Various
International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, / No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850

LORD BROUGHAM

It is generally understood that this most illustrious Englishman now living, will, in the course of the present year, visit the United States. Whatever may be the verdict of the future upon his qualities or his conduct as a statesman, it is scarcely to be doubted that for the variety and splendor of his abilities, the extent, diversity and usefulness of his labors, and that restless, impatient and feverish activity which has kept him so long and so eminently conspicuous in affairs, he will be regarded by the next ages as one of the most remarkable personages in the age now closing—the second golden age of England. Lord Brougham is of a Cumberland family, but was born in Edinburgh (where his father had married a niece of the historian Robertson), on the 19th of September, 1779. He was educated at the University of his native city, and we first hear of him as a member of a celebrated debating society, where he trained himself to the use of logic. He was not yet sixteen years of age when he communicated a paper on Light to the Royal Society of London, which was printed in their transactions; and before he was twenty he had written discussions of the higher geometry, which, appearing in the same repository of the best learning, attracted the general attention of European scholars. In 1802, with his friends Jeffrey, Francis Homer, and Sidney Smith, he established the Edinburgh Review. In 1806 he published his celebrated "Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers," and soon after was called to the English bar, and settled in London, where he rapidly rose to the highest eminence as a counselor and an advocate. On the 16th of March, 1808, he appeared in behalf of the merchants of London, Liverpool, Manchester, &c., before the House of Commons, in the matter of the Orders in Council restricting trade with America, and greatly increased his fame by one of the most masterly arguments he ever delivered. In 1810 he became a member of Parliament, and he soon distinguished himself here by his speeches on the slave trade and against the Orders in Council, which, mainly through his means, were rescinded. Venturing, at the general election of 1812, to contest the seat for Liverpool with Mr. Canning, he was defeated, and for four years he devoted himself chiefly to his profession. In this period he made many of his most famous law arguments, and acquired the enmity of the Prince Regent by his defense of Leigh Hunt, and his brother, in the case of their famous libel in "The Examiner." In 1816 he commenced those powerful and indefatigable efforts in behalf of education, by which he is perhaps best entitled to the gratitude of mankind. As chairman of the educational committee of forty, he drew up the two voluminous and masterly reports which disclosed the exact condition of British civilization, and induced such action on the part of government as advanced it in ten years more than it had been previously advanced in a century. In 1820 he displayed in their perfection those amazing powers of knowledge, reason, invective, sarcasm, and elocution, on the trial of Queen Caroline, which more than anything else have made that trial so memorable among legal and forensic conflicts. In 1822 he made his unparalleled speech in the case of the Dean and Chapter of Durham against Williams, and in the following year was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. On the downfall of the Wellington administration, in 1830, and the consequent general election, he was returned to Parliament as one of the members for Yorkshire, and a few weeks afterward was made Lord High. Chancellor, and elevated to the peerage under the title of Lord Brougham and Vaux. He continued in the office of Lord Chancellor until the dissolution of the Melbourne cabinet, in 1834. In 1823 he wrote his "Practical Observations on the Education of the People," and was engaged with Dr. Birkbeck in the formation of the first Mechanics' Institution. In 1827 he was one of the originators of the London University, and in the same year he founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, of which he was the first president, and for which he wrote its first publication, the admirable "Treatise on the Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Science." In 1830 he was elected a member of the Institute of France, and about the time of his resignation of the chancellorship he published his "Discourse on Natural Theology." In 1840 he published his "Historical Sketches of the Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" in 1845-6, "Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George the Third;" and he has since given to the world works on "The French Revolution," on "Instinct," "Demosthenes' Oration on the Crown," &c., &c. Collections of his Speeches and Forensic Arguments, and of his Critical Essays, as well as the other works above referred to, have been republished in Philadelphia, by Lea and Blanchard.

In the language of the Editor of his "Opinions", Lord Brougham is remarkable for uniting, in a high degree of perfection, three things which are not often found to be compatible. His learning is all but universal: his reason is cultivated to the perfection of the argumentative powers; and he possesses in a rare and eminent degree the gift of eloquence.

Of his learning it may be said that there is scarcely a subject, on which ingenuity or intellect has been exercised, that he has not probed to its principles, or entered into with the spirit of a philosopher. That he is a classical scholar of a high order, is shown by his criticisms on the internal peculiarities of the works of the ancients and their styles of composition. They evince an intimate acquaintance with the great master pieces of antiquity. The book-worms of Universities—those scholastic giants who are great on small questions of quantity and etymology,—who buckle on the ponderous armor of the commentators in the contest with more subtle wits, on the interesting doubt of a wrong reading; such men, in the spirit of pedantry, have refused to Lord Brougham the merit of profundity, while they allow that he possesses a sort of superficial knowledge of the classics; they say that he can gracefully skim the surface of the stream, but that its depths would overwhelm him. Now, while this may be true as regards the fact, we dissent from it as regards the inference. It is a question to be decided between the learned drones of a by-gone school and the quicker intellects of a ripening age, which is the better thing,—criticism on words—on accidental peculiarities of style—or a just and sympathizing conception of the feelings of the poet or the wisdom of the philosopher. Men are beginning to disregard the former, while they set a high value upon the latter: so much laboriously-earned learning is at a discount, and allowance should be made for the petty spite, the depreciating superciliousness, of disappointment. Lord Brougham's classical knowledge partakes more of that intimate regard and appreciation which we accord to the great writers, than of this pedantry of the schools. Hence the cry of want of depth, that has been raised against him. Like many other great men of his age, he has read the authors of Greece and Rome in a spirit that has identified him with their thoughts and feelings, by taking into account the circumstances of their times; and the result has been, that he has exchanged the formalities and critical sharp-sightedness of acquaintance for the intimacy of friendship.

In point of general political knowledge, and particularly of that branch called political economy, Lord Brougham stands prominently among his contemporaries. In his speeches and writings will be found the first principles of every new view of these subjects that has been taken by the moderns. Of not a few he has himself been the originator. In the party history of the last century he is well versed, as many of his speeches show; and no public man of the present day is so well acquainted with the theory and practice of the constitution, whether as regards the broad principles of liberty on which it is based, or its gradual formation during the different periods of our history. It may not be amiss here to observe, that notwithstanding his long connection with the movement party, and the countenance he has from time to time given to measures of a decidedly liberal cast, he never was, and is still as far from being, a Democrat. Throughout his career he has been a consistent Liberal: always advocating such measures of reform as were calculated to remove abuses, while they in no way affected the stability and integrity of the institutions of the country. While, on the one hand, he has declared his most unequivocal opposition to the ballot and universal suffrage, on the other he has advocated popular education, as the ultimate panacea for all the evils to be feared from the extension of popular influence.

The legal knowledge of Lord Brougham has been questioned by the members of the profession whose abuses he desired to reform. It was even said, that while his elevation to the Chancellorship was the unjustifiable act of a party to serve party purposes, it was at the same time desirable to Mr. Brougham in a pecuniary point of view, from a falling off in his professional practice, caused by his hostility to those abuses. Now, although this is a question really of more interest to lawyers, than to the public in general, and one which might, therefore, be left to their decision, yet there was an animus at the time among this class of men, that rendered them not disinterested judges. Their opinion therefore must be taken with a qualification, as well on the score of particular immediate drawbacks, as on the score of their general professional prejudices. Lord Brougham respected too much the principles of justice, and he too little regarded the technicalities of law, to be agreeable to that body. He had a faculty too, for giving speedy judgments, and a determination to prevent unnecessary expenses, that were particularly disagreeable to men imbued with a conscientious desire that justice should not be prejudiced by an unprecedented and informal haste in its dispensation, or by a reduction of the number of its advocates. The new Lord Chancellor, too, thought that when one or two intelligent barristers had been engaged at a large expense, and had well stated the case of their client, it was quite unnecessary that the same ground should be again gone over by juniors, whose arguments marred more than they helped the interests of their employers. When, therefore, he either put them down, or was droned into a short nap, while the industrious advocate was earning his unnecessary fee, it was a specimen of "the arrogance of an upstart wholly unacquainted with Chancery Law," or "of an eccentricity bordering on insanity, and wholly unfitting its exhibitor for the high and responsible situation he held." Posterity will do justice to Lord Brougham in this respect. It will be felt to have been impossible that a man of such vast acquirements, who had been so successful in his profession, and who had, in all other branches of knowledge, evinced such clearness of intellect, could have been the inefficient lawyer his detractors have represented him to be.

There is another great department in which he has proved his excellence—that of physical science. With the principles of all the sciences, his works show him to be familiar. His treatise "on the Objects, Pleasures, and Advantages of Science" is admirable, as a bird's-eye view of the subject, while at the same time it is an enticing stimulant to study. The work on "Natural Theology" necessarily touches upon the physical sciences, and their connection with the great mechanism of nature. The geometrical and optical papers, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, when he was only fifteen years of age, show at least a firm groundwork of scientific knowledge. And if it be said that Lord Brougham's attainments are superficial only, we say that knowledge of detail does not of itself make a man competent. The principles of all sciences are a sine qua non.

Lord Brougham is eminently clear-headed; and he is distinguished for his argumentative powers. He has peculiarly the faculty of analysis; that of keeping in his own mind a comprehensive view of the whole bearings of a question, even while running at large into the minutest details; no man detects the fallacy of an opponent's argument more easily; nor can any man be more skillful in concocting a fallacy to suit a temporary purpose.

Lord Brougham's eloquence most distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Learning may be acquired; the habit of reasoning may be induced by constant dialectic contest; but eloquence is far more than these the gift of nature. Lord Brougham's eloquence savors of the peculiar constitution of his mind. It is eminently adapted for educated men. He was never intended for a demagogue; for he never condescends to the art of pandering to the populace. His speeches are specimens of argumentative eloquence; and their only defect arises from his fertility of illustration. The extraordinary information he possesses has induced the habit of drawing too largely upon it; and he is apt to be led aside from the straight road of his argument, to elucidate some minor disputed point. But the argumentative style of which we speak is almost peculiar to himself. There is a ripeness, a fruitfulness, in his mind, that places him above the fetters of ordinary speakers. Such men, from the difficulty of clearing their heads for the contest, too often present a mere fleshless skeleton, as it were, very convincing to the judgment, but powerless over the feelings; so that no lasting impression is produced. But Lord Brougham, from being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument. The very structure of his sentences is more adapted for this kind of speaking than any other. They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from their length, and the abundance of illustration and explanation which they embrace; but the extraordinary vigor with which the delivery is kept up, and the liveliness of fancy or of humor that flashes at every turn of the thought, soon dispel the temporary cloud.

In irony and in sarcasm, Lord Brougham is unrivaled among the public men of the day. That his exuberant power of ridicule led him while Lord Chancellor, into some excess of its use, cannot be denied, although a ready excuse can be found in the circumstances of his situation. He might be held to be the representative of liberal principles in a place where almost the name of Liberal had, till then, been proscribed; and the animosity toward the new Chancellor, evinced by many peers, was calculated to induce reprisals. The eccentricities, too, of men of genius are of such value that they may well be said to atone for themselves.

A quality of Lord Brougham's mind, that is almost as extraordinary as his extent of information, is its singular activity. His energies never seem to flag—even for an instant; he does not seem to know what it is to be fatigued, or jaded. Some such quality as this, indeed, the vastness and universality of his acquirements called for, in order to make the weight endurable to himself, and to bear him up during his long career of political excitement. Take the routine of a day for instance. In his early life he has been known to attend, in his place in court, on circuit, at an early hour in the morning. After having successfully pleaded the cause of his client, he drives off to the hustings; and delivers, at different places, eloquent speeches to the electors. He then sits in the retirement of his closet to pen an address to the Glasgow students, perhaps, or an elaborate article in the Edinburgh Review. The active labors of the day are closed with preparation for the court business of the following morning; and then instead of retiring to rest, as ordinary men would, after such exertions, he spends the night in abstruse study, or in social intercourse. Yet he would be seen as early as eight next morning, actively engaged in the Court, in defense of some unfortunate object of government persecution; astonishing the auditory, and his fellow lawyers no less, with the freshness and power of his eloquence.

A fair contrast with this history of a day, in early life, would be that of one at a more advanced period; say in 1832. A watchful observer might see the Lord Chancellor in the Court over which he presided, from an early hour in the morning until the afternoon, listening to the arguments of counsel, and mastering the points of cases with a grasp that enabled him to give those speedy and unembarrassed judgments that have so injured him with the profession. If he followed his course, he would see him, soon after the opening of the House of Lords, addressing their Lordships on some intricate question of Law, with an acuteness that drew approbation even from his opponents, or, on some all-engrossing political topic, casting firebrands into the camp of the enemy, and awakening them from the complacent repose of conviction to the hot contest with more active and inquiring intellects. Then, in an hour or so, he might follow him to the Mechanics' Institution, and hear an able and stimulating discourse on education, admirably adapted to the peculiar capacity of his auditors; and, toward ten perhaps, at a Literary and Scientific Institution in Marylebone, the same Proteus-like intellect might be found expounding the intricacies of physical science with a never tiring and elastic power. Yet, during all these multitudinous exertions, time would be found for the composition of a discourse on Natural Theology, that bears no marks of haste or excitement of mind, but presents as calm a face as though it had been the laborious production of a contemplative philosopher.

It would be a great mistake that would suppose the man who has thus multiplied the objects of his exertion to be of necessity superficial; superficial, that is, in the sense of shallowness or ignorance. Ordinary minds are bound by fetters, no doubt. Custom has rendered the pursuit of more than one idea all but impossible to them, and the vulgar adage of "Jack of all trades, master of none," applies to them in full force. But it must be remembered that a public man like Lord Brougham, who has chosen his peculiar sphere of action, and who prefers being of general utility to the scholar-like pursuit of any one branch of science exclusively, is not bound to present credentials of full and perfect mastership, such as are required from a professor of a university. His pursuit of facts must of necessity be for the purpose of illustrating general principles in political or moral science; and where more than a certain amount of knowledge is not laid claim to, the absence of more is no imputation.

Lord Brougham is thoroughly individualized as regards his talents and all that constitutes idiosyncratic difference, even while he is identified with the political and moral advancement of the people. During all the agitations of a period almost unparalleled, he has remained untainted by the influence of party spirit. That he has entered, and hotly too, into almost every question of any moment that has come before the Legislature during many years is true; but he has never appeared in the character of a partisan; he has always been the consistent supporter of liberal measures per se, and not because they were the means adopted by a party to gain political power. With his political steadfastness he has preserved his intellectual integrity from profanation. For although, had he early devoted his powers to the study of abstract or practical science, as a leading and not a subsidiary pursuit, the acuteness of his mind was such, that he must have risen to eminence upon the basis of discovery, yet it is no slight proof how little the struggles of the world affect superior intellects, that he has all along turned aside, with a never cloying avidity, to the pursuits of mind—to science, to literature, and to philosophy.

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THE WHITE LADY

The readers of The International may have seen some account of an apparition said to have been seen recently in the royal palace at Berlin, and known under the name of the "White Lady." M. Minutoli, lately chief of the Police at Berlin, has been amusing himself by looking up the history of this visitant from the unknown world, and has published a variety of curious particulars respecting her, drawn in a measure from documents preserved in the royal archives, as well as from old-time chronicles and dissertations, Latin and German middle age doggerel, and the records of jurists, historians and theologists. Several persons are designated in the early history of the family of Hohenzollern as that unquiet soul who for some three hundred years has performed the functions of palace-ghost. Many writers agree that she was a Countess named Orlamünde, Beatrice, or Cunigunde, and that she was desperately in love with Count Albert of Nuremberg, and was led by her passion to a crime which is the cause of her subsequent ghostly disquiet. Mr. Minutoli proves that this lady cannot be the same that alarms the palace with her untimely visitations. The accounts of the White Lady ascend to 1486, and she was first seen at Baireuth. Subsequently two ghosts were heard of, one white and one black. They were several times boldly interrogated and interesting discoveries arrived at. In 1540, Count Albert the Warrior laid in wait for the apparition, seized it with his powerful arm and flung it head over heels down into the castle court-yard. The next morning the chancellor, Christopher Hass, was found there with his neck broken, and upon his person a dagger and a letter proving him to have had treasonable designs. Notwithstanding the spirit has several times been thus compromised, it has maintained itself to the present day. It was first seen in Berlin January 1, 1598, eight days before the death of the Prince Royal John George. When the French invasion took place, it returned to Baireuth and was patriotic enough to take up its abode in the new chateau which had never been occupied before the arrival of the French officer. Even Napoleon called the place ce maudit chateau, on account of its mysterious inhabitant, and had to give up his lodgings to the ghost. He stopped in the chateau on his way to Russia but when he returned next year he avoided passing the night there. With regard to the last appearance at the palace at Berlin just before the late attempt on the life of the king, and which has been described as "a fearful apparition of a White Lady dressed in thin and flowing garments, moving slowly and silently around and around the fountain to the terror of a corporal standing near the entrance to the silver chamber," M. Minutoli proves it to have been an old woman once a cook at the chateau who has since lived there and is known, by the nickname of Black Minna.

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MRS. FANNY KEMBLE'S "READINGS" IN LONDON

MRS. KEMBLE has been giving a series of dramatic readings in London, and her success in the scene of her early triumphs appears to have been as decided as it was in New York. She was never in a situation more agreeable to her temper and ambition than that represented in the above engraving, which we have copied from one in The Illustrated News. She is triumphant, and "alone in her glory."

Mrs. Kemble is now about forty years of age. Gentleness is acquired in three generations; she is removed but two from the most vulgar condition; and by the mother's side but one. The Kembles of the last age were extraordinary persons. John Philip Kemble and Mrs. Siddons had both remarkable genius, and Charles Kemble has been an actor of consummate talent. Whatever intellect remains in the family is in his children; one of whom is a man of learning and refinement, another a woman of some cleverness in musical art, and Frances Anne, of whom we write more particularly.

The first appearance of Miss Kemble on the stage was on the evening of the 5th October, 1829, at Covent Garden, and was hazarded with the view of redeeming the fortunes of the theater. The play was "Romeo and Juliet," and the heroine was sustained by the debutante with unexpected power. Her Siddonian countenance and expressive eyes were the general theme of admiration; while the tenderness and ardor of her action went to the soul of the spectator, and her well-instructed elocution satisfied the most critical ear. It was then, also, that her father took the part of "Mercutio," for the first time. It is recorded that he earned by it thirteen rounds of applause. Nor was its merit overrated. It was then, and continued to be, a wonderful impersonation of the poetic-comic ideal. On the 21st of the same month of October, the performers of Covent Garden presented to Miss Kemble a gold bracelet as a testimony of the services which she had rendered to the company by her performance of "Juliet." It was not until the 9th of December that she had to change her role. She then performed Belvidera in "Venice Preserved," and achieved another triumph. For some time the part was alternated with that of "Juliet." The latter, during the season, was performed thirty-six times; the former, twenty-three. The "Grecian Daughter," and Mrs. Beverley, Portia in "The Merchant of Venice," Isabella, and Lady Townley, followed, and in all she was eminently successful. Her season finished on the twenty-eighth of May, and in it she performed altogether, one hundred and two times. Her reputation, however, proved to be greater in the metropolis than in the provinces. Nevertheless, on her return to London, she was greeted with an enthusiastic reception. The next season was celebrated by the failure of the "Jew of Aragon," and the affair with Mr. Westmacott; however, Miss Kemble added to her répertoire the characters of Mrs. Haller, Beatrice, Lady Constance, and Bianca in "Fazio."

