A complete grammar of the Coptic language has been brought out at Berlin, by Professor Schwartze.
The Italian Revolution.Books relating to the late revolution in Italy and the events which preceded it are now published in that country in considerable numbers. One by Farini, Lo Stato Romano dall' anno 1815 all' anno 1850, not yet completed, only two volumes having been published, will be found valuable to the future historian. Its author is a constitutionalist, and treats the reign of Pius IX. strictly from that stand-point. His book must therefore be read with discretion. With the third volume, which will soon appear, will be issued a second edition of the first two volumes. Marquis F. A. Gualtiero of Orvieto has just brought out at Florence the first volume of a large work, Gli Ultimenti Rivolgimenti Italiani, Memorie Storiche con Documenti Inediti. This is excellent in respect to the pre-revolutionary events, giving a great variety of information as to persons as well as circumstances, in considerable detail. It is to be followed by an account of the revolution itself, treated of course in the same manner. It hardly need be said that the Marquis must fail to do justice to Mazzini and the republicans. An elaborate and able article reviewing the whole question has lately appeared in the Rivista Italiana, from the pen of Signor Berti. One of the best books yet produced on the revolutionary side is General Pepe's Guerres d'Italie.
We noticed last month the anniversary meeting of the Archæological Institute at Rome. The same society has just published its Annals, or Annual Memoirs, for 1850, a volume of great value and interest. It contains Lanza's report on the excavations at Salona, continued down to the year 1848. An essay is contributed by Canina upon the three temples of Pietas, Spes, and Juno Sospita, on whose ruins is built the church of San Nicola in carcere, new remains of the temples having been discovered in 1848. The statue of Apoxyomenos, found a year since at Trastavere, as well as the series of Amazons in relievo now in the British Museum, which Emil Braun takes to be relics of the famous Mausoleum, are treated at length. A little triangular candelabra, found in the Baths of Titus, is made interesting from the relation of the figures upon it to the worship of Apollo. The series of Etruscan frescoes has been greatly enriched by the pictures in two tombs, one of which was discovered in 1846 by A. Francois, while the other was then for the first time copied and rescued from entire oblivion. These pictures, which, like most monumental works, represent funeral feasts and games, according to Braun, are valuable for a mass of details relating to antique athletic art, which were before unknown. A Pompeiian fresco, representing the twelve gods, hitherto little esteemed, is made the subject of a profound investigation by E. Gerhard. Among the essays on vases, a long one by Welcker deserves especial mention. It discusses all the known representations of the Death of Troilus. The sphere of numismatics is filled by a long essay by Cavedoni on the Roman coins of the time of Augustus. There are also many other articles of no less interest to scholars, antiquaries, and artists.
M. Antoine D'Abbadie received not long ago from President Bonaparte, the decoration of the Legion of Honor, for alleged geographical discoveries in Africa. An "Inquiry" into M. Abbadie's journey has just appeared in London, from the hand of Dr. Charles T. Beke, and it is not impossible that the traveller will turn out a Damburger or a Hunter. Dr. Beke is an Englishman; D'Abbadie, an Irishman by birth, but a Frenchman by name, education and allegiance. The latter professes to have been the first European who ever put foot in the African Kingdom of Kaffa; the former gives reasons for doubting his statements entirely, and does not believe the Frenchman has even been in the country he describes at all.
The great oriental scholar Monsignore Molsa has been appointed to the office of Chief Guardian of the Vatican Library, in the room of M. Laureani, whose melancholy death occurred a few months ago; and the Abate Martinucci has been nominated to fill the office of sub-chief, which is one of very considerable importance, and has hitherto been filled by some of the most eminent of Italian scholars.
We are to have from Paris a hitherto unpublished ode of Piron, the well-known author of La Metromanie. It is entitled Les Confessions de mon Oreiller, (Confessions of my Pillow,) and is considered by connoisseurs to be decidedly authentic. It is signed and headed thus: "To be given to the public a hundred years after my death."
The vacancy occasioned by the death of M. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, in the list of members of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, has been filled by the election of M. Louis Reybaud, the author of Jerome Paturot, and husband of Madame Reybaud, who wrote the charming novels of Le Cadet de Calabriere, Helena, &c.
