianity," must certainly be regarded by all who come into his fit audience as one of the greatest living masters of metaphysics. Mr. James has never been mentioned in the North American Review; but then, that peculiarly national work has not in all its seventy volumes an article upon Jonathan Edwards, whom Robert Hall, Dr. Chalmers, Dugald Stuart, Sir James Mackintosh, Kant, Cousin, and a hundred others scarcely less famous, have regarded as the chief glory in our intellectual firmament; it has never let its light shine upon the pages of Legaré; it has preserved the most profound silence respecting Henry Carey, William R. Williams, and Addison Alexander; so that it must not be considered altogether conclusive as to Mr. James's merits that he has not had the seal of the North American's approval. We regard him as one of the great metaphysicians of the time, not because, like Comte, he has evolved with irresistible power and majestic order any grand and complete system, but because he has brought to the discussion of the few questions he has attempted, so independent a spirit, so pure a method, such expansive humanity, and such ample resources of learning, as separately claim admiration, and combined, constitute a teacher of the most dignified rank, who can and will influence the world. We do not altogether agree with Mr. James; on the contrary, we have been regarded as particularly grim in our conservatism; but we are none the less sensible of Mr. James's surpassing merits as a writer upon the philosophy of society. We dedicate this paragraph to him on account of the series of lectures he has just delivered in New-York, upon "The Symbolism of Property," "Democracy and its Issues," "The Harmony of Nature and Revelation," "The Past and Future Churches," &c. We understand that these splendid dissertations will be given to the public in the more acceptable form of a volume. The popular lecture is not a suitable medium for such discussions, or certainly not for such thinking: one of Mr. James's sentences, diluted to the lecture standard, would serve for an entire discourse, which by those who should understand it, would be deemed of a singularly compact body, as compared with the average of such performances.
Professor Torrey, of the University of Vermont, is one of the few contemporary scholars, whose names are likely to survive with those of the great teachers of past ages. He has translated Schilling's Discourse on Fine Arts, and other shorter compositions from the German; but his chief labor in this way is, a most laborious and admirably executed version of Neander's History of the Christian Religion and Church, published in Boston, and now being republished in London, by Bonn, with Notes, &c., by the Rev. A. T. W. Morison, of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Neander has sometimes been called, but with scarcely sufficient reason, the Niebuhr of ecclesiastical history. The only point in which he resembles the historian of Rome, is in that vast range of complete erudition which makes the Past in its minutest details as familiar as the Present, which is never content with derivative information, but traces back every tributary of the great stream of History to its remotest accessible source. In this respect the two eminent historians were alike, but with this point of resemblance the similarity ends. Neander is entirely free from that necessity under which Niebuhr labored, of regarding every recorded aggregate of facts as a mass of error which the modern philosophy of history was either to decompose into a myth, or reconstruct into a new form more consistent with preconceived theory.
The Works of John C. Calhoun will soon, through the wise munificence of the state of South Carolina, be accessible by the students of political philosophy and history in a complete and suitable edition, with such memoirs as are necessary for their illustration, and for the satisfaction of the natural curiosity respecting their illustrious author. The first volume will comprise Mr. Calhoun's elaborate Disquisition on Government, and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States, in which are displayed in a systematic manner the author's opinions upon the whole subject of the philosophy of government. These treatises were begun many years ago, and though they had not received the ultimate revision which was intended, they are very complete, and by the careful and judicious editing of Mr. Crallé, his intimate friend and confidential secretary, will perhaps appear as perfect in all their parts as if re-written by Mr. Calhoun himself. These are now nearly stereotyped; and to correct some misapprehensions which seem to prevail in South Carolina, we state that only the stereotype plates are made in New-York, there being no foundries for stereotyping in Charleston, where the book will be printed and published. For this purpose the Legislature has appropriated $10,000, which will meet the expenses for fifteen thousand copies of the first volume, all but five hundred of which, printed on large paper, for public libraries, will be sold for the benefit of Mr. Calhoun's family. Another volume will contain Mr. Calhoun's official papers, and another his Letters upon Public Affairs. This, we think, will be the most interesting of the series. Mr. Calhoun wrote always with sincerity and frankness, and his communications to his friends contain, much more than his speeches and state papers, the exhibitions of his feeling, his regrets, fears, expectations, and ambitions. His speeches will probably make three volumes; the collection formerly printed by the Harpers did not embrace half of them; many of them have never been printed at all, but (particularly some of his most elaborate performances previous to 1817) exist in carefully prepared manuscript reports. All these speeches will be revised and illustrated by Mr. Crallé: and the series will be completed with the memoirs of the great senator, for which that gentleman has the most ample and interesting materials.
Archbishop Whateley's very ingenious Historical Doubts Respecting Napoleon Bonaparte, is the cleverest book of the kind yet written, not excepting the high church pamphlet treating of the Archbishop's own existence in the same way. But the idea was not original with Whateley: Mr. William Biglow of Boston wrote half a century ago, The Age of Freedom, being an Investigation of Good and Bad Government, in Imitation of Mr. Paine's Age of Reason, and intended, by a similar style of argument respecting the Discovery of America, &c., to expose that infidel's sophistries. We perceive that the Life of Jesus, by Dr. Strauss, has been met by another such performance in England, under the title of Historical Certainties respecting the Early History of America, developed in a Critical Examination of the Book of the Chronicles of the Land of Ecnarf; By the Rev. Aristarchus Newlight, Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Giessen, Corresponding Member of the Theophilanthropic and Pantisocratical Societies of Leipsig, late Professor of all Religions in several distinguished Academies at Home and Abroad, &c. The author very satisfactorily disposes of the events between the first French Revolution and the Battle of Waterloo, by putting them through the "mythic" circle invented by Dr. Strauss. The joke is carried out with remarkable ingenuity, and with the most whimsical resources of learning. The good doctor finds, a la Strauss, a nucleus, for here and there a great tradition, but remorselessly wipes out as altogether incredible many of the most striking and familiar facts in modern history.
