A convenient book of reference for those who deal with the more recondite and interesting questions of history is the Statistique des Peuples de l'Antiquité, by M. Moreau de Jonnés, just published at Paris. It is a work of great erudition and even originality. All sorts of facts as to the social condition of the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and Gauls, may be gathered from it. Another new work of a similar character is entitled Du Probleme de la Misére et de sa solution chez tous les Peuples Anciens et Modernes, by M. Moreau Christophe. Two volumes only have been published; a third is to follow. Price $1.50 a volume.
A translation of M'Culloch' Principles of Political Economy has appeared at Paris, in four vols. 8vo. The translator is M.A. Planche.
Louis Viardot has published in Paris a Histoire des Arabes et des Mores d'Espagne. The excellent translator of Don Quixote ought to produce a striking work on this subject. The Count Albert de Circourt, too, has published a new edition of his Histoire des Mores Mudejares et des Morisques; ou des Arabes d'Espagne sous la domination des Chrétiens. Few topics in history have been until recently so much neglected as that of the Moorish races in Europe, and a good deal of what has appeared on the subject has been put together rather with a view to romantic effect than with a proper respect for the responsibility of the historian; though all Spanish history, Christian or Saracen, so abounds in romantic interest that there is less excuse, as less necessity, for outstepping the limits of truth, or giving undue prominence to the pathetic and marvellous. From this defect of most of his predecessors, the work of the Count de Circourt is in a great measure free. He has made a dexterous and conscientious use of the materials within his reach, and produced a work which unites to an unusual degree popularity of style with matter of great novelty and interest. There are few spectacles in modern times more attractive, or hitherto more imperfectly understood, than the condition of the Spanish Moors, from the time when they became a subject race, until their final expulsion from Europe in 1610. The reason why more attention has not been given to this subject, must be looked for in the fact that the expelled people were Mahometans, and that they took refuge in Africa, not in Europe. They had not, as the Protestants of France had, an England, Holland, and Germany to sympathize with and shelter them;—though, taking it with all its consequences, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was not a more important event in history, or more pregnant with injury to the power that enforced it, than the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. In folly and perversity the last transaction has pre-eminence. Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes, when he and his empire were at the summit of their power; but Philip III. chose the luckless moment for expatriating the most energetic and industrious of the inhabitants of Spain, when the virtual acknowledgment of the independence of the Dutch, and the concession to them of free trade to India, now assailed the prestige of Spanish supremacy in Europe, and the commerce of Portugal, at that time subject to Spain. From that hour the Peninsula declined with unexampled rapidity; and though, in course of time, the progress of decay became less marked, it was not finally arrested until two centuries after, when the invasion of Napoleon re-awakened Spanish energies, and freed them from the trammels which had impeded their development. Two centuries of degradation are a heavy penalty for a nation to pay for pride and intolerance; though not heavier than Spanish perfidy and cruelty to the Moors most richly deserved. In accordance with his design of treating of the Moors as a subject race, the Count de Circourt has given only a brief summary of their early history when they were ascendant in Spain. With the rise of the Christian and decline of the Mahometan power, the subject is more minutely, but still succinctly treated, the four centuries from the capture of Toledo to that of Granada being comprised in the first volume. The two remaining volumes are occupied exclusively with the history of the Moors from the overthrow of Grenada to their final expulsion from Spain. The various efforts made to convert and control them, and their struggles to regain their independence and preserve their faith, are copiously treated, but a subject so peculiar and hitherto so unjustly neglected, needed early discussion. We know not where the character of that worst species of oppression, where the antagonism of race is aggravated by differences of creed, can be so advantageously studied as in this portion of Spanish history. Nor is the early history when the Moors, still a powerful people, were treated with comparative consideration by their antagonists, deficient in traits of the highest interest, and lessons which oppressors of the present day would do well to lay to heart.
