Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Impressed with the urgency of the object, the missionaries attempted the establishment of female schools, and especially of boarding schools, where Hindoo girls might be trained, and separated from evil influences until they could be settled with the approbation of the guardians. They had at first great difficulty in getting pupils, and only enticed them by presents of dress, or some such cogent bribe, or by engagements to give fortunes of five or six pounds to all who remained in their institutions until suitably married. Even with these allurements their early efforts promised no success. Parents were inveighed against for allowing their daughters to be instructed, and so strong was native prejudice that the children, when learning to read, blushed with shame. These and other obstacles have been surmounted, and, as the following extract shows, the missionaries have no longer to allure, but must select their scholars. The Americans made the first experiment at Oodooville, a few miles distant from the fort of Jaffna:--

"'The hamlet of Oodooville is in the centre of a tract of
very rich land, and the buildings occupied by the Americans
were originally erected by the Portuguese for a Roman
Catholic church, and the residence of a friar of the order
of St. Francis. It is a beautiful spot, embowered in trees,
and all its grounds and gardens are kept in becoming order,
with the nicest care and attention.

"'The institution opened in 1824, with about thirty pupils,
between the ages of five and eleven; and this, after eight
years of previous exertion and entreaty, was the utmost
number of female scholars who could be prevailed on to
attend from the whole extent of the province. This
difficulty has been long since overcome. Instead of
solicitations and promises, to allure scholars, the
missionaries have long since been obliged to limit their
admissions to one hundred, the utmost that their buildings
can accommodate; and now, so eager are the natives to secure
education for their daughters, that a short time before my
visit, on the occasion of filling up some vacancies, upwards
of sixty candidates were in anxious attendance, of whom only
seventeen could be selected, there being room for no more.
The earliest inmates of the institution were of low castes
and poor; whereas the pupils and candidates now are, many of
them, of most respectable families, and the daughters of
persons of property and influence in the district.

"'The course of instruction is in all particulars adapted to
suit the social circumstances of the community; along with a
thorough knowledge of the Scriptures and the principles of
the Christian religion, it embraces all the ordinary
branches of female education, which are communicated both in
Tamil and in English; and combined with this intellectual
culture, the girls are carefully trained, conformably to the
usages of their country, in all the discipline and
acquirements essential to economy and domestic enjoyments at
home. Of two hundred and fifty females who have been thus
brought up at Oodooville, more than half have been since
married to Christians, and are now communicating to their
children the same training and advantages of which they have
so strongly felt the benefit themselves.'"

"The consequence of these proceedings is, that the number of households is fast increasing, where the mother, trained in the habits of civilized life, and instructed in the principles of Christianity, is anxious to give to her children the like advantages."

A PAPER OF ... TOBACCO.

We find a lively passage on tobacco in the pleasant new book by Alphonse Karr. It must be borne in mind that, in France, tobacco is a monopoly--and a very productive one--in the hands of government:--

"There is a family of poisonous plants, amongst which we may
notice the henbane, the datura stramonium, and the tobacco
plant. The tobacco plant is perhaps a little less poisonous
than the datura, but it is more so than the henbane, which
is a violent poison. Here is a tobacco plant--as fine a
plant as you can wish to see. It grows to the height of six
feet; and from the centre of a tuft of leaves, of a
beautiful green, shoot out elegant and graceful clusters of
pink flowers.

"For a long while the tobacco plant grew unknown and
solitary in the wilds of America. The savage to whom we had
given brandy gave us in exchange tobacco, with the smoke of
which they used to intoxicate themselves on grand occasions.
The intercourse between the two worlds began by this amiable
interchange of poisons.

"Those who first thought of putting tobacco dust up their
noses were first laughed at, and then persecuted more or
less. James I., of England, wrote against snuff-takers a
book entitled _Misocapnos_. Some years later, Pope Urban
VIII. excommunicated all persons who took snuff in churches.
The Empress Elizabeth thought it necessary to add something
to the penalty of excommunication pronounced against those
who used the black dust during divine service, and
authorised the beadles to confiscate the snuff-boxes to
their own use. Amurath IV. forbade the use of snuff under
pain of having the nose cut of.

"No useful plant could have withstood such attacks. If
before this invention a man had been found to say, Let us
seek the means of filling the coffers of the state by a
voluntary tax; let us set about selling something which
every body will like to do without. In America there is a
plant essentially poisonous; if from its leaves you extract
an empyreumatic oil, a single drop of it will cause an
animal to die in horrible convulsions. Suppose we offer this
plant for sale chopped up or reduced to a powder. We will
sell it very dear, and tell people to stuff the powder up
their noses.

"'That is to say, I suppose, you will force them to do so by
law?'

"'Not a bit of it. I spoke of a voluntary tax. As to the
portion we chop up, we will tell them to inhale it, and
swallow a little of the smoke from it besides.'

"'But it will kill them.'

"'No; they will become rather pale, perhaps feel giddy, spit
blood, and suffer from colics, or have pains in the
chest--that's all. Besides, you know, although it has been
often said that habit is second nature, people are not yet
aware how completely man resembles the knife, of which the
blade first and then the handle had been changed two or
three times. In man there is no nature left--nothing but
habit remains. People will become like Mithridates, who had
learnt to live on poisons.