In 1832 she came with her father to the United States, where she played with unprecedented success in the principal cities, confirming the reputation she had acquired, of being the greatest British actress of the age. While here she published her dramas, "The Star of Seville" and "Francis the First," and at this period she was a frequent contributor to the literary journals,—many of her best fugitive poems having appeared in the old "New York Mirror."

In 1834 she retired from the stage, and was married to Mr. Pierce Butler of Philadelphia, a gentleman of fortune, accomplishments, and an honorable character. The history of this union is sufficiently notorious. On both sides there was ambition: it was a distinction to be accepted by a woman of so much genius; it was a great happiness to change the dominion of a spendthrift and sometimes tyrannical father for that of a rich and indulgent husband. But a woman accustomed to the applause of the theater never yet was content with the repose of domestic life, and she was of all her sex the most ill-fitted by nature for such an existence. Her second resort to the stage in 1847, her fortunes at Manchester and in London, her return to America, her public readings of Shakspeare here, her divorce, and the very curious and unexplained circumstance of her translation of a profligate French play, and disposal of it as a piece of her own original composition, are all matters of too late occurrence to need recapitulation.

She is a woman of masculine abilities, tastes, and energies; fitted better for the camp than for the drawing-room, and often evincing a degree of discontent that she is not a man. She always acts, and has seldom, except when on the stage, the tact or ability even to seem natural. Her equestrian exhibitions in Boston and New York, during her more recent visits, illustrated the quality of her aspirations. Every day, at a particular hour, so that a crowd might assemble to look upon the performance, her horse was brought to the front of her hotel, and when mounted, with affected difficulty, made to rear and pitch as if he never before had felt the saddle or bit, and then to dash off as if upon a race-course or to escape an avalanche. The letters to her husband, with much tact but without any necessity displayed to the public, in her answer to his process for divorce, were admirable as compositions, and seemed to have been written in the very phrensy of passion; but their effect upon the reader was changed somewhat when he reflected that she had been sufficiently self-possessed meanwhile to make careful copies before sending them, to be exhibited, as specimens of her genius, to a mob of the pit, which never fails to recognize a point. Indeed, in petticoats or in pantaloons, making a show of her "heart" in the publication of these letters to a gentleman whom she had treated with every species of contempt, obloquy, and insult, until she had made his home insupportable, or courting the wondering admiration of country bumpkins by unsexing herself for feats of horsemanship, or for other athletic diversions, she is always anxious to produce a sensation, anxious to stir up the gentle public to a roar.

Still, with all her infirmities of taste and temper, Mrs. Kemble is a woman of unquestionable and very decided genius; a genius frequently displayed in literature, where its growth may be traced, in prose, from her foolish "Journal in America" to her more artistic "Year of Consolation;" and in poetry, where its development is seen from its budding in "Frances the First" to its most perfect blossoming in the recent collection of her "Poems." As an actress, her powers and qualifications are probably greater than those of any other tragedienne now on the English stage; and her characteristics and supremacy are likely to be far more profitably as well as distinctly evinced in her "Shakspeare Readings" than in any appearance before the footlights.

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LITERATURE IN AFRICA

The Bible has been translated into the principal language of eastern Africa, and the American Bible Society has lately received a copy of "EVANGELIO za avioondika LUCAS. The Gospel according to St. Luke, translated into Kinika, by the Rev. JOHN LEWIS KRAPF, Phil. Dr.; Bombay American Mission Press: T. Graham, printer; 1848." The Kinika language is spoken by the tribes living south of Abyssinia, toward Zanzibar. Dr. Krapf is a German missionary, in the service of the Church Missionary Society. He is now in Germany for the recovery of his health. The language resembles in some particulars the dialects used in Western Africa. The Independent copies, as a philological curiosity, the Lord's Prayer in Kinika:

"Babawehu urie mbinguni, Rizuke zinaro. Uzumbeo uze. Malondogo gabondeke hahikahi ya zi, za gafiohendeka mbinguni. Mukahewehu utosao, hu-ve suisui ziku kua ziku. Hu-ussire suisui maigehu; hakika suisui kahiri huna-mu-ussira kulla mutu akos saye zuluyehu. Si-hu-bumire suisui magesoni, ela hu-lafie suisui wiini."

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THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING

The British Association for the Advancement of Science assembled this year at Edinburgh, and its first general meeting was held on Wednesday, the 31st of July, when Sir DAVID BREWSTER, upon taking the chair, delivered a very interesting address upon the history of the Association, and the progress of the Sciences. On Thursday, business began in all the sections, and in the evening Prof. Bennett delivered a lecture on the passage of the blood through the minute vesicles of animals, in connection with nutrition. On Friday, a party of about seventy started under the direction of Mr. R. Chambers, to examine into the groovings on the western face of Corstophine Hill, and the striæ on the sandstone near Ravelstone. They afterward visited Arthur's Seat and St. Margaret's, where they examined the striated rocks and stones. In the evening there was a conversazione and promenade. Saturday was devoted to excursions. On Monday afternoon upward of two hundred members dined together, Sir David Brewster presiding. In the evening, Dr. Mantell delivered a lecture on the extinct birds of New Zealand. On Tuesday evening there was a full-dress promenade and soirée. On Wednesday, the general committee assembled to sanction the grants that had passed the Committee of Recommendations: and in the afternoon of the same day the concluding general meeting of the Association, for the accustomed ceremonial proceedings, was held. The next annual meeting is to take place at Ipswich, and Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, will preside. The meeting, altogether, was one of unusual interest; among the persons present were the chief lights of science, in the empire and from the continent, and our own country was represented by Prof. Hitchcock and several other scholars. The papers read in the various sections were numerous, and some of them are described as of very remarkable freshness and value. They will soon be accessible in the published Transactions, which will this year be more voluminous than ever.

The retiring President, Dr. Robinson, at the opening meeting, congratulated himself on being able to surrender his dominion to his successor in a more prosperous condition than he had received it, and spoke in glowing terms of the character and scientific achievements of that successor, of whose labors he gave a brief but glowing history. Sir David Brewster, who was one of the founders of the Association, is a native of Jedburgh, in Roxburgshire; where he was born December 11, 1781. He was educated for the Church of Scotland, of which he became a licentiate; and in 1800 he received the honorary degree of M. A. from the University of Edinburgh. While studying here he enjoyed the friendship of Robison, who then filled the Chair of Natural Philosophy; Playfair, of Mathematics; and Dugald Stewart that of Moral Philosophy. In 1808, he undertook the editorship of the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," which was only finished in 1830. In 1807 he received the honorary degree of LL. D. from the University of Aberdeen; and in 1808 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Between 1801 and 1812 he devoted his attention greatly to the study of Optics; and the results were published in a "Treatise on New Philosophical Instruments," in 1813. In 1815 he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for one of his discoveries in optical science; and soon after was admitted a Fellow of that body. In 1816, the Institute of France adjudged to him half of the physical prize of 3000 francs, awarded for two of the most important discoveries made in Europe, in any branch of science, during the two preceding years; and in 1819, Dr. Brewster received from the Royal Society the Rumford gold and silver medals, for his discoveries on the Polarization of Light. In 1816 he invented the Kaleidoscope, the patent-right of which was evaded, so that the inventor gained little beyond fame, though the large sale of the instrument must have produced considerable profit. In 1819, in conjunction with Dr. Jameson, he established the "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal"; and subsequently he commenced the "Edinburgh Journal of Science," of which sixteen volumes appeared. In 1825, the Institute of France elected him a Corresponding Member; and he has received the same honor from the Royal Academies of Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark. In 1831, he received the Decoration of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order; and in the following year, the honor of Knighthood from William the Fourth.

Sir David Brewster has edited and written various works, besides contributing largely to the Edinburgh Review, the Transactions of the British Association, and other scientific societies, and the North British Review. Among his more popular works are "A Treatise on the Kaleidoscope;" an original Treatise on Optics for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia; and Letters on Natural Magic and a Life of Sir Isaac Newton for the "Family Library." The latter work has been translated into German.

Sir David Brewster is likewise one of the editors of the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine.

The discoveries of Sir David Brewster range from the kaleidoscope to the law of the angle of polarization, the physical laws of metallic reflection, and the optical properties of crystals; and the venerable philosopher is the author of an immense number of facts and practical applications in every branch of optics.

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The AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION assembled this year at New Haven, and Was presided over by Alex. D. Bache, LL. D. of the Coast Survey. It was attended by many of the most eminent men of science in this country, among whom were President Woolsey, Professor Denison Olmsted, the elder and the younger Silliman, E. C. Herrick, and E. Loomis, of Yale College; Professors Louis Agassiz, E. N. Hosford and Benjamin Pierce of Harvard University; Lieutenant Charles H. Davis, U. S. N.; Professor O. M. Mitchell, Superintendent of the Cincinnati Observatory; Dr. A. L. Elwyn of Philadelphia; Professor Walter R. Johnson of Washington; Professor Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; William C. Redfield of New York; and an unusual number of amateur scholars from various parts of the Union. There were several papers of remarkable value, among which that of Mr. Squier, our Charge d'Affaires for Central America, was perhaps at this period of the most general interest. Others were puerile, and as unfit in subject as in ability for presentation in such an assembly. It is to be regretted that the Association does not adopt the only protection against such discreditable annoyances, by insisting upon the submission of everything offered for its consideration to a competent private committee.

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A GREAT NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, is said to have been discussed recently at the meetings of inferior societies, and we have read a circular upon the subject, which contemplates a convention of scholars and men of letters, at Washington, some time in the coming winter. The American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, and made respectable by the labors of many eminent men, is no longer in authority, and its proceedings command little attention. The various societies for the cultivation of the natural sciences, in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, are undoubtedly accomplishing much good, but the spheres and degrees of their influence would be greatly enlarged under a central organization. In such a design, the initiative should be taken by men of nerve as well as men of abilities, so that the dead weights of mediocrity so constantly obtruding into and making ridiculous the present societies, should be altogether excluded.

Hitherto, in this city, the most reputable and dignified association connected with the advancement of learning, has been the Ethnological Society. It is to be feared that with the death of Mr. Gallatin, its president, and the dispersion of so many of its active members in the diplomatic service, its action hereafter will deserve less consideration than has thus far been awarded to it.

LAMARTINE'S APOLOGY FOR HIS CONFIDENCES

Lamartine has just commenced the publication of a second part of his Confidences, in the feuilleton of La Presse, and precedes it by the following letter to the editor of that paper, which we translate for The International from La Presse of July 30. It relates to the way in which he came to publish the work, and gives a deeply interesting account of the pecuniary embarrassments under which he had for some time been laboring, and then eloquently defends the publication of what is real, and glowing in private life and experience.

To M. de Girardin:

In addressing to you, my dear Girardin, this third volume of private notes, to which the public have given the name of Confidences, I cannot repress an emotion of pain. What I foresaw but too well has happened. I have opened my life, and it has evaporated. This journal of my impressions has found grace, indulgence, interest even, with some readers, if I may judge from the anonymous friends who have written me. But the unsparing critics, men who mingle even our tears with their ink, in order to give more bitterness to their sarcasms, have not pardoned those outbursts of a soul of twenty. They have believed, or have pretended to believe, that I was seeking a miserable celebrity in the ashes of my own heart: they have said, that by an anticipation of vanity, I desired to gather and enjoy in advance, while yet living, the sad Flowers which might one day grow after me upon my tomb. They have cried out at the profanation of the inner feeling; at the effrontery of a soul shown naked; at the scandal of recollections made public; at the venality of sacred things; at the simony of the poet selling his own fibers to save the roof and the tree that overshadowed his cradle. I have read and heard in silence all their malign interpretations of an act, the true nature of which had been revealed to you long before it was to the public. I have answered nothing. What could I say? The appearances were against me. You alone knew that these notes had long existed, shut up in my casket of rosewood, along with the ten volumes of the notes of my mother; that they were intended never to be taken thence; that I rejected the first suggestion of publishing them, with all possible warmth of resolution; that I refused the ransom of a king for those leaves of no real value; and that finally, one day—a day for which I reproach myself-constrained fatally to choose between the necessity of selling my poor Charmettes—Charmettes, as dear and more holy than the Charmettes of the Confessions—and the necessity of publishing these pages, I preferred myself to suffer rather than cause suffering to good old servants, by selling their roofs and their vines to strangers. With one hand I received the price of the Confidences, and with the other I gave it to others in order to purchase time.

Behold here all the crime that I am expiating.

And let the critics rejoice till their vengeance is satiated. This sacrifice was in vain. It is in vain that I have cast upon the wind these leaves, torn from the book of my most pious memories. The time that their price procured has not proved sufficient to conduct me to the threshold of that abode where we cease to regret anything. My Charmettes have been sold. Let them be content. I have had the shame of publishing these Confidences, but not the joy of having saved my garden. Steps of strangers will efface there the steps of my father and mother. God is God, and sometimes he commands the wind to uproot the oak of a hundred years, and man to uproot his own heart. The oak and the heart are his, we must yield them to him, and yield him therewith justice, glory, and benedictions!

And now that my acceptance of these critics is complete, and that I confess myself guilty, and still more, afflicted—am I as guilty as they say, and is there no excuse, which, in the eyes of indulgent and impartial readers, can extenuate my crime?

In order to judge as to this, I have but one question to ask you, and the public, which deigns with distracted finger to turn these pages. My question is this:

Is it to myself, or to others, that the published pages of these Confidences can have done injury in the view of those who have read them? Is there a single man now living, is there a single memory of one of the dead, on whom these recollections have cast an odious or even unfavorable light, whether on his name, his family, his life, or his grave? Have they brought sadness to the soul of our mother in the heaven where she resides? Has the manly face of our father been lessened in the respect of his descendants? Has Graziella, that precocious and withered flower of my early manhood, received aught beyond a few tears of young girls shed on a tomb at Portici? Has Julia, the worship of my young enthusiasm, lost in the imagination of those who know the name, that purity which she has preserved in my heart? And my masters, those pious Jesuits, whose name I love not, but whose virtue I venerate; my friends, dearest and first harvested, Virieu Vignet, the Abbe Dumont, could they complain, returning here below, that I have disfigured their beautiful natures, discolored their noble images, or soiled one place in their lives? I appeal to all who have read. Would a single shade command me to efface a single line? Many of whom I have spoken are still living, or their sisters, or their sons, or their friends: have I humiliated them? They would have told me.

No! I have embalmed only pure recollections. My shroud was poor, but it was spotless. The modest name I have wrapped there for myself will neither be adorned nor dishonored by it. No tenderness will reproach me; no family will accuse me of profanation in naming it. A remembrance is an inviolable thing because it is voiceless, and must be approached with piety. I could never console myself if I had allowed to fall from this life into that other life, whence no one can answer, one word which could wound those absent immortals whom we call the dead. I desire that not a single word, thoughtfully uttered, should remain after me against one of the men who will one day be my survivors. Posterity is not the sewer of our passions—it is the urn of our memories, and should preserve nothing but perfumes.

These Confidences have then done injury or caused pain to no one, among the living or among the dead. I mistake, they have done injury to me, but to me alone. I have depicted myself such as I was: one of those natures, alas! so common among the children of women, wrought not of one clay only, not of that purified and exceptional substance which forms heroes, saints, and sages, but moulded of every earth which enters into the formation of the weak and passionate man; of lofty aspirations, and narrow wings; of great desires, and short hands to reach whither they are extended; sublime in ideal, vulgar in reality; with fire in the heart, illusion in the mind, and tears in the eyes; human statues, which attest by the diversity of the elements that compose them, the mysterious failings of our poor nature; in which, as in the metal of Corinth, we find after the fire the traces of all the melted metals which were mingled and confounded in it, a little gold and much lead. But, I repeat, whom have I injured but myself?

But they say, these unvailed exposures of sentiments and of life offend that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not blush! Who then are you?

Alas! I am what you see, a poor writer; a writer, that is to say, a thinker, in public. I am, less their genius and virtue, what were St. Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, all those men Who have silently interrogated their souls and replied aloud, so that their dialogue with themselves might also be a useful conversation with the century in which they lived, or with the future. The human heart is an instrument which has neither the same number nor quality of chords in every bosom, and on which new notes may eternally be discovered and added to the infinite scale of sentiments and melodies in the universe. This is our part, poets and writers in spite of ourselves, rhapsodists of the endless poem that nature chants to men and God! Why accuse me, if you excuse yourselves? Are we not of the same family of the Homeridae, who from door to door recount histories, of which they are by turns the historians and the heroes? Is it, then, in the nature of thought to become a crime in becoming public? A thought, vulgar, critical, skeptical, dogmatic, may, according to you, be unvailed innocently: a sentiment, commonplace, cold, not intimate, awaking no palpitation within you, no response in others, may be revealed without violation of modesty; but a thought that is pious, ardent, lighted at the fire of the heart or of heaven, a sentiment burning, cast forth by an explosion of the volcano of the soul; a cry of the inmost nature, awaking by its accent of truth young and sympathetic voices in the present age or the future: and above all, a tear! a tear not painted like those which flow upon your shrouds of parade, a tear of water and salt, falling from the eyes, instead of a drop of ink, falling from the pen! This is crime! this is shame! this is immodesty, for you! That is to say, that whatever is cold and artificial is innocent in the artist, but what is warm and natural is unpardonable in the man. That is to say, modesty in a writer consists in exposing what is false, immodesty in setting forth what is true. If you have talent, show it, but not your soul, carrying mine away! Oh, shame! What logic!

But after all, you are right at bottom, only you do not know how to express it. It is perfectly true that there are mysteries, nudities, parts of the soul not shameful but sensitive, depths, personalities, last foldings of thought and feeling, which would cost horribly to uncover, and which an honorable and natural scruple would never permit us to lay bare, without the remorse of violated modesty. There is, I agree with you, such a thing as indiscretion of heart. I felt this cruelly myself, the first time when, having written certain poetic dreams of my soul certain too real utterances of my sentiments, I read them to my most intimate friends. My face was covered with blushes, and I could not finish. I said to them: "No, I cannot go farther; you shall read it." "And how is it," answered my friends, "that you cannot read to us what you are about to give to all Europe to read?" "No," I said, "I cannot tell why, but I feel no shame in letting the public read it, though I experience an invincible repugnance to reading it myself, face to face to only two or three of my friends."