Of Mr. Schoolcraft's great work, which we have heretofore announced, the first part has just appeared from the press of Lippencott, Grambo & Co., in the most splendid quarto volume that has yet been printed in America. We shall take an early opportunity to do justice to this truly national performance and to its author.
Dr. Robert Knox—whose book of infidel rigmarole, The Races of Men, was lately reprinted by an American house which was never before and we trust will never again be guilty of such an indiscretion,—we understand is coming to New-York to lecture upon Ethnology. He has the "gift" of talking, and is said to have been popular as a demonstrator in anatomy; but we think it will be best for him to remain a while longer in England; the sham science of which his last book is a specimen is no longer, we believe, profitable in this country. The last Princeton Review says of The Races of Men:
"This book is fairly beneath argument or criticism. It is a curious medley of vanity, ignorance, malice, and fanaticism. At first it provoked our indignation, by the boldness and effrontery of its pretensions; but their very extravagance soon began to render them comical. It claims to originate views which are to overturn 'long received doctrines, national prejudices, stereotyped delusions,' &c., while any tolerable scholar in this department is perfectly familiar with them all in the works of Virey, Courtet, Bory de St. Vincent, Edwards, La Marck, Quetelet, &c. It has not the slightest claim to originality, except for the ridiculous ingenuity, with which it carries out the more cautious follies of these infidel philosophers, into the most glaring absurdities; and sets their ingenious physiological speculations, in broad contradiction to the most authentic and unquestioned truths of history. We certainly should not have noticed this thing at all, but for two reasons. In the first place, this subject is now rendered so interesting by the important bearings of modern ethnological researches, that some of our readers might be cheated by the mere title, and by newspaper puffs, out of the market price for the book; and in the second place, we wish to express our surprise and lift up our remonstrance against such issues from a quarter so respectable as that which has given this reprint to the American public. Whatever may be the social or scientific standing of any influential publishing house, we must say, that in our judgment they merit a deliberate rebuke from the true science of the country, for reprinting so crude and wretched a performance, to say nothing of the low malignity which it vents against the Christian sentiment and enterprise of an age like the present,—and even against men, who stand in the front ranks of science, because they happen to believe that the scriptures are entitled to some respect, as authentic records; or that other races of men are capable of being Christianized, beside the Teutonic. Cuvier was an ignorant and stubborn dogmatist, whose era is now past for ever. Buckland was an ingenious priest and Jesuit; and even Newton's brain was turned by chronology."
Mr. Boker's tragedy of Colaynos, has just been produced at the Walnut-st. Theatre in Philadelphia, and extremely well received. It had indeed a successful run. The Betrothal, which in our last we omitted to notice, is, we understand, to be brought out under the auspices of Charles Kean, in London. Mr. B. has yet another comedy quite finished, which will soon be performed in New-York.
A letter purporting to be by General Washington, and bearing date Cambridge, June 24, 1776, was read before the New-Jersey Historical Society a few weeks ago; the thanks of the Society were voted to Mr. Chetwood for it; and the Literary World characterizes it as "interesting," "admirable," &c. The Literary World does not, we believe, pretend to be an authority in such matters, but that a "historical society" should receive such a gross imposition is somewhat surprising. The letter is as much a forgery and imposture as the "exceedingly interesting letter from General Washington to his wife," published a few months ago in the Day Book. Without going into any further statement or argument on this subject, it may be sufficient to remark, that Washington was not within two hundred miles of Cambridge on the 24th of June, 1776.
The Rev. Henry W. Ducachet, D.D., the learned rector of St. Stephen's, in Philadelphia, has been several years engaged upon a Dictionary of the Church, which is now nearly ready for publication. Such a work is properly but a system and history of doctrine and ritual, in a form suited for the readiest consultation, and it demands, therefore, for its successful accomplishment, the highest and rarest faculties and acquisitions. Dr. Ducachet possesses in a very eminent degree, not only the requisite knowledge and judgment, but he has a certain temperament and felicity, with a love of and skill in dialectics, which promise even to the articles for a dictionary, from his hand, the utmost raciness and attractive interest. We understand this work will be very complete and voluminous.
The Poems of "Edith May," the finest artist among the literary women of this country, are to be published in a very beautiful edition next summer by E. H. Butler of Philadelphia.
The American Philosophical Society, which on account of some unfortunate investments of its capital, has for several years been compelled to suspend its publications, is now, we are gratified to be informed, again in a good financial condition, and new volumes of its important Transactions are in the press.
Professor Hows, during the last month, has given a very interesting series of readings from Shakspeare, in which he has displayed not only the finest capacity for histrionic effect, but a critical sagacity, and a thorough knowledge of the greatest of the poets, which justify his own reputation.
Mr. Redfield has in press "The Celestial Telegraph, or Secrets of the Life to Come, revealed through Magnetism, by M. Cahagnet," a book of the class of Mrs. Crowe's "Night Side of Nature;" and "The Volcano Diggings, a Tale of California Law, by a member of the Bar."