"'The first time that a man will smoke he will feel
sickness, nausea, giddiness, and colics; but that will go
off by degrees, and in time he will get so accustomed to it,
that he will only feel such symptoms now and then--when he
smokes tobacco that is bad, or too strong--or when he is not
well, and in five or six other cases. Those who take it in
powder will sneeze, have a disagreeable smell, lose the
sense of smelling, and establish in their nose a sort of
perpetual blister.'

"'Then, I suppose it smells very nice.'

"'Quite the reverse. It has a very unpleasant smell; but, as
I said, we'll sell it very dear, and reserve to ourselves
the monopoly of it.'

"'My good friend,' one would have said to any one absurd
enough to hold a similar language, 'nobody will envy you the
privilege of selling a weed that no one will care to buy.
You might as well open a shop and write on it: Kicks sold
here; or, Such-a-one sells blows, wholesale and retail. You
will find as many customers as for your poisonous weed.'

"Well! who would have believed that the first speaker was
right, and that the tobacco speculation would answer
perfectly! The kings of France have written no satires
against snuff, have had no noses cut off, no snuff-boxes
confiscated. Far from it. They have sold tobacco, laid an
impost on noses, and given snuff-boxes to poets with their
portraits on the lid, and diamonds all round. This little
trade has brought them in I don't know how many millions a
year. The potato was far more difficult to popularize, and
has still some adversaries."

LORD JEFFREY AND JOANNA BAILLIE.

Joanna Baillie's first volume of poems was severely criticised in the _Edinburgh Review_ by Jeffrey. In an article upon the deceased poetess in _Chambers's Journal_, we have an account of her subsequent relations with the reviewer. She visited Edinburgh in 1808.

"As she did not refuse to go into company, she could not be
long in that city without encountering Francis Jeffrey, the
foremost man in the bright train of _beaux-esprits_ which
then adorned the society of the Scottish capital. He would
gladly have been presented to her; and if she had permitted
it, there is little doubt that in the eloquent flow of his
delightful and genial conversation, enough of the admiration
he really felt for her poetry must have been expressed, to
have softened her into listening at least with patience to
his suggestions for her improvement. But in vain did the
friendly Mrs. Betty Hamilton (authoress of 'The Cottagers of
Glenburnie') beg for leave to present him to her when they
met in her hospitable drawing-room; and equally in vain were
the efforts made by the good-natured Duchess of Gordon to
bring about an introduction which she knew was desired at
least by one of the parties. It was civilly but coldly
declined by the poetess; and though the dignified reason
assigned was the propriety of leaving the critic more
entirely at liberty in his future strictures than an
_acquaintance_ might perhaps feel himself, there seems
little reason to doubt that soreness and natural resentment
had something to do with the refusal."

"It was in the autumn of 1820 that Miss Baillie paid her
last visit to Scotland, and passed those delightful days
with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, the second of which is
so pleasantly given in Mr. Lockhart's life of the bard. Her
friends again perceived a change in her manners. They had
become blander, and much more cordial. She had probably been
now too long admired and reverently looked up to not to
understand her own position, and the encouragement which,
essentially unassuming as she was, would be necessary from
her to reassure the timid and satisfy the proud. She had
magnanimously forgiven and lived down the unjust severity of
her Edinburgh critic, and now no longer refused to be made
personally known to him. He was presented to her by their
mutual friend, the amiable Dr. Morehead. They had much
earnest and interesting talk together, and from that hour to
the end of their lives entertained for each other a mutual
and cordial esteem. After this, Jeffrey seldom visited
London without indulging himself in a friendly pilgrimage to
the shrine of the secluded poetess; and it is pleasing to
find him writing of her in the following cordial way in
later years: "_London_, April 28, 1840.--I forgot to tell
you that we have been twice out to Hampstead to hunt out
Joanna Baillie, and found her the other day as fresh,
natural, and amiable as ever--and as little like a Tragic
Muse. Since old Mrs. Brougham's death, I do not know so nice
an old woman." And again, in January 7, 1842.--"We went to
Hampstead, and paid a very pleasant visit to Joanna Baillie,
who is marvellous in health and spirits, and youthful
freshness and simplicity of feeling, and not a bit deaf,
blind, or torpid.""

_Authors and Books._

DR. TITUS TOBLER, a Swiss savan, has just published a work entitled _Golgotha, its Churches and Cloisters_, in the course of which he undertakes the "Jerusalem question," or the discussion of the probable localities of the Scripture narrative of the crucifixion. Among the able German accounts of this treatise, which cannot fail to arrest the attention of the sacred student, we find the following notice of Professor Robinson, the first profound and adequate contemporary authority upon the subject: "Until the American Robinson, all the early comparisons and criticisms upon the holy sepulchre were based much more upon instinct and furious sectarianism, than upon a generous love of truth and a genuine insight into the matter. Only with wearisome effort, and not without the consent of the whole Church power, was Robinson's mighty grasp upon pious tradition repelled. In the main question the learned Yankee was not altogether wrong. But he is too rash in battle, too impatient, too reckless, too ambitious, and his armor was evidently not proof in all parts. Even the knowledge of the Semitic orient, of its antiquities and customs, seems, if we may say so without offence to transatlantic vanity, a little threadbare. But the Robinsonian breach in the wall was not to be entirely plastered up and its traces concealed. This American has first recognized the right way of breaking into the citadel of tradition; others, with more or less skill, have followed his track and widened the breach. But it was reserved for the inflexible ability of Dr. Tobler to dig up the very foundations, although he is no centaur, no giant, and in the pride of strength, does not scorn a childlike faith."