We observe that M. de Circourt agrees very nearly with Madame Anita George (whose views upon the subject we recently noticed in The International) respecting Queen Isabella. He says:
"The Spaniards speak only with enthusiasm of this Princess. They place her in the rank of their best monarchs, and history, adopting the popular judgment, has given her the title of "Great." If we consider merely the grandeur of the fabric she erected, the appellation will appear merited; if its solidity had been taken into consideration, her reputation must have suffered. Nations in general make more account of talents than of the use that has been made of them. They reserve for princes favored by fortune the homage which they ought to pay to good and honest princes, who have exercised paternal rule. They deify him who knows how to subjugate them. Thus it happens in all countries that the king who has established absolute monarchy is styled the great king. But it happens often that such founders have built up the present at the expense of the future. In Spain absolute monarchy sent forth for a time a formidable lustre, and then came suddenly a protracted period of progressive decay, which ended in the revolutions of which we have been witnesses. Barren glory, shameful prostration, interminable and possibly fruitless revolution, are all the work of Isabella."
This is very different from the estimate of Mr. Prescott, but perhaps more just. In his forthcoming Memoirs of the Reign of Philip the Second, Mr. Prescott will have to trace the results of Spanish policy toward the Moors. We shall compare his views with those of MM. Circourt and Viardot.
M. de Villemerque has translated the Poème des Bardes Bretons du VI. Siècle, and the book is praised by the French critics.
Louis Philippe's last apology for his policy as King of the French has just made its appearance at Paris, and justly excites attention. It is a pamphlet written by M. Edward Lemoine, and bears the title of L'abdication du roi Louis Philippe racconteé par lui méme. It is the report of a series of conversations which M. Lemoine had with the deceased King during the month of October, 1849, and which he was authorized to give to the world after his death. The writer gives every thing in the words of Louis Philippe, as they were uttered either in reply to questions or spontaneously in reference to the topics under discussion. The exiled monarch defends his conduct in every particular with ingenuity and force, dwelling especially on his abdication, on his refusal to yield to the opposition and admit the demanded reform, which brought on the revolution, on his abandoning Paris with so little effort at resistance, on his peace policy, and on the Spanish marriages. He denies emphatically that he or his family had thought of or undertaken any conspiracy with a view to recovering the throne. His children, he said, had been taught that when their country spoke they must obey, and that the duty of a patriot was to be ready, whatever she might command. This they had understood, and in all cases practised. Accordingly they had always been, and always would be strangers to intrigues.
As for his persistence in keeping the Guizot ministry, that was commanded by every constitutional principle. That ministry had a majority in the Chambers as large even as that which overthrew Charles X.; how then should the King interfere against this majority? Besides, had not what happened since February demonstrated that he was right? The policy of every government since June, 1848, had resembled, as nearly as could be conceived, the very policy of the ministry so much and so unjustly complained of.
Guizot had in fact promised reform. He had said that the instant the Chambers should vote against him he would retire, and the first measure of his successors would be reform. As for himself, said Louis Philippe, he had understood that this was only a pretext. Reform would be the entrance on power of the opposition, the entrance of the opposition would be war, would be the beginning of the end. Accordingly he had determined to abdicate as soon as the opposition assumed the reins of government; for he no longer would be himself supported by public opinion. The want of this support it was which finally caused him to abandon the throne without resistance. He could not have kept it without civil war. For this he had always felt an insurmountable horror, and he had never regretted that in February Marshal Bugeaud had so soon ordered the firing to stop. Besides, nobody advised him to defend himself, but the contrary. He had then nothing to do but to follow the example of his ministers who had abdicated, of his friends who had abdicated, of the national guard who had abdicated, of the public conscience which had abdicated. He did not take this step till after the universal abdication. But if he had fought and lost, and died fighting, who could tell the horrors that would have ensued? Or if he had triumphed, all France would have exclaimed against him as sanguinary and selfish, a bad prince, a scourge to the nation, and ere many months a new insurrection would have made an end. Victory would have been more disastrous than exile. He had done well to abdicate, and were the crisis to recur, he would not act otherwise. He had abandoned power (of which he was accused of being so greedy) as soon as he understood that he could no longer hold it to the advantage of his country.
As for the charge of avarice, that was abundantly disproved by the publication of the manner in which he had employed the civil list, and by the fact that he was covered with debts. He had spent like a King without counting, and now that he had to pay he was obliged to borrow. And it is rather curious, said he, that the furniture employed in the festivals of the Republican President of the Assembly is my personal property, and that the horses and carriages of which so free use has been made, had been paid for from my own purse. This however, was a trifle not worth speaking of.