The sons of Rossi, the distinguished economist, and less distinguished minister of Pius IX., in which capacity he was assassinated, have published the third volume of his Cours d'Economie Politique. It treats of the distribution of wealth, and is marked by the same ability and tendencies as the volumes which preceded it, which were upon the production of riches.
H. Bailliere, the eminent publisher, of Paris, has established a branch of his house at 169 Fulton street, New-York, where American scholars may obtain all the best scientific literature of the time in suitable editions and at reasonable prices.
Of Mr. James Bailey, and the blasphemous rant and fustian and crude speculation which make up his poem of "Festus," which has had such extraordinary popularity among our transcendentalists, and which Shakspeare Hudson so excellently well reviewed in the Whig Review a year or two ago, we think a correspondent of The Tribune speaks justly in the following extract from a letter dated at Nottingham, in England:
"Apropos of Nottingham, I have seen Bailey, the author of 'Festus.' His father is proprietor of the Nottingham Mercury, and the editorial department rests with him. He is a heavy, thick set sort of man; of a stature below the middle size; complexion dark; and, in years about eight and thirty. His physiognomy would be clownish in expression, if his eyes did not redeem his other features. He spoke of 'Festus,' and of its fame in America, of which he seemed very proud. In England, it has only reached the third edition, while eight or nine have been published in the States. You know my opinion of the work. It is as far from being a great poem as the Thames, compared with the Mississippi or the Ohio, is from being a great river. Anxiously, anxiously have I sought one striking original idea in the whole poem (appalling in its length), but to no purpose. The transcendental literature of Germany absorbs all that, at first glance, arrests the attention. Without learning, imagination, or the attraction of a beautiful metre (like that of Tennyson's 'Princess'), I am at a loss to know what has given this poem its notoriety. Not its daring speculation, surely, for it is but a timid compromise between Orthodoxy and Universalism."
H. F. Clinton has published in London the concluding volume of his Fasti Romani: the civil and literary chronology of Rome and Constantinople from the death of Augustus to the death of Heraclius. The first volume, containing the chronological tables, was published in 1845, and formed a continuation of the Fasti Hellenici, by the same author. It came down to the death of Justin II., a. d. 578. The present volume continues the tables from the latter date to the death of Heraclius, a. d. 641; but the greater part of it consists of a series of learned dissertations on various points connected with the civil and literary history of the Roman and Byzantine empires.
Captain J. D. Cunningham, author of the "History of the Sikhs," who was dismissed from his political situation at Bhopal, by orders of the Court of Directors, for having published an official correspondence, without the permission of his immediate superiors, has been recalled to public employment by the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie having just appointed him general superintending engineer in the north-western provinces.
Mr. Hepworth Dixon, author of "Howard and the Prison-World of Europe," has published in London a Life of William Penn, which will be republished immediately by Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia.
The Literary Women of England were never so active as now. Mrs. Crowe has commenced in The Palladium magazine a new novel entitled Estelle Silvestre. Miss Anne G. Greene has published the third volume of her Lives of the Princesses of England; Mrs. David Ogilvy, Traditions of Tuscany; Mrs. Gordon, Musgrave, a Story of Gilsland Spa; Maria de la Vaye, Eugenie, the Young Laundress of the Bastille; Mrs. Norton, a new poem; the author of "Olivia," Sir Philip Hetherington; Mrs. Ward, Helen Charteris, or Sayings and Doings in a Cathedral Town; Mrs. Hubbach, niece of the celebrated Miss Austen, The Wife's Sister, or the Forbidden Marriage; Mrs. Jameson, Legends of the Madonna, forming the conclusion of her series illustrating Sacred and Legendary Art; the authoress of "Mary Powell" has commenced in Sharpe's Magazine a new work of the same description, under the title of The Household of Sir Thomas More.