* * * * *

Among recent German romances we note second and third editions of JEREMIAS GOTTHELF'S _Sylvester-Dream_, and the _Peasant's Mirror, or a Life-History_. The author is not much known beyond Germany, but is there recognized as having the greatest certainty and correctness in delineation, the most genial principle, and the soundest and freshest life of any contemporary writer. The Sylvester-Dream is as vague and fantastic, and of the same electrical effect, as the similar sparkling flights of Dickens and Jean Paul. _Uriel the Devil_, a satirical romance, in eight pictures, bears the name of Kaulbach, but whether the author is related to William Kaulbach, the great painter, we have no means of ascertaining. This, with the _Memorabilia of a German House-Servant_ are spoiled by their imitations of Jean Paul, and the latter is somewhat strongly infected with Hoffman's Phantasies. But they are both books of more than common talent. Two romances by two women are most curtly and contemptuously noticed, in a style of uncourteous condemnation hardly to be paralleled in England or America, in which countries the chivalry of private respect for the fair sex always ameliorates condemnation of their writings. "Of these two books there is little else to say than that they are moral and respectable, and extremely well written for women. The former author has the rare and memorable heroism in a woman to allow her heroine to reach her thirty-fourth year."

Levin Schuneking formerly Grand-Master at the Court of the Elector of Cologne, has just published _The Peasant Prince_, a romance, called in Germany his best work.

* * * * *

KOHL, the traveller or writer of travels, has just published a book upon the Rhine, which is not of the usual character of his works, as the author perhaps feared too much the criticising contrast of Victor Hugo's _Rhine_, to undertake a detailed and sprightly description of the present life and aspect of the country. The new work is, in fact, an attempt to portray, according to Ritter's principles, a famous river region in its geological, historical and statistical relations; and from this point of view to present it vividly to the mind. The contents are simple and succinctly arranged, and the book is a signal success in the popularization of the results of recent geographical research. It has the same relation to the old river guide books, that Ritter's philosophical geography has to the old geographies.

* * * * *

ANASTASIUS GRUN, the famous German poet, has just edited the poetical remains of Nicolaus Lenau, of whom Auerbach wrote a graceful reminiscence for the German _Museum_, under the title of _Lenau's last Summer_. The chief poem of the collection is entitled _Don Juan_, which, although not fully finished, the German critics highly extol. Soon after the death of Lenau, in a madhouse, last year, we gave some account of him in the _International_.

* * * * *

Of Sir CHARLES LYELL'S Second Journey in America, which Mr. E. Dieffenbach has rendered into German, the Germans say that its geniality and _gentlemanliness_, its graceful and striking pictures of the state of society, politics, and religion, and its popular treatment of scientific subjects, make it altogether charming. A reviewer notes what Lyell says of the universal tendency to read among the American laboring classes, and quotes some interesting facts, as that one house published eighty thousand copies of Eugene Sue's Wandering Jew, in various forms and at various prices. The same house had sold forty thousand copies of Macaulay's History of England, at the end of the first three months, at prices varying from fifty cents to four dollars, while other houses had sold twenty thousand copies, and this sale of sixty thousand copies while Longman was selling fifteen thousand at one pound twelve shillings.

* * * * *

The Countess HAHN-HAHN, who for several years has occupied in German literature a position corresponding to that of George Sand in France, with whose views of life and society she strongly sympathized, and whose "Faustina" and other works were republished here, has recently become a Roman Catholic, as our readers will have seen, and has just written the following letter to a Hamburg journal:

"To correct some misapprehension, I feel it to be my duty to
declare that the new edition of my complete works announced
by Alexander Duncker in Berlin is no new series, but an
edition with a new title. A new series of those writings
will never appear, as I no longer recognize as my own the
spirit in which they were written.

IDA, COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN."

* * * * *

DAVID COPPERFIELD has been translated into German, with the peculiarities of speech of the different classes of characters unattempted. Old Pegotty and Ham speak "pure Castilian." It is easy to see how the dramatic character of the book is thus lost. Indeed, Dickens is almost the only very famous English author who is not much translated. The Battle of Life, one of the least valuable and characteristic of his works, is well known upon the Continent, because it was so easy to translate. But what can a descendant of Dante, for instance, ever know of the drolleries of Sam Weller? Fancy a _spiritual_ Frenchman trying to catch the fun of Pickwick!

* * * * *

Mr. Judd's _Richard Edney_ induces a German critic to say of him, "This is a new English poet of the Carlyle and Emerson school, who, inspired by the example of Jean Paul, turn the English language topsy-turvy, and introduce a jargon that makes us satisfied with our own romantic barbarism."

* * * * *

Mrs. S. C. HALL'S _Sorrows of Women_ has been also translated into German, and is highly praised.

* * * * *

In Vienna, most of the recent publications have more or less relation to affairs. There is very little of pure literature. M. de Zsedenyi, one of the most capable Hungarian political writers, has published a work entitled _Responsibility of the Cabinet and the State of Hungary_. The author of _The Genesis of the Revolution_, (supposed to be Count Hartig, who was a Minister without portfolio under Prince Metternich) has again appeared before the public with 146 closely printed pages of _Night Thoughts_, some of which had better never have seen the light of day. A Mr. Schwarz has published a work advocating "protection," and in it he spares neither England nor the Austrian Minister of Commerce. Free trade notions have indeed been attacked in a score of books by continental thinkers lately, and free trade opinions seem to have received, throughout Europe, a most decided check.