If he had suffered from falsehoods printed in the journals, print had however done him justice in giving to the world his private letters. These had set right his private character as well as his public policy. He only wished that those papers had all been published, and published more widely. They did more for the glorification of his policy than the speeches of his most eloquent ministers. They proved that his had never been a policy of peace at any price. He had besieged Antwerp without the consent of England; he had sent an army to Ancona, though Metternich had declared that a Frenchman in Italy would be war in Europe. His government had always acted boldly and firmly, and had been respected. Why, only a few weeks before February, the great powers of Europe had asked of France to settle with her alone, and without consulting England, some of the questions which might compromise the equilibrium of Europe. Such was the consideration in which France was then held.
As to the Spanish marriages, that was all done in the interest of France, and not, as had been charged, of his dynasty. If the latter were the thing he had aimed at, would he have refused the crown of Belgium, or of Greece, or of Portugal, for Nemours? Would he have refused the hand of Isabella for Aumale or Montpensier? No; he merely sought to render his country independent of England, and not her dupe. The entente cordiale in the hands of Lord Palmerston was becoming treacherous. He recollected the saying of Metternich, that the alliance of France and England was useful, like the alliance of man and horse. He determined to be the man, and by those marriages accomplished it. There was already a Cobourg in Belgium, one in England, and one in Portugal; could France allow another to be set up in Spain? So far the conversations of Louis Philippe relate to matters of his own history. From this he was led to speak briefly of Charles X., and things preceding the downfall of that prince. For this we must refer our readers to the pamphlet itself, which will doubtless be imported by some of our booksellers, if not soon translated into English and published entire. It cannot be read without interest. We give its substance above, without thinking it necessary to criticise any of the statements of the exiled prince.
M. Audin, a French historian, whose histories of Leo X., Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII., are known to those who have sought an acquaintance with the Catholic view of those personages and their times, died on the 21st February, in his carriage, near Avignon. He was returning to Paris from Rome, where he had been to finish a new work, and to recover his health, which intense devotion to study had undermined. His expectations were not realized, and he returned to his own country to expire before reaching his home. At Marseilles, where he landed, the physicians dissuaded him from attempting to go further, but he refused to be guided by their advice. The works of Audin have been much read in this country. They are singularly unscrupulous.
The Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna has just published an essay by the eminent Spanish scholar Ferdinand Wolf, which justly excites attention in the learned circles of Europe. It is on a collection of Spanish romances which exists in manuscript in the library of the University at Prague. Among these are many which are found in no other collection, and have hitherto remained unknown. Some of them, relating to the Cid, are very remarkable. They make a hundred romances discovered by Wolf, whose former collection (Rosa de Romances), published in 1846, and whose work on the romance-poetry of the Spaniards, are known to all students of that kind of literature.
A new weekly journal, under the title of Le Bien-Etre Universel (The Universal Well-Being), appeared at Paris on the 24th February. It advocates Girardin's idea of the abolition of taxes, and the support of the government by the assumption by the latter of the whole business of insurance. Among the contributors are Victor Hugo, Eugene Sue, Francois Vidal, E. Quinet, Alphonse Esquiros, and Eugene Pelletan. It is published in quarto form, of the largest size permitted by the law, at $1.20 a year, and furnishes, in addition to its political and economical articles, a full summary of news, political, commercial, literary, and miscellaneous.
The Revue Brittanique has some interesting facts as to the English book trade. It says: "The great booksellers, like Longman & Murray, must be encouraged by the result of the speculations ventured on by the booksellers of Paris." Is it not wonderful that articles from reviews, which one would suppose would lose their interest in the course of time, and which have been circulated in the Edinburgh or Quarterly to the extent of ten thousand or twelve thousand copies, should be sold in reprints at a high price, and live through two, three, or even six editions? The articles of Macaulay are going through the sixth edition, although the book costs a pound sterling. Of Macaulay's History of England Longman has sold between 20,000 and 30,000 copies, and Thirlwall's and Grote's Histories of Greece, though they have not the same immediate, exciting interest, sell well, notwithstanding they are so long. Mure's and Talfourd's Histories of Greek literature are put forth in new editions. The reviews, instead of injuring the sale of solid works, increase it. Occasional books, like travels, biographies, &c., naturally have their public interest, but most of them are sold at half price within three months of their appearance. At London there are circulating libraries which lend out books, not only in the city itself, but all over England: the railroads have extended their business very greatly. In order to satisfy as many customers as possible, they buy some works by hundreds. For instance, such a circulating library has two hundred copies of Macaulay's History, a hundred of Layard's Nineveh, a hundred of Cumming's hunting adventures, and so on. When the first excitement about a book is over, these extra copies are put into handsome binding and disposed of for half price. The system of cheap publishing has not yet much affected the circulating libraries in England, while in this country it has destroyed them. Books can be bought here now for the former cost of reading them.
