superior to a translation published anonymously in this country some years ago,indeed, some passages are not so good. The original itself is so delicate, clear and beautiful, that a perfect translation is quite impossible. We remember to have read it years ago, in the German, in which it was written by the author (as well as Swedish), and regarded it at that time as a touching glorification of a great genius in painting by another great genius in poetry. But a perusal of the English version does not recall our earlier admiration. It is still, however, even under the veil of translation, a sad, pathetic story, tenderly and nobly told, with the characters admirably individualized, and a grand tone of aspiration breathing around its sweet pictures of the struggles and trials of genius. The finest passage in the whole is, perhaps, the soliloquy of Antonio (Coreggio), on entering the grand picture gallery of the Duke Ottavio, a cold, hateful character, by the way, to whom he was carrying a picture for sale. It is a long passage for extracting, but it will repay the reader, especially if he have artistic tastes. "Antonio (enters, carrying his picture on his back). Arrived at last! Good heavens, how tired I am! (Puts his picture down, takes a chair, and sits.) It was so hot, the road so long, the sun So scorching! Ha! the air's refreshing here. The vaulted roofs, broad pillars cast a shade; And cool both air and walls. Heavens! who would not Be lodged like this! Well, so shall I be soon. (Casts a look around the room.) As rich-emblazon'd scutcheons o'er the tombs I ne'er saw any thing like this before; known! Flemish? What country can that be, I wonder? Why this is exquisite! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Four greedy gray beards counting o'er their gold! His snout, and peers with curious wonder down; When he was young, most probably. (Reads.) By Holbein. I know him not. I know you there, old friends! How farest thou, worthy Perugino, with Thy soft green tone, thy figures ranged to match Still thou'rt a glorious fellow! Though, perchance, There are the mighty throned: yonder hangs A powerful picture. the full size of life. A noble graybeard! 'Tis the holy Job. Grandly conceived, and executed grandly! It is not every monk can work like this. No doubt behind it is the best of all. I must see this before Ottavio comes This is the Saint Cecilia! There she stands, By whom is this? It is not painting; no, Here is sublime, celestial poesy, "Ottavio (coldly). "Tis Raphael's. -There is an individual who calls himself Sam Slick, but whose real name is Haliburton, who writes tales and sketches of American life on purpose for the English market. He is a Nova Scotian by birth or residence, and knows about as much of genuine Yankee character as one half the comic actors who attempt to personate it on the stage. i. e., he knows a few enormous exaggerations and nothing more. His representations, however, are received in England as the true thing, and nine out of ten of the current slang expressions, which the English ascribe to Yankees, are taken from his books, never having been heard of in Yankee land. They strike a New Englander as oddly as they do John Bull himself, and are most likely inventions of the author. But Mr. Haliburton's last book is an improvement upon his former volumes. It is called "The Americans at Home, or By-ways, Backwoods and Prairies ;" and consists of selected original stories, from the press of the several States, illustrating the local life, from a coon hunt to a husking frolic, and presenting the characters of the halfcivilized emigrants and hunters of the frontier, in all their bold, hardy, manly, and sometimes picturesque adventures. It is a companion piece to Mr. Haliburton's Traits of American Humor, which was compiled in the same way. -We can hardly hope to keep our readers au courant with the course of English novels, for they are issued so rapidly and forgotten so soon, that by the time the large edition of Putnam reaches its readers, an entire new batch is on the carpet. Among the best of the most recent, however, we may notice the following:-Mrs. CLARKE'S "Iron Cousin,"* which is the history of a self-willed and nearly spoiled beauty, saved at last by a cousin of inflexible principles, well told, with fine dramatic incidents throughout, but quite too long for the interest; "Claude the Colporteur," by the author of Mary Powell, an account of the adventures of a Bible missionary on the continent, effectively narrated, in that minute and painstaking way, which imparts to all the writings of this author, such a vraisemblance and air of naturalness; "Aubrey," by the author of Two Old Men's Tales, somewhat loose in texture and extravagant in conception, but powerful and exciting; the story turning upon the love of two twin brothers for the same lady-the one a reserved, studious, and intelligent man, and