* * * * *

The late Prince VALDIMAR, of Russia, made three or four years ago a journey to India, and besides taking part with the British army in sundry engagements, occupied himself busily in investigating the manners and customs of the people, the antiquities, history, and natural productions of the country. He wrote an account of his journey, and illustrated it with numerous drawings. His family is now causing this to be printed and the drawings to be engraved, and in a short time the work will be completed. Only three hundred copies are to be struck off, and they are to be presented to royal and illustrious personages. The getting up of the publication will cost 40,000 thalers.

* * * * *

M. LEON DE MONBEILLARD has written a little treatise upon the _Ethics of Spinoza_, in which--being a spiritualist who admits the dogma of the creation and of human personality--he is said to have refuted the great philosopher, yet without calumniating or disfiguring his doctrines, and with a constant admiration of all that is truly admirable in Spinoza.

The work has not yet crossed the sea, but we cannot help thinking that the colossal views of so great a mind are not to be entirely disproved in the delicate dimensions of an "_opuscule_," as the able little treatise of M. Montbeillard is called by the critics.

* * * * *

JOSEPH RUSSEGGER, imperial director of the mines at Schemnitz, has published the results of five years' travel in Europe, Asia, and Africa, comprising a universal scientific and artistic as well as social and picturesque view of those countries. It is in four volumes, very splendidly illustrated in all these departments, and is published at a cost of forty dollars.

* * * * *

Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS, the famous rationalist, has published a work entitled _Christian Marklein_, a picture of life and character from the present time, giving charming if not very new views of the Wurtemberg theological schools.

* * * * *

In the _German Universities_, it appears from the census just taken, with the exceptions of those of Koenigsberg, Kiel, and Rostock, the numbers for which have not been officially returned, there were for the last term on the registers 11,945 students. The universities may be classed, according to the number of students at each, in this order: Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Leipsic, Breslau, Tubingen, Goettingen, Wurzburg, Halle, Heidelberg, Giessen, Erlangen, Friburg, Jena, Marburg, Greifswalde. Berlin has 2,107 students, and Greifswalde only 189. The number studying the law is 3,973; of theological students, 2,539; pursuing the study of philosophy and philology, 2,357; medical students, 2,146; and there are 549 engaged in political economy. Halle reckons the greatest proportional number of theological students, there being 330 out of a total of 597; Heidelberg has most students of law; Wurzburg, most of medicine; and Jena, most students of theology. The greatest numbers of foreign students are to be found at Heidelberg, Gottingen, Jena, Wurzburg, and Leipsic.

* * * * *

The _Independence Belge_ gives an account of Frau Pfeiffer, a woman who left Vienna several years ago to travel alone in the most distant and unfrequented parts of the world. After visiting Palestine and Egypt, Scandinavia and Iceland, she landed in Brazil, penetrated the primitive forests, and lived among the natives; from Valparaiso she traversed the Pacific to Otaheite, thence to China, Singapore, Ceylon, Hindostan, to the caves of Adjunta and Ellora to Bombay, whence she sailed up the Tigris, to Bagdad, and then entered upon the arduous journey to Babylon, Nineveh, and into Kurdistan; and passing to the Caucasus, she embarked for Constantinople, visiting Greece in her way home to Germany. She is now in London, visiting the Great Exposition.

* * * * *

FERDINAND HILLER, Superintendent of the Cologne Musical Academy, and a contemporary and friend of Mendelssohn, whom, in the beginning, it was supposed he would surpass as a composer, has been recently in Paris, renewing his old experiences. He saw there most of the famous literary and artistic notabilities, and gossips pleasantly about them in the _feuilleton_ of a German journal. He saw Henry Heine, whose body is almost dead, but whose mind is as vigorous as ever. Hiller says that Heine chatted with him about God and himself, of the King of Prussia, and of Hiller--of the Frankfort Parliament and his own songs. Heine's features, he says, are interesting, and even more beautiful than they were formerly. The fallen cheeks leave the noble oval of the head and the delicately chiselled nose mournfully apparent. The eyes are closed. He can only see with the left, by elevating the lid with his finger. He wears a close-trimmed beard, and his hair is as brown and luxuriant as ever. The slim white hand is ideally beautiful. It belongs, according to the doctrine of Carns, to the class of the purely psychological. Heine had just written a song for a German composer; and that no poet can sing more sweetly for music, the many of his verses which Schubert has "married to immortal" tune sufficiently indicate. Mendelssohn also composed the most dreamily delicate music to Heine's "Moonlight on the Ganges."

Ingres, the painter, now seventy years old, the pride and model of the severe classicists of the French school, is a comely old man, with rich dark hair, luminous eye, and smooth brow. He is still light and active in movement, and a genial serenity broods over his whole character and manner. His love of music is no less enthusiastic than that of a lover for his mistress. The great German composers are great gods to Ingres. The remembrance of a beautiful sonata fills his eyes with tears. Ingres has recently finished a portrait, which is not inferior to any thing he has ever done.

Of musical men, Hiller saw Halevy, a successful composer and genial companion, with a gentle strain of irony in his conversation. Hector Berlioz has not grown to be fifty without some of the snowy tracks of time, but the volcanic genius is still alive. His conversation is like an eruption, now a burning lava-stream of glowing inspiration, now sulphurous mockery and scorn, and now, wide-flying, a shower of sharp stones of criticism. He tells the most laughable stories of his London life, and his musical difficulties and experiences there. In Paris he is only librarian of the "Conservatoire," and director of great concerts.