They did not understand me—I did not understand myself. We together exclaimed at the inconsistency of the human heart. Since then I have felt the same instinctive repugnance at reading to a single person what cost me not a single effort of violated modesty to give to the public: and after having long reflected on it, I find that this apparent inconsistency is at bottom only the perfect logic of our nature.

And why is this? The reason is, that a friend is somebody and the public nobody; a friend has a face, the public has not; a friend is a being, present, hearing, looking, a real being—the public is an invisible being, a being of the reason, an abstraction; a friend has a name, and the public is anonymous; a friend is a confidant, and the public is a fiction. I blush before the one, because he is a man; I do not blush before the other, because it is an idea. When I write or speak before the public, I feel myself as free, as exempt from the susceptibilities of one man to another, as if I were speaking or writing before God and in the desert; the crowd is a solitude; you see it, you know that it exists, but you know it only as a mass. As an individual it does not exist. Now this modesty of which you speak, being the respect of one's self before some other person, when there is no person distinct on account of the multitude, becomes without a motive. Psyche blushed under a lamp because the hand of a single god passed over her, but when the sun gazed at her with his thousand rays from the height of Olympus, that personification of the modest soul did not blush before the whole heaven. Here is the exact image of the modesty of a writer before a single auditor, and of the freedom of his utterance before all the world. Do you accuse me of violating mysteries before you? You have not the right: I do not know you, I have confided nothing to you personally. You are guilty of impropriety in reading what is not addressed to you. You are somebody, you are not the public. What do you want with me? I have not spoken to you: you have nothing to say to me, and I nothing to reply.

So thought St. Augustine, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Cæsar, Bernardin de St. Pierre, Montaigne, Alfieri, Chateaubriand, and all other men who have confided to the world the genuine palpitations of their own hearts. True gladiators they are in the human Colosseum, not playing miserable comedies of sentiment and style to distract an academy, but struggling and dying in earnest on the stage of the world, and writing on the sand, with the blood of their own veins, the heroism, the failings, or the agonies of the human heart.

Having said this, I resume these notes where I left them, blushing for one thing only before these critics, that is, for not having either the soul of St. Augustine or the genius of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in order to merit, by indiscretions as sacred and touching, the pardon of tender hearts and the condemnation of narrow minds, that take every movement of the soul for an obscenity, and hide their faces whenever they are shown a heart.

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BALZAC

We have news from Paris of the death of Honore De Balzac, one of the most eminent French writers of the nineteenth century. "Eighteen months ago," says a Paris letter, "already attacked by dropsy, he quitted France to contract a marriage with a Russian lady, to whom he was devotedly attached. To her he had dedicated 'Seraphitus,' and he had accumulated in his hotel of the Beaujoin quarters all the luxuries which could contribute to her pleasure. He returned to France three months ago, in a state of extreme danger. Last week he underwent an operation for abscess in his legs: mortification ensued. On the morning of the 18th he became speechless, and at midnight he expired. His sister, Madame de Surville, visited his deathbed, and the pressure of her hand was the last sign he gave of intelligence." We must defer for another occasion what we have to say of the great novelist-the idol of women, even at seventy-the Voltaire of our age, as he was accustomed to style himself in private—the historian of society—French society—as it is. The author of Le Peau de Chagrin, Le Physiologie du Marriage, Le Dernier Chauan, Eugene Grandet, and the Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, and Scenes de la Vie de Province, was one of the marks of the era, and being dead, we will speculate upon him. At present we can only translate for the International the following funeral oration by Victor Hugo, pronounced at his grave:

"GENTLEMEN—The man who has just descended into this tomb is one of those whom the public sorrow follows to the last abode. In the times where we are all fictions have disappeared. Henceforth our eyes are fixed not on the heads that reign but on the heads that think, and the whole country is affected when one of them disappears. At this day, the people put on mourning for the man of talent, the nation for the man of genius.

"Gentlemen, the name of Balzac will be mingled in the luminous trace that our epoch will leave in the future.

"M. de Balzac belonged to that potent generation of writers of the nineteenth century who came after Napoleon, just as the illustrious pleiades of the seventeenth century came after Richelieu, and in the development of civilization a law caused the domination of thought to succeed the domination of the sword.

"M. de Balzac was one of the first among the greatest, one of the highest among the best. This is not the place to say all or that splendid and sovereign intelligence. All his books form only one hook, living, luminous, profound, in which we see moving all our contemporaneous civilization, mingled with I know not what of strange and terrible; a marvelous book, that the poet has entitled comedy, and which he might have called history; which assumes all forms and all styles: which goes beyond Tacitus and reaches Suetonius, which crosses Beaumarchais and reaches Rabelais; a book which is observation itself, and imagination itself; which is prodigal of the true, the passionate, the common, the trivial, the material, and which at moments throws athwart realities, suddenly and broadly torn open, the gleam of the most somber and tragic ideal.

"Without knowing it, whether he will or not, whether he consents or not, the author of this strange and immense work is of the mighty race of revolutionary writers. Balzac goes directly to his object. He assails modern society face to face. From all he forces something: from some illusions, from others hope, from these a cry of pain, from those a mask. He unvails vice and dissects passion. He penetrates and sounds the heart, the soul, the sentiments, the brain, the abyss that each man has within him. And by a gift of his free and vigorous nature, by a privilege of the intelligences of our times,—who, having seen revolutions nearly and with their own eyes, perceive better the end of humanity and comprehend better the course of Providence,—Balzac came forth serene and smiling from those redoubtable studies which produced melancholy in Moliere and misanthropy in Rousseau.

"This is what he has accomplished among us. Such is the work he has left us, lofty and solid, a pile of granite, a monumental edifice, from whose summit his renown will henceforth shine. Great men make their own pedestals: the future charges itself with their statues.

"His death has struck Paris with stupor. But a few months since he returned to France. Feeling that he was about to die, he desired to see his country, like one who on the eve of a long voyage comes to embrace his mother.

"His life was brief, but crowded; fuller of labors than of days.

"Alas, the powerful and indefatigable laborer, the philosopher, the thinker, the poet, the man of genius, lived among us the life of storms, of struggles, of quarrels, of combats, common in all times to all great men. Today, behold him here at peace. He leaves collisions and hostilities. The same day he enters on glory and the tomb. Henceforth he will shine above all the clouds over our heads, among the stars of our country.

"And you all who are here, are you not tempted to envy him?

"Gentlemen, whatever be our sorrow in the presence of such a loss, let us resign ourselves to these catastrophes. Let us accept them in their poignancy and severity. It is good perhaps, and necessary, in an epoch like ours, that from time to time a great death should communicate a religious book to minds devoured by doubt and skepticism. Providence knows what it does when it thus puts a whole people face to face with the supreme mystery, and gives it Death to meditate upon, which is at once the great equality and the great liberty.

"Providence knows what it does, for here is the highest of instructions. There can be in all hearts only austere and serious thoughts when a sublime spirit majestically makes its entrance upon the other life; when one of those beings whom the visible wings of genius have long sustained above the crowd, suddenly puts forth those other wings that we cannot see, and disappears in the unknown!

"No, it is not the unknown! No, I have already said it on another mournful occasion, and I shall not weary in repeating it, it is not darkness, it is light! It is not the end, it is the beginning! It is not nothing, it is eternity! Is not this true, I ask all that hear me? Such graves as this are proofs of immortality. In the presence of the illustrious dead we feel more distinctly the divine destinies of this intelligence called man, which traverses the earth to suffer and to be purified; and we know that those who have shone with genius during life, must be living souls after death."

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DR. GUTZLAFF, THE MISSIONARY

CHARLES GUTZLAFF the famous missionary in China is described in the Grenzboten by a writer who lately heard him preach at Vienna, as a short, stout man, with a deep red face, a large mouth, sleepy eyes, pointed inward and downward like those of a China man, vehement gesticulations, and a voice more loud than melodious. He has acquired in his features and expression something like the expression of the people among whom he lives. His whole manners also, as well as his face, indicate the genuine son of Jao and Chun, so that the Chinese when they encounter him in the street salute him as their countryman. We translate for The International the following sketch of his life and labors:

Charles Gutzlaff was born in 1803, at Pyritz, a village of Pomerania. His zeal as an apostle was first manifested some fifteen years ago. He married an English woman, who was animated with the same aspiration as himself and who accompanied him on his voyages as a missionary. His extensive acquaintance with the Chinese and kindred languages even then made deep impression on Robert Morrison, the founder of the Evangelical Mission in China, whom he joined in 1831 at Macao, and caused his Acquaintance to be much sought by the merchants. In 1832 and 1833 he was employed as an interpreter on board ships engaged in smuggling opium, but turned this occupation, which in itself was not of a very saintly character, to his religious ends, by the dissemination of tracts and Bibles. A missionary journey to Japan which he undertook in 1837 was without any result. After Morrison's death Gutzlaff was appointed Chinese Secretary to the British Consulate at Canton, and in 1840 founded a Christian Union of Chinese for the propagation of the Gospel among their countrymen. His present journey through Europe has a similar purpose, the foundation of Missionary Societies for the spread of Christianity in China.

His literary labors have had an almost incredible extent and variety. He Himself gives the following enumeration of his writings: "In Dutch I have written: a History of our Mission and of distinguished Missionaries, and an appeal for support of the Missionary Work; in German: Sketches of the Minor Prophets; in Latin: The Life of our Savior; in English: Sketches of Chinese History; China Opened; Life of Kanghe, together with a great number of articles on the Religion, History, Philosophy, Literature and Laws of the Chinese; in Siamese: a Translation of the New Testament, with the Psalms, and an English-Siamese Dictionary, English-Cambodian Dictionary and English-Laos Dictionary. These works I left to my successors to finish, but with the exception of the Siamese Dictionary they have added nothing to them. In Cochin-Chinese: a Complete Dictionary Cochin-Chinese-English and English-Cochin-Chinese; this work is not yet printed. In Chinese: Forty Tracts, along with three editions of the Life of our Savior; a Translation of the New Testament, the third edition of which I have carried through the press. Of the Translations of the Old Testament the Prophets and the two first books of Moses are completed. In this language I have also written The Chinese Scientific Monthly Review, a History of England, a History of the Jews, a Universal History and Geography, on Commerce, a short Account of the British Empire and its Inhabitants, as well as a number of smaller articles. In Japanese: a Translation of the New Testament, and of the first book of Moses, two tracts, and several scientific pamphlets. The only paper to which I now send communications is the Hong Kong Gazette, the whole Chinese department of which I have undertaken. Till the year 1842 I wrote for the Chinese Archives."

The writer in the Grenzboten goes on to say that "so vast a surface as these writings cover, requires a surprising facility of mind and an indefatigable perseverance. When you see the man engaged in his missionary toils you understand the whole at once. He arrives in a city and hastens to the church which is prepared for his reception. After preaching for an hour with the greatest energy he takes up his collection and is gone. He speaks with such rapidity that it is hardly possible to follow him. Such rapidity is not favorable to excellence in the work. Of all his writings, only one work is known to me, that published in Munich, in 1847, under the title of 'Gutzlaffs History of the Chinese Empire from the earnest times to the Peace of Nankin'. In our imperfect acquaintance with Chinese history this compendium is not without value, but it displays no critical power, and is a mere external compilation and poorly written. From it we learn as good as nothing of the peculiar customs and state of mental culture of the country. The whole resembles a Christian History of the World written in the eighteenth century, Beginning with Adam and Eve, and leaving the Greeks and Romans out altogether because they were without a divine revelation."

Mr. Gutzlaff's family were recently for several months in the United States, and the proceedings of the great missionary—second in eminence only to our own Judson—have always been regarded with much interest by the American churches.

AUTHORS AND BOOKS

The Asiatic Society at Paris has just held its twenty-eighth yearly session. According to the report of its Secretary and Financial Committee, this society has suffered little from the disastrous times which have fallen on literature generally. In 1848, being uncertain as to the future, it stopped receiving subscriptions to works with a view to their publication, and arrested the printing of those which were already commenced, with the single exception of the Asiatic Journal, which the members determined not to alter in any case. The series of this journal is of great value, containing already fifty-five volumes, to which two new ones are added every year. For many years it has contained only original articles, though formerly it admitted translations from other European languages. Of course, in so voluminous a periodical work, the contents vary in character, but the whole is of the greatest importance to History, Belles Lettres, and Philology, and should not be wanting in any public library. The society has now resumed the suspended publications, beginning with the "Chronicles of Cashmir", by the Austrian Orientalist Captain Troyer, two volumes of which were issued some time since. Troyer is a remarkable man. As an Austrian artillery and staff officer he served in all the wars, from the breaking out of the French Revolution to the Peace of Paris. While in Italy, he passed some time at the head-quarters of Lord William Bentinck, as an Austrian Commissioner, and so gained his esteem and confidence that he was invited to go with Lord William to Madras as his military secretary. When Lord William resigned the government of Madras, Troyer remained for some time as Director of the East India Company's School for Artillery and Engineers, till finally he resigned and came to Paris. In 1829, Lord William went again to India as Governor-General, and persuaded Troyer to go with him. While in India at this time, among other offices Troyer filled that of Secretary of the Hindoo College. In 1834, when Bentinck again left India, Troyer once more resigned his functions, and has since been in Paris, devoting an active and honorable old age to constant labors upon Persian and Indian literature.

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The FRENCH ACADEMY held its annual public session on the 8th of August, in the presence of a large audience, including almost all the literary celebrities of the metropolis, both masculine and feminine. The prizes of victory were given to Napoleon Hurney, who had saved the lives of fourteen persons, and to Marguerite Briand, for having supported and taken care for forty-five years of her mistress, who had fallen from wealth into the extremest poverty. M. de Salvandy, who bestowed these prizes, delivered the usual eulogy on virtue in general, winding up with praise of Louis Philippe and his reign, a thing more creditable perhaps to the fidelity and consistency of the speaker, who has never renounced his allegiance to the Orleans family, than proper to the occasion.

The literary prizes were distributed by M. Villemain. The grand prize of ten thousand francs for the best work on the history of France, was given to Augustin Thierry. Emile Angier received a prize of seven thousand francs for his comedy of "Gabrielle," and M. Antran one of three thousand for his "Daughter of Æsehylus." Three ladies got prizes worth two thousand francs each for works of a popular nature on moral subjects; M. A. Garnier got one of one thousand for his Morale Sociale; M. Martin the same for his Philosophie Spiritualiste de la Nature, and M. Kastus the same for his Psycologie d'Aristote. The crown for the best specimen of eloquence was awarded to M. Baudrillast for his Eulogy on Madame de Stael, in which the literary history and character of the subject were served up in the most florid style. The same writer once before won the same prize by a eulogy on Turgot. His productions are more elaborate and showy than substantial and permanent in their character.

It must be said that this Academy is rather a respectable and slow-moving institutution. The most illustrious names of France are not always included in the list of its members. Neither Beranger nor Lamenais belong to it. A writer in the Paris National says that after three hours at its meeting everybody he met in the street seemed to belong to the time of Louis XI.

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EDWARD EVERETT has been many years engaged in the collection and arrangement of materials for a systematic Treatise on the Modern Law of Nations; more especially in reference to those questions which nave been discussed between the governments of the United States and Europe since the Peace of 1783. This will be Mr. Everett's "life poem." Hitherto he has written nothing very long except the "Defense of the Christian Religion," published when he was about twenty-one years of age. We have just received from Little & Brown their edition of the "Orations and Speeches" of Mr. Everett, in two very large and richly-printed volumes, which we shall hereafter notice more largely. These are to be followed, at the author's leisure, by his Political Reports and Speeches and Official Papers, in two large volumes, and his contributions to the North American Review, which, if all included, we think will make four others: so that his works, beside the new treatise above mentioned, will be completed in not less than eight volumes. We are gratified at the prospect of such a collection of these masterpieces of rhetoric, so full of learning and wisdom, and infused by so genial a spirit. We wish some publisher would give us in the same style all the writings of Alexander Everett.

CHARLES MACKAY has lately published in London, a work upon which he had long been engaged, under the title of "Progress of the Intellect." We suspect, from the reviewals of it which appear in the journals, that it is of the German free thinking class of philosophical histories. It embraces dissertations on Intellectual Religion, Ancient Cosmogony, the Metaphysical Idea of God, the Moral Notion of God, the Theory of Mediation, Hebrew Theory of Retribution and Immortality, the Messianic Theory prevailing in the days of Jesus, Christian Forms and Reforms, and Speculative Christianity. And these dissertations are written with an eloquence and power unexampled in a work of so much learning.

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M. AND MAD. DE LAMARTINE having returned from the East, are at present Staying at the Villa du Prado, a branch of the Hotel des Empereurs, a pleasant house on the banks of the Huveaune, in the midst of the most beautiful landscape. It was in a country box, upon the Avenue du Prado, that Lamartine wrote, in 1847, his "Histoire des Girondins." Lamartine is pleased with his Smyrna estate; he was received there by his vassals en grand seigneur, but he found that he would be obliged to expend a good deal of money before the estate would be profitable.

* * * * *

THEODORE PARKER'S "Massachusetts Quarterly Review," is dead, and—God be Praised that New England refused to support it any longer. Mr. Parker says in the farewell to his readers, that the work "has never become what its projector designed that it should be;" and expresses a hope that "some new journal will presently be started, in a more popular form, which will promote the great ideas of our times, by giving them an expression in literature, and so help them to a permanent organization in the life of mankind."

* * * * *

CAPT. SIR EDWARD BELCHER, R.N., known in the literary and scientific world by his extensive voyages of survey and discovery, is now on a visit to New York, whence he will shortly proceed to Texas. Sir Edward Belcher is a gentleman of remarkable energy of character, and of eminent abilities.

* * * * *

A LETTER from M. Guizot, assigning the motives of his refusal to appear as a candidate of the Institute for a seat in the Superior Council of Public Instruction, is published by the Espérance of Nancy. The Principles avowed by M. Guizot lead directly to a separation of Church and State.

* * * * *

JOHN G. SAXE will soon publish a new poem which he delivered recently at the commencement of Middlebury College, with the applause which crowns all his efforts in this way.

* * * * *

A RE-ISSUE of the Complete Works of Eliza Cook will be shortly commenced in her Journal, and continued weekly until completed.

* * * * *

THE INSTITUTE OF GOETHE has just been founded by the government of Saxe Weimar. It consists simply of a prize of twenty thousand francs offered to the competition of the literary and artistic world. The first year it will be given to the best among the poems, romances, and dramatic works submitted; the second year to the best picture; the third year to the best piece of statuary; the fourth year to the best piece of music, whether sacred or profane, opera or oratorio. This circle having been completed, the prize will next be given as at the first year; and so on in regular succession. The successful competitor is to remain proprietor of his work, as are all the others. The prize will he allotted by two committees, one at Weimar the other at Berlin. The establishment of the fund was celebrated at Weimar on the 23d of August.

