in the highest esteem by them. They fully appreciated his genius and were proud to honor him. In the latter years of his life, when far removed from the land of his birth, his thoughts and feelings always turned homeward, and he never ceased to express the hope of returning to lay his bones in his native soil. His wish has not been gratified, but his memory will remain forever connected with the spot. THE DIPLOMATIC AND OFFICIAL PAPERS OF kind. He commonly replied to these hints by say- | dream of such fame as that of Watt and Arking, that he was still an "apprentice" in science, wright. It is much to the honor of his townsand must learn more and do more before he could men that Perkins was from his earliest days held abandon his studies for mere money-making pursuits. Still he never affected to think meanly of his own capacity, but always cherished a modest and manly hope that the world would do him justice by a reasonable compensation in fame and fortune. In this manner, with a mind constantly active, and an undiminished ardor in the pursuit of knowledge, prodigal of his labors for the advancement of science and the public good-yet never complaining of the neglect of the world, he passed the remainder of his life. We are not able to speak positively as to his private affairs, but we believe he secured the benefit of some of his numerous inventions in such a manner as to enjoy a moderate competence to the end of his days. The inventor of a cork-screw or a quack sugar-plum, has realized a princely fortune. Perkins, whose whole life was devoted to the enlargement of human knowledge, got merely bread to eat. Fame is his great reward. He gave to mechanism new powers, a new importance, and a new dignity. Speculative and practical science are both indebted to his genius. A writer well qualified to judge, says of him, regarding his experiments in high pressure steam : "Viewing his exertions from first to last, no other mechanic of the day has done more to illustrate an obscure branch of philosophy by a series of dangerous, difficult, and expensive experiments." We refrain from copying other testimonials of the regard in which he is held by men of scientific and philosophical acquirements; these would suit a much more extended biography. He died in London, July 30th, 1849. The name he leaves behind him is that of the American Inventor. It is one which he deserves, and which is his true glory. He was entirely selfeducated in science, and the great powers of his mind expanded by their innate force. For half a century from the hour of his birth, he lived in the town of Newburyport. Here he grew up, acquired his knowledge, applied his genius to action, perfected his inventive powers, and gained all his early reputation. At the present day, when books are in the hand of every man, woman, and child, and the rudiments of scientific knowledge are presented to us in thousands of student's manuals, cyclopedias, periodicals, public lectures, &c., we can form no adequate notion of the obstacles which lay in the way of a young man beginning his scientific pursuits at the time when Perkins was a youth. Imagine the state of popular science in 1787, and some faint notion may be obtained of the difficulties which the young artist was compelled to encounter in the preliminary steps of every undertaking. The exact sciences were but slightly regarded, even by those who made pretensions to complete learning in those days, and a great proficient in the mechanic arts could only hope to be considered in the light of a clever carpenter or blacksmith. Men did not A RECENT number of the London Morning Chronicle contains, under the above title, the following notice of Mr. Webster, which has been called forth by the publication in London of a volume of documents from the pen of our distinguished countryman. These remarks, coming from a quarter in which Americans and their institutions have not been accustomed to receive hasty or indiscriminate commendation, will be read with much interest, as showing the rank which Mr. Webster occupies in the estimation of the people of Europe. Some passages towards the close refer to Mr. Webster's conversational peculiarities, of which an Englishman is perhaps little qualified to judge. We have, however, printed the writer's remarks entire. As Gibbon says of the magnificent eulogy pronounced upon him by Porson, " the sweetness of his praise is tempered by a reasonable mixture of acid."-Boston Courier. Few of the living statesmen of America have occupied so prominent a position in the history of their country as Daniel Webster. A native of Massachusetts, he early distinguished himself in that legal career which is, in America, the shortest and the surest road to political distinction. He was but a very young man when his voice was first heard in the councils of the nation, and he took his seat in the federal senate, the most august assembly in the Union, as soon as he had attained the age at which such an honor can constitutionally devolve upon a citizen. As one of the senatorial representatives of the state of Massachusetts, he was returned to that body for five consecutive terms, each term embracing a period of six years. It was during the progress of the fifth term that he quitted the Senate, to exchange, for a brief period, his legislative for administrative duties, having been called, in 1841, as Secretary of State to the cabinet of General Harrison. For many years previous to this he had been regarded as one of the competitors for the Presidency, but party exigencies and party manœuvring have prevented him from even securing a nomination. In addition to