Jules Janin, the sparkling "J. J." of the _Journal des Debats_, and the grand seigneur of the Parisian _feuilletonistes_, leads the most loitering, pleasant life, and grows merry and fat thereby. He sits upon a luxurious ottoman, wrapped in a gorgeous _robe de chambre_, by the fire-place of his beautifully adorned study, and there among his books and bijoux of taste and art, gives audience to all the world. He has visits without end. He gives instruction and advice, hears all that every body has to say, applauds extravagantly, as he writes, all things in this world and some more, until it is time to go to dinner, or to see a new vaudeville. He has beside a beautiful wife, and suffers with the gout. Could his cup be fuller?

The poet Beranger, too, who seems to Hiller the songfullest of song-writers, charmed him by the gravity, and sweetness, and nobility of his character. Beranger received him quietly at Passy, near Paris, where he resides, a hale old man of more than seventy years. His hair is white, but his face has the freshness of blooming health. In his features there is a remarkable blending of geniality and intelligent sharpness. They are largely moulded, and their general expression is as generous, fine, and graceful as his verses. The perfect simplicity of his household is very striking. The only hints of any luxury are some medallion portraits, among which Hiller observed Napoleon and Lamartine. Yet this severity is so evidently the result of taste and not of poverty, that it has no unpleasant effect. The beauty and richness of his conversation filled his visitor with the greatest regret that he could not record it all. His first great remembrance is the destruction of the Bastille. His essay in literature was by the songs which circulated universally in manuscript before they were printed. But his literary ambition was toward works of great scope and extent, and it was not until after thirty years of age that he felt distinctly what he could do best. Of his songs he said, "I present to myself a song, as a great composition--I sketch a complete plan, beginning, middle, and end, and make the refrain the quintessence of the whole."

While Beranger was finding a letter, he opened a drawer, in which Hiller saw scraps of song and sketches of poems, which he longed to seize, as a wistful boy would grab at the money piles in a banker's window. The following is the letter in which Beranger speaks of the Marseillaise:

"I thank you, Madame, for the pleasant letter which you
addressed to me. It has revealed to me a noble heart, and
although I do not believe such hearts as rare as many say,
it is always a fair fortune to meet them.

"What you say of the Marseillaise is entirely just. But
remember, Madame, that it is the people itself, which always
selects its songs, words, and melodies, uninfluenced by any
one in the world. Once made, this choice endures, with
authority even among the later generations, whose experience
would not have made it.

"I have often enough thought about a new song of the kind,
but I am too old now, and the circumstances of the time have
robbed my voice of power. You, Madame, saw the true thought
of the song which should be now sung, and I lament that you
find the poetical harness not flexible enough for it.

"As to your remarks upon my new songs, I must say that I
trouble myself as little about the destiny of my younger
daughters as about that of their elder sisters. And I am
surprised that you speak to me of a Lierman, who should have
known me. Excuse, Madame, my delay in acknowledging and
thanking you for your letter, and believe me your devoted,

BERANGER."

* * * * *

A recent Italian translation of the _Diplomats and Diplomacy of Italy_, which first appeared in Professor Von Raumer's _Pocket Book_ for 1841, contains three hitherto unprinted MSS. from the Venetian archives. They are curious and interesting, as indicating the strict surveillance which the republic maintained, by means of its ambassadors, over the whole world of the period.

* * * * *

MR. WILLIS'S _Hurry-Graphs_ have a French rival in the _Pensees d'un Emballeur_, by M. Commerson, chief editor of the _Tintamarre_ (Paris journal.) They are called fantastic, original and forcible.

* * * * *

A work to create some surprise, coming from Spain, is the _Persecution of the Spanish Protestants by Philip the Second_, by Don ADOLPHO DE CASTRO. The name of Castro is honorably distinguished in Spanish literature. The present author is a grandson, we believe, of Rodriguez de Castro, who wrote the BIBLIOTECA ESPANOLA. He displays abilities and a temper suitable for the task he attempted; he has joined to careful and intelligent research a bravery of characterization which quite relieves his work from the censures which belong to most Spanish compositions of its class. That he could print in Madrid a work in which statecraft and ecclesiastical persecutions are so frankly dealt with, is a fact of more significance than a dozen such revolutions as have vexed the slumbers of other states. In Spain, above all countries, the spread of a taste for historical studies must be regarded as pregnant with important consequences. It shows that the barriers of ignorance and self-conceit, which have so long isolated that country from the rest of Europe, are beginning to be effectually broken down. To the common Protestant reader, indeed, De Castro's work will appear studiously moderate, or perhaps timid. But it should be remembered that it was written for a public which is four or five centuries behind our own, in all that constitutes true liberty and enlightenment; and what would appear most gratuitous cowardice here may easily enough be remarkable courage in Spain. To speak in favor of Protestantism at all, still more to become the biographer of the Protestant martyrs, is an undertaking which demands from a Spaniard, even of the present day, no ordinary amount of resolution. And we should be by no means surprised to hear that De Castro has been, in one way or another, made to pay some penalty of his rash enterprise. That it is both a dangerous and an unpopular one is manifest from the caution with which historical as well as religious topics are treated. Compiling what we cannot better characterize than as a Spanish supplement to Fox's "Book of Martyrs," the author nowhere professes himself a Protestant. And the slow and gradual way in which he unmasks the character of Philip II., shows how haughty and sensitive are the public whom he has undertaken to disabuse of a portion of the inveterate pride and prejudice which they nourish on all subjects affecting their church or their country. On the whole, however, though the Protestant reader will occasionally desiderate a little more warmth and indignation when chronicling such atrocities, we should say that the book rather gains than loses by this studied moderation both in tone and opinions. It certainly gains in dignity and impressiveness; and it is vastly better adapted to make its way with the author's countrymen, than if he had betrayed at the outset a sectarian bias, which would have revolted them, before they had time to make acquaintance with the sad and sanguinary events of which he is the historian. The ground gone over is necessarily much the same as in M'Crie's _History of the Reformation in Spain_, a work which possibly suggested the undertaking, and to which De Castro gives due credit for learning and ability. His advantage over the Scottish historian consists in his command of a variety of documents in print and in manuscript, to which access could be had only in Spain, especially the publications of the Spanish reformers themselves, which are exceedingly rare in consequence of the pains taken to destroy them by the Inquisition. The most remarkable result obtained by De Castro's researches, and the feature in his work for which he claims the greatest credit is the new light he has thrown on the history of Don Carlos. But unfortunately the question as to the Protestantism of that prince remains in much the same obscurity as before. His having been tainted by heretical opinions would aid certainly in accounting for his father's malignity towards him; but otherwise there seems to be no proof of the fact; and our own opinion is, that his tolerant views as to the treatment of the Flemish provinces were misconstrued into bias towards Protestant doctrines. The inference relied on by De Castro and others, that if he had remained Catholic he must have shared his father's extravagant bigotry, is lame. Don Carlos did no more than follow the usual course of heirs apparent when he disapproved of his father's tyranny; and his sympathies with Aragon are not less marked than those with Flanders.