the other a frank sailor, and ending, of course, in the success and punishment of the subtlest not the best of the two suitors; "Counterparts, or the Cross of Love," by the author of Charles Auchester, not sustaining the promise of the earlier book, with more of the defects and fewer merits; "Angelo," a romance of modern Rome, showing up the workings of Jesuitism, as well as the secret movements of the late Revolution, with the requisite machinery of a novel of Italian life, consisting of stilettoes, trapdoors, masks, dungeons, and midnight poisonings. &c.; and last, not by any means least, "Nannette and her Lovers," by TALBOT GWYNNE. As the last has been republished here, we may say of it, at greater length, that it is a story of French domestic life during the era of the revolution. The heroine, at the time it opens, is on the eve of marriage with a young countryman, but the ceremonies are interrupted by a mob. The lover is carried off to join the army, rises in rank, but grows selfish and vain as he rises, and when he comes back, is indifferent to his betrothed, who subsequently marries another. The plot is simple enough, but it is artfully told; and in its several incidents portraying with vivid fidelity the aspect of public affairs at the eventful period in which the scene is laid. It is by far the best of any of Mr. Gwynne's novels that we have looked over. As the name of Radcliffe is associated with novels of hobgoblins and demons, it strikes us as perfectly natural that JOHN NETTEN RADCLIFFE should write a history of "Fiends, Ghosts and Sprites," and an instructive history it is, wanting in research somewhat, but containing many of the best authenticated facts relating to the appearance of goblins, &c., and an intelligent philosophy of them. The belief in supersensual existences is one of the most ancient and wide-spread of all the faiths of the human soul, prevailing in the later ages of civilization as well as in the earlier, and defying all the attempts of philosophy to eradicate it, even in an age of blank materialism. It has been the habit with some to regard it as an evidence of imbecility and barbaReprinted by Appleton & Co., New York, rism; but a sounder view now obtains, and these supernatural tendencies are considered as the protests of the heart against that scientific narrowness which converts nature into a mere mechanism, and confines life to mere visible realities. It gets to be associated with the most monstrous chimeras and superstitions, and has led in times past, to rites inconceivably horrid, and to methods of legislation as atrocious as they were absurd; but lying back of most of its vagaries, are profound and central truths. Mr. Radcliffe traces many of these, through the religions of different nations, but the best part of his book is taken up with Hallucinations, Dreams, Presentiments, &c., which he accounts for on the same principle as Sir David Brewster, Sir Walter Scott, and others who have written on the subject. The volume is often amusing, in the anecdotes it brings together, out of the literature of all nations. FRENCH.-Mr. Stirling's Cloister-Life of Charles the Fifth, is well known by this time to English readers, and supposed to have thrown much new light upon the history of that monarch; but M. AMEDEE PICHORT, in his Charles Quint (Charles Quint, Chronique de sa vie interieure, et sa vie politique de son abdication, et de sa Retraite dans le Cloitre de Yuste), has aimed at quite opposite conclusions, contending that he is the first historian who has really obtained a glimpse at the true personal character and domestic life of the hero. we are wrong in speaking of him as a historian; he claims to be a mere chronicler only; but whatever he is, his book seems to be conclusive as to its subject. Spanish, German, and English authorities are cited in abundance, to say nothing of those of the French archives to which he has had access. The fault of the work is prolixity and superabundance, though the author handles his materials with great freedom and judgment. But The same author has recently published a book about the Mormons (Les Mormons), which is a compilation apparently from the various accounts of them given in the American newspapers and English reviews. It is noticed in the Revue du Deux Mondes. which makes itself quite merry over the doctrine of spiritual wives, and attempts to deduce the movement of Joseph Smith from the Protestantism of the 16th century, combined with the doctrines of the Millennarians and Swedenborg, and a touch of the Socialists. Poor Joe, if he were alive now would be surprised to find what an illustrious descent his craft and impudence had, and how profoundly philosophical his spiritual genesis! -The seventh volume of the life of Joseph Bonaparte, entitled Mémoires et Correspondence Politique et Militaire du Roi Joseph, contains the sequel of the Spanish