Miss Martineau began on the first of February, a serial work under the title of "Half a Century of the British Empire; a History of the Kingdom and the People, from 1800 to 1850." It will be in six volumes, and it is intended to present, in handsome octavos at a rate of extraordinary cheapness, a connected narrative of the most important era in the history of the modern world. The work of Macaulay professes to be "the history of England from the accession of King James the Second down to the time which is within the memory of men still living." "Half a Century of the British Empire," will chiefly deal with events and states of society during a period in which many of our contemporaries have lived and acted.
The correspondence of Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington, British Minister at Vienna in 1694, has just been published by Murray in London, having recently been discovered in the library of the Suttons, at Kilham. There is not much absolute value in their contents, historically speaking; but the letters supply several striking and some amusing illustrations of characters already known in history, and are a contribution really important to the history of manners and society at the seventeenth century. The non-official letters are in this respect most curious and entertaining.
Pensions of £100 a year each have been granted in England to Mrs. Belzoni, the aged widow of the celebrated traveller; and to Mr. Poole, the author of Paul Pry, and of many contributions to periodical literature, who is a great sufferer from bodily infirmities.
Captain Medwin, whose book about Byron was once read by every body, and who for some time resided in this country, turns up in Holland, after an oblivion of several years. He contributes to the last number of the New Monthly an article entitled, Hawking at Loo.
John Clare, the peasant poet, sometimes called the "rural Burns," is now in the Lunatic Asylum at Northampton. There is much sweetness in some of poor Clare's verses, of which four volumes appeared many years ago. We believe he was among the proteges of Southey. His complaints to visitors of the madhouse are commonly of the injustice done to him by the public in not recognizing him, instead of Scott and Byron, as the author of "Marmion" and "Don Juan," and in refusing him the honor of having gained the battle of Waterloo. Clare was the writer, though not generally known as such, of the lines, "Here we meet too soon to part"which, set to one of Rossini's most beautiful airs, were some time exceedingly popular.
A new volume of the writings of De Quincey has just been published by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston. It contains, with other admirable papers, those "On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth," "Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," "Joan of Arc," and "Dinners, Real and Reputed." These works of one of the greatest of living authors, have never before been collected, and the publishers confer a most acceptable benefit by their edition of them. We have from the same house a copy of the best English version of "Faust," that of Hayward.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is publishing a complete collection of his Poems and Dramas. This edition will include several pieces not hitherto published, and those that have appeared before will receive the author's last corrections and revision. Each volume will be illustrated with an appropriate vignette title; and the first will contain, in addition, a portrait, from a painting by Maclise.
One of the most delightful books in natural history that we have ever seen is "Episodes of Insect Life," recently published in England, and now in the press of Mr. Redfield, in this city. It is divided into three "scenes," representing spring, summer, and autumn, and is profusely and skilfully illustrated. It is even more entertaining than Lord Brougham's Dialogues on Instinct, which we had regarded as the pleasantest work in such studies.
Dr. Achilli, whose imprisonment in the Roman Inquisition is a familiar story, has published "Dealings with the Inquisition, or Papal Rome, her Priests and her Jesuits; with Important Disclosures." It is an autobiography.
Samuel Bailey, whose "Essays on the Pursuit of Truth and on the Progress of Knowledge," "Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions," &c., have been largely read in this country, has just published a volume entitled, "The Theory of Reasoning, with Comments on the Principal Points of Scholastic Logic."
Major Poussin's "United States, their Power and Progress," a translation of La Puissance Americaine, by Edmund L. Du Barry, U. S. N., has been published in a large octavo of about five hundred pages, by Lippencott, Grambo, & Co., of Philadelphia. We take the opportunity to give some account of the author.