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LONGWORTH, who distinguished himself in the Hungarian troubles, is writing a history of them. There is promise of so many books upon the subject that we shall be able to find out nothing about it. By the way, we wonder that no one has yet chosen for a motto to place upon his title-page, this sentence, which Lord Bolingbroke wrote more than a hundred years ago:

"_I mean to speak of the troubles in Hungary. Whatever they
become in their progress, they were caused originally by the
usurpations and persecutions of the emperor. And when the
Hungarians were called rebels first, they were called so for
no other reason than this, that they would not be slaves_."

It is from his _Letters on History_, and occurs where he has been speaking of the hostility of foreign powers to Austria.

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A PENNY MAGAZINE, in the Bengalese language, is to be established in Calcutta, under the editorship of Baboo Rajendralal Mittra, the librarian of the Asiatic Society. It is to be illustrated by electrotypes executed in England, of woodcuts which have already appeared in the _Penny Magazine_, the _Saturday Magazine_, and the _Illustrated News_.

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A NATIVE of India has translated the tragedy of _Othello_ into Bengalee Othello's cognomen in the Oriental version is Moor Bahadoor (General Moor).

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IN ITALY, at Turin and Florence, a great number of valuable works have been issued, illustrative of the recent revolutions. They do not claim to be histories, for history is impossible, while events are contemporary and cannot be contemplated from a universal point of principle and analysis. But these volumes are what the French with their happy facility would call studies for history. They are the material from which the great historic artists must compose their pictures--they are the diary of the movement--they follow all the changes of the time, hopeful or despondent, with the fidelity and closeness of an Indian upon the trail. We have seen several of these publications, and hope ere many months to see a treatise upon the republican movement in Europe from a pen well able to sketch it, and which is fed by ink which is never for a moment red.

The largest and most important of these works is that of M. Gualterio, just published in Florence, which comprises several letters of the Austrian lackey, Francis IV., Duke of Modenas, and throws light upon many of the darkest passages of the dark Austria-Italico policy. Among other letters, also, one of the most remarkable is that of the Cardinal Gonsalvi, well known as the able and humane Prime Minister of Pius VII., and to whose memory there is now upon the walls of St. Peter's a monument by Thorwaldsen, of which a statue of the Cardinal is part. This letter speaks of the miserable conduct of the political trials, and "justice," he says, "charity, the most ordinary decency demands that all humanity shall not be so trampled under foot. What will the English and French journals say--not the Austrian, when they learn of this massacre of the innocents." This was thirty years ago. But at this moment, were there an able and humane minister at the Vatican, how truly might he repeat Gonsalvi's words!

It is in works like these, and in the journals and pamphlets published during the intensity of the struggle, that the still-surviving Italian genius, which it has been so long the northern policy to smother and repress, betrayed itself. Nor among these works, as striking another key, ought we to omit the Souvenirs of the War of Lombardy by M. de Talleyrand-Perigord. Duke of Dino--and the history of the Revolution of Rome by Alphonse Balleydier. The Souvenirs are devoted to the glory of the unhappy King Charles Albert, the dupe of his own vanity and the victim of his own weakness.

Upon the pages of M. le Duc de Dino, however, he blazes very brilliantly as a martyr--martyr of a cause hopeless even in the first flush of success--martyr of an army without enthusiasm, of a liberalism without freedom or heroism. The English royalists, the reader will remember, were fond of the same title for the unhappy Charles I.

In M. Balleydier's history of the Roman revolution, Rossi is the central figure, in whose fate there was something extremely heroic, because he had received information, just as he quitted the Pope's palace to go to the assembly, from a priest who had heard it in confidence, that he was to be attacked, and he must have known the Italian, and especially the Roman character, sufficiently to have felt assured of his fate. After hearing the priest, Rossi said to him calmly: "I thank you, Monseigneur, the cause of the Pope is the cause of God," and stepping into his carriage drove to the palace of the Cancelleria, at whose door he fell dead, by a stroke that wounded much more mortally the cause which condemned him, than the cause he espoused.

