Is this present year, 1873, to be, like some famous ones in history, specially fatal to crowned heads, and to heads that have once been crowned? During the whole twelve months of 1872 the only European sovereign who died was Charles XV. of Sweden, while none suffered irremediable misfortune; and in European royal families the only two losses by death were Archduke Albrecht and the duke of Guise. But within the first six weeks of 1873 no less than three persons died who had at some time worn imperial crowns, and one monarch resigned his sceptre. First died Napoleon III., on the 9th of January. Then, on the 25th, at Lisbon, died the dowager-empress Amelia, daughter of Prince Eugene, wife of Pedro I. of Brazil, and stepmother of the present emperor, Pedro II. On February 8 the empress Caroline Augusta, widow of Francis I. of Austria, and grandmother of the reigning emperor, died at Vienna. In Spain the abdication of Amadeo is an incident to be mentioned in a year opening so ominously to crowned and discrowned heads.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Santo Domingo, Past and Present; with a Glance at Hayti. By Samuel Hazard. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Mr. Hazard, who has already obliged us with one of the best accounts of Cuba extant in modern literature, now does a similar service for Santo Domingo, which he declares to be much more highly favored by Nature, and which he examined with the United States commission of 1871. This book has the advantage of being prepared within reach of the British Museum, whose stores of Americo-Spanish authorities have enabled him to write up with much fullness the historical sketch which occupies a third of his space. This is a fair, faithful and skillful condensation, and the most readable narrative we have seen of poor Dominica's tale of revolutions and wrongs. The personal portion begins with the author's arrival at the Salt Keys and Puerto Plata, and follows the steps of the commissioners, with a great many anecdotes and a sprinkling of artistic sketches, to Samana and Santo Domingo City; thence overland to the great inland tobacco-mart of Santiago; and so back to Puerto Plata and Monte Christo, where the commission ceased its labors, being discouraged by the Haytians from an exploration within their domain; while Mr. Hazard, resuming his capacity of private citizen, took his life in his hand and ventured into the proud Mumbo-Jumbo republic. It is here that the really lively part of the story commences, and the author becomes the hero of quite a tragedy of errors. At the first Haytian port, Dauphin Bay, he meets the port-captain who cannot read his passport, the port-general who bows and sends him to the chef de police, the chef who asks for half a dollar without countersigning the document, and lets the pilgrim go on in quest of the American consul. The only hotel is closed and "busted:" the consul indicates a billiard-room, whose proprietor feeds the stranger, informing him at the same time that the authorities take him for a United States commissioner, and have doubled the guards. The next visit is to a banker, who plays him a curious practical joke. Demanding Haytian bank-notes for a few hundred dollars on a letter of credit, the tourist, after a time of waiting, sees the street on which the banker lives completely blocked with donkey-carts, drays, mules, horses with panniers and carts drawn by bullocks. A negro drayman informs him that "the American commissioner, having come over-night from Monte Christo, is drawing a draft in Haytian specie, and that the carts are to load up with it." The banker, being consulted, offers to store the currency cheap in a warehouse, but advises as a friend that the draft be reduced, the bullocks sent away, and that the traveler take a beer. "I took the beer," says Mr. Hazard. A dollar in gold means just four hundred dollars in Haytian paper: a cocktail cost the traveler "thirty dollars," and other things in proportion. These beginnings of make-believe pomposity are followed up by the strangest revelations wherever the adventurer sets his foot. Going from Cape Haytien to the citadel and "Sans-Souci" palace of Christophe, the traveler is charged "two thousand dollars" by the drunken negro guide, and "a dollar" by the sable sentry of whom he happens to ask a question. The town of Cape Haytien he finds surrounded by the rotting bodies of dead animals; the ruins of fine old country-seats are occupied by filthy black squatters; the new houses going up are built by the process of throwing single bricks one after the other from the ground to the bricklayer. Squalor and braggadocio he finds everywhere. The general who has given him a permit to inspect Christophe's stronghold sends a messenger secretly in advance with instructions reversing his order: the commandant refuses lodgings to "the American who has come to take the fort." Some friends of the consul who had received a general invitation to accompany the excursion had previously backed out, because the stranger was an American, a reputed commissioner, and very unsafe company. Mr. Hazard could only obtain permission to swing his hammock in the house of a negress; a citizen who pointed him out to the others made the signs of throat-cutting; and he left behind him the filibustering reputation of the American who came to take the citadel. Naturally disgusted by this time, the author renounced his intention of further land-traveling, and passed in a steamer around the western end of the island to Port-au-Prince. Here he was delighted with the entertainment of our present minister to Hayti, Mr. Bassett, a Philadelphia quadroon of uncommon qualities and collegiate education. "Some of my most delightful hours," says the writer, "were spent enjoying the kind hospitalities of Mr. Bassett and his lady." He represents the minister as living in a palace built for the emperor