We believe it is about six years since the Rev. William W. Lord, then a resident graduate at Princeton College, published the volume of poems by which he was introduced to the literary world. That book had various and striking merits, and though it had many defects in an artistic point of view, upon the whole it illustrated a just apprehension of the poetic principle, and such capacities for execution as justified the sanguine hopes it occasioned among his friends of his future eminence in the highest and finest of the arts. From that time until the present, Mr. Lord has not appeared as an author; but the leisure that could be withdrawn from professional study has been devoted to the composition of "Christ in Hades," (Appleton & Co.) a poem displaying his best abilities in art, while it is a suitable offering to religion.
"It was my purpose," he says, "in undertaking this work, to give poetic form, design, and history to the descent of Christ into hell; a fact that has for so many ages attracted the curiosity of the human mind, as to furnish occasion for surprise that the attempt has not hitherto been made. As regards the end for which He descended, I have adhered to the Christian tradition that it was to free the souls of the ancient saints confined in the temporal paradise of the Under-world, embracing also in my design the less general opinion, that it was to demonstrate His universal supremacy by appearing among the damned.
"A source of additional human interest was suggested by the relation which men, as a distinct order of beings, might be supposed to sustain to demons in the place of their common doom, and under new conditions of existence; such, I conceived, as would make it possible in some degree to realize even the divine fictions of the Greek mythology, under the forms and with the attributes accorded them by ancient religions, and by the poetry of all time. This could not fail to suggest the further conception of introducing the divinities of our forefathers, and of other great families of mankind, thus bringing together in action and contrast the deified men, or various representatives of an heroic humanity, among different races: nor did it seem too great a stretch of imaginative probability to conceive that their general characteristics might be adopted and imitated by beings already invested by the human mind with an indefinite power, and inhabiting a world in which the wonderful becomes the probable.
"But it is, after all, the general purpose of exhibiting the triumph of moral power over all physical and inferior spiritual force, in the descent of Christ into hell, which gives my design the complex character of a mythic, heroic, and Christian poem, and, at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. The ancients, whose representative types I introduce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the aid of adventitious force, or relying upon unconquerable pride and disdain to resist it, was the highest reach of their dynamic conceptions. Moral power is properly a Christian idea. It is not, therefore, without what I conceive to be a true as well as a poetic apprehension of the design of the Descent into Hell, that the heroes of profane, and the not fabulous Titans of sacred antiquity, by their rivalries and contentions, brought together in arms for a trial of their comparative strength, are suddenly confronted with a common and dissimilar antagonist, and 'all strength, all terror, single or in bands, that ever was put forth' opposed to that novel, and, save in the Temptation, hitherto untested power, represented by Christ, the author of the theory and master of the example.
"He is not supposed to appear among them 'grasping in his hand ten thousand thunders,' but endued with an equal power, the result and expression of perfect virtue and rightful authority. His triumph is attributed neither to natural, nor to supernatural power; but to moral superiority, evincing itself in His aspect, and exercising its omnipotence upon the soul and conscience. That in the conception of a great Christian poet, His appearance among the rebel angels in Heaven was distinguished by the former attributes, is due, perhaps, to the heroic prejudice of a mind thoroughly imbued with the spirit of pagan writers, and of the Hebrew Scriptures."
The volume opens with this noble invocation, in which there is fit recognition of Dante and Milton, whose lips aforetime for such song had been touched by the divinest fire:
Thou of the darkness and the fire, and fame
Avenged by misery and the Orphic doom,
Bard of the tyrant-lay! whom dreadless wrongs,
Impatient, and pale thirst for justice drove,
A visionary exile, from the earth,
To seek it in its iron reign—O stern!
And not accepting sympathy, accept
A not presumptious offering, that joins
That region with a greater name: And thou,
Of my own native language, O dread bard!
Who, amid heaven's unshadowed light, by thee
Supremely sung, abidest—shouldst thou know
Who on earth with thoughts of thee erects
And purifies his mind, and, but by thee,
Awed by no fame, boldened by thee, and awed—
Not with thy breadth of wing, yet with the power
To breathe the region air—attempts the height
Where never Scio's singing eagle towered,
Nor that high-soaring Theban moulted plume,
Hear thou my song! hear, or be deaf, who may.
And if not rashly, or too soon, I heed
The impulse, but have waited on my heart
With patience, and its utterance stilled with awe
Oh what inspired it, till I felt it beat
True cadence to unconquerable strains;
Oh, then may she first wooed from heaven by prayer
From thy pure lips, and sympathy austere
With suffering, and the sight of solemn age,
And thy gray Homer's head, with darkness bound,
To me descend, more near, as I am far
Beneath thee, and more need her aiding wing.
Oh, not again invoked in vain, descend,
Urania! and eyes with common light
More blinded than were his by Heaven's hand
Imposed to intercept distracting rays,
Bathe in the vision of transcendent day;
And of the human senses (the dark veil
Before the world of spirit drawn) remove
The dim material hindrance, and illume;
That human thought again may dare behold
The shape and port of spirits, and once more
Hear voices in that distant, shadowy world,
To which ourselves, and this, are shadows, they
The substance, immaterial essence pure—
Souls that have freed their slave, and given back
Its force unto the elements, the dread
Manes, or the more dread Archetypes of men:
Like whom in featured reason's shape—like whom
Created in the mould of God—they fell,
And mixed with them in common ruin, made
One vast and many-realmed world, and shared
Their deep abodes—their endless exile, some,—
Some to return to the ethereous light
When one of human form, a Savior-Man
Almighty, not in deity alone,
But mightier than all angels in the might
And guard of human innocence preserved,
Should freely enter their dark empire—these
To loose, o'er those to triumph; this the theme,
The adventure, and the triumph of my song.
