"Yes; Mr. Egerton promised to get me under the gallery. He is to speak
himself to-night, and I have never heard him. As you are going into the
House, will you remind him?"

"I can't now, for he is speaking already, and well too. I hurried from the
Athenæum, where I was dining, on purpose to be in time, as I heard that his
speech was making a great effect."

"This is very unlucky," said Randal, "I had no idea he would speak so
early."

"M---- brought him up by a direct personal attack. But follow me; perhaps I
can get you into the House; and a man like you, Leslie, of whom we expect
great things some day, I can tell you, should not miss any such opportunity
of knowing what this House of ours is on a field night. Come on!"

The member hurried towards the door; and as Randal followed him, a
bystander cried--"That's the young man who wrote the famous
pamphlet--Egerton's relation."

"Oh, indeed!" said another. "Clever man, Egerton--I am waiting for him."

"So am I."

"Why, you are not a constituent, as I am."

"No; but he has been very kind to my nephew, and I must thank him. You are
a constituent--he is an honor to your town."

"So he is; enlightened man!"

"And so generous!"

"Brings forward really good measures," quoth the politician.

"And clever young men," said the uncle.

Therewith one or two others joined in the praise of Audley Egerton, and
many anecdotes of his liberality were told.

Leonard listened at first listlessly, at last with thoughtful attention. He
had heard Burley, too, speak highly of this generous statesman, who,
without pretending to genius himself, appreciated it in others. He suddenly
remembered, too, that Egerton was half-brother to the Squire. Vague notions
of some appeal to this eminent person, not for charity, but employ to his
mind, gleamed across him--inexperienced boy that he yet was! And while thus
meditating, the door of the House opened, and out came Audley Egerton
himself. A partial cheering, followed by a general murmur, apprised Leonard
of the presence of the popular statesman. Egerton was caught hold of by
some five or six persons in succession; a shake of the hand, a nod, a brief
whispered word or two, sufficed the practised member for graceful escape;
and soon, free from the crowd, his tall erect figure passed on, and turned
towards the bridge. He paused at the angle and took out his watch, looking
at it by the lamp-light.

"Harley will be here soon," he muttered--"he is always punctual; and now
that I have spoken, I can give him an hour or so. That is well."

As he replaced his watch in his pocket, and re-buttoned his coat over his
firm broad chest, he lifted his eyes, and saw a young man standing before
him.

"Do you want me?" asked the statesman, with the direct brevity of his
practical character.

"Mr. Egerton," said the young man, with a voice that slightly trembled, and
yet was manly amidst emotion, "you have a great name, and great power--I
stand here in these streets of London without a friend, and without employ.
I believe that I have it in me to do some nobler work than that of bodily
labor, had I but one friend--one opening for my thoughts. And now I have
said this, I scarcely know how, or why, but from despair, and the sudden
impulse which that despair took from the praise that follows your success,
I have nothing more to add."

Audley Egerton was silent for a moment, struck by the tone and address of
the stranger; but the consummate and wary man of the world, accustomed to
all manner of strange applications, and all varieties of imposture, quickly
recovered from a passing and slight effect.

"Are you a native of ----?" (naming the town he represented as member.)

"No, sir."

"Well, young man, I am very sorry for you; but the good sense you must
possess (for I judge of that by the education you have evidently received)
must tell you that a public man, whatever be his patronage, has it too
fully absorbed by claimants who have a right to demand it, to be able to
listen to strangers."

He paused a moment, and, as Leonard stood silent, added, with more kindness
than most public men so accosted would have showed--"You say you are
friendless--poor fellow. In early life that happens to many of us, who find
friends enough before the close. Be honest, and well-conducted; lean on
yourself, not on strangers; work with the body if you can't with the mind;
and, believe me, that advice is all I can give you, unless this
trifle,"--and the minister held out a crown piece.

Leonard bowed, shook his head sadly, and walked away. Egerton looked after
him with a slight pang.

"Pooh!" said he to himself, "there must be thousands in the same state in
these streets of London. I cannot redress the necessities of civilization.
Well educated! It is not from ignorance henceforth that society will
suffer--it is from over-educating the hungry thousands who, thus unfitted
for manual toil, and with no career for mental, will some day or other
stand like that boy in our streets, and puzzle wiser ministers than I am."

As Egerton thus mused, and passed on to the bridge, a bugle-horn rang
merrily from the box of a gay four-in-hand. A drag-coach with superb
blood-horses rattled over the causeway, and in the driver Egerton
recognised his nephew--Frank Hazeldean.

The young Guardsman was returning, with a lively party of men, from dining
at Greenwich; and the careless laughter of these children of pleasure
floated far over the still river.

It vexed the ear of the careworn statesman--sad, perhaps, with all his
greatness, lonely amidst all his crowd of friends. It reminded him,
perhaps, of his own youth, when such parties and companionships were
familiar to him, though through them all he bore an ambitious aspiring
soul--"_Le jeu vaut-il la chandelle?_" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

The coach rolled rapidly past Leonard, as he stood leaning against the
corner of the bridge, and the mire of the kennel splashed over him from the
hoofs of the fiery horses. The laughter smote on his ear more discordantly
than on the minister's, but it begot no envy.

"Life is a dark riddle," said he, smiting his breast.

And he walked slowly on, gained the recess where he had stood several
nights before with Helen; and dizzy with want of food, and worn out for
want of sleep, he sank down into the dark corner; while the river that
rolled under the arch of stone muttered dirge-like in his ear;--as under
the social key-stone wails and rolls on for ever the mystery of Human
Discontent. Take comfort, O Thinker by the stream! 'Tis the river that
founded and gave pomp to the city; and without the discontent, where were
progress--what were Man? Take comfort, O Thinker! wherever the stream over
which thou bendest, or beside which thou sinkest, weary and desolate, frets
the arch that supports thee;--never dream that, by destroying the bridge,
thou canst silence the moan of the wave!

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Continued from page 259.

[19] Fact. In a work by M. GIBERT, a celebrated French physician, on
diseases of the skin, he states that that minute troublesome kind of rash,
known by the name of _prurigo_, though not dangerous in itself, has often
driven the individual afflicted by it to--suicide. I believe that our more
varying climate, and our more heating drinks and ailments, render the skin
complaint more common in England than in France, yet I doubt if any English
physician could state that it had ever driven one of his _English_ patients
to suicide.

From the London Art-Journal.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

The recent judgment of Lord Campbell in Boosey _v._ Jeffreys, which has
settled finally the much litigated question of the right of a foreigner to
copyright in this country, whether of books, pictures, or music, has been
alleged as an excuse for a public meeting of authors and publishers, to
appeal against the concession of such a right, and to procure a reversal of
the decision, should his lordship be disposed to overrule his own judgment
in the House of Lords. The direct impulse to the present agitation,
however, appears to have been certain proceedings commenced against Mr.
Bohn and others, by Mr. Murray, for their alleged invasion of his
copyrights in the works of Washington Irving; of which cheap editions have
been issued, on the faith of a recent opinion of Lord Cranworth, wholly at
variance with that which has lately been pronounced by the Court of Error,
by no fewer than four publishers. The defendants in these cases are of
course the leading instigators of this movement, and appear to have
prevailed upon Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton to take the chair at a public
meeting of Authors and Publishers, at the Hanover Square Rooms, for the
purpose of discussing the question in all its bearings. Although the
authors and publishers of England were but slenderly represented on the
occasion, and even those who were present were far from unanimous, several
ingenious and even brilliant speeches were delivered, and resolutions were
carried, tending to support the Chairman's view of the subject; viz., to
procure a revision of the law which declares foreign authors resident
abroad, to be entitled to copyright in this country; to form a society to
consider the steps necessary to obtain the proposed readjustment of the
law; and lastly, to collect subscriptions to indemnify the gentlemen now
acting on the defensive, in the various actions for the alleged invasion of
copyright, in the expensive process of appealing against Lord Campbell's
decision to the House of Lords. We confess that we have not been convinced
by any of the arguments adduced on this occasion, able and plausible as
many of them were, that we should violate that great principle of justice,
which forbids that we should do evil that good may come; and that because
foreign nations cannot be brought to a sense of the dishonesty of their
habitual invasions of British Copyright, we should make reprisals upon
their authors, and deny them that protection which they so dishonestly
withhold to us. Still less can we affirm a proposition which would go back
from twenty five to thirty years, and deprive English booksellers of
copyrights for which, on the faith of the law as it then stood, they have
paid very considerable sums of money. The impression, that if we deprive
American authors of the copyright they have hitherto enjoyed in England, we
shall force them and their readers to agree to an international
arrangement, we believe to be entirely fallacious. There are very few
American authors whose copyrights have proved of any material value to
English publishers; and even of that few, the majority have retired for
some years past, almost wholly from the field of literature. Washington
Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, are almost the only authors who have a
marketable value in this country; and two out of the three have written
little that is worthy of their genius for many years. Besides, the American
buccaneer knows full well that the chief weight of the sacrifice, if
American copyrights were to be declared null and void in this country,
would fall upon neither Mr. Irving, Mr. Cooper, nor Mr. Prescott, but upon
Messrs. Murray and Bentley, the British possessors of their copyrights. If,
therefore, the question be mooted at all, it should not be with a view to a
retrospective operation. But we more than doubt, if America, uninfluenced
by worthier motives, will ever be driven to a recognition of the rights of
British authors, for the sake of protecting the interests of the very few
of its native writers who look to England for the chief reward of their
literary labor. America, in her rage for cheap editions, has almost
annihilated her own literature, and her unwarrantable piracy of our best
authors, does but react on those of her own. If unable to understand the
impolicy of her present course, will mulcting Mr. Murray and Mr. Bentley
induce her to abandon her wholesale appropriations of English literary
property? or, will our becoming robbers ourselves diminish the wholesale
piracy of our neighbors? We think not. The arguments of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton, which apply to the conduct of America in refusing to entertain the
question of international copyright, are unanswerable; but if she prefers
the selfish demands of the million to the interests of her own writers, she
is not likely to be deterred from continuing the work of spoliation because
we, at length, determine to follow her example. It cannot be doubted, for
one moment, that it was the _intention_ of the act at present in force, to
recognize the copyright of foreigners whose works were first published in
this country, and it is equally clear that the law for the protection of
the patents of foreigners in England, was conceived in the same spirit. Why
should we refuse protection to the writings of a foreign author, and
concede it to his scientific discoveries? If we are to interpret the law as
Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Bohn would have us do, why should we grant to
any foreign inventor the patent by which his property is secured in this
country? More than twenty years ago the late Mr. Murray paid Washington
Irving 1500_l._ for his Tales of a Traveller; 3000_l._ for his Columbus;
1000_l._, for his Granada; and 1000_l._ for his Bracebridge Hall. Is it to
be endured, that because American booksellers are engaged in an
unauthorized republication of every English book which they consider worth
reprinting, we should, after so long a forbearance, become pirates in our
turn; and thus despoil, not the foreign aggressor, but our own respectable
publishers, of a right in which so large an amount of capital and
enterprise has been embarked.

Whatever difference of opinion, therefore, there may be as to the measures
which are most likely to force upon our neighbors a fair recognition of the
rights of our authors, by a system of reprisal which we could never be
brought to admire, and which we consider beneath the dignity of our
national character, there can be none as to the absurdity of attempting so
to do, by a retrospective operation which has neither justice nor common
honesty to recommend it. We are far from desiring to attach any moral blame
to the gentlemen whose reprints, in this country, of the works of Irving
and others, have given occasion for the present controversy. The state of
the law, as interpreted by Lord Cranworth, and other of our eminent
jurists, appears to have warranted their belief that they were perfectly
authorized in so doing. There are, however, considerations of courtesy
which ought always to be observed by persons of the same profession towards
each other, which should prevent them from doing all that even the law
entitles them to do, where, by such a course, they are prejudicing the
interests of their respectable brother tradesmen, on occasions on which
they had good ground to believe that they have done every thing they could
to secure the rights to which they lay claim. Neither is the position of
the author to be wholly overlooked. So far back as 1813 or 1814, Washington
Irving was a resident in this country, engaged in mercantile pursuits, as a
partner in a British firm, and was as much an Englishman as either Mr.
Leslie or Mr. Stuart Newton. He was, indeed, a resident in England at the
date of the publication of several of his works. But the principle, if
carried out fairly, would compromise the interests of painters and
print-publishers, as well as of litterateurs and booksellers. If the
arguments employed at the late meeting, are at all tenable, the valuable
copyrights of Messrs. Moon, Graves & Co., Colnaghi, or Hogarth, and other
printsellers, in the engravings executed from the works of Leslie, Newton,
Ohalon, and others, are completely at the mercy of any one who may think it
worth his while to reproduce them. The sort of retaliation, therefore,
which is now suggested, would be equivalent to that of cutting off the nose
for the purpose of being revenged upon the face.