Soulouque, and playing a part in the revolutionary conflicts of the island similar to that of Minister Washburne in revolutionary Paris. The brave conduct of Mr. Bassett during the brief presidency of the unhappy Salnave deserves mention. About three thousand humble blacks, frightened by the rebellion of the "aristocracy," fled to the protection of our flag, and the minister, though shot at in the streets and without the support of a single man-of-war, saved and fed them all. It seems to be not much to its credit that our nation, though very tender of Hayti when the question of Dominican annexation is raised, has never reimbursed its ambassador for this drain on his private purse for the succor of Haytian lives. With Port-au-Prince, where the writer awaited his steamer's departure for the United States, the journey terminates. The traveler's evident disgust with almost every manifestation of Haytian attempts at self-government is balanced by his rapture with the natural features of the other end of the island. He writes as an ardent annexationist—not so much from the humanitarian view of President White and Dr. Howe, as from the belief that Santo Domingo, if once made our territory, would soon enrich our treasury from its commerce and its uncommon adaptability as a watering-place. We have spoken of this book as very thorough. It is so in every respect—historical, pictorial and narrative. The list of books pertaining to the subject occupies alone eight pages of small print: as the author, however, evidently wishes this list to be approximately complete, and as he seems to be aware of but few books except those in the British Museum, we will oblige him, as possibly useful for a future edition, with the titles of some which he does not give: one of these especially, Dr. Brown's History and Present Condition of St. Domingo, we are surprised he does not include, as it is one of the most popular and useful books on the topic, and a manual of which we imagined every commissioner to have got a chapter by heart daily when on the way to Samana:
Las Casas, "Destruccion de las Indias," Sevilla, 1552; Desportes, "Histoire des Maladies de Saint Domingue," Paris, 1770, 3 vols.; Petit, "Droit Publique des Colonies Françaises" (containing the "Black Code"), Paris, 1777; Nicolson, "Histoire Naturelle de Saint Domingue," Paris, 1776; Valverde, "Idea del Valor de la Isla Española," Madrid, 1785; Puységur, "Navigation aux Côtes de St. Domingue," Paris, 1787; D'Auberteuil, "Considérations sur la Colonie, etc.," 1776; Coulon, "Troubles en Saint Domingue," 1798; Malouet, fourth volume of his "Colonial History," 1802; Dubroca, "Toussaint l'Ouverture," 1802; Tonnerre, "Mémoires, Histoire d'Haïti," Port-au-Prince, 1804; Laujon and Montpenay, "Précis," 1805, 1811, 1814 and 1819; Bercy, "De St. Domingue," Paris, 1814; Hérard Dumesle, "Voyage," Port-au-Prince, 1824; Clausson, "Révolution de Saint Domingue," 1819; Malo, "Histoire d'Haïti," Paris, 1825; Wallez, "Biography of General Boyer," 1826; Macaulay, "Abolition d'Esclavage," 1835; J. Brown, M.D., "History and Present Condition of Saint Domingo," 1837; Chaucheprat, "Le Routier des Antilles," 1843; Schoelcher, "Résultats de l'émancipation anglaise," 1843; Emile Nau, "Histoire des Caciques d'Haïti," 1855; Saint-Amand, "Histoire des Révolutions d'Haïti," Paris, 1860; Pradine (ex-minister to England), "Digest of Laws of Hayti," Paris, 1860.
Thorvaldsen: his Life and Works. From the French of Eugene Plon, by I.M. Luyster. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Thorwaldsen's life lasted from 1770 to 1844, and was very industrious. He was the son of a Copenhagen ship-carver, and received all his bent from the study of the antique in Italy. The works he left are almost innumerable, and some of them will have lasting reputation. The finest perhaps is his medallion of Night, "launched with infinite lightness into space, carrying in her arms her two children, Sleep and Death." This masterpiece is said to have been conceived during a sleepless night in 1815, and modeled in one day. His Lion at Lucerne, made to commemorate the Swiss guards at Paris who fell in defending the Tuileries, August 10, 1792, is known to every tourist: it is altogether conventional, but it is not commonplace. "Never having seen a live lion," says his biographer, "he went to antique statues for inspiration:" he thus, at two or three removes from Nature, secured a grand, monumental conception, fully charged with human intelligence. The colossi of Christ and his Twelve, now to be seen with the artist's other works at Copenhagen, and formerly exhibited at the World's Fair in New York, are imposing and classical, while they perhaps show the absence of the Christian idea noted in his other clerical subjects. Thorvaldsen, born a Lutheran, was a spectator in Rome of bigotry and skepticism, and took refuge in artistic impartiality. A friend once observing that his want of religious faith must make it difficult to express Christian ideas in his works, "If I were altogether an unbeliever," he replied, "why should that give me any trouble? Have I not represented pagan divinities?—still, I don't believe in them." The life of this artist was one of consummate worldly success; the kings of Bavaria and Denmark were the personal friends of the unlettered son of the ship-carver, as were Horace Vernet, Walter Scott, Andersen, and Mendelssohn; his casket of decorations was the amusement of his lady visitors; and his invitations were so constant that he could not always remember the name of his host: he was at once parsimonious and charitable, cheerful and melancholy. His artistic influence was very strong, exhibiting itself in the style of Tenerani, Galli, Rauch, Drake and Bissen. The life of him by Plon is methodical and complete, and the American version is illustrated by thirty-five careful engravings printed in Paris and gummed upon the sheets.