The Fine Arts.
Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware.—Our readers are aware of the accident by fire which happened some months since to Leutze's nearly-finished picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware, in consequence of which he abandoned it to the underwriters, intending to commence the work anew for the party from which he had received the order to paint it. The underwriters have accordingly paid the insurance, and are now exhibiting the picture in its incomplete state to the public of Cologne, where it meets with high approval. The Kölnische Zeitung says of it: "In this picture the artist has depicted the events of the hour in which the destiny of the Free States of North America was decided for centuries through the boldness of their courageous and prudent leader. The means of continuing the war were almost exhausted; the army threatened in a few days to dissolve itself; the cause of freedom for that continent, with its inestimable consequences for ancient Europe, would have been postponed, no one can tell how long, perhaps for ever. Then the great mind of Washington conceived what the morally debased, reposing enemy thought impossible. He crossed the Delaware with his army in the night, amid masses of floating ice, and, in the twilight of morning, assailed the inactive camp on the other side. The picture reproduces the moment when the great general,—ahead of the mass of the army, which had also just embarked, and part of which are passing off from the shore, and part already struggling with the driving ice,—is steering to the opposite shore in a small boat, surrounded by eleven heroic figures, officers, farmers, soldiers, and boatmen. The tall and majestic form of the man in whose hands at that hour lay the fate of millions, rises from the group, standing slightly bent, forward, with one foot on the bottom of the boat, the other on the forward bench. His mild yet serious and commanding glance seems seeking to pierce the mist of the farther shore and discover the enemy, while intimations of the future grandeur of his country rise upon his mind. Nothing of youthful rashness appears in the expression of this figure, but the thoughtful artist has depicted the 'heart for any fate' of the general and statesman in noble, vigorous, and faithful traits. And what an impulse moves through the group of his companions! Their thought is, 'Forward, invincibly forward, for our country!' This is expressed in their whole bearing, in every movement, in the eyes and features of all. Under the influence of this thought they command the raging elements, so that the masses of ice seem to dissolve before the will and energy of these men. This is a picture by the sight of which, in this weary and exhausted time, one can recover health and strength. Let none miss a draught from such a goblet of nectar. And while we are writing this, it occurs to us that it was at this very hour seventy-four years ago, in the ice-cold night, Washington crossed the Delaware. And amid the ominous concatenation of events which the weak mind calls accident, but which the clear spirit, whose eye rests on the whole world, regards as the movement of nature according to eternal laws, there rises from our soul the ardent prayer that Germany may soon find her Washington! Honor and fame to the artist whose production has power to work upon the hearts and inflame the spirits of all that behold it!"
Messrs. Goupil & Co. have purchased the duplicate of this work, to be completed on the first of July, for seven thousand dollars. The picture described was unfinished, and has been exhibited by the underwriters, to whom it was given up after the fire.
An Italian picture dealer in London named Campanari, lately bought for a trifle a portrait which has proved to be a genuine Michel Angelo. It represents the famous Vittoria Colonna, wife of the Marchese Pescara, the General of Charles V. She was herself distinguished as a poetess as well as by the impassioned love and adoration of the great painter, who not only took her portrait, but left behind him several sonnets in her honor. Campanari, though himself confident of the genuineness of the picture, could not procure it to be recognized in England. Accordingly he sent it to Rome, where the Academy of San Luca, with Minardi at its head, unanimously decided in its favor. In fact, it contains a grandeur and sublimity which could be ascribed to nobody but the author of the prophets and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel. An antique repose is displayed in the whole work, perfectly agreeing with the character of the lady as described by Michel Angelo, and which suits the advanced age at which she is painted. The execution is like that of the picture in the Florentine Tribune, in the wonderful facility of its execution. In the coloring a carnation hue is remarkable, like that in Michel Angelo's Roman works. The hands of the figure are thought to be by some other artist. Only the head and part of the person seem to be by the author. The picture has suffered little from time, some parts having apparently been repaired by a later pencil. It is valued at $30,000.
The Munich Art-Union gives to its subscribers for the next year a galvanograph of Rubens' Columbus. This is the first time that galvanography has been applied to such a purpose. The plate from which the print is taken has been copied by the galvanoplastic process, so that it can serve for other art-unions also. For 1851 the Munich Union has decided on engraving four Greek landscapes by C. Rottman. These plates will also be copied by the same process, and may be had at much less than the cost of original plates.
GOETHE'S OPINION OF BYRON, SCOTT, AND CARLYLE.