It is quite true that in 1845, in Chappell _v._ Purday, the Court of
Exchequer was of opinion that a foreign author residing abroad, who
composed a work there, could have no copyright in this country; a decision
which was subsequently confirmed in the same Court in Boosey v. Purday.
These judgments have, however, been entirely overruled by Lord Campbell,
who on a late occasion pronounced an opinion in the teeth of these
decisions, and whose impressions on this question are said to be shared by
a large majority of the Judges of the Court of Queen's Bench. The point may
therefore be considered as settled; and as further litigation in the Court
of Chancery can only be productive of ruinous expense and vexation, it is
much to be desired that an amicable arrangement of the differences of the
respective publishers may be entered into, which, whilst it recognizes the
proper principle, will avert the necessity of further contests on the
subject. Mr. Colburn was, it appears, in favor of the anti-foreign
copyright disputants, and has, therefore, clearly invited the invasion of
his own copyrights of the works of American authors. As, however, he is
understood to have virtually, if not ostensibly, retired from the
publishing trade, he has for the future, at least, but little interest in
the matter.

The speeches of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and of Mr. Bohn, at the late
meeting, contain many facts and illustrations, which will be found of
service in considering the question of international copyright. Mr. Bohn
has already done much by the publication of cheap editions of standard
authors, at a very moderate price, to render good books accessible to the
public, and is placed by his position as a bookseller, beyond the suspicion
of having been actuated by mercenary or unworthy motives in the matter. We
question however if the general interests of authors and publishers have
not suffered materially from his reprints. When Mr. Colburn attributed to
American piracy the discouraging fact that for books for which he could
once afford to pay 1000_l._, he cannot now give more than from 100_l._ to
150_l._, he appears to have overlooked the prevalence of cheap literature
generally in this country; and the ruinous competition which is now going
on among rival booksellers. Who is likely to purchase his guinea and a half
editions of Cooper's novels, when he can obtain from Mr. Bohn the works of
Washington Irving (large and handsomely printed volumes) at two shillings
each? Besides, the same system of piracy was at work when he purchased Mr.
Cooper's copyrights, as is in operation now. He recommends British
publishers not to purchase another copyright from an American author until
his government have consented to enter into some international arrangement;
and so far we agree with him in his suggestion. It is a remarkable fact,
however, that whilst British authors are protesting in their speeches and
writings against foreign appropriations of their copyrights, they are often
very much flattered by their adoption. The audacious single-volume piracies
of Galignani and Baudry of Paris, of the poetry of Byron, Scott, Southey,
Moore, Coleridge, Shelley and others, were often looked upon by the parties
who might be expected to consider themselves most aggrieved, as conferring
a distinction upon their writings calculated to increase their reputation
in this country. In several instances within our knowledge, the materials
for the biographical notices which prefaced the respective volumes were
supplied by the authors themselves! Lord Byron, so far from expressing any
indignation at the liberty which Messrs. Galignani had taken with his
writings, assisted them in identifying them, and wrote interesting
autograph letters to aid in their illustration.

Southey, as we gather from one of his letters, was rather flattered than
otherwise at the republication of his poetry in Paris, and if rumor may be
credited, Moore corrected the proofs, and furnished materials for the
biography of one or more of the foreign editions of his works. Mr. Bowles
and several other poets whose writings were included in this series, not
only furnished notes for the Biographical Prefaces, but indicated to the
editor the publications from which their fugitive writings should be
collected. Mrs. Hemans furnished several notes and suggestions for one of
the American editions of her works, and sent copies to her friends as
evidence of her translantic popularity. In fact we have rarely met with an
author whose writings have been deemed worthy of being reprinted abroad,
who has not considered himself flattered by the preference. We do not of
course profess to believe that their publishers were equally complimented
by this unceremonious invasion of their property. So long as the sale of
such piracies were limited to the continent, we doubt if they were the
means of abstracting a great deal from the pockets of either the author or
publisher; but for very many years they were allowed to be imported in
single copies, during which period they were introduced into this country
in large quantities. They were, however, purchased rather from their
compactness than for their cheapness, and the instant Mr. Murray published
a handsomely printed single volume edition of the Poetry of Lord Byron at a
moderate price, the trade in French and Belgian piracies of British
copyrights was almost destroyed. Why should we not print cheap editions for
exportation? The drawback on the paper, and the superiority of our printing
and binding would be sufficiently obvious to enable us to obtain a better
price than would be given for such coarse reprints as are usually hurried
into circulation in America. We cannot but believe that such an enterprise
might be carried out successfully. There is scarcely an edition, at a
moderate price, of any American author, that is worthy of the library; and
looking at the quality of the paper and print, we doubt if the American
booksellers could afford a volume of similar quality at the price charged
by Mr. Bohn for his reprints.

Any plan is, however, better than that suggested at the late meeting, of
becoming pirates ourselves to cure our neighbors of their buccaneering
propensities. The comparatively small number of works of mark which are now
produced in America (there have been no prose writers of any very great
eminence since the heyday of the literary lives of Irving, Cooper, and
Channing, if we except Mr. Prescott) goes far to show that national
literature is all but annihilated in that country, and that the evil must
eventually, in a great measure, correct itself. In a recent American
newspaper it is stated that protection is not refused in that country to
any British author who will go through the necessary forms by which he
becomes qualified for the privilege. Our readers will smile to hear that
one of these conditions consists of an oath, by which the candidate for
copyright in America is required to "renounce for ever all allegiance and
fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereign, whatever,
and particularly _to the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland!"_ The late Captain Marryat declined to comply with these terms,
although another English author, of undeniable reputation, has, it is
affirmed, not scrupled to bolt this denationalizing pill. We have not heard
if he has turned his privilege to any account.

From Fraser's Magazine.

A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN AT HOME.

BY C. ASTOR BRISTED.

It was a lovely October day; the temperature perfectly Elysian--not half a
degree too hot or too cold--and the air moister than is usual in the dry
climate of the Northern States, altogether reminding one of Florence in
early autumn, only less enervating. Ashburner and the Harry Bensons were
gliding up the Hudson in a 'floating palace,' which is American
penny-a-liner for a northriver steamboat. Gerard Ludlow was on board,
handsome and _distingué_ as ever, but a little thinned and worn by
numberless polkas. He had got rid of his wife by a mighty effort, and was
going to play _le Mari à la Campagne_--not at Ravenswood, however, but with
some of the Van Hornes who lived higher up the river. While the young
exquisite was rattling on in a sort of Macaronic French to Mrs. Benson
about the mountains of Switzerland and the pictures of Italy, the ascent of
the Nile and "that glorious _Clos-Vougeot Blanc Mousseux_ at the
_Anglais_"--every topic, in short, that had not the least connection with
America--Ashburner was witnessing for the third time, with unabated
admiration, the magnificent scenery of the classic American river--for
classic it is to a New-Yorker since Washington Irving has immortalized its
legends.

"I am glad to see you are not ashamed to show a little enthusiasm," said
Benson, as he marked his friend leaning over the forward railing, absorbed
in the view before him. "Some people don't care much for this sort of
thing. There's my cousin Ludlow, how supremely indifferent he is to it all!
He is talking to my wife about the last comic opera he saw in Paris, which
represents Shakespeare and Queen Bess getting very jolly together."

"Certainly one would hardly be able to tell what countryman Ludlow was,
without previous knowledge. He seems, like many of your fashionables, very
much out of place here."

"That's true enough; and the man most out of place among them all is my
brother Carl, whom we are just going to visit."

Ashburner's recollection and knowledge of Carl Benson were pretty much
comprised in a certain luncheon at Ravenswood, which he had found very much
in place, and a very good place for. Henry went on to explain himself.

"He prides himself on a regard for two things--sincerity and equity--two
very estimable virtues, no doubt, but capable of being ridden to death like
all hobbies."

Benson further proceeded to state that he was afraid they would find his
brother in no very genial mood--that, in fact, he had two special reasons
at that time for being in bad humor. The anti-rent epidemic had broken out
in the vicinity, and his place was threatened with perforation by a
railroad. The former, however perilous to some of his acquaintance, was no
very terrible danger to Carl himself, he having as many tenants in the
country as his brother had in town--to wit, just one. The latter was
considerably more serious in itself, and rendered particularly aggravating
by attendant circumstances. An equally convenient and much safer inland
route for the railway had been originally proposed; but Mr. Jobson, the
chief engineer, started the project of a new one close along the shore,
running through the beautiful private grounds that lined the whole east
bank of the river for a hundred and fifty miles. The true motive for this
change was, that the company would thus have to pay less for right of way,
since the inland route would have passed through the cornfields and
vegetable-grounds of farmers, to whom they must have made full compensation
at the market value of the land, whereas by cutting through a private lawn
they could take the ground at a merely nominal rate, the damage caused to a
gentleman by the destruction of his place for all the purposes of a
country-seat being a "fancy value," which jurors and commissioners chosen
from the mass of the people, and regarding the aristocratic landholder with
an envious eye, would never pay the least attention to. But either from a
lingering regard for outward decency, or from some other motive, this, the
real reason, met with only a passing allusion in Mr. Jobson's report. He
came out boldly, and recommended the river route as calculated to improve
the appearance of the shore, by filling up bays and cutting off sharp
points.[20] What made it worse was, that the majority of these very
gentlemen proprietors had been induced to subscribe largely to the road
under the solemn assurance from leading members of the company (which took
care not to make itself officially and corporately responsible) that the
inland route would be adopted, which assurance was thrown to the winds as
soon as the books were filled up. Carl was not to be taken in so; he had
refused to subscribe to the road, and opposed it to the extent of his small
influence from the first; he might be the victim of such people, but he
would not be their dupe. This was one consolation to him. Another was, that
the railway, when it did come upon him, which would not be for two years
yet, would not absolutely ruin his place. It would not go through his
house, or across the lawn in front of it, or break down his terrace, for
which Nature was to be thanked, and not Mr. Jobson. Ravenswood was partly
within one of the to-be-improved bays, and, consequently, the rails would
cut it close along the water under the terraced bank. It merely stopped his
access to the river, which, as he did not yacht, and had room for the
little boating he wanted in the adjoining bay, was no great deprivation. At
any rate, the danger anticipated by Harry turned out all moonshine. When
they stopped at Van Burenopolis (the landing nearest Ravenswood), Carl's
rockaway was on the ground, and in ten minutes their host received them at
his front door, both his hands out-stretched, and his face lighted up with
unfeigned pleasure.

Carl Benson was an unflattered likeness of his brother, with a larger nose,
large feet, that got into every one's way, coarser hair, and narrower
chest; altogether a rougher and inferior type of form; but he had a fresh
and ruddy complexion, and though he was Henry's senior by six years, there
did not seem to be more than a twelve-month between them. In dress he was
as quiet as Harry was gay; never cared how old his clothes were, so long as
he had plenty of clean linen; was often two years behind the fashion;
affected black coats and gray trousers; eschewed enamelled chains, jewelled
waistcoat-buttons, and other similar fopperies of Young New-York; preferred
shoes (not of patent leather) to boots, and usually tied his cravat in the
smallest possible bow. Nor was the contrast in manner between the two
brothers less marked; the elder was shy and retiring before strangers, and
would have been called a very awkward man anywhere but in England. You
might easily guess from his way of behaving himself on a first
introduction, the uncertain style of his movements, and his "butter-finger"
fashion of taking hold of things, that he had none of that dexterity in the
little every-day occasions of life which distinguished Harry; who, for
instance, could harness a horse about as soon as his groom, while Carl
would have been half the day about it, and not have done it well after all;
Harry could carry out a complicated affair of business at one interview,
without coming off worst; but his elder brother would have pottered about
it three days, and probably been cheated in the end. This inaptitude for
small business, this want of promptitude and dexterity, of presence of mind
and body, so to speak, is not very detrimental in Europe, where a gentleman
with a tolerably well-filled purse can have so much done for him; but in
America, where the richest man has to do so much for himself, it is a
constantly recurring inconvenience, and it struck the Englishman almost
immediately that this, though not especially alluded to by Henry, was one
of the things that made Carl out of place in his own fatherland.