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With all our waste of money, and continual boasts of encouraging individual merit, we have not yet a single pension in this country except to homicides. "They manage these things better in France." A return just published in the official _Moniteur_, shows that one department of the government, that of Public Instruction, distributes the following pensions to literary persons: five of from $400 to $480 a year; nine of $300 to $360; twenty-nine of $200 to $240; thirty-four of $120 to $180; and fifteen of $40 to $100. To the widows and families of deceased authors, two of $400 to $450; six of $300 to $360; seventeen of $200 to $240; twenty-five of $120 to $180; and thirty-one of $40 to $100. In addition to this, it may be mentioned, that the same department distributes a large sum annually, under the title of "Encouragements," to authors in temporary distress, or engaged in works of literary importance and but small pecuniary profit. It also awards several thousands to learned societies, for literary and scientific missions, purchases of books, &c. The department of the Interior gives $2,500 a year in subscriptions to different works, and nearly $30,000 for "indemnities and assistance to authors." The other departments of the government also employ considerable sums in purchasing books, and in otherwise encouraging literary men. It is said indeed to be no unusual thing for an author, laboring under temporary inconvenience, to apply for a few hundred, or, in some cases, thousand francs, and they are almost always awarded. No shame whatever is attached to the application, and no very extraordinary credit to the gift. Surely, France must be a Paradise for authors.

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A BOOKSELLER in Paris announces: "Reflections upon my conversations with the Duke de la Vauguyon, by Louis-Augustus Dauphin, (Louis XVI.,) accompanied by a fac simile of the MS., and with an introduction by M. FALLOUX, formerly Minister of Public Instruction." Falloux is a churchman of the stamp of Montalembert. We are apt to doubt the genuineness of these luckily discovered MSS. of eminent persons. We have no more faith in this case than we had in that of the Napoleon novels, mentioned in the last _International_.

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The late M. De BALZAC, who, besides being one of the cleverest writers of the age, was a brilliant man of society, and a very notorious _roue_, left, it appears, voluminous memoirs, to be printed without erasure or addition, and his friends are much alarmed by the prospect of their appearance. It is said that his custom of extorting letters from his friends upon any subject at issue, under pretence of possessing an imperfect memory, and his method of classing them, will render his memoirs one of the completest scandalous _tableaux_ of the nineteenth century that could ever be presented to the contemplation of another age. Opposition to the publication has already been offered, but without success, and the princess-widow is busily engaged with the preparations for printing, intending to have the memoirs before the world early in June. They extend minutely over more than twenty years.

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M. E. QUINET, who was long associated with Michelet, in the College of France, and who is known as a writer by his _Alemagne et Italie, Ultramontanisme, Vacances en Espagne_, etc. has published in Paris _L'Enseignement du Peuple_. "On the 24th day of February, 1848," he says, "a social miracle places in the hands of France the control of its destiny. France, openly consulted, replies by taking up a position in the scale of nations between Portugal and Naples. There must be a cause of this voluntary servitude; the object of these pages is to discover this cause, and, if possible, to protect futurity against the effects of its operation." This is the problem he proposes to solve, and he concludes that the important secret is in the fact, that the "national religion is in direct contradiction with the national revolution." "Chained by the circumstance of its religion to the middle ages, France believes that it can march onward to the end of a career opened to it solely because of its protest against every great principle of government which those ages held sacred." He has worked ten years, he tells us, to demonstrate two things: The first, that catholic states are all perishing; the second, that no political liberty can be realized in those states. "I have shown," he continues, "Italy the slave of all Europe, Spain a slave within, Portugal a slave within and without, Ireland a slave to England, Poland a slave to Russia, Bohemia, Hungary, slaves of Austria--Austria herself, the mother of all slavery, a slave to Russia. Looking for similar proofs out of Europe, I have shown in America, on the one hand, the increasing greatness of the heretical United States; on the other hand, the slavery of the catholic democracies and monarchies of the south: _in the former a_ WASHINGTON, _in the second a_ ROSAS." M. Quinet considers that the only remedy applicable to an evil of this magnitude is the utter separation of church and state. Leave but the slightest connection between the two, and the former will inevitably overpower the latter. The one is a compact, organized, single-minded body; the other is scattered, loosely put together, swayed to and fro by every change in the political atmosphere, and can offer no resistance that is sufficient to oppose the steady, unremittent attacks of its enemy. The two, therefore, must not be placed in collision. The very indifference manifested towards the national religion by the great bulk of the French people is the cause why so much danger is to be apprehended from the efforts of the church. Because a religion is dead, says M. Quinet, there is the danger. A living religion, like that of the puritans, may certainly mould the government into a despotic form, but it communicates to it, at least, a portion of its own power and energy, whilst a dead religion infallibly occasions death to the state and to the people with which it is politically and organically united. He argues the whole subject with eloquent force, and with not a little of the earnestness which reminds the reader of his personal controversies with the Roman Catholic Church.