his legislative and administrative renown, Mr. Webster stands high as a jurist, and the character which he has achieved as a profound constitutional lawyer will form no insignificant ingredient in his reputation with posterity. The work now before us has reference chiefly, if not exclusively, to the brief episode of his life during which it was his lot to exercise executive functions. The evanescence of his ministerial career was attributed to circumstances which neither tions; but, when carried in any great degree into he nor his colleagues could control. The sudden private life, it disfigures the general character. death of General Harrison completely dislocated is the flaw in Mr. Webster's mind. In the the whig cabinet which he had called around him within a brief month after its formation. His successor got rid, one after another, of the advisers of the deceased President, and Mr. Webster would have been one of the first to retire, but that, as Secretary of State, he thought he had a mission to fulfil which he was anxious to bring to a peaceful termination before the government had passed entirely into the hands of Mr. Tyler and his nominees. The negotiations concerning the northeastern boundary, and the capture, detention, and trial of McLeod, were still in progress; and Mr. Webster, bent on a peaceful solution of the dispute, ordinary relations of life he is distant, reserved, and ambiguous to a degree, keeping his auditor constantly ill at ease, lest he should have misapprehended the real drift of his words. A set match between Mr. Webster and a diplomatist of this country, at present not a hundred miles from Downing-street, would be an intellectual strugglo of no ordinary interest. Mr. Webster can both write and speak clearly, when he chooses; it in his habit to be studiously obscure. His correspon dence with Lord Ashburton furnishes us with spec imens of diplomatic literature well worthy of study. There is more earnestness displayed was not disposed to deliver, unadjusted, into possi-throughout it than is generally to be met with bly unskilful hands, questions at once so delicate, in documents like those of which it is composed, and dangerous. He therefore remained in the cab- arising from the anxiety under which the negotiator to their house in the capital; and every spring so is it also in the midnight hours of great suffertrundled back again from their house in the capital to their country seat; nor how there were young daughters in the family who played on the piano, sang ballads, read novels, drew in black chalk, and looked forward, with longing glances, to the future, when they hoped to see and do wonderful things. With humility, I must confess, I always regarded myself as a heroine. inet for several months after his political friends had, one after another, fallen away from it, and after the principles which had presided at its formation had been abandoned for an imbecile policy, which developed itself in the form of a protracted intrigue. During the period for which he thus remained at the head of the foreign department of the government, an isolated relic of the then short-lived ascendency of the whigs, he was in constant communication with the British plenipotentiary, with whom he at length concluded a convention, which brought the dispute between the two countries to an amicable issue. Having thus, as he conceived, fulfilled his mission, he retired from the cabinet, and left Mr. Tyler to his fate. Being thus once more eligible to the Senate, he was again, on the first vacancy in the representation of Massachusetts occurring, returned by that state to the body of which he had been so great an ornament, and which he had so recently quitted. His time is therefore once more divided between his senatorial duties and his legal pursuits. The only portion of the published correspondence before us, which is of much interest to us in this country, is that which relates to the settlement of the international dispute just alluded to. This is evidently not the place in which to discuss the merits of the convention itself, by which that dispute was finally adjusted. It has been said that the best proof that an arbitrator can afford of his having dealt fairly by both parties, is to have them both dissatisfied with his award. Such was the case with the treaty of Washington. If some of the provisions excited considerable dissatisfaction on this side of the Atlantic, it was certainly far from obtaining a universal approval on the other. Both the negotiators, not unwisely perhaps, conceded, and it was for this mutual concession that they were both assailed in their respective countries; and one of Mr. Webster's last great efforts in the Senate was devoted to a vindication of the treaty in its application to American interests. But our present business, instead of being with the merits of the treaty, is with the character of the correspondence, so far as Mr. Webster bore a part in it, and with the literary and diplomatic attainments which it demonstrates him to possess. Of the correspondence it is impossible to speak but in terms of the highest praise. Mr. Webster's mind is cast in an eminently diplomatic mould. He possesses all the qualities which are considered as essential to successful diplomacy-astuteness, forethought, reserve, self-possession, and, to an eminent degree, the talent of ambiguity. The last mentioned gift may sometimes be very serviceable in state transac evidently labored for the speedy and amicable arrangement of the dispute. But notwithstanding this, his communications display neither precipitancy nor carelessness in their composition. Like his oratory, they are massive, studied, and stately, and show the extent to which he combines the qualities of a diplomatist with the attributes of a jurist and lawgiver. [We copy the foregoing into the Living Age partly for the oddity of seeing Mr. Webster charged with being obscure and ambiguous! In our opinion, he is of all our statesmen the most clear and unmistakeable, as well as the ablest and most sagacious. Had the whigs cast off their party leaders, and followed his lead after Harrison's election, they would probably have acquired California without the war, and have settled the Oregon dispute without coming so near a rupture with England. And, perhaps not!