The mansion at Ravenswood, which had braved the storms of eighty-five
winters (a venerable age for an American house), was pitched on a hill
commanding a view of the Hudson for forty miles. Without, it was built of
rough stone, with an ample wooden _stoop_ running all round it, and a great
variety of vines and creepers running round all the pillars of the
stoop;--within, it branched off into large halls and spacious rooms, filled
with antediluvian furniture, and guiltless of the ambitious upholstery
attempts of Young New-York, which in such matters goes ahead of Paris
itself. The library alone, in which Carl lived,--that is to say, he did
everything but dining and sleeping there,--was fitted up in modern style,
furnished with luxurious arm-chairs and sofas, the walls and ceiling neatly
painted in oak, and the principal window composed of one oval pane of glass
set in a frame, to which the external landscape supplied an exquisite
picture. The hill swept down to the water's edge almost, where it
terminated abruptly in a lofty terrace, ninety feet above the level of the
shore. The woodlands all about--on Benson's place, on the places adjoining,
on the opposite bank--would have been beautiful at any time of the year;
now, when the foliage was changing color, in anticipation of the coming
frost, they were surpassingly so. As the trees change not all at once, but
different ones assume different tints successively, the natural
kaleidoscope is varied from day to day. The sumach leaf is one of the first
to alter; it becomes a vivid scarlet; then the maple assumes a brilliant
red and gold; then others put on a rich sienna, and others a warm olive.
Here and there were interspersed patches of evergreens, pines looking
almost blue, and cedars looking quite black from the contrast of the
gorgeous and fiery coloring that surrounded them. The river water was deep
blue; in the little bay north of Ravenswood it shaded off into a soft olive
from the reflection of the foliage and grass about it; while beyond the
further bank of the Hudson rose the Kaatskill[21] chain, richly wooded to
their summits, and painted with the myriad dyes of autumn,--a fitting
background to the landscape. Of course the finest part of this view was
beyond the limits of Ravenswood, but so much of it as belonged to Carl (and
his grounds covered some two hundred acres) was cleverly disposed with the
help of an ingenious landscape-gardener; the trees were cut into
picturesque clumps and vistas, opened at the desirable points. Henry, who
bragged for all the family as well as for himself, took care to inform
Ashburner how, when the place came into Carl's possession (or rather into
his wife's, for by the laws of New-York, the wife's property is absolutely
hers, and out of her husband's control) by the demise of his father-in-law,
there was hardly a carriage-road on it, and how he had devoted all his
spare income to it for seven years, "and made it what you see it."

As the Englishman had nothing to do for some days but to ramble about
Ravenswood, and talk to the owner of it, he had full opportunity of
ascertaining how far his brother's estimate of him was correct, and also
how far the difference between the two, particularly in their practical
aptitude for business, was attributable to the fact, that one of them had
finished his education in England, and the other in America, which, for a
New-Yorker, means in Paris, in Germany, half over the continent of Europe,
in short. His conclusion was, that some of the qualities which made his
host so "out of place" were natural, and that others had been superinduced
upon these by his English education.

Harry Benson had truly stated, that his brother's prominent trait of
character was sincerity. He used to say of himself, that the fairy had
bestowed on him true Thomas's gift, "the tongue that ne'er could lie," and
that the consequent incapacities predicted by the Scottish minstrel had
fallen upon him; he could neither buy nor sell, nor pay court to prince or
peer, (that is, in America, to the sovereign people,) nor win favor of fair
lady. Certainly this is a dangerous quality in any country, unless tempered
with an exquisite tact, which was not among Carl's possessions; but it is
peculiarly dangerous in America, for there is no public (not excepting the
French or Irish) that feeds so greedily on pure humbug as the American.
_Populus vult decipi_ there with a vengeance; and when the general current
of feeling has set towards any show or phantasm, moral, political,
literary, or social, woe to the individual who plants himself in its way!

Equally correct was the assertion that equity was a leading idea of his
mind. "Give the devil his due," was one of his favorite proverbs; and when
he said that a thing "was not fair," it seemed to him a conclusive argument
against it. His conception of the virtues was the genuine Aristotelian
one--a medium between two extremes. Not that he was a lukewarm partisan on
all subjects; but of the people he most disliked--and he was a really "good
hater" of some classes, Romanists, for instance, and Frenchmen, and
Southern slaveholders--he could not bring himself to take any unfair
advantage. Now it is no news to any one who knows anything of the
Americans, that they are a nation of violent extremes; the different
political parties, theological sects, geographical divisions--the literati
of different cities, even--vituperate and assail one another fearfully,
hardly respecting the laws of the land, much less the principles of natural
justice. Add to all this, that Carl had a naturally elegant and fastidious
taste, certain to make him aristocratic in sentiment, however democratic he
might be in principle, and it will be seen that he had a tolerable stock of
incompatibilities to start with before having anything to do with England.

But, as if to settle his business completely, and prevent him from ever
becoming a contented and contenting citizen of his own country, it chanced
that just at the period of his youth, when, according to the wont of Young
America, dress and billiards formed the main topic of his conversation, and
he was aspiring to the possession of a fast trotter, accident took him to
England, and a series of accidents kept him there, and caused him to make
it his home for several years, and his standpoint for all his continental
excursions. He grew up to mature manhood among and along with a generation
of Englishmen. He acquired a taste for classical studies, and for that
literary society, and those habits of literary and ethical criticism which
are nowhere else found in such perfection. His life had always been
strictly, even prudishly moral; and while casting off the frivolities and
fopperies of his boyhood, he also parted with much of the impulsive and
imperfectly understood religion of his younger days, and replaced it by a
more sedate and permanent feeling, which never rose to ecstasy of emotion,
but was always present to him as a daily habit, and was deeply earnest,
with little outward show.

Such a man's tendencies were visibly towards the church; and had Carl been
an Englishman, or continued his sojourn in England, he would have taken
orders naturally and inevitably, and might have made a tolerable parson.
But at home he soon found it impossible to assimilate himself to that
Evangelical party which constitutes the great bulk of the American
religious community.

The three leading tendencies of his character already alluded to, fostered
as they were by his residence abroad, had ended by making him very eclectic
and very unconventional. He took what seemed good to him from every
quarter, without reference to antecedents; and the fact that all the world
about him were going one way, was just the reason to make him go the other.
The Puritan denunciations of all who differed from them on points of
transcendental theology, or of social institutions, seemed to him illiberal
and uncharitable. His religion acted upon him somewhat like the Socratic
Dæmon; it restrained him from actions, rather than prompted him to them. He
abhorred all parade of godliness, and shrunk from disclosing his religious
experiences, as he would have done from disclosing his loves to a mixed
assemblage. There were many things about these people besides their
abhorrence of the fine arts, that shocked his æsthetic sensibility, and
their inquisitive censoriousness he deemed ungentlemanly in point of
manners, and little short of persecution in point of principle. What most
of all repelled him was their unmitigated "seriousness." A certain
notorious personage, whom it is no scandal to call the greatest of living
charlatans, is reported to have taken for his motto, "Praise God, and be
merry." Now this was exactly what Carl wanted to do, to praise God, and be
merry; and he did not think the latter clause of the device implied any
necessary incompatibility with the former. He held strongly to the "_neque
semper arcum_," and thought that a man was all the better man, and better
Christian, for an occasional season of healthy enjoyment. He did not think
"teetotalism" necessary to prevent gentlemen from becoming drunkards, and
he took his regular exercise on Sunday as well as on other days. His
sincere nature revolted equally from the idea of dissembling a merriment
which he felt, and from that of simulating a religious enthusiasm which he
did not feel. With all personal respect for such men, and all reverence for
the service they had done to the cause of vital religion, and civil, no
less than religious liberty, he very soon found that he could not
amalgamate with them, and gave up all intention of going into the church.
Thus it came to pass, that letting himself slide into the place which his
fortune and connections had marked out for him, he became a man of society,
and a gentleman of the world. It proved that he was not entirely free from
the national error of quitting one extreme for another: it could only be
said in his defence, that his new _rôle_ rather came to, than was sought
for by him. Perhaps his fastidiousness partly led him into it; but this
trait of his mind showed itself more in intellectual criticism than in
material Sybaritism, and more in the choice of companions than either.
Certainly he had no great qualifications for the part, especially in
New-York, and very wild work he made of it with his peculiar ideas, some of
which were rather English, and all of which were considerably the reverse
of American.

The first offence that Carl gave was by getting married in church as
quietly as anything can be done in New-York, and going out of the way
immediately afterwards, instead of standing his bride up for eight hundred
people to look at. He was shamefully negligent of his duties to society in
not having given "a reception." Carl said that he married for the present
happiness and future comfort of himself and his wife, not for the amusement
of society; and that was all the explanation he deigned to give his
fashionable acquaintances.

His next eccentricity was refusing to read _The Sewer_, to let it enter his
house, or to talk about it. He said, that in Europe, scandalous newspapers
were not taken in by respectable families, that even young men read them at
their clubs and by stealth, and never mentioned them before ladies; that
people making pretensions to superior morality and decency ought not to
patronize an immoral and blasphemous print--and more to the same effect.
Men and women who referred to France as the standard of half the things
they did, taunted him with referring to England. Benson did not think it
worth while to discuss the merits of that case, but answered by a quotation
from Aristophanes, how "clever folks learn many things from their
enemies,"--which he had to translate before his auditors understood
it,--and by another of like purport from a Latin bard, which they were less
slow to comprehend, as it has become part of the stock in trade of our
public speakers, and even the editors know what it means. Then one man
liked _The Sewer_ because it had the best reports of trotting matches; and
another, because it published the news from Washington half-an-hour sooner
than any of its contemporaries; and they all said, that all the papers were
so bad, it was merely a question of degree, and not of kind. Nobody agreed
with Carl, not even the people who were abused by _The Sewer_, and he made
no converts out of his own family--his wife, brother, and sister.

But his great crime was blaspheming the polka, for which I believe Young
New-York thought him absolutely insane, and would gladly have put him into
a straight-jacket. He thought that a _matinée_ which lasted from noon to
midnight was an absurd and wicked waste of time; that even six hours a day
was too much for a reasonable being to devote to the Redowa; that at a ball
or party there should be some place for people who like to converse, and a
non-dancing man should not be stuck into a corner all the evening on pain
of being knocked over by the waltzers; that the tipsy excesses of the young
gentlemen who lorded it in the ball-room rendered their society not the
most edifying for ladies; and as whatever he thought he gave utterance to
in pretty plain language, he made himself prodigiously unpopular, and was a
great nuisance to the exclusives.

On the other hand, he found things enough to annoy him. He had no
like-minded, and it seemed no _like-bodied_ men to associate with; no
gentlemen to converse with on classical subjects, no acquaintances to join
him in his long walks and drives. He was not over-fond of the French. "They
make the best coffee and gloves in the world," he used to say, "but coffee
and gloves, after all, are a very small part of life." Therefore it was
irksome to him to hear the French always appealed to as the standard of
dress, furniture, and manners. Above all, it worried him to find their
language the recognized one of the _salon_ and the opera. That two or three
persons, whose native tongue was English, should go on talking imperfect
French, (for the knowledge acquired by a two years' residence in Paris must
be comparatively imperfect,) though no foreigners were present, struck him
as a mischievous absurdity, and directly calculated to hinder mental
growth. But all these were petty troubles compared to the misery he endured
from the gossiping and scandalous propensities of his fashionable
acquaintance. He now found his error in supposing that there is any
peculiar illiberality and uncharitableness in a religious community, as
distinguished from a worldly one; and discovered, that in avoiding the
Evangelical connection, he had not escaped the spirit of inquisitive
censoriousness. A common error of young men is this: they fancy, that
because people of the world talk of their liberality, and parade it
ostentatiously, they must possess an extra share of it. And doubtless they
are more charitable towards their favorite propensities; the "jolly good
fellow" will judge leniently of his bottle companion's trippings, and so on
through the calender of vices: though even this proposition is not to be
received absolutely. Catiline will sometimes be found complaining of
sedition; most offenders have some lingering sense remaining of original
right and wrong; not enough to keep them straight, but enough to blame
others for the self-same obliquities. But to try the question correctly, we
should examine the worldly, not in their judgments of one another, but in
their judgments of the religious, and see how much liberality they show
them. We should watch the hatred of virtue and purity, and the envy of fair
fame, developing themselves in every form of slander and detraction, from
the sly innuendo to the open falsehood. All merely fashionable society has
a necessary tendency to be scandalous; fashionable people must talk a great
deal without any definite purpose, and personal topics are always the
readiest at hand for small talk, in a momentary dearth of others--this
one's dress and appearance--that one's style of living--who is attentive to
whom--and so on; so that besides the gossip which springs from deliberate
wickedness, there is a great deal that is the result of mere
thoughtlessness and vacuity. And New-York fashionable society is probably
more scandalous than any other, because there are fewer public amusements
for persons of leisure than in the continental cities of Europe, while the
men have not that vent in political life, or the women in outdoor exercise,
which Londoners find.

Now Carl was imbued with the idea (I believe it was one of his acquired
English ones), that the first duty of a gentleman is to mind his own
business. He had a horror of interfering with any one's private affairs,
and an equal horror of any one interfering with his. It sickened him,
therefore, to be among people who were always speaking ill of one another,
and fetching and carrying stories. He grew tired of every one in the not
very large circle of his acquaintance, which his fastidiousness, before
adverted to, had always kept small; for he hated immoral people, and had a
very imperfect sympathy for vulgar ones; and the man who begins by
excluding these two classes, will make a large hole in his visiting list.
He was in danger of becoming morbid and misanthropic. The natural and
proper resource for a person so situated, is to take up some active and
steady occupation--ride some hobby, if he can do nothing better,--at any
rate, give himself enough to do. Carl was not a man of hobbies, and all the
available ones were ridden to death already. The first resort of a young
Englishman, with good fortune and connections, is politics; it is the very
last resort of a New-Yorker similarly situated. He usually has enough of it
at college; is a violent politician at sixteen, and by nineteen gives up
all thoughts of shining in that way. _Why_ this is so, I will not stop to
explain at present, as I have no intention of writing a treatise _à la De
Tocqueville_ on the working of democratic institutions in America. I only
mention the fact; perhaps you will find some further light thrown on it
before we get to the end of this paper.