correspondence down to April, 1811. It has, doubtless, value for the historian, but is without general interest. -A book is printed by M. GRASSET, to prove that J. J. Rousseau was at a place called Montpellier once-an important fact not mentioned by his biographers. In the first, he shows that Rousseau, then about twenty-five years of age, sojourned at Montpellier, and consulted a physician for a palpitation of the heart with which he was troubled; in the second part, he establishes his relations to certain people and professors; and in the third part he attempts to refute the very poor opinion that Rousseau appeared to have of its inhabitants. The next work we should recommend the author to undertake would be a translation into French of Poole's "Little Pedlington." -We postpone a number of works on French ethics, that we may get in an extract or two from LAMARTINE'S latest work, "Memoirs of Celebrated Characters," which is a kind in which his brilliant faculties work to the most advantage. As a regular historian, Lamartine has remarkable defects, but as a sketcher of schemes and characters in history he has no superiors. He is not always accurate, it is true, but he is quite sure to be picturesque and impressive. The volumes before us open with Nelson, of whom, and particularly his friend Lady Hamilton he gives a most striking sketch. Here is the introduction of the latter personage: "Thus originated, by the combination of events, and the accidental sympathy of an old man, the fatal attachment between Nelson and Lady Hamilton; which, like the passion of Antony and Cleopatra, inflamed the coasts of the Mediterranean, changed the face of the world, and carried on to glory, to shame and to crime, a hero entangled in the snares of beauty. To comprehend, clearly, the infatuation of Nelson, it becomes necessary to retrace the life and adventures of Lady Hamilton, at first the Aspasia, and af terwards the Herodias of ber age,-elevated by extraordinary beauty, by fortune and blind affection, from the hovel of her mother, and the suspected dens of London, to the rank of an English ambassadress, the hand of a gentleman of distinguished rank and ability, and the close intimacy of a queen of whom she was the protectress and ally, rather than the dependent companion. Supreme beauty is a royalty of the senses, which subjugates even the masters and mistresses of empires. These conquests are the miracles of nature; few have arrived at the do minion which Lady Hamilton, the modern Theodora, exercised by her charms. "Her only name was Emma, for her father remained always unknown. She was one of the children of love, of crime, of mystery, whom nature delights to overwhelm with gifts in compensation for the loss of hereditary claims. Her mother was a poor farmer's servant in the county of Chester. Whether she had lost her husband by death, or, like Hagar, had been abandoned by her seducer, she arrived unknown and reduced to beggary, at a village in Wales, the Switzerland of England. She carried in her arms a female infant of a few months old. The beauty of both attracted the simple mountaineers of the village of Hawarden; the stranger picked up a livelihood by working for the farmers and gleaning in the fields. The marked and noble features of the child served to propagate the rumor that her birth was illustrious and mysterious; she was said to be a daughter of Lord Halifax. Nothing afterwards, either in her fortune or education, gave color to the report. At the age of twelve she was received in a neighboring family as children's servant The frequent visits of her master and mistress to London, where they resided in the house of their relative, the celebrated engraver, Boydell, gave her the first idea of the im pression her figure produced on the crowd in public places, and a vague presentiment of the high fortune to which her beauty would exalt her. At sixteen she made her escape from Hawarden, a field too obscure and circumscribed for her expanded dreams, and engaged herself in the household of a respectable tradesman in London. A lady of superior rank, struck by her appearance in the shop, elevated her to a higher position of servitude. Almost without em. ployment in an opulent family, Emma gave herself up to the perusal of those fascinating romances which create an imaginary world for the love or ambition of youthful minds; she frequented the theatres, and imbibed there the first inspirations of the genius of dramatic expression, of action, and attitude, which she embodied afterwards in a new art, when she be came the animated statue of beauty and passion. "Being discharged by her mistress for some household negligence, her growing taste for the theatre induced her to seek a situation in the family of one of the managers. The irregularity and freedom of that establishment, the constant intercourse with actors, musicians, and dancers, initiated