A book worthy of all commendation is the Histoire des Protestants de France, from the Reformation to the present time, by M. G. de Felice, published at Paris. The author treats his subject with all that peculiar talent which renders French historians always interesting and instructive. He is clear, forcible, judicious, and profound, without pedantry or sectarian zeal. The action of his story is dramatic, the delineation of his characters as glowing as it is just, and his sympathies so true and generous, and at the same time so tolerant, that the reader follows him attentively from the beginning to the end. The Huguenots were worthy of such a historian, for though persecuted for their opinions, they never ceased to love their country, or to wish to live at peace with their enemies and serve her. Rarely has a body of men produced nobler characters. This book fills a vacuum in French history.
Modern Greek Literature is by no means so wild and imperfect as might be expected from a nation in such a chaotic and uncultivated condition. The people of Greece are hardly more civilized than the Servians, the Dalmatians, or any other of the half-savage tribes that inhabit the south-eastern corner of Europe, but the influence exercised by the antique glory of the land still remains to develop among them a degree of artistic power and beauty unknown to their neighbors. And little as Greece has gained generally from the introduction of German royalty and German office-holders, it has no doubt profited by the greater attention thus excited toward the works of the mighty poets who stand alone and unharmed after all else that their times produced has fallen into ruin. Thus, since the incoming of the Bavarians there has been growing up a disposition in favor of the early literature, and against the newer and less elegant forms of the modern language. The purification of the latter, and its restoration to something like the old classical perfection, the abandonment of rhyme, which is the universal form of the proper new Greek verse, and even the employment of the ancient mythological expressions, are the characteristic aims of some of the most gifted of living Hellene writers. In this way there are two distinct classes of cotemporaneous literature to be found in the Peninsula; the one consists of these somewhat reactionary and romantic lovers of the past, the other of the fresh, native products of the people, independent as far as possible of antiquity, and altogether unaffected by learned studies. The latter is mainly lyric in its character, and has often a wild beauty, which is none the less attractive because it is purely natural. These songs deal more with nature than those of the Sclavonic tribes, with which Mrs. Robinson has made us so well acquainted. The brooks, the hills, the sky, the birds, appear in them, and for human interest, some adventurous Klepht, some fighting and dying robber, is brought upon the scene.
The best of the Romaic literature is no doubt the dramatic. This is natural, for the Greeks are still a representative and dramatic people. Until comparatively lately the poets confined themselves, if not to modern subjects, at least to the modern genius of their language. Their dramas were written in rhyme, and with a total disregard of the antique principles of rhythm. Quantity was supplanted by following the accents, and the exterior of the piece was more that of a French play than like the drama of any other nation. The specimen of this style most accessible to American students is the Aspasia of Rizos, published in Boston some twenty years ago, a tragedy, by the way, well worth reading. But latterly, the antique tendency prevailing, plays are written in the old measures, and with all the old machinery. This is in fact a revolutionary proceeding, but we hope may not be without its use, for Greece is not now rich enough to make useless experiments. One of these plays has been translated into German, and thus made accessible to those of the readers of that language whose studies have not reached into the musical Romaic. It is called The Wedding of Kutrulis, an Aristophanic Comedy, by Alexandros Rhisos Rhangawis. The form used by the great Athenian satirist is perfectly reproduced, and an original and hearty wit is not wanting. The Aristophanic dress is justified by the poet in some lines which we thus render into the rudeness of English:
Though he trimeters boldly arranges together, and anapæsts weaves with each other,
'Tis not weakness in words that compels him, nor fear at the rhymes' double ringing;
In spans he can syllables harness with skill, as a fledgling should do of the muses,
And where thoughts and poetic ideas there are none, words can heap up in ἱα and ἁζει,
But mid the verdure of laurels eternally green, and by Castaly's ever pure fountains,
There found he all broken and voiceless the pipe that, in rage at these poets profaning,
At these now-a-day sons of Marsyas, the noble old Muse had flung from her.