Two refuges lay open before him--business and literature.
"Business"--banking, or commerce of some sort, is the shortest way for a
New-Yorker to dispose of himself; but Carl had neither taste nor ability
for trading or finance, and was too frank and unsuspecting to make his way
profitably in a very sharp mercantile community. To literature his ideas
naturally turned; and in some countries a productive literary life might
have been his happy destiny. He was not necessitated to write for a
livelihood, and was just the sort of man to write for reputation. It was
the occupation for which his tastes and his education fitted him.

But he had been too well educated for an American _litterateur_. His
standard of excellence was pitched too high. The popular models provoked
his criticism, not his emulation. The exaggerated flattery of newspaper
puffs, and the Little-Peddlingtonism of sectional cliques disgusted him. He
would not toady others, and disliked being toadied himself. He had too
correct an appreciation of newspaper editors, and too much candor to
disguise this appreciation. His accurate taste was shocked by little
mechanical deficiencies--the carelessness of compositors and
proofreaders--the impossibility of getting a Greek quotation set up
correctly. He wrote for elegantly and thoroughly educated men, such as had
been the associates of his youth, and found few of his countrymen to read,
and fewer to understand him; consequently, after a brief experience, he
gave up all writing for publication except one species of authorship, which
had only a semblance of doing others any good, and which did himself a
great deal of harm.

This was the controversial and satirical, to which he was prompted by an
honest abhorrence of shams, and in which he was encouraged by the morbid
public appetite for any thing savoring of personality or approaching to a
"row" upon paper. Carl had a knack of saying disagreeable things in a
disagreeable way, with some point and smartness--was clever in prose
parody, in the _reductio ad absurdum_, in quoting a man against
himself,--in short, up to all the "dodges" of belligerent criticism, and
had a lively sense and keen perception of the ridiculous; but not priding
himself as a gentleman and a Christian on these accomplishments, he did his
best to keep them down, just as he did to keep down any tendency to say
ill-natured things in social intercourse, and only gave them play when
provoked by any flagrant exhibition of imposture. But having once found by
experiment how this sort of writing took, how an hour's ebullition of
sarcasm would command attention, when two months of research and polish
were unheeded, and having no lack of material to tempt him, he was seduced
into it again and again. If a sciolist undertook to put forth a new theory
of the Platonic philosophy without having mastered his Greek grammar, Carl
Benson was at hand to turn him inside out, and show up his pretensions. If
a demagogue took up the formulas and watchwords of other times and
countries, to malign his betters, and stir up one class against another,
Carl was the first to dissent from the popular voice of panegyric, and
demonstrate in plain terms what mischievous nonsense the lecturer had been
uttering. If a Radical magazine blazoned out the discovery of some
prodigious mare's nest--some awful conspiracy of England against American
liberty or letters, who was so ready as Carl to point out that the editor
could not spell the most ordinary foreign name straight, and did not
exactly know the difference between _Fraser_ and the _Edinburgh!_
Booksellers and periodicals were glad enough to publish these squibs, and
the reading public read them fast enough, with considerable amusement, and
no profit or intention of profiting by them; it was _parvis componere
magna_, like Aristophanes and Cleon; the bystanders cheered the exposer,
and followed the exposed as fast as ever. Carl began to set up for a
professed satirist,--one of the worst things that can befall a man, for the
benefit he confers on others is very problematical, and the evil he
inflicts on himself positive and inevitable.

He who had been the merriest of young men found himself growing ill-natured
and morbid when he should have been in the prime of life. It was hard to
say which he disliked most, the exclusives or the democracy, and he uttered
his mind about both pretty freely. He was sick of the newspapers, with
their bad print and worse principles--of the endless debates about the same
old questions in Congress--of literary pretenders and the thousand and one
"most remarkable men among us,"--of all the continuously succeeding popular
delusions--of the gossiping young men in illimitable cravats, and all the
personal intelligence about Mr. Brown and Miss Jones. Still he clung to old
Gotham for a reason that influenced few people in it. He had strong
conservative feelings and local attachments; his childhood (unlike his
brother's) had been spent in the city, and the scenes of his childhood were
dear to him, however little interest he might feel in the new characters
that peopled them. But when in the rapid march of "up town" progress, the
house which his father built, where his parents had died, and he and his
brother and sister played as children, became so surrounded by shops, and
stores, and manufactories, that he was fairly driven out of it, then he
withdrew from the city altogether, and established himself for all the year
round at his--that is to say, at his wife's--place on the Hudson. His
contemporaries speedily forgot him, or if they ever thought of him, it was
only as an unhappy recluse, Bellerophon-like, eating his own heart, and
shunning the ways of men.

He was nothing of the sort. In quitting the town, he quitted most of his
sources of discontent. He had great capacity of self-amusement when fairly
left to himself, and could always find interesting occupation in his
library. He now reaped the fruit of his early studies, though not exactly
in the way he had once hoped and anticipated. His place, too, amused him
greatly, and, not keeping up two establishments, he had money in abundance
to spend on it. He revelled in out-of-door exercise; it was a constant
pleasure to him to gallop his blood mare (a taste for horses ran in the
family) over fresh grass, where there were no omnibuses or fast trotters in
his way. Nor was he without society; those who are unpopular with the
majority can generally boast a few of the warmest personal friends, and it
was so in his case. They came to visit him by intervals and relays,--real
worthies of literature, who had been his father's friends before they were
his,--quiet men of general tastes and accomplishments, like Philip Van
Horne; now and then a like-minded stranger, such as Ashburner, or his
sister and her husband, a good-natured, gentlemanly, ornamental
Philadelphian; or his brother Harry. But most of all was he happy in his
family circle: a man of the warmest domestic affections, he rejoiced in the
society of his children and the cheering presence of his wife. We owe this
lady an apology for not bringing her forward sooner: it would have been
more in accordance with the grammar of gallantry to "put the more worthy
person first." And yet, reader, may it not be better to keep the good wine
till the last, and after telling you a great deal about a man whom you may
not like, then to tell you something about a woman whom you must, or, at
least, you ought to like? So let me present you to Mrs. Carl Benson.

Henry Benson used to say that Carl had carried out his eclectic principles
in the choice of his wife, for she was something between a blonde and a
brunette, and had dark eyes and light hair. She was a tall woman (according
to the American standard of female height--I am not sure that she would
have been considered so in England), and her figure rose up straight and
springy as a reed. Altogether, she was in beautiful preservation, which is
more than can be said for every American woman who has mounted into "the
thirties," and is the mother of three children. Her shoulders were
magnificent, her bust good, her arms and hands exquisitely moulded, her
feet and ankles neatly turned, her features regular, yet not wanting in
expression, and her complexion almost perfect. Still, with all these
elements of beauty, and though of good family (she was one of the Van
Hornes) and sufficient worldly prospects, she had never been a great belle,
and this was an additional charm in her husband's eyes, who would never
have deeply loved a woman that all the world ran after. Indeed, she had not
belle accomplishments or tastes, preferred singing English ballads to
Italian arias, and galloping over the county all the morning to dancing at
a ball all night. And she was so insensible to the advantage of a cavalier
_per se_, that she would rather talk to an amusing woman than to a stupid
man, however handsome and fashionable. Of toilet mysteries she knew enough
to keep her from dressing badly, but not enough to make her dress well and
effectively. Her talents were not of the showy order, and did not fit her
for shining in a _salon_. She had good (not extraordinary) natural
abilities, and had been beautifully "coached," first by her father, and
afterwards by her husband, so that without any pedantry or _bas-bleu_-ism,
she displayed an extensive acquaintance with literary topics, but she was
not brilliant in small talk, in playful raillery, or cut-and-thrust
repartee. When she was in Paris (as Miss Louisa Van Horne), the French
could make nothing of her; they thought her a handsome bit of marble, cold,
unimpassioned, and uninteresting. And when more lately Vincent Le Roi came,
as Henry's _umbra_, to pass a few days at Ravenswood, the Vicomte went away
saying that Madame Carl Benson was undoubtedly an angel, but, for his part,
he didn't like angels; they were very misty and insipid; he much preferred
_les filles d'Eve_. And all who knew Le Roi agreed that he would not know
well what to do with an angel. On the other hand, it must be set off
against the deficiencies above mentioned, that she was a true and loving
wife, a fond mother, a benevolent lady, and a sincere Christian.

Such was--no, such was not the mistress of Ravenswood. I feel the attempted
portrait is inadequate. A passing description cannot do justice to the
woman any more than a passing interview. Her superficial blemishes--want of
ease in her conversation, or of crinoline in her dress,--were obvious to
the casual observer; but the sterling qualities of her character, her truth
and honesty, her constancy of affection, her unworldly disposition, her
loftiness of soul--all these, as they could only be properly appreciated by
those who had known her for years, so can they only be generally and
vaguely hinted at in a brief sketch like this. The great mystery was, how
she came to marry Carl. Every one said she was too good for him, and he
would have been the last man to deny it. Perhaps she was pleased with his
simple integrity, and foresaw that he would make a most affectionate
husband, though it was not in his nature to be a passionate lover. Perhaps
she pardoned his awkwardness in regard for his honesty.

After all, I would not claim that she was morally perfect; very few of us
are. I am afraid she was rather censorious, and judged harshly of sinners;
that in her own comfortable position she did not always weigh accurately
the temptations of others. It is a common practice of very good and moral
people to indemnify themselves for their virtue by depreciation of others;
'tis an error that lurks at the heels of Christian duty; for are we not
_commanded_ to hate sin? and the transition from the abstract to the
concrete is so easy.

I fancy, too, she did not harmonize altogether with Mrs. Henry Benson.
Indeed, the two sisters-in law made little secret of their mutual
incompatibility. Clara said that Louisa was very proper and very stupid,
regular as a machine, and with no fun or frolic in her--that the only man
she ever had about her, her cousin Philip, was as dull as herself,--that
she dressed badly, and talked bad French,--that she went to church in the
morning, and gossiped in the afternoon, and was more charitable to the
bodies of her inferiors than to the souls of her equals. Louisa looked down
upon Clara as a worldly and frivolous little creature, who fostered her
beauty to attract admirers and worried her husband to death by her
caprices, who wasted her time in dancing and flirting, and her money in
Parisian nick-nacks, or in giving parties to people who did not care for
her. In short, the two ladies said many hard things of each other when
separate, and were painfully amiable when together.

But these bickerings did not greatly impair the happiness of our party at
Ravenswood. The brothers loved each other as much as if they had _not_ been
brothers, and had not had to divide a large family estate between them.
Even their wives' quarrels could not make them quarrel.

Many a jolly turn had they and their guest, lounging with their cigars
after breakfast on the vine-trellised stoop, or under the spreading
horse-chesnuts at one corner of the house, watching the white sails that
glided by on the sunny water, and the fantastic cloudlets that floated in
the clear sky; strolling through the winding walks, or across the terrace
at evening, when the setting sun had piled red clouds like a huge volcano
over the Hudson, and the Kaatskills looked like great blocks of lapis
lazuli, their summits half veiled in fiery mist; riding through the
adjacent country in bright moonlight nights, now threading their way among
the uncertain bridle-paths of a dense wood, and anon startling a village
with their clattering hoofs and boisterous merriment as they swept by it at
full gallop; driving four-in-hand a livelong day to visit friends who lived
north or south of them on the rivers, by roads that rose up over the hills
and showed all the glorious panorama of the Hudson, and then dipped down
inland among picturesque glens and water-courses and mill-streams. Capital
game breakfast they had, which the women were not too sentimental to help
them in doing justice to; and excellent plain dinners, with oceans of iced
champagne; and when the cloth was drawn, Carl would chirp over his claret
with as comfortable a melancholy as ever any "ruined" Protectionist
gentleman in Old England gave utterance to.

At a very early period of their acquaintance, Henry Benson had put
Ashburner up to the way of getting at the dark side of things in America.
"Never assail anything," he said; "if you do, the people will tackle you,
from the highest to the lowest. _Let an American gentleman talk_; give him
his head, and he will soon lead you on the track you want." Acting on this
hint, the Englishman let his host talk; what little he said himself would
come in the form of a query or suggestion. "You lead a very nice life
here," he would say, "but it is rather quiet. I should think an active man
like yourself would choose some more stirring form of existence." Then Carl
blazed out.