her in the subordinate mechanism of the dramatic art She was then in the flower of her youth, and the full perfection of her beauty. Her tall and elegant figure equalled in natural grace the studied attitudes of the most prac tised figurantes. Her voice was soft, mellow, and capable of expressing deep tragic emotion. Her countenance, endowed with susceptibility as delicate and varying as the first feelings of a virgin mind, was, at the same time, pensive and dazzling. All who saw her at that period of her life agreed in describing ber as a resuscitation of Psyche. Purity of soul, transparent through elegance of feature, surrounded her even in her dependent position with a respect which admiration dared not overleap. She spread fire without being entangled in the flame herself; her innocence found a safeguard even in the excess of her beauty. Her first fall was not a descent to vice, but a gliding into imprudence arising from a yielding nature. “A young countryman, of the village of Hawarden, eon of the farmer who had first given an asylum to her mother, was seized by a press-gang, and carried in fetters to the fleet at anchor in the Thames. Emma, at the entreaty of the prisoner's sister, accompanied her to the captain of the ship to implore the liberation of her brother. Won by the beauty of the fair sup pliant, he listened to her prayers and tears, reinoved her from her low though honest station, overwhelmed her with shameful luxury, furnished a house for her, supplied her with masters in every ornamental accomplishment, boastfully displayed his conquest in public, and left her, when the squadron sailed, exposed without safeguard to new seductions. One of his friends, bearing a noble name, and possessed of a large fortune, carried off the faithless Emina to an estate in the country, treated her as his wife, made her the queen of hunting parties, fêtes, and balls; and finally, growing tired of her at the end of the season, left her in London, at the mercy of chance, necessity, and crime." After describing her extraordinary career at length, he draws the curtain from the last scene in these few lines: "Lady Hamilton, universally reprobated as the instigating cause of Nelson's errors, sank, after his death, into the insignificance from which her personal charins alone had originally elevated her. She fell from the splendor of vice to utter neglect, and from opulence to poverty. Twenty years after the death of the victor of Trafalgar, an unknown female, still preserving the remains of extraordinary beauty, died in a foreign land, in Calais, where, for several years, with reduced means, she had sought an obscure asylum. After her decease, the landlord ascertained from her papers that this impoverished stranger was Lady Hamilton, the widow of an ambassador, the favorite of the Queen of Naples, and the adored mistress of Nelson! She was burled by public charity. Nelson, by naming her in his will, had only bequeathed to her the scandal of his attachment and the indignation of his country." The life of Nelson is followed by that of Heloise, then comes Christopher Columbus: then Palissy the Potter; then the fabulous hero Roostain, by Madame Lamartine; and then in order Cicero, Jacquard, the inventor of the loom; Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Homer, Göttenberg and Fenelon. The illustrious author intimates that this is the last book he intends to publish, but the announcement we suspect is a ruse to assist his publisher, and is preliminary to more last words. He has grown careless, in his later publications, but we can ill afford to lose his brilliant sentimentalities and idealizations. We prefer, however, that he should dwell upon the Heloises, and the Emma Hamiltons, than upon the Cromwells (whom he cannot comprehend), or better still, to continue the memoirs of his own life. -The Cossacks of the Bourse, (Les Cozaques de la Bourse) is the seasonable title of a little satirical tale by F. DE GROSSEILLIER, in which he exposes the influence of stock gambling. The hero is a simple-hearted Breton, who is gradually inducted into all the mysteries of Parisian life, from dining at the Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, to making a splen did fortune by means of the agens de change. The sketches of character and the incidents are highly amusing. GERMAN. Our readers may remember an article on a new German speculator called Schopenhauer, which appeared lately in the Westminster Review, but since then, one of his countrymen, M. JULIUS FRAUENSTAEDT, has published a book named Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Brisfe uber deo Schopenhauer, sche Philosophie), in which his system appears more at length. We have spoken of him as a new speculator, but he is only new to the public, his first work having appeared as early as 1813, and he having been born in 1788. Mr. Frauenstaedt is a perfect enthusiast