-for John Bull would not attend to his part of the business till strongly pressed-and our affairs with Mexico were a Gordian knot.] FREDRIKA BREMER. BY MARY HOWITT. Or herself, Fredrika Bremer says: If it should so happen that, as regards me, any one should wish to cast a kind glance behind the curtain which conceals a somewhat uneventful life, he may discover that I was born on the banks of the Aura, a river which flows through Abo, and that several of the venerable and learned men of the university were even my godfathers. At the age of three, I was removed, with my family, from my native country of Finland. Of this part of my life, I have only retained one single memory. This memory is a word, a mighty name, which, in the depths of Paganism, was pronounced by the Finnish people with fear and love; and is still so pronounced in these days, although perfected by Christianity. I still fancy that I often hear this word spoken aloud over the trembling earth by the thunder of Thor, or by the gentle winds which bring to it refreshment and consolation. That word isJumala; the Finnish name for God, both in Pagan and Christian times. If any one kindly follows me from Finland into Sweden, where my father purchased an estate after he had sold his property in Finland, I would not trouble him to accompany me from childhood to youth, with the inward elementary chaos, and the outward, uninteresting, and commonplace picture of a family, which every autumn removed, in their covered carriage, from their estate in the country ing; the human soul opens itself to the light of the eternal stars. Casting a glance into the family circle, it would be seen that they collected, in the evening, in the great drawing-room of their country house, and read aloud; that the works of the German poets were read, especially Schiller, whose Don Carlos made a profound impression upon the youthful mind of one of the daughters in particular. A deeper glance into her soul will show that a heavy reality of sorrow was spreading, by degrees, a dark cloud over the splendor of her youthful dreams. Like early evening, it came over the path of the young pilgrim of life; and earnestly, but in vain, she endeavored to escape it. The air was dimmed as by a heavy fall of snow, darkness increased, and it became night. And in the depth of that endless winter night, she heard lamenting voices from the east, and from the west; from plant and animal; from dying nature and despairing humanity; and she saw life, with all its beauty, its love, its throbbing heart, buried alive beneath a chill covering of ice. Heaven seemed dark and void ;-there seemed to her no eyes, even as there was no heart. All was dead, or, rather, all was dying-excepting pain. There is a significant picture, at the commencement, in every mythology. In the beginning, there is a bright, and warm, and divine principle, which allies itself to darkness; and from this union of light and darkness of fire and tears-proceeds a God. I believe that something similar to this takes place in every human being who is born to a deeper life; and something similar took place in her who writes these lines. Looking at her a few years later, it will be seen that a great change has taken place in her. Her eyes have long been filled with tears of unspeakable joy; she is like one who has arisen from the grave to a new life. What has caused this change? Have her splendid youthful dreams been accomplished? Is she a heroine? Has she become victorious in beauty, or in renown? No, nothing of this kind. The illusions of youth are past the season of youth is over. And yet she is again young; for there is freedom in the depth of her soul, and "let there be light" has been spoken above its dark chaos; and the light has penetrated the darkness, and illumined the night, whilst, with her eye fixed upon that light, she has exclaimed, with tears of joy, "Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?" Many a grave since then has been opened to receive those whom she tenderly loved; many a pang has been felt since then; but the heart throbs joyfully, and the dark night is over. Yes, it is over; but not the fruit which it has borne; for there are certain flowers which first unfold in the darkness; If it be desired to hear anything of my writings, it may be said that they began in the eighth year of my age, when I apostrophized the moon in French verses, and that during the greater part of my youth I continued to write in the same sublime strain. I wrote under the impulse of restless youthful feelings-I wrote in order to write. Afterwards, I seized the pen under the influence of another motive, and wrote that which I had read. At the present time, when I stand on the verge of the autumn of my life, I still see the same objects which surrounded me in the early days of my spring, and I am so happy as still to possess, out of many dear ones, a beloved mother and sister. The mountains which surround our dwelling, and upon which Gustavus Adolphus assembled his troops, before he went as a deliverer to Germany, appear to me not less beautiful than they were in the days of my childhood; they have increased in interest, for I am now better acquainted with their grasses and their flowers. Fredrika Bremer's works are: The Neighbors ; The Home; The H. Family; Strife and Peace; The President's Daughter; Nina; The Diary; In Delecarlia; Brothers and Sisters; The Midnight Sun; together with smaller tales, and a considerable number of tracts and papers, published at various times, in the Swedish journals. All these works I have, with the assistance of my husband, translated. From the New York Evening Post. Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words. By the Rev. C. C. COLTON. Revised edition; with an Index. New York: William Gowans. 1849. FEW books have ever earned the fame and the study which have been bestowed upon them, more fairly than Lacon. It is difficult to foresee that period in the progress of our race, when its sententious wisdom and eloquence, all compact with thought, may not be profitably pondered by the children of men. It is now about thirty years since the first volume appeared, and within that period it has been republished in every form, to accommodate the taste and means of every class of readers. It has been translated into many different languages, and has been more read and quoted than almost any book of its size, from the pen of an English writer. And yet of the author himself, scarcely anything is known. It is more difficult to find persons unacquainted with the contents of Lacon, than to find those who know any of the few particulars which have been preserved of its author's life. Under these circumstances, we venture to assume that a rapid sketch of Mr. Colton's life will be more interesting to most of our readers, than anything we can say of the work to which he owes his fame. Mr. Caleb Colton was educated at Eton and Kings College, Cambridge. He graduated B. A. in 1801, and M. A. in 1804. In 1801 he was presented by the college to the perpetual curacy of Tiverton Prior's Quarter in Devonshire, which clergyman had concluded reading the afternoon prayers in the church at Tiverton. Colton rushed from the dying man's bedside into the pulpit, and for above an hour poured forth an extemporaneous flood of eloquence in favor of strict morals, to the no small surprise of his crowded auditory, and closed at length as follows: he held with his fellowship, and where he con- sity of reflection than of any cynical severity of tinued to reside for many years, and until presented disposition. His nose was aquiline, or (to speak to the vicarage of Kew and Petersham, in 1818. more correctly, if less elegantly) hooked; his The eccentricities and irregularities by which cheek bones were high and protruding, and his he was afterwards distinguished, were not en- forehead by no means remarkable either for its tirely unknown here. On one occasion he was expansiveness or phrenological beauty of developsent to read the "Visitation of the Sick," to a dy- ment. There was a singular variability of expresing parishioner, who had amassed great wealth in sion about his mouth, and his chin was precisely the Indies. The visit occupied him until another what Lavater would have called an intellectual "You wonder to hear such things from me, but if you had been where I was just now, and had heard and seen what I did, you would have been convinced it was high time to reform our courses -and I, for one, am determined to begin." The very next Sunday he hurried over the reading of a fifteen minutes' discourse, and immediately after was seen placing his pointers in a basket behind, and his guns beside him, in his gig, and driving off towards a distant manor, to be ready for the next day's partridge shooting. His first publication, in 1810, was also marked by the same characteristics. It was "A plain and authentic Narrative of the Sampford Ghost;" in which he asserted his confident belief in the supernatural agency of the disturbances of Sampford, (rather closely plagiarized from the ghost of Cock Lane,) and wound up all, by placing in the hands of the mayor of Tiverton a bond, by which he engaged to pay £100 to any one who could explain the cause of the phenomenon. It certainly required this proof of his good faith not to provoke a smile at the title of his next publication: Hypocrisy, a Satirical Poem," which was welcomed but coldly by the public in 1812. Mr. Colton was always an anti-Bonapartist, both when, in the height of his power, he was the peculiar object of the abuse of the English newspapers, and when, after his fall, he was made the theme of praise which posterity will perhaps regard as equally exaggerated and disgusting. The poem of "Napoleon" followed that of "Hypocrisy," in the same year, and was considered to evince much superior poetical talent. It was while the proof-sheets of this work were preparing for publication, that a writer, who gave an account of him about fourteen years afterwards, in a defunct periodical, "The Literary Magnet," was introduced to Mr. Colton by an equally eccentric personage, the well-known Walking Stewart. "The appearance of Mr. C. was," he says, "at once striking and peculiar. There was an indefinable something in the general character of his features, which, without being remarkably prepossessing, fixed the attention of a stranger in no ordinary degree. His keen gray eye was occasionally overshadowed by a scowl or inflection of the brow, indicative rather of an habitual inten chin. Perhaps the shrewdness of his glances was indicative