Mr. John Oxenford, who has shown remarkable capacities for appropriation, in the use he has made of the labors of William Peter, Parke Godwin, and others, in his various "translations" from the German, has recently fallen in with Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli's version of the Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, published many years ago by Mr. Ripley in his "Specimens of Foreign Literature;" and the result is two volumes, embracing, with what Margaret Fuller translated, the great poet's conversations with Soret. Among the chief notable men who existed at the time of the conversations, and to whom reference is made, are Scott and Byron. The first, whose Fair Maid of Perth is read as a new book, is praised for his "objective" qualities. The second is pronounced the greatest modern poet of England, but censured for his polemic tendency. Goethe's rapture is kindled when he speaks of him:
"'Lord Byron,' said Goethe, 'is to be regarded as a man, as an Englishman, and as a great talent. His good qualities belong chiefly to the man, his bad to the Englishman and the peer, his talent is incommensurable. All Englishmen are, as such, without reflection, properly so called; distractions and party spirit will not permit them to unfold themselves in quiet. But they are great as practical men. Thus, Lord Byron could never attain reflection on himself, and on this account the maxims in general are not successful, as is shown by his creed, 'much money, no authority,' for much money always paralyzes authority. But where he will create, he always succeeds; and we may truly say that with him inspiration supplies the place of reflection. He was always obliged to go on poetizing, and then every thing that came from the man, especially from his heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, as women do pretty children, without thinking about it or knowing how it was done. He is a great talent, a born talent, and I never saw the true poetical power greater in any man than in him. In the apprehension of external objects, and a clear penetration into past situations, he is quite as great as Shakspeare. But as a pure individuality, Shakspeare is his superior. This was felt by Byron, and on this account he does not say much of Shakspeare, although he knows whole passages by heart. He would willingly have denied him altogether, for Shakspeare's cheerfulness is in his way, and he feels that he is no match for it. Pope he does not deny, for he had no cause to fear him. On the contrary, he mentions him, and shows him respect when he can, for he knows well enough that Pope is a mere foil to himself.'...
"Goethe seemed inexhaustible on the subject of Byron, and I felt that I could not listen enough. After a few digressions, he proceeded thus: 'His high rank as an English peer was very injurious to Byron; for every talent is oppressed by the outer world,—how much more, then, when there are such high birth and so great a fortune. A certain middle rank is much more favorable to talent, on which account we find all great artists and poets in the middle classes. Byron's predilection for the unbounded could not have been nearly so dangerous with more humble birth and smaller means. But as it was, he was able to put every fancy into practice, and this involved him in innumerable scrapes. Besides, how could one of such high rank be inspired with awe and respect by any rank whatever? He spoke out whatever he felt, and this brought him into ceaseless conflict with the world. It is surprising to remark,' continued Goethe, 'how large a portion of the life of a rich Englishman of rank is passed in duels and elopements. Lord Byron himself says, that his father carried off three ladies. And let any man be a steady son after that. Properly speaking, he lived perpetually in a state of nature, and with his mode of existence the necessity for self-defence floated daily before his eyes. Hence his constant pistol-shooting. Every moment he expected to be called out. He could not live alone. Hence, with all his oddities, he was very indulgent to his associates. He one evening read his fine poem on the Death of Sir John Moore, and his noble friends did not know what to make of it. This did not move him, but he put it away again. As a poet, he really showed himself a lamb. Another would have commended them to the devil.'"
Yet Goethe had a curious theory in respect to criticism, and believed it possible for a foreigner to understand the achievements of a language not his own better than those to whom it is native—in which we think he was partially correct. In the following he criticises Carlyle.
"'Sit down,' said he, 'and let us talk awhile. A new translation of Sophocles has just arrived. It reads well, and seems to be excellent; I will compare it with Solgar. Now, what say you to Carlyle?' I told him what I had been reading upon Fonqué. 'Is not that very good?' said Goethe. 'Aye, there are clever people over the sea, who know us and can appreciate us?... We are weakest in the æsthetic department, and may wait long before we meet such a man as Carlyle. It is pleasant to see that intercourse is now so close between the French, English, and Germans, that we shall be able to correct one another. This is the greatest use of a world-literature, which will show itself more and more. Carlyle has written a life of Schiller, and judged him as it would be difficult for a German to judge him. On the other hand, we are clear about Shakspeare and Byron, and can, perhaps, appreciate their merits better than the English themselves."
Carlyle is frequently referred to, and always thus. The clear-sighted, great old man, already perceives how much his fame will owe to such an apostle and preacher of his faith—for he sees also what Carlyle himself will become. The mention of Lockhart is also very interesting.
"I asked about Lockhart, and whether he still recollected him. 'Perfectly well!' returned Goethe. 'His personal appearance makes so decided an impression that one cannot easily forget him. From all I hear from Englishmen, and from my daughter-in-law, he must be a young man from whom great things in literature are to be expected. I almost wonder that Walter Scott does not say a word about Carlyle, who has so decided a German tendency that he must certainly be known to him. It is admirable in Carlyle that, in his judgment of our German authors, he has especially in view the mental and moral core as that which is really influential. Carlyle is a moral force of great importance. There is in him much for the future, and we cannot foresee what he will produce and effect.'"
Again:
"'It is pleasant to see,' said Goethe, 'how the earlier pedantry of the Scotch has changed into earnestness and profundity. When I recollect how the 'Edinburgh Reviewers' treated my works not many years since, and when I now consider Carlyle's merits with respect to German literature, I am astonished at the important step for the better. In Carlyle,' said he, 'I venerate most of all the mind and the character which lie at the foundation of his tendencies. The chief point with him is the culture of his own nation; and, in the literary productions of other countries, which he wishes to make known to his contemporaries, he pays less attention to the arts of talent, than to the moral elevation which can be attained through such works. Yes,' said Goethe, 'the temper in which he works is always admirable. What an earnest man he is! and how he has studied us Germans! He is always more at home in our literature than ourselves. At any rate we cannot vie with him in our researches in English literature.'"
MR. KELLOGG'S EXPLORATION OF MT. SINAI.