* * * * *

GIFFORD, some five-and-twenty years ago, declared that all the fools of the country had taken to write plays; and it would appear that all the dull Englishmen of our day have taken to write pamphlets on the slave-trade. The London Times is very severe upon a book just issued by Mr. W. Gore Ouseley, who was several years British Charge d'Affaires at Rio, as such conducted a voluminous correspondence on the subject with the government of Brazil, and might have been expected to have there learned something on the slave-trade worth telling. According to his reviewer he appears, however, to be one of that class of persons described by Sterne, who, traveling from Dan to Beersheba, found all to be barren; and no amount of observation can in any human being supply defective reasoning faculties. So, says the Times, he has little or nothing to say about the Brazilian slave-trade that has not been better said a thousand times before; and when he does venture on a special statement of his own, it topples down the whole superstructure of his argument.

A work of rather more interest is "Seven Years' Service on the Slave Coast of Africa", by Sir Henry Huntley, who, when a lieutenant in the navy in 1831, was ordered to the scene of his observations. Shortly after his arrival, he was appointed to the independent command of a small vessel, in which he visited stations, looked out for slavers, chased them when he saw them, and captured them when he could. A few years subsequently he was nominated Governor of the settlements on the Gambia. His two volumes contain his adventures during the whole or nearly the whole of his seven years' service upon the station; the last closing abruptly in the middle of preparations for a congress of black kings. The public is already familiar with many of the topics, from the occasional narratives of voyages and adventures along the coast. Visits to the commandants of the so-called castles; a description of the European and native mode of life at the settlements; accounts of the slave-stations, the slave-dealers, the slaves, and the slave-trade, together with sketches of more legitimate commerce, and occasional trips to the islands lying off the coast, for change of air and fresh supplies, are frequent features. Sir Henry Huntley's duties sometimes brought him in contact with native chiefs, and continually with slavers, in the search, the capture, and the pursuit. During the latter part of his career, the office of Governor gave great variety and largeness to his subjects; consisting of public business, palavers with native potentates, and matters connected with home policy. In point of literary character this work very nearly resembles the author's "Peregrine Scramble." Indeed, the "Seven Years' Service" is a sort of continuation of that book, without the form of fiction.

* * * * *

M. JULES LECHEVALIER, known in this country chiefly as one of the foreign Correspondents of The Tribune, but in Europe as an able writer on the Social Sciences, has recently delivered in Paris and Berlin, and in London, (where he is residing as a political exile,) a series of lectures, which will soon be given to the world in a volume, upon the subject of his favorite studies. M. Lechevalier's system, which he denominates "New Political Economy," is based upon the principle of association, in opposition to that of competition and laissez-faire, which constitute the groundwork of the school of the present political economists. In the course of his series he pointed out the gradual tendency of the competitive principle to produce extremes of riches and poverty, and ultimately revolutions, and maintained, that by the adoption of the associative principle alone, society can be preserved from confusion and destruction. He contends that the new political economy, or Socialism, is essentially Conservative, while the present system of unlimited competition, or buying cheap and selling dear, is destructive, M. Lechevalier pretends to base his system on the moral principles of Christ, and maintains that Christianity cannot be practically carried out in any other way. His lectures abound in examples of the working of the two opposing systems.

* * * * *

The Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, Boston, are going forward in the work of re-publishing the old standard works of the New-England theology. They have issued a fine edition of Bellamy and have procured an edition of Edwards the younger. They are now about commencing the stereotyping of Catlin's Compendium, and the whole works of Dr. Hopkins. We wish they would go back a century further, and give us the best works of Mather and his contemporaries.

* * * * *

There is a political novel by OTTO MULLER, of Manheim, announced, under the title Georg Volker: ein Vreiheits Roman, which is said to give a faithful picture of the Baden revolution, and to open with the rise of the peasantry in the Ottenwald.

* * * * *

THE DUC DE LA ROUCHEFOUCAULD's celebrated "Moral Reflections, Sentences, and Maxims," have just appeared in a new and very much improved translation, and with notes, pointing out similarities of sentiments in ancient and modern authors, and sometimes proving that Rochefoucauld's good things have been made use of without sufficient acknowledgment, by moderns. There is also an introduction, which dissertates well on the purpose and quality of the reflections. Such books were once very popular; but in this country they have not been much read. We have indeed had numerous editions of "Lacon," and Dr. Bettner's "Acton" has found a thousand purchasers; but the Rev. Dr. Hooker's "Maxims," which, in our opinion, are as good as anything of their kind in the English language, we believe have not attracted attention, and Mr. Simms's "Egeria" has been printed only in the columns of a newspaper.

* * * * *

A new theory has just been propounded at Paris in a book called "Armanase," (a Sanscrit word, meaning the "Reign of Capacity"). The author asserts the present forms of administrative government are injurious instead of useful to society, and ought to be replaced by institutions of a new and different order. His principle is, that the sovereignty of the individual ought to be instituted for that of governments, and that great associations of mutual assurance may be advantageously substituted for the existing system of management by office-holders. The author shows also that the progress of the natural and mechanical sciences will deliver man from the pressure of the more painful sorts of labor; and that wealth, freed from the barriers which now hinder its circulation, would be distributed freely throughout society. Intellectual property would be seriously guaranteed, and would enrich the men of genius, whose inventions and discoveries are now profitable, not to the authors, but to the capitalists who take advantage of them. By this means an important element of revolutions will be removed. The author proposes, that in order to prevent all suffering, a civil list shall be set apart for the people, who will be the king. This civil list is to be composed of a tax of one per cent., levied on all who have property in favor of those who have nothing. But, says he, let no one imagine that all would be dissolution and ruin in this system, without law or government. Crimes and offenses will be tried by juries, that is to say, by a living code. Property will no longer be seizable for debt, and the courts will become useless. Everybody shall have the absolute right to buy land by paying its possessor ten per cent, on its value: this is to give a chance for carrying on all sorts of grand public enterprises without trouble from the proprietors of little pieces of land. It may perhaps be doubted, whether the "Reign of Capacity" has exhibited any astonishing endowments in that respect.

* * * * *

THACKERAY, in Pendennis, has given offense, it appears, to some of the gensd'armes of the Press, by his satirical sketches of the literary profession. Those whose withers are unwrung will admit the truth of many pages and laugh at the caricature in the rest. In the last number of the North British Review is a clever article upon the subject, written with good temper and good sense. Hitherto publishers have been ridiculed and declaimed against as "tyrants" and "tradesmen,"—made to bear the onus of "poetical" improvidence, and to sustain the weight of a crime which no author can pardon—the rejection of manuscripts. The authors have painted the portraits of publishers; but an ancient fable suggests that if the lion had painted a certain picture, it would not have been a lion we should see biting the dust.

* * * * *

M. DE LUYNES is now engaged at Paris in publishing a work on the antiquities of Cyprus. He has discovered a number of inscriptions in ancient Cyprian writing, and is having them engraved on copper. The writing is that which preceded the introduction of the Phoenician character upon the island, and seems to have no affinity either with that or with the Assyrian, which is discovered to have been once used there. The work of M. de Luynes will open a new problem for the philologists. It will be difficult to decipher the inscriptions and language, unless there can be found somewhere an ancient Cyprian inscription, with a translation in some known tongue; but in a time which has read the riddles of the pyramids, nothing of this sort is to be despaired of. M. de Luynes is the last of the great French nobles who makes a worthy use of his riches.

* * * * *

SIR ROBERT PEEL left full and specific directions in his will for the early publication of his political memoirs; and ordered that the profits arising from the publication shall be given to some public institution for the education of the working-classes. He believed his manuscripts and correspondence to be of great value, as showing the characters of the great men of his age; and directed that his correspondence with the Queen and Prince Albert shall not be published during their lives without their express consent. He confided the task of preparing these memoirs to Lord Mahon and Mr. Cardwell. Their duty will, however, be comparatively light, though delicate, from the admirable and orderly state in which he left his papers.

* * * * *

MR. JOHN P. BROWN, author of "The Turkish Nights Entertainments," recently published by Putnam, is now on a visit to this country as the Secretary of the Commissioner of the Sublime Porte, Captain Ammin Bey.

* * * * *

EUGENE SUE'S new romance "The Mysteries of the People," has been prohibited in Prussia.

* * * * *

M. BURNET DE PESLE has just published the first part of his Examen Critique de la Succession des Dynasties Egyptiennes, a work to which competent critics assign a high value. He follows the method of Champollion, rejecting hypotheses and admitting only the testimony of the historians and monuments. At the same time he treats his subject with independence and originality, though he advances nothing for the sake of novelty. The second part of the work will be devoted to the discussion of the ancient inscriptions, dynasty by dynasty, and reign by reign.

* * * * *

WASHINGTON IRVING is claimed by the English as by both birth and spirit a British author. In the question of copyright lately before the Vice Chancellor, the case rested in part upon a plea that Mr. Irving's father was from the Orkneys and his mother from Falmouth, so that, though he was born in New York, he was not an alien. Still, our "Diedrich Knickerbocker" was Colonel Irving once, and served in this capacity against the king, and it will not he safe for him to establish the position assumed by his publisher.

* * * * *

M. ARAGO, having completed his love-labor in honor of Condorcet, is again abstracting from scientific pursuits a portion of his time, to prepare a memoir upon the acts and doings of the Provisional Government of 1848 of which he was a member. It is said to be a curious work which will enlighten much that is yet dark in the history of that period, throwing additional obloquy upon some members, and relieving others of a portion of that which they have hitherto borne. M. Chemiega is also engaged upon his own account in similar historical labors.

* * * * *

DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, on the 9th of September, delivered a poem, described by a correspondent of the Commercial Advertiser as one of his finest compositions, before a large audience, assembled to dedicate a rural cemetery at Pittsfield, Mass.

* * * * *

M. DUGANNE, some of whose songs and dramatic pieces have the ring of true metal, has just completed a satire entitled "Parnassus in Pillory," and with the motto, "Lend me your ears." We have seen some advance sheets of it, which are full of wit and spirit.

* * * * *

SOUTH CAROLINA has always been prolific of epics. Those of Mr. Simmons, Dr. Marks of Barhamville, and some others, have been tried, and-the court of criticism has now before it from the same quarter "America Discovered, in Twelve Books."

* * * * *

JOHN NEAL has given notice of his intention to write a history of American Literature "in two large octavo volumes," and he invites authors who are not afraid to show their books, to send them to him at Portland without delay.

* * * * *

"GERMANIA, ITS COURTS, CAMPS AND PEOPLE," is the title of a brace of volumes by "the Baroness Blaize de Bury." And who, pray, is the Baroness Blaize de Bury? A writer in The Leader answers after this wise:

"Why, sir, she is somewhat of a myth, making her avatars in literature with all the caprice and variety of Vishnou or Brougham; her maiden name of Rose Stewart has not, that we can discover, been stained with printer's ink, but we trace her as 'Arthur Dudley' in the Revue des Deux Mondes writing upon Bulwer and Dickens, we next find her as 'Maurice Flassan' in Les Français Aeints par eux-mémes. Rumor further whispereth that she had a finger in 'Albert Lunel,' one of the eccentricities of an eccentric law-lord, which was hurriedly suppressed, one knows not why; in the Edinburgh Review she wrote a paper on Molière, and for Charles Knight's Weekly Volume a pleasant little book about Racine, on the title-page of which she is styled 'Madame Blaize Bury;' since that time you observe she has blossomed into a Baroness de Bury! Let us add that she is the wife of Henri Blaze, known as agreeable critic and the translator of Faust, that she is said to be a great favorite with the author of 'Albert Lunel,' and that she has the two novels 'Mildred Vernon' and 'Leonie Vermont' placed to her account: how many other shapes she may have assumed we know not; are these not enough? Whether, after all, a flesh-and-blood Madame de Bury exists is more than We can decide. Une supposition! what if, after all, she should turn out to be Lord Brougham himself? The restless energy of that Scottish Phenomenon renders everything possible. He does not agree with Pliny's witty friend, that it is better to be idle than to do nothing—satius est otiosum esse quam nihil agere."

* * * * *

REV. CHARLES ELLIOT, D.D. of Cincinnati, has published, through the Methodist printing house of that city, an important work on Slavery, in two duodecimo volumes. Dr. Ellliot has declined the acceptance of the Biblical Professorship in McKendree College, on the ground that he is busily engaged in preparing works for the press, including a thorough investigation of the Biblical argument in defense of slavery.

* * * * *

A NEW edition of a Lexicon of the Dakota language (of an Indian tribe near Lake Superior,) has just been completed by the missionaries. It contains upward of fifteen thousand words. Near thirteen years or more of labor have been expended upon it.

* * * * *

JUDGE SYDNEY BREESE, late U.S. Senator, at the commencement of Knox College, delivered a discourse before the Literary Societies on the Early History of Illinois. It is said to be part of a volume he is preparing, and had reference to the first ninety years of Illinois history.

* * * * *

MR. LAYARD, in excavating beneath the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass of masonry, within which he had discovered the tomb and statue of Sardanapalus, with full annals of that monarch's reign engraved on the walls.

* * * * *

MR. H. H. WILSON, F.R.S., has published in London, a collection of Ancient Hindu Hymns, constituting the First Ashtaka, or Book, of the Rig-Veda, the oldest Authority for the religious and social institutions of the Hindus. The translation of the Rig-Veda-Sonhita is valuable for the scholar who wishes to study the most ancient belief, opinions, and modes of the Hindus, so far as they can be gathered from hymns addressed to the deities. At the same time, their mystery or obscurity, increased by remoteness of years, is perhaps so considerable, that it will require peculiar learning to profit by the materials this most ancient and important of the Vedas contains.

* * * * *

DR. SHELTON MACKENZIE, author of "Mornings at Matlock," has been appointed, through the influence of Lord Brougham, to the office of official assignee to the Court of Bankruptcy, in Manchester.

* * * * *

The Fine Arts.

THE FINE ARTS IN AMERICA are not in a state of remarkable perfection, if we may credit a writer in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung. This critic is evidently honest and impartial, but not perfectly well informed. He supposes that the majority of the artists as well as of the scholars in the country are emigrants from Europe; and affirms that artists of great talent, who have been esteemed and encouraged in Europe, have been reduced to misery in America, and compelled to resort to common labor for their living. Latterly, however, fashion has brought pictures into market; and we may now hear, in more refined circles, here and there a misapplied artistic term, which shows that art is somewhat thought of. It is characteristic that an American will often bargain for pictures by the square foot. The New York Art Union has done a good deal of good in the culture of taste for art, and from the Philadelphia Art Union much may also be expected. The daguerreotypes taken here may be compared with the best of Voightländer of Vienna and Williams of Liverpool. The talbotypes of this country are better than all others. Lithographing is done mostly by French and Germans; wood-cutting and steel-engraving by Englishmen and Americans. The products of the latter two resemble perfectly those of the same arts in England. Dramatic and musical art are in a feeble condition. The theaters in the great cities have been visited by the writer, and nothing admirable found in them. They are all private enterprises, and no great things are to be expected in that line without the aid of a government. The theaters are built and furnished in the most elegant and even luxurious style. The Italian Opera in New York is supplied by European artists whose best days are over. The actors never rise to any commendable excellence, and the pieces they perform are well adapted to their talents. Hardly ever is anything classical produced upon the stage.

The German drama in the United States is spoken of as being in a condition of even more desperate degradation. The writer's remarks on that subject will not specially interest our readers; but we trust that what we have given above from his strictures will be edifying to all whom it may concern.

* * * * *

FROM ROME we hear of an extensive undertaking about to be commenced in the way of Catholic Art. The plan is this: Overbeck, whose designs from Scripture history are familiar to all lovers of Art who have not overlooked one of the most remarkable geniuses of the times, is now employed upon fourteen compositions representing the fourteen Stations or pauses of the Lord on his way to the cross. Part of them are already done, and to judge from them the series will surpass all previous works of this great master. These designs are to be multiplied to the greatest extent and put within the means of churches, convents and even the poorest classes of the people. They will appear of the size of the original in colored lithography, which will probably be executed in Germany. Engravings of half size on copper are to be executed by the eminent engraver Bartoccini, who is familiar with Overbeck's manner, and who has worked under him in Germany. Indeed Bartoccini is already best known from the engravings of Overbeck's designs to the New Testament, the best of which were from his burin. In addition there are to be editions of these compositions in middling and small sizes as well as in wood engravings. The object is to provide something which has real artistic merit in place of the wretched pictures which are offered for the devotion of the faithful in so many churches and in Catholic prayer-books. The Pope himself, to whom the first colored drawings have been shown, takes a lively interest in the enterprise, and will probably recommend it in a special circular to all the bishops.

* * * * *

CHARLES MULLER, a German sculptor, whose group, "The Singer's Curse," Received the second prize at the Exposition of 1849, at Paris, has arrived in this country, where he proposes to take up his residence. The Tribune states that "The Singer's Curse" will soon be exhibited to the public in this city. It was suggested by one of the finest of Uhland's works.

* * * * *

The city of Paris is about to erect along the grand avenue of the Champs Elysées three hundred statues, in marble, of Parisians distinguished in the administration of the city, in letters, in science, the fine arts or commerce. The statues will alternate with beautiful little fountains, and will form rows on each side of the avenue.

* * * * *

POWER'S STATUE OF EVE is now-having been rescued from the waters off the coast of Spain—on the way to New York, and it will soon be here. The Prince Demidoff has purchased the figure of the Greek Slave, originally commenced for Mr. Robb of New Orleans, for £700, being £100 more than Mr. Robb was to have given for it. The Prince has placed it in a room by itself, in his palace at St. Donato, near Florence. He is one of the finest critics of art now living, and his collection of masterpieces constitutes to the man of taste one of the chief attractions of Italy. From a letter of Powers now before us, we learn that the model of his "America" was finished, and on the first of August the marble was about to be commenced, in the same size. This the sculptor and his friends think will be his greatest work. We are happy in being able to mention a fact eminently honorable to a distinguished American gentleman, in this connection. When the statue of Eve was lost, Powers wrote to the underwriters to pay the insurance ($6000) to Mr. J.S. Preston of South Carolina, upon whom the loss was to fall; but Mr. Preston instantly upon hearing the circumstance directed that every cent of the money should be sent to the artist, expressing only a regret that the country suffered the loss of a performance so admirable. Mr. Powers had not at this time heard of the loss of the statue of Mr. Calhoun. This great work has not yet been recovered, but Mr. Kellogg has still hopes of its being rescued in perfect safety.

* * * * *

The Venice Statuto of the 13th August announces that Venice and Italy have experienced an irreparable loss. The celebrated Barbarigo Gallery, known for ages, comprised amongst other masterpieces seventeen paintings of Titian, the Magdalen, Venus, St. Sebastian; the famous portraits of the Doge Barbarigo, of Philip XIV., &c. After the extinction of the Barbarigo family, Count Nicholas Giustiniani, the brothers Barbaco, and the merchants Benetti, who became proprietors of the collection, presented it to the Government. The Viceroy Raniere offered it for sale in 1847 to the Austrian Government, which refused to buy it. It has been lately purchased by the Court of Russia for five hundred and sixty thousand francs.