rather of extraordinary cunning, than of high mental intelligence. His usual costume was a frock-coat, sometimes richly braided, and a black velvet stock: in short, his general appearance was quite military; so much so, that he was often asked if he was not in the army. I am half-inclined to believe that he courted this kind of misconception, as his reply was invariably the same: 'No, sir, but I am an officer of the church militant.'" Before they parted, Mr. Colton gave his new acquaintance a pressing invitation to breakfast next morning, and put a card into his hand, in which the name of the street and the number of the house were explicitly mentioned. The describer went and found a marine-store shop! and thinking that, after all, there must be a mistake, he walked off. On again meeting Mr. Colton, the too fastidious stranger was reproached for his breach of appointment, and invited anew. "The most exaggerated description of the garrets of the poets of fifty years ago," says the visitor, "would not libel Mr. Colton's apartment. Such of the panes as were entire were begrimed with dirt. As to the only two chairs in the room, while one, apparently the property of the poet, was easy and cushioned, and differed essentially in character from the rest of the furniture, the other, a miserable rush-bottomed one, was awfully afflicted with the rickets. On the deal table at which the host was seated, stood a broken wine-glass, half filled with ink, with a steel pen, which had seen some service, laid transversely on its edge. Immediately beside the poet lay a bundle of dirty and dog'seared manuscripts. After reciting to his visitor several pages of the MS. Lacon, the work which raised him to fame, Mr. Colton insisted he should taste his wine; and, going to the piece of furniture which contained his bed, opened a large drawer near the floor which was filled with bottles of wine ranged in sawdust, as in a bin. His hock and white hermitage were delicious, and poet and auditor parted faster friends than ever." Towards the end of 1820 appeared "Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words, addressed to those who think," a thin, ill-printed seven-shilling octavo. It attracted much attention and praise. The name of Colton was henceforth known to all; and when we find that the sixth edition of "Lacon" appeared in 1821, we need not wonder that "Lacon, vol. II." appeared in 1822. It has been charged that some of the ideas in this popular work may be traced to Burdon's " Materials for Thinking," a favorite work with Mr. it was an access of suicidal frenzy, can never be known; but the unhappy wretch disappeared from the sight of the horror-stricken beholder, one last scream of despair ascending as the criminal shot downward to his frightful and inevitable doom. Manuel, overcome by a sickening weakness, leaned against the steep side of the mountain, and wiped away the cold perspiration which gathered on his brow; then, summoning all his strength, he hurried forward and managed to reach the galera. His entrance, as may be supposed, was the cause of great agitation. Most of those present recoiled and crossed themselves in terror, though not so excessive as that of the miserable Gomez. One person, however, sprang forward with a laugh of hysteric delight, and exclaimed, Frisch ist des Morgen's Sehein, GAILY the sun ascends his throne, O, Mourner!-from the new-lit skies And tears, thou valiant youth and true That down from heaven hath flown?" "The dew would show its wonted care, "A noble hero!-and in tears? A brave young man and weakly pine? O come where gleams the sheen of spears, And Love's warm glance divine !" "Let others kneel at Beauty's throne, "Oh! tell me, then, thy heart's deep woeWhat sorrow chains thee to the stone?" "Ah! yes, from lips the tale will flow, Last night I crossed the mountain near, It was a beauteous Fairy form, That thus about the wanderer played, And twined a garland bright and warm Around us twain, that ne'er can fade. with these words the overjoyed Margarita fell upon her husband's neck, and fainted away in his arms. I need only add to the foregoing narrative, that Don Manuel Campos, the present resident manager of the new mine of San Adrian, will receive with great hospitality, at his house in Zacatecas, any English traveller who may pass through that city, and will, if desired, relate all the particulars of the remarkable, accident to which he was mainly indebted for his rise in the world. Doña Margarita, his very lady-like wife, will confirm the account by her own testimony, and by the additional token of a long-haired, black-eyed urchin, some five or six years old, bearing the identical name of Adriano, in commemoration of the event which happened shortly before his birth, so that the essential truth of the story may be considered as established beyond the possibility of a doubt. She called me her beloved lord- That moment did the Night withdraw And as it paled before the day, And sank amid the silent sea, Hence! hence!-for ere the sun has smiled, One beam on me, the Fairy Child, For this, through Time's unnumbered years, The Fairy People rule the night!" Audacious boy! Oh! sad event! I prayed, and kissed her thousand charms, Until she, weeping, gave consent But through her tears she sang this strain- If thou didst not that promise blight. I cannot bring my lips to speak Farewell, beloved murderer mine! There in my very hands she grew A lifeless stone, so hard and cold; There from my heart the life-blood flew, And strength grew weak, and youth grew old. A lifeless stone! - O bitter woe! My joy! my grief! my Elfin Bride! Dublin U. Mag. |