"Go into politics, I suppose! A nice business that for an honest man and a
gentleman! Why, Ashburner, the democracy of our State, who are always in
fear of being reduced to vassalage by a few thousand easy and unambitious
rich men, have lost their liberties without perceiving it to hundreds of
thousands of alien settlers with their foreign priests. A successful
politician here is either a hack lawyer of thirty years' standing, who has
had opportunity enough of getting used to the devil's work in his first
business, or an upstart demagogue, who has made his way by dint of sheer
brass; either a blind partisan, who knows nothing outside of "the regular
ticket," or a "non-committal" man, who says everything to everybody, and
never gave an intelligible, manly, straightforward opinion in his life. One
party would sell us body and soul to the Slaveholders, and the other to the
Anti-renters, and both to the Irish. If I could bring myself to enter the
lists with such people, I should have to start with the dead weight of
being a "millionaire" (as they call every man here who has two or three
hundred thousand dollars) and an "aristocrat" (as they call every man who
has the habits and education of a gentleman). There is not a voter in this
county has less influence than I have;--to be sure, I don't try for any,
because I well know that by doing so, I should only make myself more
unpopular, without becoming any more influential. Or be a leader of
fashion, perhaps--one of those people who talk scandal about one another
all day long when they are not dancing, who try to pursue pleasure in a
place where every one else is at work, and are so destitute of resources,
that they quarrel for pure want of something to do. See what they have made
of my brother, who is a clever fellow and a well-educated man, though I say
it. He is becoming a third-rate dancer--one of Tom Edwards's _corps_; is
growing frivolous and scandalous, and getting his earnest honesty knocked
out of him every day. Or profess literature, possibly--Henry does a little
of that too; you may see him in the magazines sandwiched between the last
learned cobbler and the newest Laura Matilda of the West. No, I don't want
to belong to any "Mutual Admiration" Society, and if I did, it's too late
now. My mind has been spoken so often and so freely, that were I to write
a book as good as one of Fenimore Cooper's, (if you can imagine the
possibility of such a thing even in hypothesis) no editor would notice it,
and no one read it--unless it contained something personal. Here I shall
stay and amuse myself in what one of our ex-great men used to call
"dignified retiracy;" and if this railroad drives me out, why, then,
_ingens iterabimus æquor_--to England, were I a bachelor, but my wife
couldn't live there; no American woman can, after the attention she has
been used to at home, except the ambassador's wife--so it will probably be
to Italy, or perhaps to Paris, for a man can find occupation there,
whatever be his peculiar bent, and fill up his time well in the place
without knowing or liking the people."

"It does surprise me," said Ashburner, "that the terminus of a refined
American's dream should always be Paris,--that whenever a man has means and
leisure, he runs off thither, and stays as long as he can: and if not
there, in some other place--anywhere but at home."

"Come now," broke in Henry Benson; he had retired with the ladies after
dinner, and now rejoined the men to have some more claret,--"don't you
English run over to Paris perpetually, and all around the continent? Don't
we meet you everywhere in the four quarters of the globe? You don't like to
stay at home any more than we do; only we are franker than you, and avow
it."

"We _go_ away from home, but we don't like to _stay_ away," replied the
Englishman.

"Exactly; and if we had a _pied-à-terre_ close to the continent as you
have, we should not like to stay away from home either--more than half the
year. Here has Carl been making his moan to you about our unappreciated
condition; it's always his way over the decanters--one of his amusements
merely. (Carl, old fellow, pass the Laffitte this way.) Well, I think," and
he paused to fill a brimming glass, "that we are very jolly victims; and
for my part, I am quite disposed to play, regardless of my doom. Look at
our wives and children, our houses and horses, our whole style of living.
Ponder well on this _Bourdeaux;_ ruminate on those woodcocks we have been
discussing. What miserable misused fellows we are! We _do_ live in a great
country--we have such civil and religious liberty as is enjoyed in only one
other country in the world; and if we don't have the management of the
government, why no one here or abroad holds us responsible for what the
government does, and that is just the condition Plato thought a philosopher
should pray for. Fill up again, brother mine, and thank your stars that you
have your time to yourself, and are not a parliament man, as Ashburner is
going to be, and are not set to work twelve hours a day among blue books
and red tape."

And now, reader, these papers, which have been running on for a year or
more, are wound up. I did not begin them intending to give you anything
marvellous, or new, or profound about the aspect, prospects, and destiny,
political, religious, or literary, of the great people among whom I am a
small unit. I only intended to present you with some phases of outward life
and manners--such things as would strike or interest a stranger in our
beloved Gotham, and in the places to which regular Gothamites--American
cockneys, so to speak--are wont to repair. For I am but a cockney in my own
country; I have never travelled far in it,--good reason why, when they are
apt to hang up a man at one end of the Union for what is a sort of religion
at the other. They did not aspire to be "Sketches of American Society"
(that was an honorary prefix of yours, Mr. Editor), nor even Sketches of
New-York Society, but only of a very small class of persons in New-York;
and therefore I had originally headed them "The Upper Ten Thousand," in
accordance with a phrase established by Mr. Willis, though even that is an
exaggeration, for the people so designated are hardly as many hundred. In
truth, I began the series chiefly to amuse some Cantab friends of mine, who
were curious to know how the gentlemen that were their contemporaries and
representatives in our Atlantic cities, lived, and eat, and dressed, and
amused themselves; what their habits and pursuits and propensities were.
The last thing that I expected was that any of them should be read, much
less republished, on my side the water. To a New-Yorker, many things which
they contain must necessarily appear stale, stupid, and commonplace. For
instance, in one number half a page is taken up with the description of a
trotting-wagon; to an American I should as soon think of describing a pair
of boots; the one is as familiar an object to him as the other. But at the
very first number, some clever folks took it into their heads that they
were to be very personal,--that every character described or even alluded
to in them was to represent a real living prototype; that was enough to
make them sought after. And it really did happen that in that first number
I had described a sleigh which actually existed in real wood and iron
somewhere about the city; and the inference above detailed was obvious. It
is not every story in Gotham that has so much foundation; in fact, they get
them up frequently without any foundation to speak of, only unfortunately
the narratives don't fall to the ground as readily as the houses do. It is
hardly worth while contradicting such idle rumors, but to my American
readers (since I have some, much to my own amazement) I wish to say one
thing once for all--that Harry Benson is not meant to represent any living
individual whatsoever, and that his wife, house, horses, and other
accessaries, are not designed after the corresponding appurtenances of any
real person. And the same remark applies with equal force to all the
appendages of Carl Benson, as delineated in this very sketch.

Still, I suppose I ought to be obliged to the members of "our set" who got
up this idea; for the factitious interest thus communicated to these papers
has caused them to be reprinted (in the cheap and multitudinous style of
American reprints), and thus to become known to the outsiders both of our
own city and of other parts of the country, who could perhaps judge them
more fairly on their own merits, from having no knowledge of, or interest
in, the local celebrities supposed to be portrayed in them. Some have been
disposed to accept them as what they were really meant for--light sketches
of life and manners in a certain circle; some have had the bad taste to wax
furious at them. I understand that a few southern editors have departed
from their usual stoical calmness and dignified reserve on the subject, to
assail me for my occasional allusions to "the peculiar institution;" and am
told (life is too short, and time too precious, to read such things
oneself, but there are always good-natured friends to put you up to them)
that a correspondent of the _Ochloratic Review and No Government Advocate_,
who probably never wore a decent coat in his life, and regards every man in
a clean shirt as an oppressor of the people, has seriously taken me to ask
for representing some of my characters as elegantly dressed! If this
individual could find nothing worse to say of my papers, _after nine months
examination of them_, methinks he might have continued to hold his tongue;
but I suppose any trash will do for the _Ochlocratic_.

Whether the abuse of these persons, or the praise of others, or my own
inclination, may tempt me hereafter to essay something more definite and
connected, I will not say at present. Of the things that "lie on the knees
of the Gods," it becomes no man to speak prematurely. Meanwhile, make a
long arm across the Atlantic--So--shake hands, and good-bye!

                                              FRANK MANHATTAN.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] A literal fact. Washington Irving's residence was among those
disfigured by this operation, which made havoc of all the oldest and most
beautiful properties in the State.

[21] Commonly written _Catskill_; but I believe the above is the genuine
Dutch orthography.

From Dickens's Household Words.

THE FLYING ARTIST.

Karl Herwitz is a German. He is about fifty years of age, and one of the
most original of characters. Since I have know [known] him, I have passed
whole nights in listening to his adventures, which are in general as
instructive as they are amusing. Married at a very early age, he left the
military career for that of inventions. He had a most marvellous talent for
conceiving novel machines, often of practical utility; but his soul was set
upon perfecting a flying machine. To this he had devoted nearly his whole
life. He made models, he tried experiments, he brought to bear all his
prodigious knowledge of mathematics on the subject of travelling in air,
with an enthusiasm, a childish earnestness, which is not uncharacteristic
of genius. He studied every natural law which was likely to advance him
towards the consummation of all his hopes and desires--namely, the ability
to fly. At one time his little garden was turned into an aviary. He filled
it with birds of various kinds, to study the mechanism of their powers of
flight. There was the eagle and the dove, the vulture and the sparrow, all
of which were made subservient to his darling object. He has often
explained all this to me. "The Golden Eagle," he once said, "can cleave the
air at the rate of forty miles an hour. Now, if I can succeed in imitating
the mechanism by which he travels in space, exactly and efficiently, of
course, my machine will move in the air at the same pace." What could I
say? No argument, no warning, availed. Still he went on, hoping and
working, and buying expensive tools and materials. He completed aërial
ships one after another; and although none of them answered, he was never
discouraged.

At one time, however, he thought he had succeeded. His contrivance was a
curious affair, shot out of a bomb; but it was about as buoyant as a shot,
fell, and failed, disheartening everybody but the persevering projector.
Still he did not wholly neglect useful productions, and several times made
improvements in mechanism, and sold them for very good prices. But the
money went as fast as it came. His winged Pegasus was a merciless Ogre,
which swallowed up all the money the old German earned.

Last Christmas-eve, in Paris, five of us were collected, after dinner,
round a roaring fire, half wood, half charcoal. For some time the
conversation was general enough. We spoke of England and of an English
Christmas. The magic spell of the fireside was felt, and the word "home"
hung on the trembling lip of all; for we were in a foreign land; we were
all English, save one. There was a lawyer, the most unlawyer-like man I
ever knew, a noble-hearted fellow, whom to know is to like; there was a
poet, of an eccentric order of merit, whose love of invective, bitter
satire, and intense propensity to hate--whose fantastic and Germanic cast
of philosophy will ever prevent his succeeding among rational beings; then
there was an artist, a young man well known in the world, not half so much
as he deserves, if kindness of soul could ever make a man famous; there was
Citizen Karl Herwitz, as he loved to be called; lastly myself. I had been
speaking of some far-off land, relating some personal adventure; and, with
commendable modesty, feeling that I had held possession of the chair quite
long enough, paused for a reply.

"Tell us your adventures at the Court of Konningen," said the poet,
standing up to see that his hair hung tastefully around his shoulders,
addressing at the same time Karl, and mentioning the name of one of the
smaller German states. "I have heard it before, but it will be new to the
rest, and I promise them a rich treat."

"Ah!" sighed the German, with a huge puff at his long pipe; "that _was_ an
adventure--or rather a whole string of adventures. I have told it several
times; but, if you like, I will tell it again."

All warmly called on the German to keep his promise. After freshly loading
his pipe, and taking a drain at his glass, he drew his arm-chair closer to
the fire, settled his feet on the _chenets_, and began his narrative in a
quaint and strange English, which I shall not seek to copy:--

"I had spent all my money. I had sold all my property. There remained
nothing but a little furniture in my house, which was in a quiet retired
quarter of the town; but then I had completed a machine, and sent it for
the approval of the Minister of the Interior, who promised to purchase it
for the government. I now looked forward with delight to a long career of
success, and saw the completion of my flying machine in prospect. On this I
depended, and still depend, for fame, reputation, and fortune.

"I had then a good wife and four children; she is dead now." The German
paused, puffed away vigorously at his pipe, and tried to hide his emotion
from our view by enveloping himself in smoke.

"I was naturally impatient for some result," he continued, when his face
became once more visible.--"I used to go every day to the Minister, and
wait in the antechamber, with other suitors, for my turn. Weeks passed, and
then months, and yet it never came. But we must all eat, and six mouths are
not fed for nothing. We had no resources, save our clothes and our
furniture. My clothes were needed to go out with, so the furniture went
first. One article was sold, and the produce applied by my careful wife to
the wants of the family. We had come to that point when food is the only
thing which must be looked on as a necessity. We lived hardly indeed.
Bread, and a little soup, was all we ever attempted to indulge in."

Six months passed without any change for the better. I went to the
Minister's every day; sometimes I saw him, and sometimes I did not. He was
always very polite, bowed to me affably, said my machine was under
consideration, should be reported on immediately, and passed on his way. It
was the dead of winter. Every article of furniture was now gone, my wife
and children having not gone out for two months for want of clothes. We
huddled together, for warmth, on two straw mattresses, in the corner of an
empty room, without table, without chairs, without fire. Catherine had
nothing to wear but an old cotton gown and one under-garment. We had not
eaten food for a day and a night, when I rose in the morning to go to the
Minister's. I felt savage, irate, furious. I thought of my starving and
perishing family, of the long delay which had taken place in the
consideration of my machine. I compared the luxurious ease of the Minister
with my own position, and was inclined to do some desperate act. I think I
could have turned conspirator, and have overthrown the Government. I was
already half a misanthrope.