The subject and story of this comedy are drawn from the actual life of the people. Spyros, a tavern-keeper in Athens, has promised his daughter Anthusia to Kutrulis, a rich tailor. The young lady's notions are however above tailors; her husband must wear epaulettes and orders. If Kutrulis wants her hand, he must become minister. He despairs at first, but as others have become ministers, there is a chance for him. Accordingly, the needful intrigues and solicitations are set on foot. The strophe of the chorus by the sovereign public is too characteristic and too Attic for us not to try to render it, though perhaps only the few who have dipped in the well of the antique drama can appreciate it:
O muse of the billiard room,
Thou that from mocha's odor-pouring steam,
And from the ringlets, white-curling from pipes on high
Thine inspiration drawest, of venal sort!
Here's a new minister must be appointed now.
Up and strike the praising strings!
Up, O muse of the mob's grace,
Put forth in the rosy pages of newspapers
Dithyrambic articles!
The hero praise aloud!
To succeed in his ambition, Kutrulis must choose a party with which to identify himself. Accordingly the Russian, the British and the French parties, the three into which Greek public men are divided, are introduced, and each urges the reasons why he should become its partisan. This gives the poet an admirable opportunity for the use of satire, which he improves excellently. Kutrulis pledges himself to each of these candidates for his support, but mean while his friends have spread the report that he has actually been appointed minister. Now the swarm of office-seekers and speculators of all sorts come to solicit his favor and exhibit their own corruption. This part of the drama is treated with keen effect. While the report of his appointment is believed by himself and others, Kutrulis marries the scheming Anthusia, who presently wakes from her illusion to find that she is only a tailor's wife after all. She declares that by way of revenge she will compel her husband to give her a new dress every week, and the piece ends to the amusement of everybody.
M. Planche, the oldest Professor and the most learned Grecian at Paris, has just issued the first number of a Dictionnaire du Style poétique dans la Langue Grecque. This dictionary is in fact a concordance of Greek, Latin, and French poetry. It offers a complete and curious illustration of the origin and growth of figurative words and phrases, and of their transfer from one language to another. The word anchor, for instance, was one of the earliest among the Greeks, a marine people, to take on a metaphorical sense. We see this even in Pindar, who speaks of his heroes as casting anchor on the summit of happiness. M. Planche follows this typical use of the word in Virgil, in Ovid, and in Racine, the last of whom says in the Pleaders:
"Natheless, gentlemen,
The anchor of your goodness us assures."
To the curious student of words and their internal senses this Dictionary is evidently a book worth having.
M. Elias Regnault has undertaken to continue the Dix Ans of Louis Blanc, in the shape of L'Histoire de Huit Ans 1840—48. Few works had ever so powerful an influence as Blanc's "Ten Years." The events of the eight years of which Regnault proposes a history were in no inconsiderable degree fruits of this work.
Mr. Hallam, on the 13th of February, sent a letter to the Society of Antiquaries, in London, announcing in consequence of his recent bereavement, he wished at the next anniversary to relinquish the office of Vice-President, which he had filled for the last thirty years; having been a member of the Society for more than half a century, and having during that period contributed many papers to its transactions. A resolution was proposed by Mr. Payne Collier, seconded by Mr. Bruce, expressive of respect for Mr. Hallam, sincere sympathy with his afflictions, and sorrow at his retirement. In a subsequent letter, Mr. Hallam stated that he should continue to be a member of the Society.
General Sir William Napier has published a new edition of his History of the War in the Peninsula—the best military history in the English language—and in his new preface he states that he is indebted to Lady Napier, his wife, not only for the arrangement and translation of an enormous pile of official correspondence, written in three languages, but for that which is far more extraordinary, the elucidation of the secret ciphers of Jerome Bonaparte and others.