in his behalf, speaks of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel as tyros in comparison with him, while he is said to be the only German who is worthy to wear the mantle of Kant. What the peculiarities of his system are, we are not able to say, nor do we suppose one in a thousand readers cares. -The Albanian studies of HAHN (Albanesche Studien), who was a consul of Austria in Greece for a number of years, residing principally in the oriental part of the kingdom, where he had an opportunity of acquiring the language and studying the manners of the Albanians, is almost the only good work on the subject that we know. It presents a faithful account of that people, who have so long stubbornly maintained their independence of other nations, just as they are. The Albanians have preserved their originality with as much tenacity as the Basque, the Hungarians, or the Finns; they are energetically characterized by their manners, and though not more than two millions in number, are striking evidences of the force of personality in preserving a people. Mr. Hahn is very learned in tracing out their ethnological origin, contending that they are the descendants of the ancient Macedonians, but the most valuable part of his work relates to their popular poetry, their tales, their legends, their language, their proverbs, and their local traditions. -A monograph on the Jacobin Club (Der Jakobiner Klub), by J. W. ZINKEISEN, is a contribution to the history of parties and political morals in France during the revolutionary period, of rare value. The first volume was issued a long time since, but the second is more recent, and together they will form, we think, the standard authority on the Jacobins. The author has availed himself of a long residence in Paris to consult the most authentic documents, and has left none of the recent memoirs unread that threw the least light upon the secret movements of the famous revolutionary society. Unlike most Germans, he writes in a clear and intelligible style, not confining himself to an industrial detail of events, but filling up a grand general outline with anecdotes, portraits, and other dramatic illustrations. -VEHSE'S "Memoir of the Court of Prussia" is a collection of historical notices of Prussia during the last century and a half. We take from it the following passage, relating to Frederick William I. as a specimen of the details with which it abounds: "Frederick William was most outrageously rude and insulting in speaking and writing. The epithets, of villain, rascal, scoundrel,' were constantly on the royal lips. If he was displeased with a report or a petition, he used to draw on the margin asses' heads and ears. The noble ministers, who were used to consider idleness as an aristocratical privilege, ho ordered about like a parcel of non-commissioned officers. Any minister who, without leave of the king or the excuse of illness, was one hour too late for the sitting, had to pay a fine of one hundred ducats; if he was absent from the whole sitting he forfeited, in the first instance, the salary of one half year; if the same thing happened a second time, dismissal from office was the unalterable consequence. In his autograph instructions for the General Direc torium, he said: "The gentlemen are to do the work which we pay them for.' "One of his valets one evening had to read prayers to him. Arriving at the words 'The Lord bless thee,' the silly man, in his habitual subserviency, thought he must read, The Lord bless your Majesty;' on which the king at once cut him short-You rascal, read as it is in the book: before God Almighty I am but a rascal like yourself.' The servants were never safe in his presence. He had always two pistols, loaded with salt, lying by his side, which, if they blundered, he would fire at them. In this manner, one man had his feet dreadfully injured, and another lost an eye; notwithstanding all which, he was quite offended that he should be generally considered a tyrant. Terror might be said to go before him. A functionary who was once unexpectedly summoned to his presence, fell down dead from fright. His cane he applied so unreservedly to every body, that one day he maltreated with it a major in front of his regiment; on which the officer at once drew his pistols, fired one before the feet of the king's horse, and with the other shot himself through the head. One day, the king fell in with his court apothecary, to whom, for a consideration of a thousand dollars, he had granted the title of privy councillor. To the usual royal question, Who are you?' the proud man of the pestle answered. Your royal Majesty's privy councillor, Blank.' Scarcely had he uttered the words, when, with a shower of blows, and a volley of rascals and scoundrels,' his royal Majesty was graciously pleased to intimate to him, that in future he was to answer, I am called privy councillor Blank.' |