When I entered the Minister's antechamber, I placed myself, as usual, near
the stove. I kept away from the well-dressed mob as much as possible. They
were solicitors, it is true, and humble enough, some of them; but then they
had good coats on, smart uniforms, polite boots, and came, perhaps, in
carriages. I came on foot, clad in a long frock reaching almost to my
heels, patched in several places; with trousers so darned about the calves
as to be almost falling to pieces; with boots which were absolutely only
worn for look, for they had no soles to them. My hat, too, was a
dreadful-looking thing. This day, being faint with hunger, and pinched by
the cold, the heat of the room overcame me, and I grew dizzy. I am sure I
knew nothing of what passed around. I saw my wife and children, through a
misty haze, starving with hunger and cold. A basket full of logs of wood
lay beside my knee. Reckless, wild, not caring who saw me, I took a thick
log, huddled it under my frock, and went away. I passed the porter's lodge
unseen; I was in the open air; I was proud, I was happy. _I had stolen a
log of wood_; but my children would have fire for one day.

When I got home I went to bed. I was feverish and ill; wild shapes floated
round me; I saw the officers of justice after me; I beheld a furious mob
chasing me along interminable fields; and on every hedge, and every tree,
and every house, and every post, I read, in large letters, the word
"thief." It was evening when I awoke. I looked around for some minutes
without moving or speaking; a delicious fragrance seemed to fill the air, a
fire blazed on the hearth, and round it huddled my wife and children,
sitting on logs of wood. I rubbed my eyes. The presence of these logs of
wood seemed to convince me that I still dreamed. But there was an odor of
mutton broth, which was too real to be mistaken.

"Catherine," said I, "why, you seem to have some food."

All came rushing to my bedside, mother and children. They scarcely spoke;
but one brought a basin of broth, another a hunch of bread, another a plate
of meat and potatoes, which had been kept hot before the fire. I was too
faint and sick to talk. I took my broth slowly. Never did food prove a
greater blessing. Life, reason, courage, hope, all seemed to return, as
mouthful by mouthful I swallowed the nourishing liquid. It spread warmth
and comfort through every fibre of my frame. When I had taken this, I ate
the meat, and vegetables, and bread, without fear. While I did so, my
wife, sending the children back to the fire-place, told me, in a whisper,
how she had procured such unexpected subsistence. It seems that scarcely
had I got home, and, after flinging my log on the ground, rushed to bed,
when a knock came to the door. Catherine went to answer it. A man of middle
age entered. He gave a hurried glance around, seemed to shudder at its
emptiness, looked at the next room through the open door, saw that it was
as bare as the other, turned his eyes away from the crouching form of my
half-dressed wife, and spoke:--

"Have you any children?"

"Four," said Catherine, tremblingly; but, still, answering at once, so
peremptory was the tone of the stranger.

"How long have you been in this state?"

"Six months."

"Your husband is Karl Herwitz, the mechanist?"

"He is, sir."

"Well, madam, please to tell him that I recognized him as he came out of
the Minister's of the Interior, and, noticing what he clutched with such
wild energy, followed him here. Tell him, I am not rich, but I can pay my
debts; I owe him the sum contained in this purse. I am happy to pay it."

"And did he owe it you?" said I, anxiously.

No, replied Karl; he had never seen me or heard of me before. Generous
Englishman! I shall never forget him. I found out afterwards that he was a
commercial traveller, with a large family and a moderate income. On what he
left we lived a month, by exercising strict economy. I did not go to the
Minister's for several days. I feared some one might have seen me, and I
was bowed by shame. But, at last, I mustered courage, and presented myself
at the audience. I was, as usual, totally unnoticed, and I resumed my
wretched dangling in the antechamber, as usual. The result was always the
same. Generally I caught a glimpse of the Minister; but, when I did, it was
eternally the same words. Meanwhile time swept rapidly by, and soon my
misery was as great as ever. My children, who during the past month had
recovered a little their health and looks, looked pale and wan again. I was
more shabby, more dirty, more haggard and starved-looking than ever. Once
again I went out, after our all being without food for some twenty-four
hours. I knew not what to do. I walked along the street turning over every
possible expedient in my mind.

Suddenly I saw, on the opposite side of the way, a lieutenant belonging to
the regiment I had quitted. He had been my intimate friend, but so shabby
was I, that I sought to avoid him. He saw me, however, and, to my surprise,
hurried across and shook me heartily by the hand. I could scarcely restrain
tears; so sure was I, in my present state, to be cut by even old friends.
But, in my worst troubles, something has always turned up to make me love
and cherish the human heart.

"My poor Karl," said he, "the world uses you badly."

"Very;" said I: and in a few words I told my story.

"My dear Karl!" he exclaimed, when I had concluded, "I was going to ask you
to dine with me on what I have left. I am come up to claim a year's arrears
of pay, and have been sent back with a free passage and promises. But I
have a little silver; and, as I said, meant to ask you to devour it. But
after what you have told me, will you share my purse with me for your wife
and children's sake?" And he pulled out a purse containing about the value
of five shillings English, forced me to take half, shook me heartily by the
hand, and hurried away to escape my thanks.

Home I rushed with mad eagerness, a loaf in one hand, the rest of the money
in the other. My poor wife once more could give food to her little ones. On
the morning of the third day after I had obtained this little help, I lay
in bed, ruminating. I was turning over in my mind every possible expedient
by which to raise enough money to go on with, a brief time, until my
machine was really decided on by the Government. Suddenly I sat up in my
bed and addressed my wife:

"How much money have you got left, Catherine?"

She had threepence of your money.

"Can you manage with the loaf of bread then, and three-halfpence for
to-day?"

"I have often managed on less," said she.

"Then give me three-halfpence to take out with me."

"But what are you going to do? We may have nothing to-morrow, and then the
three-halfpence will be missed."

"Give!" said I, rather sternly, reflecting as I was on my scheme; "be
assured, it is for our good."

My poor wife gave me the money with a very ill grace, but without another
word; and, rising, I went out. When in the street, I directed my footsteps
towards the outskirts. They were soon reached. I halted before a tavern
frequented wholly by workmen, and going into the public room, called for a
_choppe_ of beer. I had purposely chosen my position. Before me was a
handsome, neatly-dressed young workman, who, like all his companions, was
smoking and drinking beer. Quietly, without saying a word, I drew out a
small note-book and a drawing-pencil. I was then considered a very good
artist; but had only used my pencil to sketch models. But I now sketched
the human face with care and anxiety. Presently, as my pencil was laid
down, a man sitting next to me peeped over my shoulder.

"Why!" he cried, "that's Alexis, to the life."

"How so?" said the man I had been sketching, holding out his hand, into
which I put my note-book.

"Good!" cried he, while a smile of satisfaction covered his face. "Will you
sell this? I should like to keep it."

"I will sell it if you like," replied I, as quietly as I could, though my
heart was nigh bursting with excitement.

"How much?"

I knew my man, and asked but six sous, threepence, which the workman gladly
paid, while five others followed his example, at the same price. I went
home a proud and happy man with my thirty-six pence of copper. Would you
believe it? that was the commencement of a long and prosperous career,
which lasted until the Revolution of 1848 threw me back again. Six months
after, I received a thousand florins for a portrait in oil of the Grand
Duchess of B----; and about the end of the same year I drove up to the
Hotel of the Minister of the Interior in a splendid carriage, a gentleman
by my side; it was the English commercial traveller.

We had a letter of audience, and were admitted at once. The Minister rose,
and after a very warm greeting, requested us to be seated. We took chairs.

"My dear Herwitz," said the Minister, a little, bowing, smirking man, "what
can I do for you? Glad to see you doing so well. The Grand Duchess says
wonders of you. I will have the committee on your machine."

"I beg your pardon," said I, "but I have come to request your written order
for its removal. I have sold it to the English house represented by this
gentleman."

"Its removal!" cried the astonished Minister; "impossible! so excellent an
invention should not pass into the hands of foreigners."

"So I thought," replied I, coldly, "when for nine months I waited daily in
your antechamber, with my family starving at home. But it is now sold. My
word is my bond."

The Minister bit his lip, but made no reply. He took up a sheet of paper,
and wrote the order for removal. I took it, bowed stiffly, and came away.

We all heartily thanked the old German for his narrative. Since the
Revolution, and the consequent impossibility of selling his machines in
Germany, he has come to Paris, and taken to portrait-painting once more.
His perseverance and endurance are untiring. His wife died long since, and
he is like a mother to his four girls;--all of whom are most industrious
and devoted. He still believes in his flying machine; but, for the sake of
his parental love, his hard-working head and fingers--for the sake of his
goodness of soul, his eccentricities, he must be forgiven for this
invincible credulity.

None can fail to admire the original dreamer when he is also a practical
worker; while few will be willing to patronize the mere visionary, who is
always thinking and never doing.

From Ainsworth's Magazine.

ART EXPRESSION.

"What is the highest degree of expression that art can delineate?" said
Piombino. "Sleep," replied the master, to the surprise of all present, not
excepting Leonardo. "I will explain," resumed Michael Angelo, "lest you
should have misapprehended me. When I say that sleep is the highest
expression that artist can put into form, I mean that it is the last and
crowning effort of art; that it is the figure surmounting the pyramid on
whose sides are prefigured life's many phases--all passion, emotion,
thought. And to elevate the idea to its highest limit, it is necessary to
depict it in youth--witness the Venus asleep--in order that man may feel
how turbulent a sea of life is calmed under its spell." "But would not
death itself express as much--a peace to the same passions, a peace more
lasting?" said Piombino. "No," said Michael Angelo, "the passions live in
sleep; are growing; in death they are at an end; hence in sleep the eye is
closed to hide the naked forms of passion that lie within; in death the eye
is open and sightless, a circumstance so effectually related in marble--a
material in which the open eye has a look of death united to
immortality."...

"But you have not told us," said Leonardo da Vinci, on observing that
Piombino was satisfied, "in what consists this long debated notion which we
call the fine ideal?" "By the fine ideal," said Michael Angelo. "I presume
we both understand not the work of art itself, but the conception out of
which it springs. Art is the exercise of an imitative faculty upon visible
things; but fine art is the transcendental idea entertained after the study
of nature, and transferred from the mind itself to the canvas or marble."
"How is that idea acquired?" asked Leonardo. "The study of unsophisticated
nature yields the ideal, or similitude of things seen; and this study,
impressing the recollection, affords in due time a conception of abstract
beauty itself to curious and sensitive minds." "By what process can such
conception be achieved?" "Alas! to make real progress in this enterprise
demands, on setting out, the possession of the finest faculties; powers so
transcendental as few are able to value. Such is, however, the prospect of
all who deserve success in the highest departments of knowledge." "Let us
suppose one to be thus endowed; what then?" "Well, let him go forth in a
genial mood and make himself master of the real; this done, he will have
observed the groupings of inanimate forms, and have learned nature's
failures and successes in giving features to the world. He will then ask
what each feature would express, whether it be not something spiritual
which lies deeper than the outer shape. Does the human face alone give
utterance through its lineaments to thought and feeling? are not those of
the landscape also pregnant with meaning?"

From the Paris Journal des Debats.

THE MEETING OF THE VEGETARIANS.