* * * * *

A history of _Marie Stuart_, by I. M. Dargaud, has just been published in Paris, and for its brilliancy, completeness, clearness, and impartiality, attracts much attention. Queen Mary of Scotland was one of the famously beautiful women whose history is romance. She must be named with the heroines of history and the figures of poetry, with Helen, and Aspasia, and Cleopatra. Certainly, we trace no more sparkling and sorrowful career than hers upon the confused page of history, and our admiration, condemnation, surprise, sorrow and delight, fall, summed in a tear, upon her grave. In this work it appears that she was undoubtedly privy to the death of Darnley. During his assassination, she was dancing at Holyrood. The fearful fascination of a brigand like Bothwell, for so proud and passionate a nature as Mary's, is well explained by M. Dargaud. He is just, also, to her own tragedy, the long and bitter suffering, the betrayal of friends; the final despair, and the laying aside two crowns to mount the scaffold. She died nobly, and as most of the illustrious victims of history have died; as if nature, unwilling that they should live, would yet compassionately show the world in their ending, that heroism and nobility were not altogether unknown to them.

_Apropos_ of this history of Queen Mary, Lamartine has written a letter to Beranger, which praises the work exceedingly, but much more glorifies himself. The letter is a perfect specimen of that vanity, wherein only Lamartine is sublime: "Ah! if you or I had had such a heroine at twenty years, what epic poems and what songs would have been the result!"

* * * * *

THE COUNT MONTALEMBERT, the fervid champion of Catholicism in the French chamber, has just published a work, entitled _The higher and lower Radicalism: in its enmity to Religion, Right, Freedom and Justice, in France, Switzerland and Italy_.

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Although M. GUIZOT appears to be as busily engaged as ever in politics, the advertisements of the booksellers would induce a belief that his whole attention is given to literary studies. He has just published _Etudes Biographiques sur la Revolution de l'Angleterre_, which, with his sketch of General Monk, he says, "form a sort of gallery of portraits of the English Revolution, in which personages of the most different characters appear together--chiefs or champions of sects or parties, parliamentarians, cavaliers, republicans, levellers, who, either at the end of the political conflicts in which they were engaged, or when in retirement towards the close of their lives, resolved to describe themselves, their own times, and the part they played therein. In the drawing together of such men," he adds, "and in the mixture of truth and vanity which characterize such works, there is, if I do not deceive myself, sufficient to interest persons of serious and curious minds, especially among us and in these times; for in spite of the profound diversity of manners, contemporary comparisons and applications will present themselves at every step, whatever may be the pains taken not to seek them." The studies here collected we suppose are not new; they are doubtless the articles which the author contributed to the _Biographie Universelle_ and other works before he became a minister--perhaps, as in the cases of his "Monk" and "Washington," with scarcely a word of alteration. The work is, however, interesting. The period of English history to which it refers has been profoundly studied by Guizot, and it would probably be impossible to select a mode of treating it that would admit of more effective or attractive delineation. The life of Ludlow appears as the first of the series.

* * * * *

French Literature tends in a remarkable degree towards monarchical institutions. Guizot and his associates publicly advocate the Restoration. M. Cousin has published a new argument against Republicanism, and M. Romieu, whose curious book, which men doubted whether to receive as a jest or an earnest argument, _The Era of the Caesars_--in which he declared his belief that the true and only law for France is _force_--is before the public again, in a volume entitled _Le Spectre Rouge de 1852_. He predicts the subversion of all order, and such terrible scenes as have never been witnessed even in France, unless some one bold, resolute, scorning all "constitutional" figments, and relying solely on his soldiers--some one who shall say _L'etat c'est moi!_ shall save France. A Cromwell, a Francia, or in default of such Louis Napoleon--any one who will constitute himself an autocrat, will become the saviour of France!

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The COUNT DE JARNAC, formerly secretary and _charge d'affaires_ of the French embassy in London, has published a novel which is well spoken of, entitled the _Dernier d'Egmont_.

* * * * *

A French traveller in upper Egypt has collected for the Parisian Ethnological Museum copies of many curious inscriptions upon the walls of the great temple of Philae. Among others, there is the modern one of Dessaix, which the Parisians think "reflects the grandiose simplicity of the Republic." "The sixth year of the Republic, the thirteenth Messidor, a French army commanded by Bonaparte descended upon Alexandria; twenty days after, the army having routed the Mamelukes at the Pyramids, Dessaix, commanding the first division, pursued them beyond the Cataracts, where he arrived the thirteenth Ventose of the year seven, with Brigadier-Generals Davoust, Friant, and Belliard. Donzelot, chief of the staff, La Tournerie, commanding the artillery, Eppler, Chief of the twenty-first Light Infantry. The thirteenth Ventose, year seven of the Republic, third March, year of J.C., 1799. Engraved by Casteix." The last date, however, strikes us as a base compromise to the _temporal_ prejudices of the world, on the part of the author of this "simple and grandiose" inscription.

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M. de Saint Beauve has published in Paris some hitherto inedited MSS. of MIRABEAU, consisting of _Dialogues_ between the great orator and the celebrated Sophie (Madame de Monnier), written when Mirabeau was confined in the fortress of Vincennes, principally, it seems, from the pleasure he had in reflecting on the object of his passion. He gives an account of their first meeting, the growth of their love, and their subsequent adventures, in the language, no doubt, as well as he could recollect, that had passed between them, in conversation or in letters. There is not much that is absolutely new in these papers, or that throws any peculiar light on Mirabeau's character, but nothing could have been written by him which is without a certain interest, especially upon the subject of these _Dialogues_. Circulating-library people had always a morbid desire to see illustrious personages while under the influence of the tender passion.

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