The last volume of Bohn's Illustrated Library (published in New-York by Bangs & Brother), is "Scripture Lands, Described in a Series of Historical, Geographical, and Topographical Sketches," by John Kitto, D.D., F.S.A., the well-known author of the Dictionary of the Bible, &c. It embraces, in a convenient and condensed form, results of the most important recent investigations by travellers and scholars in the countries sacred for their connection with the history of true religion. With other things by Americans, Dr. Kitto gives a prominent place to Mr. Miner K. Kellogg's account of Mt. Sinai, which we reprint below; and we cannot let the opportunity pass unimproved, of expressing a hope that Mr. Kellogg will prepare for the press the voluminous notes which we know him to possess of his various and interesting travels in the ancient world, which he saw with the eye of an artist, the head of a scholar, and the heart of a Christian. If he would, he might give us a most delightful and instructive book upon the East, and one that would be eminently popular, though Asia has been of all the continents the most frequently described. Dr. Kitto says:
"At the foot of the pass which leads up to the sacred shrine beneath the awful mount, from whose summit Jehovah proclaimed his law to the trembling hosts of Israel, Dr. Robinson says,—'We commenced the slow and toilsome ascent along the narrow defile, about south by east, between blackened, shattered cliffs of granite, some eight hundred feet high, and not more than two hundred and fifty yards apart, which every moment threatened to send down their ruins on our heads. Nor is this at all times an empty threat; for the whole pass is filled with large stones and rocks, the débris of these cliffs. The bottom is a deep and narrow water-course, where the wintry torrent sweeps down with fearful violence. A path has been made for camels, along the shelving rocks, partly by removing the topmost blocks, sometimes in the manner of a Swiss mountain-road. But though I had crossed the most rugged passes of the Alps, and made from Chamouni the whole circuit of Mont Blanc, I had never found a path so rude and difficult as that we were now ascending.'
"After toiling along for nearly two hours, our travellers continue their narrative:
"'Here the interior and lofty peaks of the great circle of Sinai began to open upon us—black, rugged, desolate summits; and, as we advanced, the dark and frowning front of Sinai itself (the present Horeb of the monks) began to appear. We were gradually ascending, and the valley gradually opening; but as yet all was a naked desert. Afterwards, a few shrubs were sprinkled round about, and a small encampment of black tents was seen on our right, with camels and goats browsing, and a few donkeys belonging to the convent. The scenery through which we had now passed reminded me strongly of the mountains around the Mer de Glace in Switzerland. I had never seen a spot more wild and desolate.
"'As we advanced, the valley still opened wider and wider with a gentle ascent, and became full of shrubs and tufts of herbs, shut in on each side by lofty granite ridges, and rugged, shattered peaks, a thousand feet high, while the face of Horeb rose directly before us. Both my companion and myself involuntarily exclaimed, "here is room enough for a large encampment!"
"'Reaching the top of the ascent or watershed, a fine broad plain lay before us, sloping down gently towards the south-south-east, inclosed by rugged and venerable mountains of dark granite, stern, naked, splintered peaks, and ridges of indescribable grandeur; and terminated, at a distance of more than a mile, by the bold and awful front of Horeb, rising perpendicularly in frowning majesty, from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height. It was a scene of solemn grandeur, wholly unexpected, and such as we had never seen; and the associations which at the moment rushed upon our minds were almost overwhelming.'
"They subsequently ascended the frowning summit of Horeb, and sketched the scene from that point:—'The whole plain, er-Rahah, lay spread out beneath our feet, with the adjacent wadys and mountains; while Wady esh-Sheikh on the right, and the recess on the left, both connected with and opening broadly from er-Rahah, presented an area which serves nearly to double that of the plain.
"'Our conviction was strengthened that here, or on some of the adjacent cliffs, was the spot where the Lord "descended in fire," and proclaimed the law. Here lay the plain where the whole congregation might be assembled; here was the mount that could be approached, if not forbidden; and here the mountain brow, where alone the lightning and the thick cloud would be visible, and the thunders and the voice of the trump be heard, when the Lord "came down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai."
"'We gave ourselves up to the impressions of the awful scene; and read, with a feeling that will never be forgotten, the sublime account of the transactions, and the commandments there promulgated, in the original words as recorded by the great Hebrew legislator.'"
"Other travellers have explored a valley on the southern base of Sinai, which was shut out from the view of Dr. Robinson in his ascent by a long ridge of rocks, and which has been found, by measurement of Krafft and Strauss, and others, to be even greater than the valley of er-Rahah on the north. This, it is supposed by Ritter and others, may have been occupied by the Israelites at the giving of the Law. The locality of this tremendous scene may perhaps be determined by future researches.
"An American artist and scholar, Mr. M. K. Kellogg, has lately given an interesting account of this valley, which appears to be much more extensive than er-Rahah, and better suited for the accommodation of the immense camp of Israel. To reach this station, the Israelites must have continued their march much further down the coast than on the other supposition, and turned at a bolder angle up into the mountains near the modern town of Tur or Tor. Dophkah, Alush, and Rephidim, must also, on this supposition, be transferred to other localities corresponding with this supposed line of march.
"If there be such a valley at the southern base of Sinai, it seems very extraordinary that it should have escaped the notice of travellers. It must be visible from the summit of Sinai (Jebel Musa); but, seen only from that lofty summit, and running in an irregular line at the very base of the mountain, they must have overlooked it in their brief survey of the scenery, so grand, so gloomy and peculiar, which there engaged their contemplation. The subject, however, is so curious and interesting, that we insert in some detail the narrative of the American traveller to which these remarks refer.
