Rev Azariah Smith, M.D., missionary of A.B.C.F.M. to the Armenians, died at Aintab, Syria, in the early part of June, in the 35th year of his age.
General Henry A. S. Dearborn, of Roxbury, died suddenly at Portland, Me., on the twenty-ninth of July. He was a native of New-Hampshire, and was born March 3d, 1783, and removed with his father to the county of Kennebec in Maine in 1784. His father having been twice elected to Congress from the Kennebec district, prior to 1801, and on the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the Presidency, appointed Secretary of War, his son Henry was taken to Washington, and educated at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. In 1806 he established himself in the profession of law, in which he continued but few years, the excitements of public life having more attractions for him than the quiet pursuit of that profession. He took a prominent part in the politics, of the country, filled many important public stations, among which was the collectorship of Boston, in which he succeeded his father in 1812, and remained many years. He also distinguished himself in literature, and by efforts for the promotion of public improvements. He was a member of the Convention of Massachusetts for revising the constitution of that state, in 1821, a member of the Governor's Council in 1831, member of Congress in 1832, Adjutant-General of Massachusetts in 1835, and at the time of his death Mayor of Roxbury. He was a man of fine manners, cultivated mind, and liberal views. While he held the office of Collector of Boston, he improved the favorable opportunity to collect statistics relative to the commerce of the country, and particularly that to countries connected with the Mediterranean, which he embodied in a valuable work, entitled The Commerce and Navigation of the Black Sea, in three volumes octavo. In 1839 he published a series of letters To the Secretary of the State of Massachusetts, on the Internal Improvements and the Commerce of the West, containing extremely valuable information on those subjects. He recently published a life of the Apostle Elliot, to aid in the construction of a monument in Roxbury to the memory of that celebrated missionary, and among his other published writings is a Life of Commodore Bainbridge. He left in MS. a work on Architecture, another on Flowers, and an extended Memoir of his Father, embodying all his journal in his expedition through Maine to Canada, his imprisonment in Quebec, and a vast deal of other Revolutionary matter. He was constantly throwing off essays in various periodicals, to promote the interests of society. Among other claims upon public gratitude, was his untiring zeal in the cause of horticultural and agricultural improvements. Few did more than he to elevate this important branch of industry. As a politician he was most prominent for his connection with the Native American party, by which he was nominated for the Vice Presidency of the United States.
In another part of this magazine we have given a sketch of the late Dr. Moir, from the pen of Mr. Gilfillan. The deceased physician and litterateur died at Dumfries, on the 6th of July, in the fifty-third year of his age, having left his home in Musselburg, near Edinburgh, to visit in Dumfries his friend, Mr. Aird. Of the poems of "Delta," Professor Wilson says: "Delicacy and grace characterize his happiest composition; some of them are beautiful, in a cheerful spirit that has only to look on nature to be happy, and others breathe to simplest and purest pathos." Similar praise was given him by Lord Jeffrey. We do not think so highly of his abilities. In verse, Dr. Moir had the fatal gift of facility, and he cultivated it at the ordinary penalty. His poetry is not made to survive him. He was a man, however, of varied accomplishments; and is the author, besides his considerable body of verse, of a prose narrative, Mansie Wauch, Tailor of Dalkieth, a very excellent book of Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine, being a View of the Progress of the Healing Art among the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabians, and of Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the past Half Century, in Six Lectures, a work which has the sketchy character and incompleteness common to its class. The Legend of Généviève, with other Tales and Poems, and Domestic Verses, are the two poetical volumes of his which have been published in a collected form.
General Sir Roger H. Sheaffe, Bart., died on the 17th July, at Edinburgh, at the advanced age of 88 years. He entered the army in 1778. In 1798 he became a lieut. colonel, and the next year served in Holland. He served in the expedition to the Baltic in 1801 under Sir Hyde Parker and Lord Nelson. He also served in North America, and, in 1812, the Americans having invaded Upper Canada, at Queenston, when General Brock, commanding in the province, fell in an effort to oppose the enemy, they posted themselves on a woody height above Queenston. Major-General Sheaffe, upon whom the command devolved, assembled some regular troops and militia, with a few Indians, and on the same day attacked and completely defeated the Americans, their general delivering his sword to Major-General Sheaffe, and surrendering the surviving troops on the field of battle, their number far exceeding the assailants. For these brilliant services Sir Roger Sheaffe was created a baronet of the United Kingdom.
Louis Jacques Maude Daguerre, whose name is for ever associated with the photographic process, of which he was the discoverer, died on the tenth of July, in Paris, in the sixty-second year of his age. He was a man of extreme modesty and great personal worth, and was devoted to art. He was favorably known to the world before the announcement of his discovery of the Daguerreotype. His attempts to improve panoramic painting, and the production of dioramic effects, were crowned with the most eminent success. Among his pictures, which attracted much attention at the time of their exhibition were, The Midnight Mass, Land-slip in the Valley of Goldau, The Temple of Solomon, and The Cathedral of Sainte Marie de Montreal. In these the alternate effects of night and day, and storm and sunshine, were beautifully produced. To these effects of light were added others, from the decomposition of form, by means of which, for example, in The Midnight Mass, figures appeared where the spectators had just beheld seats, altars, &c., and again, as in The Valley of Goldau, in which rocks tumbling from the mountains replaced the prospect of a smiling valley. The methods adopted in these pictures were published at the same time with the process of the Daguerreotype, by order of the French Government, who awarded an annual pension of ten thousand francs to Daguerre and M. Niepce, jr., whose father had contributed towards the discovery of the Daguerreotype. Daguerre was led to experiments on chemical changes by solar radiations, with the hope of being able to apply the phenomena to the production of effects in his dioramic paintings. As the question of the part taken by him in the process to which he has given his name, has been discussed sometimes to his disadvantage, it appears important that his position should be correctly determined. In 1802, Wedgwood, of Etruria, the celebrated potter, made the first recorded experiments in photography; and these, with some additional ones by Sir Humphrey Davy, were published in the journals of the royal institution. In 1814, Mr. Joseph Nicephore Niepce was engaged in experiments to determine the possibility of fixing the images obtained in the camera obscura; but there does not appear any evidence of publication of any kind previously to 1827, when Niepce was in England. He there wrote several letters to Mr. Bauer, the microscopic observer, which are preserved and printed in Hunt's Researches on Light. He also sent specimens of results obtained to the Royal Society, and furnished some to the cabinets of the curious, a few of which are yet in existence. These were pictures on metallic plates covered with a fine film of resin. In 1824 Daguerre commenced his researches, starting at that point at which Wedgwood left the process. He soon abandoned the employment of the nitrate and chloride of silver, and proceeded with his inquiry, using plates of metal and glass to receive his sensitive coatings. In 1829 M. Vincent Chevalier brought Niepce and Daguerre together, when they entered into partnership to prosecute the subject in common. For a long time they appear to have used the resinous surfaces only, when the contrast between the resin and the metal plates not being sufficiently great to give a good picture, endeavors were made to blacken that part of the plate from which the resin was removed in the process of heliography (sun-drawing), as it was most happily called. Amongst other materials, iodine was employed; and Daguerre certainly was the first to notice the property possessed by the iodine coating of changing under the influence of the sun's rays. The following letter from Niepce to Daguerre is on this subject:
"81, Loup de Varennes, June 23, 1831.