International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

The Gazette des Tribunaux announces that M. Libri has ceased to be a member of the Legion of Honor, in virtue of the sentence of the Assize Court of Paris, pronounced on the demand of the Grand Chancellor of the order. Since his flight to England, some two years and a half since, he has married there. Madame Libri is now in Paris, attempting to recover possession of the furniture, and other personal effects, which M. Libri was compelled to leave behind him in his flight.

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The Opinion Publique has the following:—"Is it known who at this moment inhabits the small house at Brompton, occupied some few months since by M. Guizof? It is M. Ledru-Rollin. Thus, M. Ledru-Rollin, an exile, succeeds at Brompton in his house of exile, M. Guizot, whom he succeeded at Paris in the Government."

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The Committee of the Associate Institution for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women, intends to offer a prize of 100 guineas for the best Essay on the Laws for the Protection of Women.

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DR. T. SOUTHWOOD SMITH, who was the medical member of the General Board of Health during the period of the Orders in Council, has been appointed the second member of the Board provided by the English Metropolitan Interment Act.

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The Gazette of Rome, of the 9th, contains the nomination of the Abbé Talbot, son of Lord Talbot of Malahide, and lately priest of St. George's, Westminster-bridge-road, to the office of camereire secreto.

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The arrival of JENNY LIND is the most memorable event thus far in our musical history. The note of preparation had been sounding for half a year; her name, through all the country, had become a household word; and every incident in her life, and every judgment of her capacities, had been made familiar, by the admirable tactician who had hazarded so much of his fortune in her engagement. The general interest was increased by the accounts in the chief foreign journals of her triumphal progress through England, and when at length she reached New-York, her reception resembled the ovations that are offered to heroes. Her first concert was given at the Castle Amphitheater, on the 11th September, to the largest audience ever assembled for any such occasion in America. There was an apprehension among the more judicious that the performances would fall below the common expectations; but the most sanguine were surprised by the completeness of her triumph. She surpassed all that they had ever heard, or dreamed, or imagined. It was, as the Christian Inquirer happily observes, as if all the birds of Eden had melted their voices into one, to rise in gushing song upon the streaming light to salute the sun. Her later concerts have increased rather than diminished the enthusiasm produced by her first appearance. Mlle. Lind is accompanied by M. Benedict, the well known composer, and by Signer Belletti, whose voice is the finest baritone probably ever heard in New York, and whose style is described by the Albion as "near perfection." The orchestral arrangements for her concerts have never been surpassed here. Many were deterred from being present at her first appearance by a fear of crowds and tumults, but so perfect were Mr. Barnum's appointments that all the vast assemblies at the Castle have been as orderly as the most quiet evening parties in private houses.

The personal interest in Mlle. Lind is almost as great as the interest in the singer. Her charities in New York have already reached more than $15,000. and it is understood that all the profits of her engagement in America, not thus dispensed here, are appropriated by her for the establishment of free schools in Sweden.

Mlle. Lind has given to the Fire Department Fund, $3,000; Musical Fund Society, $2,000; Home for the Friendless, Society for the Relief of Indigent Females, Dramatic Fund Association, Home for Colored and Aged Persons, Colored and Orphan Association, Lying-in Asylum for Destitute Females, New York Orphan Asylum, Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum, Roman Catholic Half-Orphan Asylum, and Old Ladies Asylum, each $500. Total, $10,000. The lives of Mr. Barnum, Jenny Lind, M. Benedict, and Signor Belletti, with all the details of the concerts, have been issued in a pamphlet displaying the usual tyographical richness and elegance of Van Norden & Leslie, Fulton-street.

notes

1

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

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

    "ROBERT G. CABELL."

2

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

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

3

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

4

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

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

5

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

6

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

7

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

8

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

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

9

A genealogist of great repute in France, twenty years since.

10

Chlamydera maculala.—GOULD.

11

Chlamydora nuchalis.

12

Fairy Queen, book iv. cant. 2, et seq.

13

Sound.

14

Pierre Bernard, nicknamed Gentil Bernard by Voltaire

was born at Grenoble about the same time as Louis XV. "It is strange," said Madame de Pompadour later, "that two lovers should be born for me during the same season—a king and a poet." Bernard ever refused all favors, and was singularly devoid of ambition. "What can I do for you, my dear poet?" Madame de Pompadour is reported to have said on her coming into Power. Bernard contented himself with kissing the hand of the marchioness. "Go to," returned she, "you will never get on in the world."

This nickname was given in a poetical invitation to a supper-party at Madame Duchatelet's, sent by Voltaire to the poet:

"Au nom du Pinde et de Cythère
Gentil Bernard est averti,