In a recent number of The International we printed a poem by Charles Mackay, entitled Why this Longing? without observing that it was a plagiarism from a much finer poem by Harriet Winslow List, of Portland, which may be found in The Female Poets of America, page 354.
A descriptive catalogue of the books and pamphlets educed by the reinstitution of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England, would be a very entertaining work. It is astonishing how active the English become in pamphleteering when any such engrossing subject comes before the people or the parliament. The Duke of Sussex carefully preserved every thing in this shape that was printed during the discussion of Catholic Emancipation, and after his death we purchased his collection, which amounted to about seventy thick volumes, and includes autograph certificates of presentation from "Peter Plimley," and perhaps a hundred other combatants. The present discussions will be not less voluminous, and it promises to be vastly more entertaining. The matter of the holy chair of St. Peter, with the Mohammedan inscription, upon which the verd antique Lady Morgan has published two or three letters as witty and pungent as ever came from the pen of an Irishwoman, will afford pleasant material for the last chapter of her ladyship's memoirs. Warren, the author of Ten Thousand a Year, Dr. Twiss, the biographer of Eldon, Dr. George Croly, the poet, Walter Savage Landor, and Sheridan Knowles, the dramatist, are among the more famous of the disputants on the Protestant side. The author of "Virginius" professes to review Archbishop Wiseman's lectures on Transubstantiation, and the Literary Gazette says he thoroughly demolishes that dogma, which, however, "no one supposes that any Romanist of education and common sense believes. It is understood on all hands that whatever defence or explanation is offered, is only for the sake of affording plausible apology to the vulgar for a dogma which the infallibility of the church requires to be unchangeably retained. The reply of the philosophical churchman, populus vult decipi et decipiatur, is that which many a priest would give if privately pressed on the subject." The Literary Gazette makes a very common but very absurd mistake, for which no Roman Catholic would thank him. The church does maintain the doctrine, and the most "philosophical" churchman would be dealt with in a very summary manner if he should publicly deny it. The Literary Gazette adds that Knowles "displays complete mastery of the principles and familiarity with the details of the controversy," which we can scarcely believe upon the Gazette's testimony until it evinces for itself a little more knowledge of the matter.
The only one of these works that has been reprinted in this country is Landor's, which we receive from Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston.
R. H. Horne, the dramatist, and author of Orion,—upon which his best reputation is likely to rest—has just published in London The Dreamer and the Worker, in two volumes.
Mr. Roebuck, the radical member of Parliament, is continuing his History of the Whigs.
It is not be denied that Miss Martineau is one of the cleverest women of our time; deafness and ugliness have induced her to cultivate to the utmost degree her intellectual faculties, and several of her books are illustrations of a mind even masculine in its power and activity; but the constitutional feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness of woman is nevertheless not unfrequently evinced by her, and as she grows older the infirmities of her nature are more and more conspicuous; vexed with neglect, without the kindly influences of home or friendship, without the consolations or hopes of religion, she seems now ambitious of attention only, and willing to sacrifice every thing womanly or respectable to attract to herself the eyes of the world—the last thing, in her case, one would think desirable. In the book she has just published—Letters on Man's Nature and Development, by Harriet Martineau and H. G. Atkinson—she avows the most positive and shameless atheism: Christians have had little regard for Pagan deities—she will have as little for theirs! The sun rose yesterday; the fishes still swim in the sea; all the world goes on as before; but she cares not a fig for any deities, Christian or pagan—and don't believe a word of the immortality of the soul! In this new book, of which she is the chief author, the interlocutors place implicit credence in all the phenomena of mesmerism, and they cannot believe there is any thing in man's being or existence or conscience beyond what the senses reach, beyond what the scalpel discloses in the brain. They trace acts and motions and even inclinations to the brain, and deny that there is or can be any thing in contact which can influence it. Cerebrum et præterea nihil is their motto. The book is the apotheosis of that lump of marrow and fibre. And yet this brain, which is so jealously guarded from any spiritual or immaterial influence, is declared to be completely under the direction of any man or woman who may pass a hand, with faith, backwards and forwards over the skull. The extremities of the body—the fingers—send forth and radiate certain electric, or galvanic, or invisible influences, and thus one has full power over another's organization and volition! But as to any influence beyond the sensible world, that Miss Martineau stoutly denies. The following passage is not an uninteresting specimen of this foolish production:
"I observed that under the influence of mesmerism some patients would spontaneously place their hand, or rather the ends of their fingers, on that part of the brain in action; and these were persons wholly ignorant of phrenology. In some cases the hand would pass very rapidly from part to part, as the organs became excited. If the habit of action was encouraged, they would follow every combination with precision: and if one hand would not do they would use both to cover distant parts in action at the same time. I was delighted with their effects; but did not consider them very extraordinary, because I had been accustomed to observe the same phenomena, in a lesser degree, in the ordinary or normal condition. I know some, who on any excitement of their love of approbation, will rub their hand over the organ immediately. Others, I have observed, when irritated, pass the hand over destructiveness. I have observed others hold their hand over the region of the attachments, as they gazed on the object of their affections. I have watched the poet inspired to write with the fingers pressing on the region of ideality, and those listening to music leaning upon the elbow, with the fingers pressing on the organ of music; and I catch myself performing those actions continually, as if I were a puppet moved by strings. You will observe, besides, how the head follows the excited organ. The proud man throws his head back; the fine man carries his head erect; vanity draws the head on one side, with the hat on the opposite side; the intellect presses the head forward; the affections throw it back on the shoulders; and so with the rest."
The Right Honorable Sir John Cam Hobhouse is created a peer with the title of Baron Broughton de Gyfford, in the county of Wilts. His fame in literature has long been lost, in England, in his reputation as a politician; but in this country we know him only as rather a clever man of letters. His most noticeable works that we remember, are, A Journey through Albania, in 1809, Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, The State of Literature in Italy, and two volumes entitled Letters from Paris during the last Reign of Napoleon. His lordship must be in the vicinity of seventy-five years of age.
Of "Junius" there is still another book—though many good libraries contain not so many volumes as have been written upon the subject—and the journals have almost every month some new contributions to the mystery, increasing the accumulation by which the face of the author is hidden. The last work is entitled "Fac-simile Autograph Letters of Junius, Lord Chesterfield and Mrs. C. Dayrolles, showing that the wife of Mr. Solomon Dayrolles was the amanuensis employed in copying the letters of Junius for the printer; with a Postscript to the first Essay on Junius and his Works: by William Cramp, author of 'The Philosophy of Language.'"
The Passions of the Human Soul, by Charles Fourier, translated from the French by the Rev. John Reynell Morell, with critical annotations, a biography of Fourier, and a general introduction, by Hugh Doherty, has been published by Baliere of London (and of Fulton-street, New-York), in two octavos. This is one of Fourier's greatest works, and the attention given to his principles of society in this country will secure for it many readers here.
Thomas Colley Grattan, the author of Highways and By-ways, Jacqueline of Holland, &c., and a few years ago, British Consul at Boston, is coming to this country to give lectures. He will not be very successful.
The Poems Of Alaric A. Watts, lately published in London, in a very sumptuous edition,—though some of the plates have an oldish look—are much commended in nearly all the reviews, and civilly treated even by Fraser, who once described Watts as a fellow "of some talent in writing verses on children dying of colic, and a skill in putting together fiddle-faddle fooleries, which look pretty in print; in other respects of an unwashed appearance; no particular principles, with well-bitten nails, and a great genius for back-biting." Watts some twenty years since had a controversy with Robert Montgomery who wrote Satan, in such a manner as very much to please his hero (a difficult task in biography), and one of the subjects of protracted and sharp discussion concerned the names of the disputants. Watts maintained that the author of "Hell," "Woman," "Satan," &c., was the son of a clown at Bath, named Gomery; and in return Montgomery, who, allowing that as Watts was the lawfully begotten son of a respectable nightman of the name of Joseph Watts, he had a fair title to the patronymic, denied that he had any claim to the gothic appellation of Alaric. "The man's name," said Montgomery, "is Andrew." This was a great while ago, and the quarrels of the time are happily forgotten. Watts is now fifty-seven years old, and age has sobered him, and given him increase of taste, both as to scandal and to writing verses. There are some extremely pretty things in this book (which may be found at Putnam's).