* * * * *

PAINTING AND SCULPTURES of the early northern artists from the eighth to the sixteenth century have just been discovered in great numbers in Gothland, by Dr. Marilignis, of the Stockholm Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He was sent to search for them by the Academy, and has spent eighteen months in his mission. A large proportion of the pictures were found in chapels built during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and were covered with thick coats of plaster, which had to be removed with great care. The results of Dr. Marilignis' investigations will be published by the Swedish Government.

* * * * *

THE INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF LARREY, the famous surgeon of the Imperial army, at the Val-de-Grace, took place in Paris lately. Among the assistants at this solemnity not the least interesting portion was a corps of one hundred invalids upon whom Larrey had operated. The hero of the day was Dupin, who walked in to the flourish of drums and trumpets at the head of the commission of the monument. The statue of bronze, by David, of Angers, was unvailed amid the clang of "sonorous metal blowing martial sounds." Old Dupin, in a fit of happy inspiration, jumped up on the chair from which he presided, and delivered perhaps the best speech he ever made. He drew, in lively touches, the mission of the man whose hospital is the battle-field, of his intrepid coolness and humane devotion. Larrey was wounded, while binding the wounds of others, in Egypt and at Waterloo, in the days of glory and of disaster. The President of the Assembly spoke with much feeling, and when he came down from his chair a general rush was made by his friends to embrace him.

* * * * *

THE STANDISH GALLERY OF PICTURES in the Louvre was decreed by the French courts, a few days before his death, to be the private property of the late Louis Philippe. It was left to the king by Mr. Frank Hall Standish, in 1838. The library of this collection is very valuable. It contains among other rare books the Bible of Cardinal Ximenes, valued alone at $5000. One of the last acts of Louis Philippe was to present it to the French people. He was desirous only of vindicating his rights in the courts. The gallery therefore will not be removed.

* * * * *

THE ANNUAL EXHIBITION OF PICTURES by Düsseldorf artists was opened in that city about the middle of July. Landscapes are rather predominant. In their line the works of Alexander Michelis, August Kossler, Weba and Fischer are the best. Ten pictures of peasant life in Norway by Adolf Tidemond, a Norwegian artist, are said to display very remarkable merit. They were retained in the exhibition only a few days, being destined for the royal chateau of Oskarshall. Of historical pictures there is nothing worth mentioning.

* * * * *

The Brussells Herald states that the artistic value of the works of art contained in the churches of Antwerp, eleven in number, is by the late financial report of the province estimated at 49,763,000 francs-nearly ten millions of dollars.

* * * * *

LEUTZE'S PICTURE of Washington Crossing the Delaware is nearly finished at Düsseldorf, and is much praised by several letter-writers who have seen it.

* * * * *

MR. POWELL, at Paris, expects to finish his picture for the Capitol about the first of February.

* * * * *

EDGAR ALLEN POE

By R.W. GRISWOLD.

The family of EDGAR A. POE was one of the oldest and most reputable in Baltimore. David Poe, his paternal grandfather, was a Quartermaster-General in the Maryland line during the Revolution, and the intimate friend of Lafayette, who, during his last visit to the United States, called personally upon the General's widow, and tendered her acknowledgments for the services rendered to him by her husband. His great-grandfather, John Poe, married in England, Jane, a daughter of Admiral James McBride, noted in British naval history, and claiming Kindred with some of the most illustrious English families. His father, David Poe, jr., the fourth son of the Quartermaster-General, was several years a law student in Baltimore, but becoming enamored of an English actress, named Elizabeth Arnold, whose prettiness and vivacity more than her genius for the stage made her a favorite, he eloped with her, and after a short period, having married her, became himself an actor. They continued six or seven years in the theaters of the principal cities, and finally died, within a few weeks of each other, in Richmond, leaving three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie, in utter destitution.

Edgar Poe, who was born in Baltimore, in January, 1811, was at this period of remarkable beauty, and precocious wit. Mr. John Allan, a merchant of large fortune and liberal disposition, who had been intimate with his parents, having no children of his own, adopted him, and it was generally understood among his acquaintances that he intended to make him the heir of his estate. The proud, nervous irritability of the boy's nature was fostered by his guardian's well-meant but ill-judged indulgence. Nothing was permitted which could "break his spirit." He must be the master of his masters, or not have any. An eminent and most estimable gentleman of Richmond has written to me, that when Poe was only six or seven years of age, he went to a school kept by a widow of excellent character, to whom was committed the instruction of the children of some of the principal families in the city. A portion of the grounds was used for the cultivation of vegetables, and its invasion by her pupils strictly forbidden. A trespasser, if discovered, was commonly made to wear, during school hours, a turnip or carrot, or something, of this sort, attached to his neck as a sign of disgrace. On one occasion Poe, having violated the rules, was decorated with the promised badge, which he wore in sullenness until the dismissal of the boys, when, that the full extent of his wrong might be understood by his patron, of whose sympathy he was confident, he eluded the notice of the schoolmistress, who would have relieved him of his esculent, and made the best of his way home, with it dangling at his neck. Mr. Allan's anger was aroused, and he proceeded instantly to the school-room, and after lecturing the astonished dame upon the enormity of such an insult to his son and to himself, demanded his account, determined that the child should not again be subject to such tyranny. Who can estimate the effect of this puerile triumph upon the growth of that morbid self-esteem which characterized the author in after life?

In 1816, he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Allan to Great Britain, visited the most interesting portions of the country, and afterward passed four or five years in a school kept at Stoke Newington, near London, by the Rev. Dr. Bransby. In his tale, entitled "William Wilson," he has introduced a striking description of this school and of his life here. He says:

"My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with a large, rambling Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each, hour, with sullen and sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded and asleep. It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure, as I can now in any manner experience to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its concerns. Steeped in misery as I am—misery, alas! only too real—I shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember. The house. I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and broken glass, encompassed the whole. The prison-like rampart formed the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week—once every Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to take brief walks in a body through some of the neighboring fields—and twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This reverend man with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy, and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian Laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution! At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery—a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation. The extensive inclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other shrubs; but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays. But the house!—how quaint an old building was this!—to me how veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings—to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time, to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be. From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were innumerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon themselves, that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and some eighteen or twenty other scholars. The school-room was the largest in the house—I could not help thinking, in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle was a square inclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, 'during hours,' of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure, with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the 'Dominie,' we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the 'classical' usher, one of the 'English and mathematical.' Interspersed about the room, crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches and desks, black, ancient and time-worn, piled desperately with much-bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length, grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.

"Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury, or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental development had in it much of the uncommon—even much of the outre. Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in mature age any definite impression. All is gray shadow—a weak and irregular remembrance—an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as vivid, as deep; and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals. Yet the fact—in the fact of the world's view-how little was there to remember. The morning's awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays and perambulations; the playground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues; these, by a mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. 'Oh, le bon temps, que se siecle de fer!'"

In 1822, he returned to the United States, and after passing a few months at an academy in Richmond, he entered the University at Charlottesville, where he led a very dissipated life; the manners which then prevailed there were extremely dissolute, and he was known as the wildest and most reckless student of his class; but his unusual opportunities, and the remarkable ease with which he mastered the most difficult studies, kept him all the while in the first rank for scholarship, and he would have graduated with the highest honors, had not his gambling, intemperance, and other vices, induced his expulsion from the university.

At this period he was noted for feats of hardihood, strength, and activity; and on one occasion, in a hot day of June, he swam from Richmond to Warwick, seven miles and a half, against a tide running probably from two to three miles an hour.¹ He was expert at fence, had some skill in drawing, and was a ready and eloquent conversationist and declaimer.

His allowance of money while at Charlottesville had been liberal, but he quitted the place very much in debt; and when Mr. Allan refused to accept some of the drafts with which he had paid losses in gaming, he wrote to him an abusive letter, quitted his house, and soon after left the country with the quixotic intention of joining the Greeks, then in the midst of their struggle with the Turks. He never reached his destination, and we know but little of his adventures in Europe for nearly a year. By the end of this time he had made his way to St. Petersburg, and our Minister in that capital, the late Mr. Henry Middleton, of South Carolina, was ummoned one morning to save him from penalties incurred in a drunken debauch. Through Mr. Middleton's kindness he was set at liberty and enabled to return to this country.

His meeting with Mr. Allan was not very cordial, but that gentleman declared himself willing to serve him in any way that should seem judicious; and when Poe expressed some anxiety to enter the Military Academy, he induced Chief Justice Marshall, Andrew Stevenson, General Scott, and other eminent persons, to sign an application which secured his appointment to a scholarship in that institution.

Mrs. Allan, whom Poe appears to have regarded with much affection, and who had more influence over him than any one else at this period, died on the 27th of February, 1829, which I believe was just before Poe left Richmond for West Point. It has been erroneously stated by all Poe's biographers, that Mr. Allan was now sixty-five years of age, and that Miss Paterson, to whom he was married afterward, was young enough to be his granddaughter. Mr. Allan was in his forty-eighth year, and the difference between his age and that of his second wife was not so great as justly to attract any observation.

For a few weeks the cadet applied himself with much assiduity to his studies, and he became at once a favorite with his mess and with the officers and professors of the Academy; but his habits of dissipation were renewed; he neglected his duties and disobeyed orders; and in ten months from his matriculation he was cashiered.

He went again to Richmond, and was received into the family of Mr. Allan, who was disposed still to be his friend, and in the event of his good behavior to treat him like a son; but it soon became necessary to close his doors against him forever. According to Poe's own statement he ridiculed the marriage of his patron with Miss Paterson, and had a quarrel with her; but a different story,² scarcely suitable for repetition here, was told by the friends of the other party. Whatever the circumstances, they parted in anger, and Mr. Allan from that time declined to see or in any way to assist him. Mr. Allan died in the spring of 1834, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, leaving three children to share his property, of which not a mill was bequeathed to Poe.

Soon after he left West Point Poe had printed at Baltimore a small volume of verses, ("Al Aaraaf," of about four hundred lines, "Tamerlane," of about three hundred lines, with smaller pieces,) and the favorable manner in which it was commonly referred to confirmed his belief that he might succeed in the profession of literature. The contents of the book appear to have been written when he was between sixteen and nineteen years of age; but though they illustrated the character of his abilities and justified his anticipations of success, they do not seem to me to evince, all things considered, a very remarkable precocity. The late Madame d'Ossoli refers to some of them as the productions of a boy of eight or ten years, but I believe there is no evidence that anything of his which has been published was written before he left the university. Certainly, it was his habit so constantly to labor upon what he had produced—he was at all times so anxious and industrious in revision—that his works, whenever first composed, displayed the perfection of his powers at the time when they were given to the press.

His contributions to the journals attracted little attention, and his hopes of gaining a living in this way being disappointed, he enlisted in the army as a private soldier. How long he remained in the service I have not been able to ascertain. He was recognized by officers who had known him at West Point and efforts were made, privately, but with prospects of success, to obtain for him a commission, when it was discovered by his friends that he had deserted.

He had probably found relief from the monotony of a soldier's life in literary composition. His mind was never in repose, and without some such resort the dull routine of camp or barracks would have been insupportable. When he next appears, he has a volume of MS. stories, which he desires to print under the title of "Tales of the Folio Club." An offer by the proprietor of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, of two prizes, one for the best tale and one for the best poem, induced him to submit the pieces entitled "MS. Found in a Bottle," "Lionizing," "The Visionary," and three others, with "The Coliseum," a poem, to the committee, which consisted of Mr. John P. Kennedy, the author of "Horse-Shoe Robinson;" Mr. J.H.B. Latrobe, and Dr. James H. Miller. Such matters are usually disposed of in a very off-hand way: Committees to award literary prizes drink to the payer's health in good wines, over unexamined MSS., which they submit to the discretion of publishers, with permission to use their names in such a way as to promote the publishers' advantage. So perhaps it would have been in this case, but that one of the committee, taking up a little book remarkably beautiful and distinct in caligraphy, was tempted to read several pages; and becoming interested, he summoned the attention of the company to the half-dozen compositions it contained. It was unanimously decided that the prizes should be paid to "the first of geniuses who had written legibly." Not another MS. was unfolded. Immediately the "confidential envelope" was opened, and the successful competitor was found to bear the scarcely-known name of Poe. The committee indeed awarded to him the premiums for both the tale and the poem, but subsequently altered their decision, so as to exclude him from the second premium, in consideration of his having obtained the higher one. The prize tale was the "MS. found in a Bottle." This award was published on the twelfth of October, 1833. The next day the publisher called to see Mr. Kennedy, and gave him an account of the author, which excited his curiosity and sympathy, and caused him to request that he should be brought to his office. Accordingly he was introduced. The prize-money had not yet been paid, and he was in the costume in which he had answered the advertisement of his good fortune. Thin, and pale even to ghastliness, his whole appearance indicated sickness and the utmost destitution. A well-worn frock-coat concealed the absence of a shirt, and imperfect boots disclosed the want of hose. But the eyes of the young man were luminous with intelligence and feeling, and his voice and conversation and manner, all won upon the lawyer's regard. Poe told his history, and his ambition, and it was determined that he should not want means for a suitable appearance in society, nor opportunities for just display of his abilities in literature. Mr. Kennedy accompanied him to a clothing-store, and purchased for him a respectable suit, with changes of linen, and sent him to a bath, from which he returned with the suddenly regained style of a gentleman.

His new friends were very kind to him, and availed themselves of every Opportunity to serve him. Near the close of the year 1834 the late Mr. T.W. White established in Richmond the Southern Literary Messenger. He was a man of much simplicity, purity, and energy of character, but not a writer, and he frequently solicited his acquaintances' literary assistance. On receiving from him an application for an article, early in 1835, Mr. Kennedy, who was busy with the duties of his profession, advised Poe to send one, and in a few weeks he had occasion to inclose the following answer to a letter from Mr. White:

"BALTIMORE, April 13, 1835.

"Dear Sir: Poe did right in referring to me. He is very clever with his pen—classical and scholarlike. He wants experience and direction, but I have no doubt he can be made very useful to you. And, poor fellow! he is very poor. I told him to write something for every number of your magazine, and that you might find it to your advantage to give him some permanent employ. He has a volume of very bizarre tales in the hands of –, in Philadelphia, who for a year past has been promising to publish them. This young fellow is highly imaginative, and a little given to the terrific. He is at work upon a tragedy, but I have turned him to drudging upon whatever may make money, and I have no doubt you and he will find your account in each other."

In the next number of the "Messenger" Mr. White announced that Poe was its editor, or in other words, that he had made arrangements with a gentleman of approved literary taste and attainments to whose especial management the editorial department would be confided, and it was declared that this gentleman would "devote his exclusive attention to the work." Poe continued, however, to reside in Baltimore, and it is probable that he was engaged only as a general contributor and a writer of critical notices of books. In a letter to Mr. White, under the date of the thirtieth of May, he says:

"In regard to my critique of Mr. Kennedy's novel, I seriously feel ashamed of what I have written. I fully intended to give the work a thorough review, and examine it in detail. Ill health alone prevented me from so doing. At the time I made the hasty sketch I sent you, I was so ill as to be hardly able to see the paper on which I wrote, and I finished it in a state of complete exhaustion. I have not, therefore, done anything like justice to the book, and I am vexed about the matter, for Mr. Kennedy has proved himself a kind friend to me in every respect, and I am sincerely grateful to him for many acts of generosity and attention. You ask me if I am perfectly, satisfied with your course. I reply that I am—entirely. My poor services are not worth what you give me for them."

About a month afterward he wrote:

"You ask me if I would be willing to come on to Richmond if you should have occasion, for my services during the coming winter. I reply that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I have been desirous for some time past of paying a visit to Richmond, and would be glad of an reasonable excuse for so doing. Indeed I am anxious to settle myself in that city, and if, by any chance, you hear of a situation likely to suit me, I would gladly accept it, were the salary even the merest trifle. I should, indeed, feel myself greatly indebted to you if through your means I could accomplish this object. What you say in the conclusion of your letter, in relation to the supervision of proof-sheets, gives me reason to hope that possibly you might find something for me to do in your office. If so I should be very glad—for at present only a very small portion of my time is employed."

He continued in Baltimore till September. In this period he wrote several long reviews, which for the most part were rather abstracts of works than critical discussions, and published, with others, "Hans Phall," a story in some respects very similar to Mr. Locke's celebrated account of Herschel's Discoveries in the Moon. At first he appears to have been ill satisfied with Richmond, or with his duties, for in two or three weeks after his removal to that city we find Mr. Kennedy writing to him:

"I am sorry to see you in such plight as your letter shows you in. It is strange that just at this time, when everybody is praising you, and when fortune is beginning to smile upon your hitherto wretched circumstances, you should be invaded by those blue devils. It belongs, however, to your age and temper to be thus buffeted—but be assured, it only wants a little resolution to master the adversary forever. You will doubtless do well henceforth in literature, and add to your comforts as well as to your reputation, which it gives me great pleasure to assure you is everywhere rising in popular esteem."

But he could not bear his good fortune. On receiving a month's salary he gave himself up to habits which only necessity had restrained at Baltimore. For a week he was in a condition of brutish drunkenness, and Mr. White dismissed him. When he became sober, however, he had no recourse but in reconciliation, and he wrote letters and induced acquaintances to call upon Mr. White with professions of repentance and promises of reformation. With his usual considerate and judicious kindness that gentleman answered him:

"My dear Edgar: I cannot address you in such language as this occasion and my feelings demand: I must be content to speak to you in my plain way. That you are sincere in all your promises I firmly believe. But when you once again tread these streets, I have my fears that your resolutions will fail, and that you will again drink till your senses are lost. If you rely on your strength you are gone. Unless you look to your Maker for help you will not be safe. How much I regretted parting from you is known to Him only and myself. I had become attached to you; I am still; and I would willingly say return, did not a knowledge of your past life make me dread a speedy renewal of our separation. If you would make yourself contented with quarters in my house, or with any other private family, where liquor is not used, I should think there was some hope for you. But, if you go to a tavern, or to any place where it is used at table, you are not safe. You have fine talents, Edgar, and you ought to have them respected, as well as yourself. Learn to respect yourself, and you will soon find that you are respected. Separate yourself from the bottle, and from bottle companions, forever. Tell me if you can and will do so. If you again become an assistant in my office, it must be understood that all engagements on my part cease the moment you get drunk. I am your true friend, T. W. W."

A new contract was arranged, but Poe's irregularities frequently interrupted the kindness and finally exhausted the patience of his generous though methodical employer, and in the number of the "Messenger" for January, 1837 he thus took leave of its readers:

"Mr. Poe's attention being called in another direction, he will decline, with the present number, the editorial duties of the Messenger. His Critical Notices for this month end with Professor Anthon's Cicero-what follows is from another hand. With the best wishes to the magazine, and to its few foes as well as many friends, he is now desirous of bidding all parties a peaceful farewell."