The Vegetarians lately held a meeting in London, under the presidency of
Mr. Brotherton, M.P. There were about 400 persons present; as many women as
men; a great many children, and a great many Quakers; and as in that
country people dine _à propos_ of everything, even when they only live on
vegetables, there was a banquet of Vegetarians. We have no need to say that
the flesh of all kinds of animals was rigorously excluded; the bill of fare
consequently could be neither so brilliant nor so full of variety as those
of Guildhall or the Hotel de Ville. These was only little pies of
mushrooms, toasted bread and parsley, rice cakes, _blanc mange_, cheese
tarts, and all sorts of pastry. The desert was composed of raspberries,
cherries, and preserves; the whole washed down with tea, milk, coffee, and
iced water. After dinner there naturally came speeches. It is probable,
from the bill of fare, that the speakers were in full possession of their
_sang froid_; they have then no excuse for making, and it is not permitted
for any one to make, after such dinners, such speeches as they delivered.
If a speech be inevitable in an English banquet, there is also something
inevitable in the speech, a quotation from the Bible. The Bible (we ask
pardon for the expression on account of the circumstance) is served up with
all sorts of sauce. The President of the Vegetarians, then, relied on the
verse in Genesis, in which it is said: "And God said--Behold, I have given
you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall
be for meat." That is very good, but something else is to be found in the
Bible; and if the Vegetarians quote to us the 29th verse of the first
chapter of Genesis, we may answer them with the 28th, in which God, after
having created man and woman, said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth
upon the earth!" So much for the theological part of the question; but
there remains the political part, that of economy and health. In a
political point of view, the Vegetarians place their panacea above all
others; according to them, society will not be regenerated until all men
shall live on parsley and tapioca: "Passing in review," says the report,
"all the plans of social reform, the Peace Congress, popular education,
&c.," the chairman expressed the opinion that none of these plans attack
the root of the evil, and that a reform in eating and drinking should
precede all others, "For," said he, "a man who, from conscientious motives,
shall abstain from the slaughter of animals, will not be guilty of murder
of his fellow creatures." As to the economic part of the question, the
Vegetarians are decided free-traders, decided partisans of direct exchange.
"It has been proved," said the chairman, "that the nutritious quality of
animals is derived from vegetables, and, consequently, men take their good
second-hand." The Vegetarians declare then for the abolition of
intermediaries and for direct consumption. As for health, the advantages of
the vegetable system are presented to us under the most encouraging colors.
Thus, the East Indians, the porters of Cairo and Constantinople, and in
general a great part of the Orientals, never eat meat, and yet they are the
finest types of the human race. The Russians eat black wheat, the Scotch
oats, and they are very industrious laborers. To this it may be answered,
that if the Orientals eat little or no flesh, it is probably for them an
affair of temperature as well as of temperament; that the conditions of
health are not the same in all countries; that if the peasants of the North
do not eat meat, it is probably because they cannot get it; if the English
army were fed on rice, oats, and milk, instead of roast beef and beer, we
should be curious to know the results of the _régime_. But that does not
prevent men from being in good health by indulging in an enormous
consumption of parsley; that herb is only fatal to parrots. The chairman of
the Vegetarians, Mr. Brotherton, is a living proof of it. For forty two
years he has followed the vegetable _régime_, and he affirms that it suits
him. There was also in the meeting an American, who came expressly all the
way from Philadelphia, and who had belonged to the fraternity for forty
years. He declared that he enjoyed the best health, that he had five
children, all well, that his children had married vegetarians, that he had
twenty-one grandchildren, who could never be made to taste meat. There is
in the society _one_ member of parliament, and, we may perceive sometimes,
that the others do not live on raspberries and cream; there is a
magistrate, before whom there will be no necessity of appealing to Philip
Sober; there is an alderman, and we hope that he was not the other day at
the Hotel de Ville; there are 21 medical men, but they are there for the
sake of experiment; there are ten members of the clergy, but that is not
many; there are ten literary men--alas! it is, perhaps, not their fault!
And there are 50 lawyers, 26 merchants, 11 fundholders, 871 workmen--in all
718, of whom 513 are men, and 205 female. We remember having seen at Paris
an Englishman who made a very large fortune by selling pills entirely
composed of extracts of vegetables. A caricature once represented his
patients in full flower, that is covered with carrots, turnips, and
potatoes, proving the success of the medicine. Perhaps we shall see it
proved that it is forbidden to men to eat animals, and we do not despair of
seeing it proved that it is permitted to animals to eat men.

_Authors and Books._

The magazine literature of Germany is quite different from ours, a fact
which generally speaking is not to its discredit. Indeed there are several
periodicals in Germany which may be compared with the best English
magazines for their varied excellence, while their cost is comparatively
trifling. Among these are the _Deutsche Monatschrift_, a republican
monthly, edited by ADOLF KOLATSCHECK, and published at Stuttgart; and the
_Grenzboten_, a weekly, of conservative and constitutional opinions, edited
by GUSTAV FREYTAG, and JULIAN SCHMIDT, and published at Leipzig. The
American reader of these two periodicals, will have an excellent
apprehension of the general scope and tendencies of current thought in
Germany, as well as some knowledge of the new books as they make their
appearance. Those who wish a convenient and cheap mode of becoming
acquainted with the productions of German novelists, may find it in the
_Illustrirtes Familienbuch_, (Illustrated Family Book), published monthly
at Treves. This is mainly made up of romances by the best writers of the
day; there is also a department for artistic criticism, but it is not very
good. The engravings are tolerable.

German Poets are prolific just now. Mr. HOPPL has brought out a volume at
Stuttgart, full of suppressed tears and melancholy miseries. He is unloved
and unappreciated, and must, therefore, have a bad time in this dreary and
woeful world. Of a similar strain is the second edition of CARL AUGUST
LEBRET'S _Gedichte_, likewise published at Stuttgart; if anything he is
more pitiable and stupid than Hoppl. ADOLPH GLASSBRENNER, of Berlin, serves
up poems of another sort, in his freshly printed third edition. He is known
to every reader of current German literature as a comic writer of no small
ability, and these poems prove his talent. They are mostly political in
their tendency, and are good of their kind. _Dunkles Laub_ (Dark Leaves) is
a youthful poem of Mr. _Frederik Ruperti_, published at Bremen. It recounts
the awful experiences, and spiritual and other struggles of the author's
youth. He suffers especially from an unhappy passion, and is apparently
convinced that the man never lived who endured so much. Still, he shows
great poetic ability, and now that his youth is disposed of something may
be hoped from him.

FREILIGRATH, the German poet, is the subject of a searching, yet mildly
expressed criticism, in that excellent periodical, the _Grenzboten_, of
Leipzig. The writer finds that he is superficial in feeling, without a
genuine sense of poetic melody, and not remarkable for mental power.

A tenth edition of BROCKHAUS'S _Conversations-Lexicon_ is now passing
through the press. The first edition was published in 1796. Of the fifth
edition, which appeared in 1818, 32,000 copies were sold; of the seventh
(1826) 27,000; of the eighth (1832) 31,000; of the ninth (1843) 30,000. The
supplementary works issued between the editions, and devoted to current
matters, have also had a large sale. Of _the Conversations-Lexicon der
Neuesten Zeit und Literatur_, (4 vols. 1832-34) 27,000 copies were sold; of
the _Conversations-Lexicon der Gegenwart_ (4 vols. 1838-1841) 18,000; and
the _Gegenwart_ which is now appearing is also sold largely. The new
edition promises to be written in the same spirit of moderation and
liberalism as its predecessors, but if the articles of the _Gegenwart_
afford an indication, it will be more "progressive" and radical, and less
careful to satisfy all parties.

An excellent German critic says of the preface to LAMARTINE'S _History of
the Restoration_, that it is as coquettish as everything in the historic
way that has come from Lamartine's pen of late years. He coquets with the
conflict of his own understanding and sentiments. His heart still beats for
the ancient dynasty; his mind decides for the republic--a very serious
state of things, not only for a statesman, who is called to share in the
immediate development of affairs, and who can never arrive at unity of
action, as long as feeling and reflection impel him to different courses,
but also for the historian. Lamartine, says the writer, is a remarkable
example of that mixture which is often found among the French, of fantastic
sentimentality, and frivolous, superficial reflection. He is especially
remarkable, because he has converted this mixture, of which in most cases,
the person is unconscious, into a sort of system, and justifies it
accordingly. The understanding says Yes, the heart says No, but both speak
vivaciously and clearly, showing that he has them both in a high degree.
This consoles him for the want of harmony between the two; he never thinks
that in such harmony the reality of both consists.

ROBERT PRUTZ, the well-known German historian, has just made his appearance
as a novelist with a romance in three parts, called _Das Engelchen_ (The
Little Angel). A large portion of it has been previously published in the
_Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_, where it has excited a profound interest.
From the author's previous achievements as a lyric and dramatic poet, his
success in this new sphere is only what was to be expected. The Little
Angel is a novel of modern society.

_Zwrei Monate in Paris_ (Two Months in Paris), by ADOLPHE STAHR, is
published by Schulze in Oldenburg. Lest our readers should infer from the
name of the author that this is a political work of solid character, we
subjoin the following remark by a German reviewer, "Written in a light,
easy, careless vein, this work helps to augment the already colossal pile
of books relating to Paris, but is by no means such as we should have
expected from the representative of the Prussian revolution. Nay, it has
been already surpassed by two recent and similar productions--the one by a
lady, a little art-criticism, a little literature, a few theatrical items,
a _bal mabille_, a visit to Heine, and the sketch of a meeting of workmen,
with their songs, all written in that tolerably piquant, lively style, with
which we have however of late been surfeited, form a book, agreeable
enough, it is true, but not such as we should, in these earnest, serious
times, have expected from such a writer." The American reader may however
draw a very different conclusion from that of this "earnest and serious
reviewer."

The last lesson usually taken by the student of ancient art is that in
gems--cameos, intaglios, and the like--a fact the more surprising since
nine-tenths of the spirit of classic life and beauty is thus extant in
miniature. The Venus di Medicis and the Apollo Belvidere, the Parthenon and
the Temple of the Winds--every variety of mosaic, and half-obliterated
scrap of fresco are familiar to the dilettante, ere he reflects over the
incredible grace, beauty, and spirit displayed in the exquisite design of
nearly every classic gem. Those, however, who have learned to appreciate
this department of ancient art, will welcome the appearance of KOHLER'S
_Gesammelte Schriften_, (and the collected essays of H. K. E. KOHLER),
forming the best work known on this subject. In it we find, treated in a
masterly manner, all the intricate methods of judging of ancient gems with
modern inscriptions, gems of an uncertain era, and modern imitations of
ancient cutting. The "darker side" of the work consists of violent and
unmerited attacks on rival writers. Published by Leopold Vossin, Leipzig.

Among the cheapest and most attractive books for children which we have met
with are the recently published _Munich Bilderbücher_, or picture-books,
consisting of thin folios of all manner of neatly-designed fancies, many of
them by eminent artists. They contain fairy tales, humorous sketches,
historical illustrations, and a vast number of pictures in the well-known
_Slovenly Peter_ style, but far more attractive. Many are colored, and the
publisher has judiciously printed a number on thick, parchment-like paper,
well adapted to withstand the wear and tear of the nursery.

Books are no longer written in Latin. For literature and learning that good
old language has finally given way, in almost every country, during the
present century. In the United States there have been produced some fifty
volumes in Latin since the Revolution, nearly all of which are by
foreigners. The Life of Washington, by Francis Glass, a western
schoolmaster, is the most considerable contribution to Latin literature by
a native American. In Europe only a few pedantic churchmen continue to
write to dead nations, and it is perhaps well enough that they should do
so, since scarce any of them have fit thoughts for the living age, or for
tongues that have been used by free and thinking men. We find an exception
to the prevailing law in _De Caroli Timothei Zumptii Vita et Studiis
Narratio August. Wilh. Zumptii_. Every body is familiar with the name of
Zumpt as that of one of the most learned Latinists of the last half
century, and it is appropriate that his life should be written in a
language to the study and illustration of which it was almost entirely
devoted. The Lives of Hemsterhuys by Ruhnken, of Ruhnken by Wyttenbach, and
of Wyttenbach by Mahne, have long been the delight of scholars, and have
furnished some of the best specimens of modern Latinity. Zumpt will not
take rank among philologers with these great lights of the eighteenth
century, but he rendered services to learning which will deserve a
memorial, and in moral qualities he was not inferior to any of them. He
became in succession a teacher in other Gymnasia in Berlin, and ultimately
Professor of History in the Military College, and of Latin Eloquence in the
University. He published the first edition of his celebrated _Grammar_ in
1818, and it soon became known throughout the civilized world. Of his other
publications the most considerate is his edition of the _Verrine Orations
of Cicero_; his _Dissertations on the Population of the Ancient World, De
Legibus Judiciisque Repetundarum_, and several others, show that he was
well versed in antiquities, but grammar, criticism, and style were his
proper field. Wolf pronounced himself and Zumpt the only men in Berlin who
could write Latin. His incessant labors undermined his constitution, and
brought on a premature decay; and for some time before his death he had
become entirely blind. He died at Carlsbad in 1849.

A third edition of THIBAUT'S well-known work, _Uber Reinheit der Tonkunst_,
with a preface by the Minister R. Bahr, and a portrait of Palestrina, has
just made its appearance, from the establishment of the well-known
publisher Mohr, of Heidelberg.

A new course of _Proces Celebres_ is to be published by Brockhaus, of
Leipsic. Number one contains the _Proces du Comte et de la Comtesse
Bocarme_.

_Remak Rob. Untersuchungen über d. Enturckelung der Wirbelthiere_, Berlin,
1851. All who are interested in theories of the development of organic life
will welcome the appearance of this work, which has been received with
cordial approbation by the most eminent German physiologists. This second
volume is devoted to the development of "the chicken in the egg," and is
illustrated with seven admirable copper-plates. Notwithstanding the
researches of Everard Horne, Ratke, and others into this department, this
work of Remak's is distinguished by an even more accurate and detailed
examination of phenomena, and it may confidently be classed among the first
of the age. This is the opinion of _The Centralblatt_. The engravings are
by Haase. This Robert Remak is the brother of Gustav Remak, an eminent
German lawyer in Philadelphia.

In the _Archives for the Study of Modern Languages and Literature_ we
observe a paper by one G. JAP, entitled, _Why does the English Language, in
its acquisition and combination of new words, rather incline to the classic
tongues than the copious and flexible German element?_ To which we may
answer, "Alas, _why_, indeed?" Why is not the study of the Saxon Testament
generally introduced? and why are not school-boys familiarized with the
older forms of our own language--as they are in Germany made to study the
Neibelungen Lied, and Wackernagel's Reader? We can imagine no argument in
favor of a study of Greek which might not be with equal force applied to
Saxon and good _old_ English.

