M. Xavier Sauriac, author of the Socialist tragedy entitled The Death of Jesus Christ, was lately tried, along with his two booksellers, for pernicious and insurrectionary doctrines put into the mouth of the Redeemer. They were heard by counsel, and the dramatist was admitted to plead at length; but the jury convicted the three, and the court inflicted long imprisonment, and fines.
Mr. Theodore Marten, a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review, and the author of the well-known Bon Gaultier Papers in Tait's Magazine, has been married to the celebrated actress, Miss Helen Faucit Saville (best known without the last name).
Thomas Cooper, author of the Purgatory of Suicides, &c., has been on a lecturing tour through Ireland and Scotland, lately, and has given an account of what he observed, in several letters to the London Leader. We copy from them a few paragraphs:
I had two hours delightful conversation with Mr. de Quincy, at Lasswade, and was as deeply impressed with his intellectual power in talking, as I was with his writing when, in my boyhood, I read his "Confessions of an English Opium Eater."
On my return from visiting Kirk Alloway, and the cottage of Burns, I called on his remaining sister, Mrs. Begg, a highly intelligent woman of eighty, who gave me some information of an important character, as I deem it to be. Her daughter, Isabella, was present while I had the short conversation with her. I told her that I entertained strong doubts of the truth of many things which were said about her illustrious brother, and I wished to have the benefit of her own personal knowledge respecting him. She replied that she would have pleasure in giving me all the information in her power. I told her that a person in Glasgow had declared to me, the other day, that he believed all the accounts of her brother's irregular life; for a friend of his had called on Mrs. Begg lately, and she had said that she had often seen her brother sit at the table in a morning, after a night's debauch, shading his face with his hand, while the big tears of remorse were dropping on the board before him. Mrs. Begg seemed moved painfully. "Nothing is more false," she replied; "I never had such a conversation; and never could say so, for I never saw my brother either drunk, or showing any such feeling; nor did I ever know him to be drunk. It is true, I saw but little of him in the latter part of his life; but his son, who was with him almost constantly, told me that he never saw his father the worse for liquor but once; and then he was sick, but yet perfectly conscious. His son also said, that though his father would come home late during the latter part of his life, when they lived in Dumfries; yet he was always able to examine bolts and bars, went to observe that the children were right in bed and always acted like a sober man. Besides," added the intelligent old lady, "how was it possible that my brother could be a drunkard, when he had so small an income, and yet, a few weeks before his death, owed nobody a shilling? That speaks for itself." Mrs. Begg furthermore confirmed what I also learned in Glasgow from persons conversant with those who had known every circumstance of the close of Burns's life, that Allan Cunningham has sorely misstated many matters. Burns did not die in the dramatic style which Allan tells of. Allan was never in Ayrshire in his life; but had his materials from some old fellow who went about poking into every corner and raking out every false story about Burns. A writer in Glasgow, in whose company I sat for a short time in the evening after I had delivered my oration there on Burns, contradicted Allan Cunningham's account of Burns's death, from personal knowledge—just at the time when Allan's Life of Burns appeared; but Allan never took any notice of the pamphlet, and never corrected the misstatement. Mrs. Begg said that she had seen the two volumes of the new life of her brother, by Robert Chambers, and the account was fairer than any she had seen before.
The name of the "Baroness Von Beck" has been familiar through the English reviews, during the last year or two, as the authoress of a book on the late Hungarian war. This woman turns out to have been no baroness, not even a "friend" of Kossuth, but a paid spy in the service of the National Hungarian Government, and lately a paid spy in the "recently established foreign branch of the English police force." She was on the thirtieth of August apprehended at Birmingham for obtaining money under false pretences, and died in the anteroom of the court, from a sudden affection of the heart, induced by the emotion caused by her detection. She had played a remarkable part. Her Memoirs were published by Bentley, and had a large sale, but they appear to have been written by another person. At the time of her arrest she was procuring subscriptions for a new volume descriptive of her pretended Adventures.
Mr. Thackeray is writing a novel in three volumes, to be published in the winter. The scene is in England early in the eighteenth century, and among the characters will be Bolingbroke, Swift, and Pope; and Steele will play a prominent part. Mr. Thackeray has concluded to publish no more "serials," and we hope his new scenes and persons will suggest to him a little respect for human nature, which hitherto he appears to have regarded as a mere trick and imposture.