"'Having read a letter which appeared in the Literary World[F] of the 20th November, from Dr. Ritter to Dr. Robinson, in which it is said that Laborde, in his Commentary "has now for the first time established the plain of Wady Sebaiyeh at the southern base of Sinai;" and that this "furnishes an important point for the elucidation of the giving of the Law," I have been induced to submit to the consideration of the public, some of the notes from a journal which I kept during my travels in that region in the spring of 1844.[G]
"'Although I have not yet seen the Commentaries of Laborde, and therefore cannot judge of their correctness in regard to this plain, yet I am happy in being able to furnish some testimony as to its existence and extent. Within the last few years a question has arisen as to the existence of a plain in front of Mount Sinai, capable of containing the multitude of Israelites who were to receive the commandments.
"'Dr. Robinson is the first, I believe, who has attempted to prove that no such plain exists. In his Researches he finds a plain at the north-east extremity of the mountain called er-Rahah, which he says was "the plain where the congregation of Israel were assembled," and that the mountain impending over it, the present Horeb, was "the scene of the awful phenomena in which the Law was proclaimed."
"'He says he was satisfied, after much inquiry, "that in no other quarter of the peninsula, and certainly not around any of the higher peaks, is there a spot corresponding in any degree, so fully as this, to the historical account, and to the circumstances of the case." Starting upon the hypothesis that there is no other plain than the one he describes, he has been obliged to give the name of Sinai to one of the peaks which overlook this plain, in order that the Israelites might witness the awful ceremonies attending the promulgation of the Law which took place upon the holy mountain. If this hypothesis is founded on truth, then tradition is at fault, which has given to another part of this region the name of Sinai, and a capacious plain beneath it; we must throw aside all our faith in such tradition, and commence investigations which shall elicit the whole truth upon the subject.
"'As many late travellers have been led into error respecting the topography of this district, by adopting, without investigation, the conclusions of Dr. Robinson, I feel it to be a duty to lay before you such facts as may be of service to those who shall hereafter journey into the wilderness of Sinai.
"'On the 6th day of March, 1844, my two companions set out from the convent at Mount Sinai, for the purpose of ascending the mountain St. Catharine. I declined going with them, partly through indisposition, and partly because I thought I could spend the day more usefully in making sketches in the neighboring convent. After my friend's departure with the guides, I took a little Arab boy with me to carry my sketch-book and water-bottle, and walked up Wady Shueib, until I came to the little Mountain of the Cross (Neja), which almost shuts up the passage into Wady Sebaiyeh, and where I had, for the first time, a view of the southern face of Mount Sinai. Here opened an extended picture of the mountains lying to the south of the Sinaite range, for I was now some three hundred feet above the adjacent valleys.
"'After much difficulty, I succeeded in climbing over immense masses of granite, to the side of the Mountain of the Cross, which I ascended about five hundred feet on its south-western face, in order to obtain a good view of the peak of Sinai, which I was anxious to sketch. Here, close at my right, arose, almost perpendicularly, the Holy Mountain; its shattered pyramidal peak towering above me some 1400 feet, of a brownish tint, presenting vertical strata of granite, which threw off the glittering rays of the morning sun. Clinging around its base was a range of sharp, upheaving crags, from one hundred to two hundred feet in height, which formed an almost impassable barrier to the mountain itself from the valley adjoining. These crags were separated from the mountain by a deep and narrow gorge, yet they must be considered as forming the projecting base of Sinai.
"'Directly in front of me was a level valley, stretching onward to the south for two or three miles, and inclosed on the east, west, and south by low mountains of various altitudes, all much less, however, than that of Sinai. This valley passed behind the Mountain of the Cross to my left, and out of view, so that I could not calculate its northern extent from where I stood. The whole scene was one of inexpressible grandeur and solemnity, and I seated myself to transfer some of its remarkable features to the pages of my portfolio.
"'I remained at work until nearly sunset, when I discovered people coming towards me through the dark ravine between the mountain of Sinai and the craggy spurs which shoot up around its base. I feared they might prove to be unfriendly Arabs; but, as they came nearer I discovered them to be my companions and their guides, who were returning from Mount St. Catharine. As the shades of evening were approaching, I shut up my portfolio, and descending the hillside, I joined my friends, and we returned together to the convent. After dinner, they desired to see what I had done during the day, and my sketch-book was opened to them. They remarked, on seeing the drawing I had made, that as there was no plain on the southern border of the mountain, I might as well have left out the one seen in the drawing. After my assurance that I had copied what was before me, they laughed, and remarked that none but a painter's imagination could have seen the plain in question, for they had passed entirely around the mountain that day, and could assert positively that there was no such plain. Here was a difference of opinion certainly, and one that I did not relish much, as it might at some future time be the means of creating a doubt as to the faithfulness of my eastern drawings. I begged them, therefore, to accompany me the next day to that side of the mountain, and be convinced of what I told them. They remarked that all authority was against me, and time was too precious to go over the same ground twice.'"