Guillaume Tell Poussin was born in the autumn of the year 1796 in the department of the Seine and Oise, in France. His father was a painter of some celebrity, who has left many fine works in the galleries of Versailles and Rouen. Introduced, while a child, to the favor of Napoleon, it was ordered by a special decree that, as a descendant of the great Nicholas Poussin, whose works are among the chief glories of French art, William Tell Poussin should be educated at the imperial school of Rouen. There he spent seven years, and passed his examination for admission to the Polytechnic school. He entered this national academy of engineering, and in 1814, while yet a youth, distinguished himself by his patriotic spirit, which prompted him to join his comrades in the defence of the walls of Paris against an invading enemy. He was wounded at the village of Aubervilliers, in an attack against the combined force of British and Russian troops who occupied that position; and after the surrender of Paris his feelings were so excited that he could not bring himself to acts of submission to the Bourbon family, but was arrested on account of his opinions, and released only on the intervention of powerful friends. He soon embarked for America, and arrived at New-York in November, 1815, having for recommendation his ardent desire to be useful and a decided love of liberty. After a short residence in New-York he proceeded to Philadelphia, where he expected to meet with some encouragement in his profession as an engineer. Here he became acquainted with Mr. Fairman, the engraver, and worked for him a few months with advantage, boarding meanwhile at a French house, into which the landlady received him in consideration of the devotion of his leisure to the instruction of her children. The next spring he removed to Washington, where he had heard that he could be profitably employed in the rebuilding of the capitol, which the British army had destroyed in the late war. He now worked as an architect for about a year, when, several leading senators and representatives having become acquainted with him, and, taking a particular interest in him for his earnest and manly character and the remarkable abilities he had evinced as an engineer, in the incidental opportunities presented by his employment as an architect, they signed a petition to President Madison for his admission to the corps of Topographical Engineers, which was then to be organized, and he was at once transferred to the United States Army. A short time after, General Bernard, whom Mr. Crawford, the American Minister at Paris, had engaged to be the chief of the Topographical Engineers, arrived in Washington, and assuming his office proceeded to the necessary preparations for that survey of the physical resources of our territory for national defence, and for tracing the lines required to form a complete base of operations in time of war, on the assailable portions of our frontier, for which the service had been instituted. Before leaving France, General Bernard had received especial recommendations from the friends of young Poussin to look after his interests, and when they met, therefore, their acquaintance was made on the most intimate and agreeable terms on both sides. Upon the application of General Bernard to the Secretary of War, Poussin was attached to his person as an aid-de-camp, and left Washington with him for a military reconnaissance of the coast on the Gulf of Mexico, and of the delta of the Mississippi. They spent a year and a half upon their important duties, in New Orleans and its vicinity, regardless of the dangers of that climate, and in 1817 returned to the seat of government and submitted to the President a particular and elaborate memoir of their operations. It was upon this first report, presented by the Executive, on the Military Defences of the United States,a report drawn up in a very large degree by the hand of M. Poussin, and illustrated throughout with his discovery and suggestion,that Congress, by an almost unanimous vote, authorized the erection of the great line of our military defences, adopting the recommendations of the commissioner without even the slightest alteration. The Board of Military Engineers entered subsequently on the yearly execution of their important duty of examining the coast previous to determining the actual sites and descriptions of the works of defence which they afterwards delineated. The young topographical engineer continued in his arduous scientific labors, and thus contributed largely in the perfecting of that great national scheme. It was in these military operations, and afterwards in the surveys for roads and canals, which, under the supervision of a Board of Internal Improvements, where confided to a portion of the same officers, assisted by civil engineers, that Poussin rendered himself so efficient as a practical and scientific surveyor, and became so perfectly familiar with all the internal resources of our extensive country, which he had thus most remarkable opportunities to study and appreciate, by crossing it in all directions, and, in fact, by visiting every state, and by following up and down every valley and river of the eastern half of the continent. Few men have had such occasion of studying de visu the extent and resources of the republic; and the intelligent readers of the volume before us will acknowledge, that few persons have shown themselves more conversant with its astonishing advancement. His first publication was a description of the works to which he had contributed, under the title of "A History of the Internal Improvements of the United States;" his second, an account of all the railroads in this country, which had considerable influence in developing in Europe a disposition toward our policy in this respect, and entitles Major Poussin to the gratitude of all lovers of rapid and safe communication. It was reproduced in Belgium and Germany, and has long been a textbook upon its subject in those countries, as well as in France. His third work was the one now translated, La Puissance Americaine, in which he has displayed, most emphatically, his admiration of our institutions, and offered them as examples to communities aspiring after rational liberty. It may be said of it, that it is the American system rendered popular by practical and convincing illustrations.