Somebody having said that Bulwer had lost his hearing, and was in a very desponding way in consequence, he has written to the Morning Post to say he is by no means deaf, but that if he were he should not much despond on that account, "for the quality and material of the talk that's going is not calculated to cause any great regret for the deprivation of one's ears."
The second volume of the Count de Castelnau's Expedition into the Central Regions of South America, under the auspices of the French government, has just been published in Paris.
An eminent diplomatist of France has just published two volumes of most interesting revelations drawn from his own note-books and personal knowledge. We allude to the Etudes Diplomatiques et Litteraires of Count Alexis de Saint Priest. On the partition of Poland especially, it casts an entirely new and conclusive light. M. Saint Priest shows that apart from the internal anarchy and weakness of Poland, the catastrophe was the work not of Russia as has been commonly supposed, but of Frederic the Great of Prussia. Russia had no interest in dividing Poland; in fact she was already supreme in that country; and besides, her policy has never been that of an active initiative,—she waits for the fruit to fall, and does not take the trouble of shaking the tree herself. The great criminal then in this Polish affair was Prussia, and the cause was the historic antagonism between Germany and Poland. M. Saint Priest sketches the character of Frederic with the hand of a master. "We shall see him," he says in approaching that part of his subject, "we shall see him as he was, both adventurous and patient, ardent and calm, full of passion yet perfectly self-possessed, capable of embracing the vastest horizon and of shutting himself up for the moment in the most limited detail, his eyes reaching to the farthest distance, his hand active in the nearest vicinity, approaching his aim step by step through by-paths, but always gaining it at last by a single bound. We shall see him employing the most indefatigable, the most tenacious, the most persevering will in the service of his idea, preparing it, maturing it by long and skillful reparation, and imposing it on Europe not by sudden violence, but by the successive and cunning employment of flattery and intimidation. And finally, when all is consummated, we shall see him succeed in avoiding the responsibility and throwing it altogether upon his coadjutors, with an art all the more profound for the simplicity under which its hardihood was concealed, and the indifference which masked its avidity. To crown so audacious a maneuver, he will not hesitate to declare, that "since he has never deceived any one, he will still less deceive posterity! And in fact he has treated them with a perfect equality: he made a mock of posterity as well as of his contemporaries." With regard to the part of France in the division of Poland, M. Saint Priest attempts to prove that the French monarchy could not prevent the catastrophe; but that it was in the revolutionary elements then fermenting in France and opposed to the monarchy, that Frederic found his most powerful allies. Of course he defends the monarchy from blame in the matter, and we shall not undertake to say that he is wrong in so doing. Certainly the downfall of Poland cannot be regarded as an isolated event, but as a part of the great series of movements belonging to the age, in which causes the most antagonistic in their nature often cooperated in producing the same effect. M. Saint Priest further reasons that the providential mission of Poland was to oppose Turkey and Islamism, and when the latter ceased to rise the former necessarily declined. But our space will not permit us to follow this interesting work any farther. The careful students of history will not fail to consult it for themselves.
Mary Lowell Putnam, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Lowell of Boston, and sister of James Russell Lowell, the poet, is the author of an annihilating reviewal, in the last Christian Examiner, of Mr. Bowen on the Hungarian Struggle for Independence. The Tribune contains a resumé of the controversy, in which it had itself been honorably distinguished, and furnishes the following sketch of Professor Bowen's antagonist:
"Without any ambition for literary distinction, leading a life of domestic duties and retirement, and pursuing the most profound and various studies from an insatiate thirst for knowledge, this admirable person has shown herself qualified to cope with the difficulties of a complicated historical question, and to vanquish a notorious Professor on his own ground. The manner in which she has executed her task (and her victim) is as remarkable for its unpretending modesty as for its singular acuteness and logical ability. She writes with the graceful facility of one who is entirely at home on the subject, conversant from long familiarity with its leading points, and possessing a large surplus of information in regard to it for which she has no present use. If she exhibits a generous sympathy with the cause of the oppressed, she does not permit the warmth of her feelings to cloud the serenity of her judgment. She conducts the argument with an almost legal precision, and compels her opponent to submit to the force of her intellect."