While in Richmond, with an income of but five hundred dollars a year, he had married his cousin, Virginia Clemm, a very amiable and lovely girl, who was as poor as himself, and little fitted, except by her gentle temper, to be tho wife of such a person. He went from Richmond to Baltimore; and after a short time, to Philadelphia, and to New York. A slight acquaintance with Dr. Hawks had led that acute and powerful writer to invite his contributions to the "New York Review," and he had furnished for the second number of it (for October, 1837) an elaborate but not very remarkable article upon Stephens's then recently published "Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petrea, and the Holy Land." His abilities were not of the kind demanded for such work, and he never wrote another paper for this or for any other Review of the same class. He had commenced in the "Literary Messenger," a story of the sea under the title of "Arthur Gordon Pym"³, and upon the recommendation of Mr. Paulding and others, it was printed by the Harpers. It is his longest work, and is not without some sort of merit, but it received little attention. The publishers sent one hundred copies to England, and being mistaken at first for a narrative of real experiences it was advertised to be reprinted, but a discovery of its character, I believe, prevented such a result. An attempt is made in it, by simplicity of style, minuteness of nautical descriptions, and circumstantiality of narration, to give it that air of truth which constitutes the principal attraction of Sir Edward Seaward's narrative, and Robinson Cursoe; but it has none of the pleasing interest of these tales; it is as full of wonders as Munchausen, has as many atrocities as the Book of Pirates, and as liberal an array of paining and revolting horrors as ever was invented by Anne Radcliffe or George Walker. Thus far a tendency to extravagance had been the most striking infirmity of his genius. He had been more anxious to be intense than to be natural; and some of his bizarréries had been mistaken for satire, and admired for that quality. Afterward he was more judicious, and if his outlines were incredible it was commonly forgotten in the simplicity of his details and their cohesive cumulation.

Near the end of the year 1838 he settled in Philadelphia. He had no very Definite purposes, but trusted for support to the chances of success as a magazinist and newspaper correspondent. Mr. Burton, the comedian, had recently established the "Gentleman's Magazine," and of this he became a contributor, and in May, 1839, the chief editor, devoting to it, for ten dollars a week, two hours every day, which left him abundant time for more important labors. In the same month he agreed to furnish such reviewals as he had written for the "Literary Messenger," for the "Literary Examiner," a new magazine at Pittsburgh. But his more congenial pursuit was tale-writing, and he produced about this period some of his most remarkable and characteristic works in a department of imaginative composition in which he was henceforth alone and unapproachable. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Legeia", are the most interesting illustrations of his mental organization—his masterpieces in a peculiar vein of romantic creation. They have theunquestionable stamp of genius. The analyses of the growth of madness in one, and the thrilling revelations of the existence of a first wife in the person of a second, in the other, are made with consummate skill; and the strange and solemn and fascinating beauty which informs the style and invests the circumstances of both, drugs the mind, and makes us forget the improbabilities of their general design.

An awakened ambition and the healthful influence of a conviction that his works were appreciated, and that his fame was increasing, led him for a while to cheerful views of life, and to regular habits of conduct. He wrote to a friend, the author of "Edge Hill," in Richmond, that he had quite overcome "the seductive and dangerous besetment" by which he had so often been prostrated, and to another friend that, incredible as it might seem, he had become a "model of temperance," and of "other virtues," which it had sometimes been difficult for him to practice. Before the close of the summer, however, he relapsed into his former courses, and for weeks was regardless of everything but a morbid and insatiable appetite for the means of intoxication.

In the autumn he published all the prose stories he had then written, in two volumes, under the title of "Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque." The work was not salable, perhaps because its contents were too familiar from recent separate publication in magazines; and it was not so warmly praised, generally, as I think it should have been, though in point of style the pieces which it embraced are much less perfect than they were made subsequently.

He was with Mr. Burton until June, 1840—more than a year. Mr. Burton Appreciated his abilities and would have gladly continued the connection; but Poe was so unsteady of purpose and so unreliable that the actor was never sure when he left the city that his business would be cared for. On one occasion, returning after the regular day of publication, he found the number unfinished, and Poe incapable of duty. He prepared the necessary copy himself, published the magazine, and was proceeding with arrangements with for another month, when he received a letter from his assistant, of which the tone may be inferred from this answer:

"I am sorry you have thought it necessary to send me such a letter. Your troubles have given a morbid tone to your feelings which it is your duty to discourage. I myself have been as severely handled by the world as you can possibly have been, but my sufferings have not tinged my mind with melancholy, nor jaundiced my views of society. You must rouse your energies, and if care assail you, conquer it. I will gladly overlook the past. I hope you will as easily fulfill your pledges for the future. We shall agree very well, thought I cannot permit the magazine to be made a vehicle for that sort of severity which you think is so 'successful with the mob.' I am truly much less anxious about making a monthly 'sensation' than I am upon the point of fairness. You must, my dear sir, get rid of your avowed ill-feelings toward your brother authors. You see I speak plainly; I cannot do otherwise upon such a subject. You say the people love havoc. I think they love justice. I think you yourself would not have written the article on Dawes, in a more healthy state of mind. I am not trammeled by any vulgar consideration of expediency; I would rather lose money than by such undue severity wound the feelings of a kind-hearted and honorable man. And I am satisfied that Dawes has something the true fire in him. I regretted your word-catching spirit. But I wander from my design. I accept your proposition to recommence your interrupted avocations upon the Maga. Let us meet as if we had not exchanged letters. Use more exercise, write when feelings prompt, and be assured of my friendship. You will soon regain a healthy activity of mind, and laugh at your past vagaries."

This letter was kind and judicious. It gives us a glimpse of Poe's theory of criticism, and displays the temper and principles of the literary comedian in an honorable light. Two or three months afterward Burton went out of town to fulfill a professional engagement, leaving material and directions for completing the next number of the magazine in four days. He was absent nearly a fortnight, and on returning he found that his printers in the meanwhile had not received a line of copy; but that Poe had prepared the prospectus of a new monthly, and obtained transcripts of his subscription and account books, to be used in a scheme for supplanting him. He encountered his associate late in the evening at one of his accustomed haunts, and said, "Mr. Poe, I am astonished: Give me my manuscripts so that I can attend to the duties you have so shamefully neglected, and when you are sober we will settle." Poe interrupted him with "Who are you that presume to address me in this manner? Burton, I am—the editor—of the Penn.—Magazine—and you are—hiccup—a fool." Of course this ended his relations with the "Gentleman's."

In November, 1840, Burton's miscellany was merged in "The Casket," owned by Mr. George R. Graham, and the new series received the name of its proprietor, who encouraged Poe in its editorship. His connection with "Graham's Magazine" lasted about a year and a half, and this was one of the most active and brilliant periods of his literary life. He wrote in it several of his finest tales and most trenchant criticisms, and challenged attention by his papers entitled "Autography," and those on cryptology and ciphers. In the first, adopting a suggestion of Lavater, he attempted the illustration of character from handwriting; and in the second, he assumed that human ingenuity could construct no secret writing which human ingenuity could not resolve; a not very dangerous proposition, since it implied no capacity in himself to discover every riddle of this kind that should be invented. He however succeeded with several difficult cryptographs that were sent to him, and the direction of his mind to the subject led to the composition of some of the tales of ratiocination which so largely increased his reputation. The infirmities which induced his separation from Mr. White and Mr. Burton at length compelled Mr. Graham to seek for another editor; but Poe still remained in Philadelphia, engaged from time to time in various literary occupations, and in the vain effort to establish a journal of his own to be called "The Stylus." Although it requires considerable capital to carry on a monthly of the description he proposed, I think it would not have been difficult, with his well-earned fame as a magazinist, for him to have found a competent and suitable publisher, but for the unfortunate notoriety of his habits, and the failure in succession of three persons who had admired him for his genius and pitied him for his misfortunes, by every means that tact or friendship could suggest, to induce the consistency and steadiness of application indispensable to success in such pursuits. It was in the spring of 1848—more than a year after his dissociation from Graham—that he wrote the story of "The Gold Bug," for which he was paid a prize of one hundred dollars. It has relation to Captain Kyd's treasure, and is one of the most remarkable illustrations of his ingenuity of construction and apparent subtlety of reasoning. The interest depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. In the autumn of 1844 Poe removed to New York.

It was while he resided in Philadelphia that I became acquainted with him. His manner, except during his fits of intoxication, was very quiet and gentlemanly; he was usually dressed with simplicity and elegance; and when once he sent for me to visit him, during a period of illness caused by protracted and anxious watching at the side of his sick wife, I was impressed by the singular neatness and the air of refinement in his home. It was in a small house, in one of the pleasant and silent neighborhoods far from the center of the town, and though slightly and cheaply furnished, everything in it was so tasteful and so fitly disposed that it seemed altogether suitable for a man of genius. For this and for most of the comforts he enjoyed in his brightest as in his darkest years, he was chiefly indebted to his mother-in-law, who loved him with more than maternal devotion and constancy.

He had now written his most acute criticisms and his most admirable tales. Of tales, beside those to which I have referred, he had produced "The Descent into the Maelström," "The Premature Burial," "The Purloined Letter," "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," and its sequel, "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The scenes of the last three are in Paris, where the author's friend, the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, is supposed to reveal to him the curiosities of his experience and observation in matters of police. "The Mystery of Marie Roget" was first published in the autumn of 1842, before an extraordinary excitement, occasioned by the murder of a young girl named Mary Rogers, in the vicinity of New York, had quite subsided, though several months after the tragedy. Under the pretense of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, Mr. Poe followed in minute detail the essential while merely paralleling the inessential facts of the real murder. His object appears to have been to reinvestigate the case and to settle his own conclusions as to the probable culprit. There is a great deal of hair-splitting in the incidental discussions by Dupin, throughout all these stories, but it is made effective. Much of their popularity, as well as that of other tales of ratiocination by Poe, arose from their being in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious; but they have been thought more ingenious than they are, on account of their method and air of method. In "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," for instance, what ingenuity is displayed in unraveling a web which has been woven for the express purpose of unraveling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story. These works brought the name of Poe himself somewhat conspicuously before the law courts of Paris. The journal, La Commerce, gave a feuilleton in which "The Murders of the Rue Morgue" appeared in translation. Afterward a writer for La Quotidienne served it for that paper under the title of "L'Orang-Otang." A third party accused La Quotidienne of plagiary from La Commerce, and in the course of the legal investigation which ensued, the feuilletoniste of La Commerce proved to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he had stolen the tale entirely from Mr. Poe,⁴ whose merits were soon after canvassed in the "Revue des Deux Mondes," and whose best tales were upon this impulse translated by Mme. Isabelle Meunier for the Democratic Pacifique and other French gazettes.

In New York Poe entered upon a new sort of life. Heretofore, from the Commencement of his literary career, he had resided in provincial towns. Now he was in a metropolis, and with a reputation which might have served as a passport to any society he might desire. For the first time he was received into circles capable of both the appreciation and the production of literature. He added to his fame soon after he came to the city by the publication of that remarkable composition "The Raven," of which Mr. Willis has observed that in his opinion "it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift;" and by that of one of the most extraordinary instances of the naturalness of detail–the verisimilitude of minute narrative—for which lie was preeminently distinguished, his "Mesmeric Revelation," purporting to be the last conversation of a somnambule, held with his magnetizer just before his death, which was followed by the yet more striking exhibition of abilities in the same way, entitled "The Facts in the case of M. Vaklemar," in which the subject is represented as having been mesmerized in articulo mortis. These pieces were reprinted throughout the literary and philosophical world, in nearly all languages, everywhere causing sharp and curious speculation, and where readers could be persuaded that they were fables, challenging a reluctant but genuine admiration.

He had not been long in New York before he was engaged by Mr. Willis and General Morris as a critic and assistant editor of The Mirror. He remained in this situation about six months, when he became associated with Mr. Briggs in the conduct of The Broadway Journal, which, in October 1845, passed entirely into his possession. He had now the long sought but never before enjoyed absolute control of a literary gazette, and, with much friendly assistance, he maintained it long enough to show, that whatever his genius, he had not the kind or degree of talent necessary to such a position. His chief critical writing in The Broadway Journal, were a paper on Miss Barrett's Poems, and a long discussion of the subject of plagiarism, with especial reference to Mr. Longfellow. In March, 1845, he had given a lecture at the Society Library upon the American poets, composed, for the most part, of fragments of his previously published reviewals; and in the autumn he accepted an invitation to read a poem before the Boston Lyceum. A week after the event, he printed in The Broadway Journal the following account of it, in reply to a paragraph in one of the city papers, founded upon a statement in the Boston Transcript.

"Our excellent friend, Major Noah, has suffered himself to be cajoled by that most beguiling of all beguiling little divinities, Miss Walter, of The Transcript. We have been looking all over her article with the aid of a taper, to see if we could discover a single syllable of truth in it—and really blush to acknowledge that we cannot. The adorable creature has been telling a parcel of fibs about us, by way of revenge for something that we did to Mr. Longfellow (who admires her very much) and for calling her 'a pretty little witch' into the bargain. The facts of the case seem to be these: We were invited 'deliver'(stand and deliver) a poem before the Boston Lyceum. As a matter of course, we accepted the invitation. The audience was 'large and distinguished.' Mr Cushing⁵ preceded us with a very capital discourse. He was much applauded. On arising we were most cordially received. We occupied some fifteen minutes with an apology for not 'delivering,' as is usual in such cases, a didactic poem: a didactic poem, in our opinion, being precisely no poem at all. After some farther words—still of apology—for the 'indefiniteness' and 'general imbecility' of what we had to offer—all so unworthy a Bostonian audience—we commenced, and with many interruptions of applause, concluded. Upon the whole, the approbation was considerably more (the more the pity too) than that bestowed upon Mr. Cushing. When we had made an end the audience of course arose to depart; and about one-tenth of them, probably, had really departed, when Mr. Coffin, one of the managing committee, arrested those who remained, by the announcement that we had been requested to deliver 'The Raven.' We delivered 'The Raven' forthwith—(without taking a receipt)—were very cordially applauded again—and this was the end of it—with the exception of the sad tale invented to suit her own purposes, by that amiable little enemy of ours, Miss Walter. We shall never call a woman 'a pretty little witch' again as long as we live.

"We like Boston. We were born there—and perhaps it is just as well not to mention that we are heartily ashamed of the fact. The Bostonians are very well in their way. Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. Their common is no common thing—and the duck-pond might answer-if its answer could be heard for the frogs. But with all these good qualities, the Bostonians have no soul. They have always evinced toward us, individually, the basest ingratitude for the services we rendered them in enlightening them about the originality of Mr. Longfellow. When we accepted, therefore, an invitation to 'deliver' a poem in Boston, we accepted it simply and solely, because we had a curiosity to know how it felt to be publicly hissed—and because we wished to see what effect we could produce by a neat little impromptu speech in reply. Perhaps, however, we overrated our own importance, or the Bostonian want of common civility—which is not quite so manifest as one or two of their editors would wish the public to believe. We assure Major Noah that he is wrong. The Bostonians are well-bred—as very dull persons very generally are. Still, with their vile ingratitude staring us in the eyes, it could scarcely be supposed that we would put ourselves to the trouble of composing for the Bostonians anything in the shape of an original poem. We did not. We had a poem, of about 500 lines, lying by us—one quite as good as new—one, at all events, that we considered would answer sufficiently well for an audience of Transcendentalists. That we gave them—it was the best that we had—for the price—and it did answer remarkably well. Its name was not 'The Messenger-Star'—who but Miss Walter would ever think of so delicious a little bit of invention as that? We had no name for it at all. The poem is what is occasionally called a 'juvenile poem,' but the fact is it is anything but juvenile now, for we wrote it, printed it, and published it, in book form, before we had completed our tenth year. We read it verbatim, from a copy now in our possession, and which we shall be happy to show at any moment to any of our inquisitive friends. We do not, ourselves, think the poem a remarkably good one: it is not sufficiently transcendental. Still it did well enough for the Boston audience—who evinced characteristic discrimination in understanding, and especially applauding all those knotty passages which we ourselves have not yet been able to understand.

"As regards the auger of The Boston Times, and one or two other absurdities—as regards, we say the wrath of Achilles—we incurred it-or rather its manifestation—by letting some of our cat out of the bag a few hours sooner than we had intended. Over a bottle of champagne, that night, we confessed to Messrs. Cushing, Whipple, Hudson, Fields, and a few other natives who swear not altogether by the frog-pond-we confessed, we say, the soft impeachment of the hoax. Et hine ille iræ. We should have waited a couple of days."

It is scarcely necessary to suggest that this must have been written before he had quite recovered from the long intoxication which maddened him at the time to which it refers—that he was not born in Boston-that the poem was not published in his tenth year, and that the "hoax" was all an after-thought. Two weeks later he renewed the discussion of the subject in The Broadway Journal, commenting as follows upon allusions to it by other parties:

"Were the question demanded of us—'What is the most exquisite of sublunary pleasures?' we should reply, without hesitation, the making a fuss, or in the classical words of a western friend, the 'kicking up a bobbery.' Never was a 'bobbery' more delightful than that which we have just succeeded in 'kicking up' all around about Boston Common. We never saw the Frogpondians so lively in our lives. They seem absolutely to be upon the point of waking up. In about nine days the puppies may get open their eyes. That is to say, they may get open their eyes to certain facts which have long been obvious to all the world except themselves-the facts that there exist other cities than Boston—other men of letters than Professor Longfellow—other vehicles of literary information than the Down-East Review.'

"We had tact enough not to be 'taken in and done for' by the Bostonians. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes—(for timeo substitute contemno or turn-up-your-nose-o.) We knew very well that among a certain clique of the Frogpondians, there existed a predetermination to abuse us under any circumstances. We knew, that write what we would, they would swear it to be worthless. We knew, that were we to compose for them a 'Paradise Lost,' they would pronounce it an indifferent poem. It would have been very weak in us, then, to put ourselves to the trouble of attempting to please these people. We preferred pleasing ourselves. We read before them a 'juvenile'—a very 'juvenile' poem—and thus the Frogpondians were had—were delivered up to the enemy bound hand and foot. Never were a set of people more completely demolished. They have blustered and flustered—but what have they done or said that has not made them more thoroughly ridiculous? What, in the name of Momus, is it possible for them to do or say? We 'delivered' them the 'juvenile poem,' and they received it with applause. This is accounted for by the fact, that the clique (contemptible in numbers as in everything else) were overruled by the rest of the assembly. These malignants did not dare to interrupt by their preconcerted hisses, the respectful and profound attention of the majority. We have been told, indeed, that as many as three or four of the personal friends of the little old lady entitled Miss Walter, did actually leave the hall during the recitation—but, upon the whole, this was the very best thing they could do. We have been told this, we say—we did not see them take their departure:—the fact is, they belong to a class of people that we make it a point never to see. The poem being thus well received, in spite of this ridiculous little cabal—the next thing to be done was to abuse it in the papers. Here, they imagined, they were sure of their game. But what have they accomplished? The poem, they say, is bad. We admit it. We insisted upon this fact in our prefatory remarks, and we insist upon it now, over and over again. It is bad—it is wretched—and what then? We wrote it at ten years of age—had it been worth even a pumpkin-pie, undoubtedly we should not have 'delivered' it to them. To demonstrate its utter worthlessness, The Boston Star has copied the poem in full, with two or three columns of criticism (we suppose), by way of explaining that we should have been hanged for its perpetration. There is no doubt of it whatever—we should. The Star, however, (a dull luminary,) has done us more honor than it intended; it has copied our third edition of the poem, revised and improved. We considered this too good for the occasion by one-half, and so 'delivered' our first edition with all its imperfections on its head. It is the first—the original edition—the delivered edition—which we now republish in our collection of Poems."

