Mr. Carlyle, is engaged upon a new work in history, but its subject is not disclosed, nor its extent.
Mrs. Robinson, who left New-York several months ago to visit her relations in Germany, writes from Berlin to the Athenæum, under date of February 2, as follows:
"A work appeared in London last summer with the following title: Talvi's History of the Colonization of America, edited by William Hazlitt, in two volumes. It seems proper to state that the original work was written under favorable circumstances in German, and published in Germany. It treated only of the colonization of New England: and that only stood on its title-page. The above English publication, therefore, is a mere translation, and it was made without the consent or knowledge of the author. The very title is a misnomer; all references to authorities are omitted; and the whole work teems with errors, not only of the press, but also of translation,—the latter such as could have been made by no person well acquainted with the German and English tongues. For the work in this form, therefore, the author can be in no sense whatever responsible.
Talvi."
From a more recent number of the Athenæum it appears that Mr. Hazlitt is not himself the translator of the original work; and the responsibility, not only of the translation, but of all the faults charged which might seem more especially editorial, is transferred by him to another. Mr. Hazlitt, we believe, is a son of the great critic of the last age.
There are connected with the newspapers a considerable number of weak-minded and absurd persons, who delight in strange coincidences and the most inconceivable relations, and who, for a certain consciousness they have of their own slight claims to consideration are anxious to find on every occasion, some indication of regard for their vocation, as if credit won by any journalist or writer were portion of a common fund of respectability from which they could draw a dividend. In no other way can we account for the thousand-and-one articles in which the appointments of Dr. Layard and Mr. D'Israeli have been referred to as "honor," "homage," &c., to literature. Dr. Layard was selected by Lord Granville to be an Under-Secretary of State, because he had shown himself in the admirable manner in which he discharged certain important diplomatic functions in the East, better fitted, in Lord Granville's opinion, than any other person for the new duties to which it was proposed to summon him. Mr. D'Israeli has long been one of the most conspicuous and astute politicians in England, and owes his present office solely to his activity and eminence in affairs. There was as little of "recognition of the claims of literature" in either case, as there was praise of fiddlesticks or Carolina potatoes. It would not be a whit more ridiculous to say that the French people, remembering the happy genius displayed by Napoleon Bonaparte in his "Supper of Beaucaire," chose him to be their emperor.
In the new British ministry are an unusual number of book-makers. The most conspicuous in authorship is the now Right Honorable Benjamin D'Israeli, "the wondrous boy who wrote Alroy, in rhyme and prose, only to show how long ago victorious Judah's lion banner rose." Sir Emerson Tennent, Sir Edward Sugden, Lord John Manners, Mr. Whiteside, the Earl of Malmesbury, Lord de Roos, are all known as authors, as well as politicians. The Duke of Northumberland also is favorably known as a zealous promoter of arts and learning.