The eminent Italian poet, Giovanni Berchet, died near the first of January. Born, says the Athenæum, at Milan, in 1788, he imbibed at an early age that hatred of the rule of Austria which a few years afterwards inspired his muse. It was when the well-known political events of 1821 forced him to leave his country, that his active mind, fervently devoted to the principles of rational liberty, burst forth in those powerful and touching strains which are to this day deeply graven on the heart of every Italian patriot, and which, during the sanguinary contest of 1848, beguiled the weary march of the troops, and animated the combatants in the conflict. He was the first who had the courage to forsake the old beaten track of insipid sonnet-making. His poems stand alone, unrivalled in the novelty of their language and conception, and in the noble spirit which pervades every line. Few Italians can repeat his Clarina, his Matilde, or the Hermit of Mont Cenis, without feeling strong emotion. But by far the best of his productions, which unfortunately are not numerous, are the Fantasie. The language and versification are beautiful and varied, and we strongly recommend all Italian students to leave, with all due respect, Tasso and Petrarch for a while, and read a page of Giovanni Berchet. This distinguished patriot-poet was for some time member of the Sardinian parliament, and his loss is deeply mourned in all Italy.
The death of the younger of the celebrated Misses Berry, is mentioned in the London Times. She died, after a short illness, at the advanced age of nearly eighty-eight, in the unimpaired vigor of all her faculties. Her varied talents and incomparable amiability threw light and life around the graver and loftier powers of her sister, and their union, unbroken for an hour through the greatest portion of a century, made them the charm of the most brilliant circles in Europe. Her sister, in her eighty-ninth year, equally unfaded in her great intellectual gifts, still lingers for a while on the scene.
The Paris papers report the death, in that city, in his eighty-fifth year, of M. Louis Bertin Parant, a painter on ivory and porcelain of great eminence. As early as the days of the First Consulship he was distinguished by Napoleon; and his works on ivory executed by sovereign order during the Empire found their way as Imperial gifts into the collections of various princes of Europe. The Journal des Débats refers particularly to his Table representing the great generals of antiquity, as having been presented by Louis the Eighteenth to the Prince Regent of England, and as being now in the possession of Queen Victoria.
The Paris Journal des Débats reports the death, in his fifty-fifth year, of M. Benjamin Laroche, a translator into French of some of the works of Shakspeare and of Byron, and an original poet of some traditional reputation—having been popularly known in early life for attempts which gave false promise of greatness.
Eugene Levesque, author of two volumes on the United States, and of a large work on the State of Russia died in Paris, Jan. 4, aged 81.