When he accepted the invitation of the Lyceum he intended to write an original poem, upon a subject which he said had haunted his imagination for years; but cares, anxieties, and feebleness of will, prevented; and a week before the appointed night he wrote to a friend imploring assistance. "You compose with such astonishing facility," he urged in his letter, "that you can easily furnish me, quite soon enough, a poem that shall be equal to my reputation. For the love of God I beseech you to help me in this extremity." The lady wrote him kindly, advising him judiciously, but promising to attempt the fulfillment of his wishes She was, however, an invalid, and so failed⁶. At last, instead of pleading illness himself, as he had previously done on a similar occasion, he determined to read his poem of "Al Aaraaf," the original publication of which, in 1829, has already been stated.

The last number of the Broadway Journal was published on the third of January,1846, and Poe soon after commenced the series of papers entitled "The Literati of New-York City," which was published in The Lady's Book in six numbers, from May to October. Their spirit, boldness, and occasional causticity caused them to be much talked about, and three editions were necessary to supply the demand for some numbers of the magazine containing them. They however led to a disgraceful quarrel, and this to a premature conclusion. Dr. Thomas Dunn English, who had at one time sustained the most intimate relations with Poe, chose to evince his resentment of the critic's unfairness by the publication of a card in which he painted strongly the infirmities of Poe's life and character, and alleged that he had on several occasions inflicted upon him personal chastisement. This was not a wise confession, for a gentleman never appeals to his physical abilities except for defense. But the entire publication, even if every word of it were true, was unworthy of Dr. English, unnecessary, and not called for by Poe's article, though that, as every one acquainted with the parties might have seen, was entirely false in what purported to be its facts. The statement of Dr. English appeared in the New York Mirror of the twenty-third of June, and on the twenty-seventh Mr. Poe sent to Mr. Godey for publication in the Lady's Book his rejoinder, which would have made about five of the large pages of that miscellany. Mr. Godey very properly declined to print it, and observed, in the communication of his decision, that the tone of the article was regarded as unsuitable for his work and as altogether wrong. In compliance with the author's wishes, however, he had caused its appearance in a daily paper. Poe then wrote to him:

"The man or men who told you that there was anything wrong in the tone of my reply, were either my enemies, or your enemies, or asses. When you see them, tell them so, from me. I have never written an article upon which I more confidently depend for literary reputation than that Reply. Its merit lay in its being precisely adapted to its purpose. In this city I have had upon it the favorable judgments of the best men. All the error about it was yours. You should have done as I requested—published it in the Book. It is of no use to conceive a plan if you have to depend upon another for its execution."

Nevertheless, I agree with Mr. Godey. Poe's article was as bad as that of English. Yet a part of one of its paragraphs is interesting, and it is here transcribed:

–"Let me not permit any profundity of disgust to induce, even for an instant, a violation of the dignity of truth. What is not false, amid the scurrility of this man's statements, it is not in my nature to brand as false, although oozing from the filthy lips of which a lie is the only natural language. The errors and frailties which I deplore, it cannot at least be asserted that I have been the coward to deny. Never, even, have I made attempt at extenuating a weakness which is (or, by the blessing of God, was) a calamity, although those who did not know me intimately had little reason to regard it otherwise than a crime. For, indeed, had my pride, or that of my family permitted, there was much—very much—there was everything to be offered in extenuation. Perhaps, even, there was an epoch at which it might not have been wrong in me to hint—what by the testimony of Dr. Francis and other medical men I might have demonstrated, had the public, indeed, cared for the demonstration—that the irregularities so profoundly lamented were the effect of a terrible evil rather than its cause.—And now let me thank God that in redemption from the physical ill I have forever got rid of the moral."

Dr. Francis never gave any such testimony. On one occasion Poe borrowed fifty dollars from a distinguished literary woman of South Carolina, promising to return it in a few days, and when he failed to do so, and was asked for a written acknowledgment of the debt that might be exhibited to the husband of the friend who had thus served him, he denied all knowledge of it, and threatened to exhibit a correspondence which he said would make the woman infamous, if she said any more on the subject. Of course there had never been any such correspondence, but when Poe heard that a brother of the slandered party was in quest of him for the purpose of taking the satisfaction supposed to be due in such cases, he sent for Dr. Francis and induced him to carry to the gentleman his retraction and apology, with a statement which seemed true enough for the moment, that Poe was "out of his head." It is an ungracious duty to describe such conduct in a person of Poe's unquestionable genius and capacities of greatness, but those who are familiar with the career of this extraordinary creature can recall but too many similar anecdotes; and as to his intemperance, they perfectly well understand that its pathology was like that of ninety-nine of every hundred cases of the disease.

As the autumn of 1846 wore on, Poe's habits of frequent intoxication and his inattention to the means of support reduced him to much more than common destitution. He was now living at Fordham, several miles from the city, so that his necessities were not generally known even among his acquaintances; but when the dangerous illness of his wife was added to his misfortunes, and his dissipation and accumulated causes of anxiety had prostrated all his own energies, the subject was introduced into the journals. The Express said:

"We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe and his wife are both dangerously ill with the consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavy upon their temporal affairs. We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the necessaries of life. This is indeed a hard lot, and we hope that the friends and admirers of Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitterest hour of need."

Mr. Willis, in an article in the Home Journal suggesting a hospital for disabled laborers with the brain, said—

"The feeling we have long entertained on this subject, has been freshened by a recent paragraph in the Express, announcing that Mr. Edgar A. Poe and his wife were both dangerously ill, and suffering for want of the common necessaries of life. Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labor, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There was no intermediate stopping-place-no respectful shelter where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, unadvertised, till, with returning health, he could resume his labors and his unmortified sense of independence. He must either apply to individual friends—(a resource to which death is sometimes almost preferable)—or suffer down to the level where Charity receives claimants, but where Rags and Humiliation are the only recognized Ushers to her presence. Is this right? Should there not be, in all highly civilized communities, an Institution designed expressly for educated and refined objects of charity—a hospital, a retreat, a home of seclusion and comfort, the sufficient claims to which would be such susceptibilities as are violated by the above mentioned appeal in a daily newspaper."

The entire article from which this paragraph is taken, was an ingenious apology for Mr. Poe's infirmities; but it was conceived and executed in a generous spirit, and it had a quick effect in various contributions, which relieved the poet from pecuniary embarrassments. The next week he published the following letter:

"My Dear Willis:—The paragraph which has been put in circulation respecting my wife's illness, my own, my poverty, etc., is now lying before me; together with the beautiful lines by Mrs. Locke and those by Mrs. –, to which the paragraph has given rise, as well as your kind and manly comments in The Home Journal. The motive of the paragraph I leave to the conscience of him or her who wrote it or suggested it. Since the thing is done, however, and since the concerns of my family are thus pitilessly thrust before the public, I perceive no mode of escape from a public statement of what is true and what erroneous in the report alluded to. That my wife is ill, then, is true; and you may imagine with what feelings I add that this illness, hopeless from the first, has been heightened and precipitated by her reception at two different periods, of anonymous letters,—one inclosing the paragraph now in question; the other, those published calumnies of Messrs. –, for which I yet hope to find redress in a court of justice.

"Of the facts, that I myself have been long and dangerously ill, and that my illness has been a well-understood thing among my brethren of the press, the best evidence is afforded by the innumerable paragraphs of personal and literary abuse with which I have been latterly assailed. This matter, however, will remedy itself. At the very first blush of my new prosperity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old, will recollect themselves and toady me again. You, who know me, will comprehend that I speak of these things only as having served, in a measure, to lighten the gloom of unhappiness, by a gentle and not unpleasant sentiment of mingled pity, merriment and contempt. That, as the inevitable consequence of so long an illness, I have been in want of money, it would be folly in me to deny—but that I have ever materially suffered from privation, beyond the extent of my capacity for suffering, is not altogether true. That I am 'without friends' is a gross calumny, which I am sure you never could have believed, and which a thousand noble-hearted men would have good right never to forgive me for permitting to pass unnoticed and undenied. Even in the city of New York I could have no difficulty in naming a hundred persons, to each of whom—when the hour for speaking had arrived—I could and would have applied for aid with unbounded confidence, and with absolutely no sense of humiliation. I do not think, my dear Willis, that there is any need of my saying more. I am getting better, and may add—if it be any comfort to my enemies—that I have little fear of getting worse. The truth is, I have a great deal to do; and I have made up my mind not to die till it is done. Sincerely yours,

"December 30th, 1846. EDGAR A. POE."

This was written for effect. He had not been ill a great while, nor dangerously at all; there was no literary or personal abuse of him in the journals; and his friends in town had been applied to for money until their patience was nearly exhausted. His wife, however, was very sick, and in a few weeks she died. In a letter to a lady in Massachusetts, who, upon the appearance of the newspaper articles above quoted, had sent him money and expressions of sympathy, he wrote, under date of March 10, 1847:

"In answering your kind letter permit me in the first place to absolve myself from a suspicion which, under the circumstances, you could scarcely have failed to entertain—a suspicion of discourtesy toward yourself, in not having more promptly replied to you…. I could not help feeling that should you see my letter to Mr. Willis—in which a natural pride, which I feel you could not blame, impelled me to shrink from public charity, even at the cost of truth, in denying those necessities which were but too real—I could not help fearing that, should you see this letter, you would yourself feel pained at having caused me pain-at having been the means of giving further publicity to an unfounded report—at all events to the report of a wretchedness which I had thought it prudent (since the world regards wretchedness as a crime) so publicly to disavow. In a word, venturing to judge your noble nature by my own, I felt grieved lest my published denial might cause you to regret what you had done; and my first impulse was to write you, and assure you, even at the risk of doing so too warmly, of the sweet emotion, made up of respect and gratitude alone, with which my heart was filled to overflowing. While I was hesitating, however, in regard to the propriety of this step, I was overwhelmed by a sorrow so poignant as to deprive me for several weeks of all power of thought or action. Your letter, now lying before me, tells me that I had not been mistaken in your nature, and that I should not have hesitated to address you; but believe me, my dear Mrs. L–, that I am already ceasing to regard those difficulties or misfortunes which have led me to even this partial correspondence with yourself."

For nearly a year Mr. Poe was not often before the public, but he was as industrious, perhaps, as he had been at any time, and early in 1848 advertisement was made of his intention to deliver several lectures, with a view to obtain an amount of money sufficient to establish his so-long-contemplated monthly magazine. His first lecture—and only one at this period—was given at the Society Library, in New York, on the ninth of February, and was upon the cosmogony of the Universe: it was attended by an eminently intellectual auditory, and the reading of it occupied about two hours and a half; it was what he afterward published under the title of "Eureka, a Prose Poem."

To the composition of this work he brought his subtlest and highest capacities, in their most perfect development. Denying that the arcana of the universe can be explored by induction, but informing his imagination with the various results of science, he entered with unhesitating boldness, though with no guide but the divinest instinct,—that sense of beauty, in which our great Edwards recognizes the flowering of all truth—into the sea of speculation, and there built up of according laws and their phenomena, as under the influence of a scientific inspiration, his theory of Nature. I will not attempt the difficult task of condensing his propositions; to be apprehended they must be studied in his own terse and simple language; but in this we have a summary of that which he regards as fundamental: "The law which we call Gravity," he says, "exists on account of matter having been radiated, at its origin, atomically, into a limited sphere of space, from one, individual, unconditional irrelative, and absolute Particle Proper, by the sole process in which it was possible to satisfy, at the same time, the two conditions, radiation and equable distribution throughout the sphere—that is to say, by a force varying in direct proportion with the squares of the distances between the radiated atoms, respectively, and the particular center of radiation."

Poe was thoroughly persuaded that he had discovered the great secret: that the propositions of "Eureka" were true; and he was wont to talk of the subject with a sublime and electrical enthusiasm which they cannot have forgotten who were familiar with him at the period of its publication. He felt that an author known solely by his adventures in the lighter literature, throwing down the gauntlet to professors of science, could not expect absolute fairness, and he had no hope but in discussions led by wisdom and candor. Meeting me, he said, "Have you read 'Eureka?'" I answered, "Not yet: I have just glanced at the notice of it by Willis, who thinks it contains no more fact than fantasy, and I am sorry to see—sorry if it be true—suggests that it corresponds in tone with that gathering of sham and obsolete hypotheses addressed to fanciful tyros, the 'Vestiges of Creation;' and our good and really wise friend Bush, whom you will admit to be of all the professors, in temper one of the most habitually just, thinks that while you may have guessed very shrewdly, it would not be difficult to suggest many difficulties in the way of your doctrine." "It is by no means ingenuous," he replied, "to hint that there are such difficulties, and yet to leave them unsuggested. I challenge the investigation of every point in the book. I deny that there are any difficulties which I have not met and overthrown. Injustice is done me by the application of this word 'guess:' I have assumed nothing and proved all." In his preface he wrote: "To the few who love me and whom I love; to those who feel rather than to those who think; to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities—I offer this book of truths, not in the character of Truth-Teller, but for the beauty that abounds in its truth: constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone:–let us say as a Romance; or, if it be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. What I here propound is true: therefore it cannot die: or it by any means it be now trodden down so that it die, it will rise again to the life everlasting."

When I read "Eureka" I could not help but think it immeasurably superior as an illustration of genius to the "Vestiges of Creation;" and as I admired the poem, (except the miserable attempt at humor in what purports to be a letter found in a bottle floating on the Mare tenebrarum,) so I regretted its pantheism, which is not necessary to its main design. To some of the objections to his work be made this answer in a letter to Mr. C.F. Hoffman, then editor of the Literary World:

"Dear Sir:—In your paper of July 29, I find some comments on 'Eureka,' a late book of my own; and I know you too well to suppose for a moment, that you will refuse me the privilege of a few words in reply. I feel, even, that I might safely claim, from Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone—that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer—but in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the World; and, in the second, I feel that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. Lamartine blames Voltaire for the use which he made of (ruse) misrepresentation, in his attacks on the priesthood; but our young students of Theology do not seem to be aware that in defense or what they fancy to be defense, of Christianity, there is anything wrong in such gentlemanly peccadillos as the deliberate perversion of an author's text—to say nothing of the minor indecora of reviewing a book without reading it and without having the faintest suspicion of what it is about.

"You will understand that it is merely the misrepresentations of the critique in question to which I claim the privilege of reply:—the mere opinions of the writer can be of no consequence to me—and I should imagine of very little to himself—that is to say if he knows himself, personally, as well as I have the honor of knowing him. The first misrepresentation is contained in this sentence:—'This letter is a keen burlesque on the Aristotelian or Baconian methods of ascertaining Truth, both of which the writer ridicules and despises, and pours forth his rhapsodical ecstasies in a glorification of the third mode—the noble art of guessing.' What I really say is this:—That there is no absolute certainty either in the Aristotelian or Baconian process—that, for this reason, neither Philosophy is so profound as it fancies itself—and that neither has a right to sneer at that seemingly imaginative process called Intuition (by which the great Kepler attained his laws); since 'Intuition,' after all, 'is but the conviction arising from those _in_ductions or _de_ductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason or defy our capacity of expression.' The second misrepresentation runs thus:—'The developments of electricity and the formation of stars and suns, luminous and nonluminous, moons and planets, with their rings, &c., is deduced, very much according to the nebular theory of Laplace, from the principle propounded above.' Now the impression intended to be made here upon the reader's mind, by the 'Student of Theology,' is evidently, that my theory may all be very well in its way, but that it is nothing but Laplace over again, with some modifications that he (the Student of Theology) cannot regard as at all important. I have only to say that no gentleman can accuse me of the disengenuousness here implied; inasmuch as, having proceeded with my theory up to that point at which Laplace's theory meets it, I then give Laplace's theory in full, with the expression of my firm conviction of its absolute truth at all points. The ground covered by the great French astronomer compares with that covered by my theory, as a bubble compares with the ocean on which it floats; nor has he the slightest allusion to the 'principle propounded above,' the principle of Unity being the source of all things—the principle of Gravity being merely the Reaction of the Divine Act which irradiated all things from Unity. In fact no point of my theory has been even so much as alluded to by Laplace. I have not considered it necessary, here to speak of the astronomical knowledge displayed in the 'stars and suns' of the Student of Theology, nor to hint that it would be better to say that 'development and formation are, than that development and formation is. The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where the critic says:—'Further than this, Mr. Poe's claim that he can account for the existence of all organized beings—man included—merely from those principles on which the origin and present appearance of suns and worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bald assertion, without a particle of evidence. In other words we should term it arrant fudge.' The perversion at this point is involved in a willful misapplication of the word 'principles.' I say 'wilful' because, at page 63, I am particularly careful to distinguish between the principles proper, Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant sub-principles which control the universe in detail. To these sub-principles, swayed by the immediate spiritual influence of Deity. I leave, without examination, all that which the Student of Theology so roundly asserts I account for on the principles which account for the constitution of suns, &c.

"In the third column of his 'review' the critic says:—'He asserts that each soul is its own God—its own Creator.' What I do assert is, that 'each soul is, in part, its own God—its own Creator.' Just below, the critic says:—'After all these contradictory propoundings concerning God we would remind him of what he lays down on page 23—'of this Godhead in itself he alone is not imbecile—he alone is not impious who propounds nothing. A man who thus conclusively convicts himself of imbecility and impiety needs no further refutation.' Now the sentence, as I wrote it, and as I find it printed on that very page which the critic refers to and which must have been lying before him while he quoted my words, runs thus:—'Of this Godhead, in itself, he alone is not imbecile, &c., who propounds nothing.' By the italics, as the critic well knew, I design to distinguish between the two possibilities—that of a knowledge of God through his works and that of a knowledge of Him in his essential nature. The Godhead, in itself, is distinguished from the Godhead observed in its effects. But our critic is zealous. Moreover, being a divine, he is honest—ingenuous. It is his duty to pervert my meaning by omitting my italics—just as, in the sentence previously quoted, it was his Christian duty to falsify my argument by leaving out the two words, 'in part,' upon which turns the whole force—indeed the whole intelligibility of my proposition.