"It seems that one of them, however, accompanied the writer in his further exploration of the ensuing day, for he uses the plural number, and speaks of his 'friend.' We thus condense his statements: One day (7th March) is described as having been spent in Wady es-Sabaiyeh, or the plain before Mount Sinai. After having penetrated into this wady, he says: 'We took our course along the base of Jebel Deir, until we came to a point whence the peak of Sinai was no longer visible, because of the intervening point of Jebel Deir; then striking across Sebaiyeh to the right, keeping Sinai in view, we stopped to contemplate the scene. Here the plain is very wide, and forms one with Wady Sedout, which enters it from the south-east at a very acute angle, and in the whole of which Sinai is plainly visible. These two wadys make a width of at least the third of a mile. The hills rising from the east and south of Sebaiyeh, in front of Sinai, are of gentle ascent, upon which flocks might feed, and the people stand in full view of Sinai. For many miles, perhaps six or more, on the eastern border of this plain, are seen many small plains high up among the hills, from all of which Sinai is plainly visible. Near where we stood, a high, rocky platform of granite arose from the plain, upon which I seated myself, and took a sketch of the valley to its junction with Wady esh-Sheikh on the north, where stands Jebel Fureia, a very conspicuous and singular mountain. At this point, Wady Sheikh turns from its eastern course, after leaving Wady Rahah, and runs north around Jebel Fureia, where it receives Sebaiyeh from the south, and with it forms one unbroken plain for about twelve miles to the north of the place where I was seated. Turning back now to the south, we traversed the plain towards the base of Sinai. The wady grew gently narrower as we approached Neja, whose base projected far into the plain, and whose head shuts off the view of Sinai for a distance of about one-half the width of the plain at its base.
"'As we passed its foot, Sinai again appeared, and we measured the plain near the pathway which leads up towards Sinai on the southern border of Neja, and which appears to be the only entrance to the Holy Mountain. The measured width here was four hundred and thirty feet. Passing on three hundred and forty-five paces, we arrived at the narrowest part of the plain, some few yards narrower than where we had measured it. This may be considered as an entrance-door to the plain, which lies directly in front of Sinai, which now spreads out level, clear, and broad, going on to the south with varied widths for about three miles on gently ascending ground, where it passes between two sloping hills and enters another wady which descends beyond, from which it is most probable Sinai may yet be clearly seen.
"'On the east, this plain of Sebaiyeh is bounded by mountains having long, sloping bases, and covered with wild thyme and other herbs, affording a good tenting-ground immediately fronting Sinai, which forms, as it were, a grand pyramidal pulpit to the magnificent amphitheatre below. The width of the plain immediately in front of Sinai is about 1600 feet, but further south the width is much increased, so that on an average the plain may be considered as being nearly one-third of a mile wide, and its length, in view of Mount Sinai, between five and six miles. The good tenting-ground on the mountain sides mentioned above, would give much more space for the multitude on the great occasion for which they were assembled. This estimate does not include that part of the plain to the north, and Wady esh-Sheikh, from which the peak of Sinai is not visible; for this space would contain three or four times the number of people which Sebaiyeh would hold.
"'From Wady Sebaiyeh we crossed over the granite spurs, in order to pass around the southern border of Sinai into Wady Lejah. These spurs are of sufficient size to have separate names among the Arabs. Around them were generally deep and rugged gorges and ravines, or water-courses, whose sides were formed of ledges of granite nearly perpendicular, of a pink color, and fine texture. There are no gravel hills, as mentioned by Dr. Robinson, but a series of low granite hills, much broken up, and of different colors, principally of a greenish-gray and brown. The plain is covered with a fine débris of granite. Whilst crossing over these low hills, my friend pointed out the path between them and Sinai, in the ravine, through which he had passed yesterday on his return from St. Catharine; and it was seen that no plain would be visible from any part of it, owing to the height of the spurs which separated the ravine from Sebaiyeh, and we concluded that most travellers had been led into false views concerning this part of the mountain from having taken the same path, and hence it was that no account has been given respecting the plain of Sebaiyeh. This ravine around Sinai becomes a deep impassable gorge, with perpendicular walls, as it enters Wady Lejah, passing through the high neck connecting with the mountain on the south.
"'Descending into Lejah, under the rocky precipice of Sinai, we found the wady narrow and choked up with huge blocks of granite which had tumbled from the sides of the adjacent mountains. We could now see the olive-ground of the deserted convent of el-Arbain, situated in the bottom of the narrow valley. Passing through this garden, we found a fine running stream of crystal water, of which we partook freely, for our thirst was great. The garden was walled, and well irrigated by many small canals, but nothing seemed to flourish but the olive.
"'Continuing down the valley, amidst loose rocks of granite, upon some of which were inscriptions in the Sinaite, Greek, and Arabic characters, and enjoying the wildness of the scene, and the gloomy grandeur of the lofty mountains of naked rocks which almost overhung our path, we saw Horeb on our right, and soon entered upon the plain before it called Wady Rahah. After taking a view of Horeb as the sun was setting, we made our way to the convent, to pass the night within its hospitable walls. Thus was completed a walk around the whole mountain of Sinai.
"'The results of these investigations, together with the information afforded by Burckhardt and other travellers, have served to convince my own mind that this district is every way adapted to the circumstances attending the encampment of the Israelites during the promulgation of the law upon Mount Sinai Though other mountains in this vicinity may answer as well as that of Jebel Musa for this great purpose, still I cannot see any good reason for taking from this mountain that holy character with which tradition has invested it for the last fifteen centuries.'
"Thus," says Dr. Kitto, "it seems that the question as to the camping-ground of the Israelites, which seemed to have been settled by the researches of Dr. Robinson and others, must now be regarded as re-opened for further investigations. The fact is, that a complete and careful survey of the whole of this central mountain region yet remains to be taken."
The friend of Mr. Kellogg alluded to in the preceding pages was an English gentleman, Mr. Ackanth, (of the East India Service,) whose notes will amply vindicate Mr. Kellogg's conclusions.