A work has recently appeared in Breslan bearing the title, _The Higher
Classes, as they are, and as they should be_, by Count ARNIM BLUMBERG:
_written in the month of February, 1851_. That the aristocracy of Germany
at the present day are far from being the practical philanthropists which
they should be is beyond a doubt, but that they will become such by
inspiring them with piety, in the unfortunate, melancholy sense in which
that word is generally taken at the present day on the continent, is still
more doubtful. _Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord_, is piety in America--something contrasting remarkably with the
mystical and world-renouncing _pietismus_ of modern Germany.

A second "completely renewed and greatly increased" edition of BERTHOLD
AUERBACH'S _Deutsche Abende_, or German Evenings, has been published by
Bassorman, of Mannheim. Auerbach is in this country rapidly attaining the
popularity which was held a few years since by Zschokke. Apropos of the
latter, we remark a neat and very cheap edition of all his works, now
publishing by Sauerländer, of Aarau.

One of the most important architectural works which has ever made its
appearance is now being published by Meissner, of Hamburg, bearing the
title _Denkmaler der Bankunst aller Zeiten und Lander_ (Monuments of the
Architecture of every Era and Country), by JULES GAILHABAND, and published
for Germany under care and contribution of Dr. Franz Kugler. The literary
and artistic excellence of the original work is too well known to render
description necessary, and its improvement is guaranteed from its being
under the care of Kugler, who is perhaps better qualified, æsthetically,
for such a task, than any German, or indeed any one living. The 197 and 198
_livraisons_ which now appear, contain engravings of the Chateau Chambord
in France, the Mosque of Hassan in Cairo, the Temple of Gerschen in Nubia,
the Baths of Caracalla, sketches of bridges of the middle ages, the Palace
of Strozzi, and many others. In connection with this we may mention the
_Entwurfez Land-und. Stadt Gebauden_, or Sketches for Domestic Architecture
by F. W. HOLZ, a work which may be commended as _suggestive_ rather than
practical, but still on that very account to be commended to young
architects desirous of developing their creative powers.

Without wishing to render aught save honor to all who diligently pursue the
minutest departments of science, we are still at times reminded, by
occasional works, of the professor who was honored as one inspired by "a
full German blood and a Fatherland's spirit," for a book--the result of
thirty years' unwearied application--on bigamy and polygamy among
grasshoppers. We are irresistibly reminded of this anecdote by a
"preliminary notice" of some thirty odd years' observations of "certain
varieties of thrushes," which are shortly to appear in an ornithological
magazine at Stuttgart.

Among a mass of Lutheran Church literature recently published in Germany,
we observe VOGEL ERNST GUST'S _Bibliotheca Biographica Lutherana, Ubersicht
der zedruckten Dr. Martin Luther betreffenden biograph. Schriften, id est_,
(Gustavus Ernst Vogel's Biographical Lutheran Library: a notice of all the
printed works extant referring to the life of Dr. Martin Luther.) This work
will be found extremely interesting to all readers of the History of the
Reformation, since it embraces notices of many important works which might
otherwise escape attention.

A work interesting to those who like to follow out the different political
trains of thought developed in these "working" times, has recently been
published by Rumpfer of Hanover, bearing the title. _The Excellence of a
Constitutional Monarchy for England, and its inapplicability to the other
countries of Europe_.

The German critics notice an increased interest in what relates to Art and
Literature in the Middle Ages. Among other singular but interesting works,
we observe the commencement of a series of "Manufacturing or Trade
Chronicles" of that time, containing "researches into the mediæval sources
and archives of many German cities, and consisting of items never before
printed," published at St. Gall, in Switzerland, by Scheitlin and
Zollikoffer. As Switzerland is eminently the country wherein the ancient
_guilds_, or business associations of the Middle Ages, have longest
continued in their original form, we may remark a peculiar appropriateness
in the fact that such a work should there make its first appearance. This
volume consists of _The Chronicles of the honorable Association of
Butchers_. Also, the publication of a manuscript, _Thetmari magistri, iter
ad Terram Sanctum_, 1217, (Thetmar's Journey to the Holy Land, in 1217,) by
Huber & Co., of St. Gall: edited by T. TOBLER. With which we would cite
_Koninc Ermenrikes Düt_. The death of King Ermenrich, an old Flemish Song
and Legend of Theodoric, discovered with notes, by Jac. Grimm, Hanover:
pub. by Ehlerman, price 15s. groschen. This work, which we have as yet not
seen, has, however, been spoken of in terms of high praise, as "although in
many places wanting, still excellent, as giving yet another glance into the
rich vein of German Legendary, and Lyrical Life." Fault is, however, found
with the publisher for a want of precision and accuracy. CONRAD SCHWENCK
publishes through SAUNERLANDER, a "_Mythology of the Ancient German_" while
the "_Origin of the three oldest cities on the Rhine_," namely, Mayence,
Bonn, and Cologne, by Franz Ritter, is not without claims to interest.

One of the most exquisite artistic literary productions which has for years
appeared in Germany, is that which has lately been published by RUDOLPH
BESSER, of Hamburg, bearing the title, _Dr. Martin Luther, der Deutsche
Reformator: In bildlichen Darstellunzen von Gustav König; in
geschichtlichen Umrissen von Heinrich Gelzer_. (Dr. Martin Luther, the
German reformer: artistically illustrated by Gustavus König, with
historical sketches, by Henry Gelzer.) This is one of the works of which
Protestant Germany may well feel proud, inasmuch as it has in every line
the impress and spirit of national art. The entire work sets forth the
artistic feeling which characterized the Nuremberg artists of the sixteenth
century, and we are continually and irresistibly reminded, in turning over
these exquisite engravings, of Albert Dürer, Cranach Wohlgemuth and Hans
Sebald Beham. The work consists in a great part of short sketches and
scenes from the life of Luther, illustrated, as the title implies, by the
eminent artist König, who, though an artist of Munich, is by birth a
Coburger. From Munich he has, however, drawn all the learning and
inspiration of the middle age and high Catholic art, the which knowledge he
has however admirably and consistently applied to an eminently Protestant
subject. Peculiarly in the modernised Dürer style, is one of the first
engravings representing Luther as a boy singing for bread, (as is even yet
the custom in some parts of Germany,) before the door of a house. Luther
gives himself a naive account of this: "They say, (quoth Luther,) and
truly, that the Pope himself hath been in his time a wandering student,
therefore let us not despise the lads who beg before the doors '_panem
propter Deum_', and sing for bread. Such an one have I also been, and
received bread before the doors of houses, particularly at Eisenach, in
mine own dear town." Very animated and expressive is also the scene
representing Luther as accidentally coming upon a copy of the Bible for the
first time in the University Library. In his left hand he holds a massy
folio Aristotle, and near him lie tomes of scholastic philosophy and
theology, while his eye with the rapid glance of intelligence and
conviction peruses the history of _Anna_. This is in short a work which
every patron of art will certainly obtain, nor will it prove less
acceptable to the scholar and theologian from the graphic and excellent
character of the literary matter.

_Deutsches Volkskalender auf das Jahr_, 1852. _Herausg, von Gustav.
Nientz._ There are two works, which, generally speaking, are found in every
Christian family--the Bible and--the almanac. The Almanac has in fact the
greater antiquity of the twain, for in the remote East, as in Norway, it
was universally published "for the million," on blocks of wood or stone, or
on walking-canes, even in the days of paganism. And since it _is_ so
generally distributed, would it not be well for some of our higher literati
to take the matter in hand, and make it a medium for something better than
criminal trials, quack advertisements, and similar subjects? This of
Nieritz is well gotten up, and contains excellent contributions from Jer.
Gotthelf, Karl Barth, A. Wildenhahn, Karl Simrock, and A. Grube. The best
in the collection appears to be _The Broom-maker of Rychiswyl_, by
Gotthelf. All of the engravings are admirable, and the work is published
for "next to nothing."

An _Austrian Biographical Dictionary_ is now publishing, by Moritz Bermann,
at Vienna; useful to students of history and politics.

In SWEDEN, is the title of two volumes of _Sketches of Travel_, by HANS
CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, just published at Leipzic. They are replete with all
the poetic charm and genial humor which his pen imparts to every subject it
touches.

HENRICH ZEISE is a Danish novelist with whose works we have in this country
no acquaintance, but who has just been introduced to the Germans by a
translation into their language of his _Novels of Christian Winther_, which
are praised by the critics as not only well written, but as affording an
excellent idea of Danish social life. Zeise is the son of a country parson
of Lolland; was born in 1796; and first distinguished himself by his
fugitive poems, which in 1820 were collected in a volume. He travelled in
Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, and in 1832 published a collection of
translations from the German poets and other writers. In 1835, he brought
out a second series of his own poems, in which he abandoned to a great
degree his previous popular style, and put on the manners of fashionable
society. This was not a successful experiment. His novels are more recent;
the best, _Osterie_, was published in 1843. In 1849 he translated _Reinecke
Fuchs_ into Danish, preserving the original metre. He now has a pension
from government, and lives at Copenhagen.

TEGNER, the great Swedish poet, is known to American and English readers
through _Frithiof's Saga_ and Longfellow's translations of his _Children of
the Lord's Supper_. A German version of his more recent writings is now
making its appearance at Leipzic. The first number contains _Gerda_, a
fragment of an unfinished heroic poem which is spoken of as very admirable,
and a few little comic poems which are said to be charming. Adam and Eve
figure in one of these.

HEINRICH VON ORTENBURG has published a second edition of his poetical tale,
entitled _Nachtbluthen_--Night-blooms, or Night-flowers--and JOHN G. SEIDE,
the Viennese, an increased edition of _The Songs of the Night_. The two
will serve to bind up with _Voices of the Night_--though perhaps there
_are_ German or Sclavonic poems that would better serve this purpose.

_Bomische Rosen, Czechische Volkslieder_ (Bohemian Roses, or National
Songs), by IDA VON DURINGSFELD, and published by Kern, of Breslau, will
undoubtedly attract the attention of the rapidly increasing circle of
friends of Sclavonic literature. Also Sketches of Travel, by the same
authoress, published by Schlodtmann, of Bremen.

An edition of _Hoffman von Fallersleben's Heimatklange_, or Regrets for
Home, a collection of songs, has just made its appearance. Apropos of
ultra-liberal political bards, we see that FRELIGRATH publishes the second
volume of _Neuere Polit und Sociale Gedichte_, or Recent Political and
Social Poems, by Schaub, of Düsseldorf. Freligrath's reputation as a poet
appears to have much advantage from his persecution as a patriot.

The Italians were surprised lately by the announcement that the ex-minister
GUERRAZZI, who is in prison awaiting trial for high treason, was about to
publish _An Apology for his Political Life_, and that sheets of this
Apology are from time to time forwarded to Signor Lami, Minister of Greece
and Justice, who revises them, when they are returned to Guerrazzi for
final correction. It seems incredible--altogether inconsistent with Italian
policy--that a state prisoner should thus be suffered to pre-occupy the
public mind with his defence. But the ministerial paper of the 8th of
August indiscreetly solved the mystery with the following notice:

     "The publisher, Lemonnier, at Florence, is now printing, and
     will shortly publish a thick volume, containing 'The Apology
     for the Political Life of Guerrazzi,' written by himself.
     The announcement of this publication, is of a nature to
     excite great curiosity; it will at the same time be a
     thunderbolt to the Neo-Moderati, and the most conclusive
     condemnation of their acts during the period Guerrazzi was
     in power. Guerrazzi therein unpitifully and ably scourges
     their political weaknesses, and their _portefeuille_
     rivalries, which obliged the Grand Duke in the end to throw
     himself into the arms of the democratic party. This book of
     Guerrazzi's will be a peremptory reply to the
     proudly-compiled apology of the Italian Constitutional
     party, published by Messrs. Gualterio and Farini, and
     especially to the base and calumnious imputations, directed
     by the latter against our excellent and loyal Grand Duke, in
     the recently published third volume of his work. Not only
     will the Constitutionalists be denounced in the book of
     Guerrazzi, but the intrigues of the Piedmontese Government
     with regard to Tuscany will be exposed, as likewise those of
     Sir G. Hamilton, British ambassador at Florence."

This certifies the publication to be a bargain between Guerrazzi and the
Tuscan Ministry to give vent to their hatred of the Constitutional party
and of Piedmont. Guerrazzi writes in prison, from prison sends to the
printers, and the Minister acts as reviser. It is really an odd thing--but
characteristic of Italian affairs, perhaps,--for a disgraced and impeached
minister to buy his life by turning "States' Evidence." In better days such
results were for rascals of a lower grade.

F. A. GUALTERIO brings out an account of the late Italian
revolution--_Gliultimi Rivolgimenti Italiani, Memorie Storiche, con
Documenti inediti_--the first part of which, in three large octavo volumes,