"Were these 'misrepresentations' (is that the name for them?) made for any less serious a purpose than that of branding my book as 'impious' and myself as a 'pantheist,' a 'polytheist,' a Pagan, or a God knows what (and indeed I care very little so it be not a 'Student of Theology'), I would have permitted their dishonesty to pass unnoticed, through pure contempt of the boyishness—for the turn-down-shirt-collar-ness of their tone:—but, as it is, you will pardon me, Mr. Editor, that I have been compelled to expose a 'critic' who courageously preserving his own anonymosity, takes advantage of my absence from the city to misrepresent, and thus vilify me, by name. EDGAR A. POE.

"Fordham, September 20, 1848."

From this time Poe did not write much; he had quarreled with the conductors of the chief magazines for which he had previously written, and they no longer sought his assistance. In a letter to a friend, he laments the improbabilities of an income from literary labor, saying:

"I have represented – to you as merely an ambitious simpleton, anxious to get into society with the reputation of conducting a magazine which somebody behind the curtain always prevents him from quite damning with his stupidity; he is a knave and a beast. I cannot write any more for the Milliner's Book, where T–n prints his feeble and very quietly made Dilutions of other people's reviews; and you know that – can afford to pay but little, though I am glad to do anything for a good fellow like –. In this emergency I sell articles to the vulgar and trashy –, for $5 a piece. I inclose my last, cut out, lest you should see by my sending the paper in what company I am forced to appear."

His name was now frequently associated with that of one of the most brilliant women of New England, and it was publicly announced that they were to be married. He had first seen her on his way from Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem before the Lyceum there. Restless, near the midnight, he wandered from, his hotel near where she lived, until he saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident afterward in one of his most exquisite poems, worthy of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion.

  "I saw thee—once only—years ago;
  I must not say how many—but not many.
  It was a July midnight; and from out
  A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
  Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
  There fell a silvery-silken vail of light,
  With quietude, and sultriness and slumber,
  Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
  Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
  Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe—
  Fell on upturn'd faces of these roses
  That gave out, in return for the love-light,
  Their odorous souls in an estatic death—
  Fell on upturn'd faces of these roses
  That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
  By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

  "Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
  I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
  Fell on upturn'd faces of these roses,
  And on thine own, upturn'd—alas, in sorrow!

  "Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—
  Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
  That bade me pause before the garden-gate,
  To breathe the incense of those Slumbering roses?
  No footstep stirred; the hated world all slept,
  Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!—oh, God!
  How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
  Save only thee and me. I paused—I looked—
  And in an instant all things disappeared.
  (Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
  The pearly luster of the moon went out:
  The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
  The happy flowers and the repining trees,
  Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
  Died in the arms of the adoring airs,
  All—all expired save thee—save less than thou:
  Save only the divine light in thine eyes—
  Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
  I saw but them—they were the world to me.
  I saw but them—saw only them for hours—
  Saw only them until the moon went down.
  What wild heart histories seemed to lie enwritten
  Upon those crystalline celestial spheres!
  How dark a woe! yet how sublime a hope!
  How silently serene a sea of pride!
  How daring an ambition! Yet how deep—
  How fathomless a capacity for love!

  "But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight
  Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
  And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
  Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
  They would not go—they never yet have gone.
  Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
  They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
  They follow me—they lead me through the years
  They are my ministers—yet I their slave.
  Their office is to illumine and enkindle—
  My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
  And purified in their electric fire,
  And sanctified in their elysian fire.
  They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)
  And are far up in Heaven—the stars I kneel to
  In the sad, silent watches of my night;
  While even in the meridian glare of day
  I see them still—two sweetly scintillant
  Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!"

They were not married, and the breaking of the engagement affords a striking illustration of his character. He said to an acquaintance in New York, who congratulated with him upon the prospect of his union with a person of so much genius and so many virtues—"It is a mistake: I am not going to be married." "Why, Mr. Poe, I understand that the bans have been published." "I cannot help what you have heard, my dear Madam: but mark me, I shall not marry her." He left town the same evening, and the next day was reeling through the streets of the city which was the lady's home, and in the evening—that should have been the evening before the bridal—in his drunkenness he committed at her house such outrages as made necessary a summons of the police. Here was no insanity leading to indulgence: he went from New York with a determination thus to induce an ending of the engagement; and he succeeded.

Sometime in August, 1849, Mr. Poe left New York for Virginia. In Philadelphia he encountered persons who had been his associates in dissipations while he lived there, and for several days he abandoned himself entirely to the control of his worst appetites. When his money was all spent, and the disorder of his dress evinced the extremity of his recent intoxication, he asked in charity means for the prosecution of his journey to Richmond. There, after a few days, he joined a temperance society, and his conduct showed the earnestness of his determination to reform his life. He delivered in some of the principal towns of Virginia two lectures, which were well attended, and renewing his acquaintance with a lady whom he had known in his youth, he was engaged to marry her, and wrote to his friends that he should pass the remainder of his days among the scenes endeared by all his pleasantest recollections of youth.

On Thursday, the 4th of October, he set out for New York, to fulfill a literary engagement, and to prepare for his marriage. Arriving in Baltimore he gave his trunk to a porter, with directions to convey it to the cars which were to leave in an hour or two for Philadelphia, and went into a tavern to obtain some refreshment. Here he met acquaintances who invited him to drink; all his resolutions and duties were soon forgotten; in a few hours he was in such a state as is commonly induced only by long-continued intoxication; after a night of insanity and exposure, he was carried to a hospital; and there, on the evening of Sunday, the 7th of October, 1849, he died, at the age of thirty-eight years.

It is a melancholy history. No author of as much genius had ever in this country as much unhappiness; but Poe's unhappiness was in an unusual degree the result of infirmities of nature, or of voluntary faults in conduct. A writer who evidently knew him well, and who comes before us in the "Southern Literary Messenger" as his defender, is "compelled to admit that the blemishes in his life were effects of character rather than of circumstances."⁷ How this character might have been modified by a judicious education of all his faculties I leave for the decision of others, but it will be evident to those who read this biography that the unchecked freedom of his earlier years was as unwise as its results were unfortunate.

It is contended that the higher intelligences, in the scrutiny to which they appeal, are not to be judged by the common laws; but I apprehend that this doctrine, as it is likely to be understood, is entirely wrong. All men are amenable to the same principles, to the extent of the parallelism of these principles with their experience; and the line of duty becomes only more severe as it extends into the clearer atmosphere of truth and beauty which is the life of genius. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a common and an honorable sentiment, but its proper application would lead to the suppression of the histories of half of the most conspicuous of mankind; in this case it is impossible on account of the notoriety of Mr. Poe's faults; and it would be unjust to the living against whom his hands were always raided and who had no resort but in his outlawry from their sympathies. Moreover, his career is full of instruction and warning, and it has always been made a portion of the penalty of wrong that its anatomy should be displayed for the common study and advantage.

The character of Mr. Poe's genius has been so recently and so admirably discussed by Mr. Lowell, with whose opinions on the subject I for the most part agree, that I shall say but little of it here, having already extended this notice beyond the limits at first designed. There is a singular harmony between his personal and his literary qualities. St. Pierre, who seemed to be without any nobility in his own nature, in his writings appeared to be moved only by the finest and highest impulses. Poe exhibits scarcely any virtue in either his life or his writings. Probably there is not another instance in the literature of our language in which so much has been accomplished without a recognition or a manifestation of conscience. Seated behind the intelligence, and directing it, according to its capacities, Conscience is the parent of whatever is absolutely and unquestionably beautiful in art as well as in conduct. It touches the creations of the mind and they have life; without it they have never, in the range of its just action, the truth and naturalness which are approved by universal taste or in enduring reputation. In Poe's works there is constantly displayed the most touching melancholy, the most extreme and terrible despair, but never reverence or remorse.

His genius was peculiar, and not, as he himself thought, various. He remarks in one of his letters:

"There is one particular in which I have had wrong done me, and it may not be indecorous in me to call your attention to it. The last selection of my tales was made from about seventy by one of our great little cliquists and claquers, Wiley Putnam's reader, Duyckinck. He has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly made up the book mostly of analytic stories. But this is not representing my mind in its various phases—it is not giving me fair play. In writing these tales one by one, at long intervals. I have kept the book unity always in mind—that is, each has been composed with reference to its effect as part of a whole. In this view, one of my chief aims has been the widest diversity of subject, thought, and especially tone and manner of handling. Were all my tales now before me in a large volume, and as the composition of another, the merit which would principally arrest my attention would be their wide diversity and variety. You will be surprised to hear me say that, (omitting one or two of my first efforts,) I do not consider any one of my stories better than another. There is a vast variety of kinds, and, in degree of value, these kinds vary-but each tale is equally good of its kind. The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination—and for this reason only 'Ligeia' may be called my best tale."

But it seems to me that this selection of his tales was altogether judicious. Had it been submitted to me I might indeed have changed it in one or two instances, but I should not have replaced any tale by one of a different tone. One of the qualities upon which Poe prides himself was his humor, and he has left us a large number of compositions in this department, but except a few paragraphs in his "Marginalia," scarcely anything which it would not have been injurious to his reputation to republish. His realm was on the shadowy confines of human experience, among the abodes of crime, gloom, and horror, and there he delighted to surround himself with images of beauty and of terror, to raise his solemn palaces and towers and spires in a night upon which should rise no sun. His minuteness of detail, refinement of reasoning, and propriety and power of language—the perfect keeping (to borrow a phrase from another domain of art) and apparent good faith with which he managed the evocation and exhibition of his strange and spectral and revolting creations—gave him an astonishing mastery over his readers, so that his books were closed as one would lay aside the nightmare or the spells of opium. The analytical subtlety evinced in his works has frequently been overestimated, as I have before observed, because it has not been sufficiently considered that his mysteries were composed with the express design of being dissolved. When Poe attempted the illustration of the profounder operations of the mind, as displayed in written reason or in real action, he frequently failed entirely.

In poetry, as in prose, he was eminently successful in the metaphysical treatment of the passions. Hia poems are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. They display a somber and weird imagination, and a taste almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of beauty which was most agreeable to his temper. But they evince little genuine feeling, and less of that spontaneous ecstasy which gives its freedom, smoothness and naturalness to immortal verse. His own account of the composition of "The Raven," discloses his methods—the absence of all impulse, and the absolute control of calculation and mechanism. That curious analysis of the processes by which he wrought would be incredible if from another hand.

He was not remarkably original in invention. Indeed some of his plagiarisms are scarcely paralleled for their audacity in all literary history: For instance, in his tale of "The Pit and the Pendulum," the complicate machinery upon which the interest depends is borrowed from a story entitled "Vivenzio, or Italian Vengeance," by the author of "The First and Last Dinner," in "Blackwood's Magazine." And I remember having been shown by Mr. Longfellow, several years ago, a series of papers which constitute a demonstration that Mr. Poe was indebted to him for the idea of "The Haunted Palace," one of the most admirable of his poems, which he so pertinaciously asserted had been used by Mr. Longfellow in the production of his "Beleaguered City." Mr. Longfellow's poem was written two or three years before the first publication of that by Poe, and it was during a portion of this time in Poe's possession; but it was not printed, I believe, until a few weeks after the appearance of "The Haunted Palace." "It would be absurd," as Poe himself said many times, "to believe the similarity of these pieces entirely accidental." This was the first cause of all that malignant criticism which for so many years he carried on against Mr. Longfellow. In his "Marginalia" he borrowed largely, especially from Coleridge, and I have omitted in the republication of these papers, numerous paragraphs which were rather compiled than borrowed from one of the profoundest and wisest of our own scholars.⁸

In criticism, as Mr. Lowell justly remarks, Mr. Poe had "a scientific precision and coherence of logic;" he had remarkable dexterity in the dissection of sentences; but he rarely ascended from the particular to the general, from subjects to principles; he was familiar with the microscope but never looked through the telescope. His criticisms are of value to the degree in which they are demonstrative, but his unsupported assertions and opinions were so apt to be influenced by friendship or enmity, by the desire to please or the fear to offend, or by his constant ambition to surprise, or produce a sensation, that they should be received in all cases with distrust of their fairness. A volume might be filled with literary judgments by him as antagonistical and inconsistent as the sharpest antitheses. For example, when Mr. Laughton Osborn's romance, "The Confessions of a Poet," came out, he reviewed it in "The Southern Literary Messenger," saying:

"There is nothing of the vates about the author. He is no poet-and most positively he is no prophet. He avers upon his word of honor that in commencing this work he loads a pistol and places it upon the table. He further states that, upon coming to a conclusion, it is his intention to blow out what he supposes to be his brains. Now this is excellent. But, even with so rapid a writer as the poet must undoubtedly be, there would be some little difficulty in completing the book under thirty days or thereabouts. The best of powder is apt to sustain injury by lying so long 'in the load.' We sincerely hope the gentleman took the precaution to examine his priming before attempting the rash act. A flash in the pan—and in such a case—were a thing to be lamented. Indeed there would be no answering for the consequences. We might even have a second series of the 'Confessions.'"—Southern Literary Messenger, i. 459.

This review was attacked, particularly in the Richmond "Compiler," and Mr. Poe felt himself called upon to vindicate it to the proprietor of the magazine, to whom he wrote:

"There is no necessity of giving the 'Compiler' a reply. The book is silly enough of itself, without the aid of any controversy concerning it. I have read it, from beginning to end, and was very much amused at it. My opinion of it is pretty nearly the opinion of the press at large. I have heard no person offer one serious word in its defense."—Letter to T.W. White

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1

This statement was first printed during Mr. Poe's lifetime, and its truth being questioned in some of the journals, the following certificate was published by a distinguished gentleman of Virginia:

"I was one of several who witnessed this swimming feat. We accompanied Mr. Poe in boats. Messrs. Robert Stannard, John Lyle, (since dead) Robert Saunders, John Munford, I think, and one or two others, were also of the party. Mr. P. did not seem at all fatigued, and walked back to Richmond immediately after the feat—which was undertaken for a wager.

"ROBERT G. CABELL."

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2

The writer of an eulogium upon the life and genius of Mr. Poe, in the Southern Literary Messenger, for March, 1850, thus refers to this point in his history:

"The story of the other side is different: and if true, throws a dark shade upon the quarrel, and a very ugly light upon Poe's character. We shall not insert it, because it is one of those relations, which we think, with Sir Thomas Browne, should never be recorded,—being 'verities whose truth we fear and heartily wish there were no truth therein … whose relations honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want name or precedent, there is ofttimes a sin even in their history. We do desire no record of enormities: sins should he accounted new. They omit of their monstrosity as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society…. In things of this nature, silence commendeth history: 'tis the veniable part of things lost; wherein there must never arise a Pancirollus, nor remain any register but that of hell.'"

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3

THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, OF NANTUCKET; comprising the Details of a Mutiny and Atrocious Butchery on board the American Brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas—with an account of the Re-capture of the Vessel by the Survivors; their Shipwreck, and subsequent Horrible Sufferings from Famine; their Deliverance by means of the British schooner Jane Gray; the brief Cruise of this latter Vessel in the Antarctic ocean; her Capture, and the Massacre of the Crew among a Group of Islands in the 84th parallel of southern latitude; together with the incredible Adventures and Discoveries still further South, to which that distressing calamity gave rise.—I vol. 12mo. pp. 198 New-York, Harper & Brothers, 1838.

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4

The controversy is wittily described in the following extract from a Parisian journal, L'Entr*ficte, of the 20th of October, 1846:

"Un grand journal accusait l'autre jour M. Old-Nick d'avoir volé un orang-outang. Cet intéressant animal flânait dans le feuilleton de la Quotidienne, lorsque M. Old-Nick le vit, le trouvâ à son goût et s'en empara. Notre confrère avait sans doute besoin d'un groom. On sait que les Anglais ont depuis long-temps colonisé les orangs-outangs, et les ont instruits dans Part de porter bottes. Il paraitrait, toujours suivant le meme grand journal, que M. Old-Nick, après avoir derobé cet orang-outang à la Quotidienne, l'aurait ensuite cédé au Commerce, comme propriété à lui appartenant. Je sais que M. Old-Nick est un garçon plein d'esprit et plein d'honneur, assez riche de son propre fond pour ne pas s'approprier les orangs-outangs des autres; cette accusation me surprit. Aprés tout, me dis-je, il y a éu des monomanies plus extraodinaires que celle-là; le grand Bacon ne pouvait voir un bâton de cire à cacheter sans se l'approprier: dans une conférence avec M. de Metternich aux Tuileries, l'Empereur s'aperçut que le diplomate autrichien glissait des pains a cacheter dans sa poche. M. Old-Nick a une autre manic, il fait les orangs-outangs. Je m'attendais toujours á ce que la Quotidienne jeât feu et flammes et demandat a grads cris son homme des bois. Il faut vous dire ques j'avaís la son histoire dans le Commerce, elle était charmante d'esprit et de style, pleine de rapidité et de desinvolture; la Quotidienne l'avait également publiée, mais en trois feuilletons. L'orang-outang du Commerce n'avait que neuf colonnes. Il s'agissait done d'un autre quadrumane litteraire. Ma foi non! c'etait le même; seulement il n'appartenait ni à la Quotidienne, ni au Commerce. M. Old-Nick l'avait emprunté a un romancier Américan qu'il est en train d'inventer dans la Revue des Deux-Mondes. Ce romancier s'appelle Poë; je ne dis pas contraire. Voilà done un écrivain qui use du droit légitime d'arranger les nouvelles d'un romancier Américan qu'il a inventé, et on l'accuse de plagiat, de vol au feuilleton; on alarme ses amis en leu faisant croire que set ecrivain est possédé de la monomaine des orangs-outangs. Par la Courchamps! voilà qui me parait léger. M. Old Nick a écrit au journal en question une réponse pour rétablir sa moralité, attaquée à l'endroit des orangs-outangs. Cet orang-outang a mis, ces jours derniers, toute la littérature en émoi; personne n'a cru un seul instant à l'accusation qu'on a essayé, de faire peser sur M. Old Nick, d'autant plus qu'il avait pris soin d'indiquer luiméme la cage ou il avait pris son orang-outang. Ceci va fournir de nouvelles armes à la secte qui ereit aux romanciers Américans. Le préjugé de l'existence de Cooper en prendra des nouvelles forces. En attendant que la vérité se decouvre, nous sommes forcés de convenir que ce Poë est un gaillard bien fin, bien spirituel, quand il est arré par M. Old-Nick."

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5

Hon. Caleb Cushing, then recently returned from his mission to China.

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6

This lady was the late Mrs. Osgood, and a fragment of what she wrote under these circumstances may be found in the last edition of her works under the title of "Lullin, or the Diamond Fay."

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7

Southern Literary Messenger, March, 1850, p. 179.

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8

I have neither space, time, nor inclination for a continuation of this subject, and I add but one other instance, in the words of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," published while Mr. Poe was living:

"One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late of the Broadway Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of peculiar originality make the fault in his case more glaring. This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, near verbatim, of 'The Text-book of Conchology, by Captain Thomas Brown,' printed in Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library, Mr. Poe actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Captain Brown's work, and, omitting all mention of the English original pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from the titlepage, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the most curious on record."

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