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

V >> Various >> International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1,




The first appearance of Miss Kemble on the stage was on the evening of
the 5th October, 1829, at Covent Garden, and was hazarded with the view
of redeeming the fortunes of the theater. The play was "Romeo and
Juliet," and the heroine was sustained by the debutante with unexpected
power. Her Siddonian countenance and expressive eyes were the general
theme of admiration; while the tenderness and ardor of her action went to
the soul of the spectator, and her well-instructed elocution satisfied
the most critical ear. It was then, also, that her father took the part
of "Mercutio," for the first time. It is recorded that he earned by it
thirteen rounds of applause. Nor was its merit overrated. It was then,
and continued to be, a wonderful impersonation of the poetic-comic ideal.
On the 21st of the same month of October, the performers of Covent Garden
presented to Miss Kemble a gold bracelet as a testimony of the services
which she had rendered to the company by her performance of "Juliet." It
was not until the 9th of December that she had to change her _role_. She
then performed Belvidera in "Venice Preserved," and achieved another
triumph. For some time the part was alternated with that of "Juliet." The
latter, during the season, was performed thirty-six times; the former,
twenty-three. The "Grecian Daughter," and Mrs. Beverley, Portia in "The
Merchant of Venice," Isabella, and Lady Townley, followed, and in all
she was eminently successful. Her season finished on the twenty-eighth
of May, and in it she performed altogether, one hundred and two times.
Her reputation, however, proved to be greater in the metropolis than in
the provinces. Nevertheless, on her return to London, she was greeted
with an enthusiastic reception. The next season was celebrated by the
failure of the "Jew of Aragon," and the affair with Mr. Westmacott;
however, Miss Kemble added to her _repertoire_ the characters of Mrs.
Haller, Beatrice, Lady Constance, and Bianca in "Fazio."

In 1832 she came with her father to the United States, where she played
with unprecedented success in the principal cities, confirming the
reputation she had acquired, of being the greatest British actress of the
age. While here she published her dramas, "The Star of Seville" and
"Francis the First," and at this period she was a frequent contributor
to the literary journals,--many of her best fugitive poems having
appeared in the old "New York Mirror."

In 1834 she retired from the stage, and was married to Mr. Pierce Butler
of Philadelphia, a gentleman of fortune, accomplishments, and an
honorable character. The history of this union is sufficiently notorious.
On both sides there was ambition: it was a distinction to be accepted by
a woman of so much genius; it was a great happiness to change the
dominion of a spendthrift and sometimes tyrannical father for that of a
rich and indulgent husband. But a woman accustomed to the applause of the
theater never yet was content with the repose of domestic life, and she
was of all her sex the most ill-fitted by nature for such an existence.
Her second resort to the stage in 1847, her fortunes at Manchester and in
London, her return to America, her public readings of Shakspeare here,
her divorce, and the very curious and unexplained circumstance of her
translation of a profligate French play, and disposal of it as a piece of
her own original composition, are all matters of too late occurrence to
need recapitulation.

She is a woman of masculine abilities, tastes, and energies; fitted
better for the camp than for the drawing-room, and often evincing a
degree of discontent that she is not a man. She always _acts_, and has
seldom, except when on the stage, the tact or ability even to seem
natural. Her equestrian exhibitions in Boston and New York, during her
more recent visits, illustrated the quality of her aspirations. Every
day, at a particular hour, so that a crowd might assemble to look upon
the performance, her horse was brought to the front of her hotel, and
when mounted, with affected difficulty, made to rear and pitch as if he
never before had felt the saddle or bit, and then to dash off as if upon
a race-course or to escape an avalanche. The letters to her husband, with
much tact but without any necessity displayed to the public, in her
answer to his process for divorce, were admirable as compositions, and
seemed to have been written in the very phrensy of passion; but their
effect upon the reader was changed somewhat when he reflected that she
had been sufficiently self-possessed meanwhile to make _careful copies_
before sending them, to be exhibited, as specimens of her genius, to a
mob of the pit, which never fails to recognize a _point_. Indeed, in
petticoats or in pantaloons, making a show of her "heart" in the
publication of these letters to a gentleman whom she had treated with
every species of contempt, obloquy, and insult, until she had made his
home insupportable, or courting the wondering admiration of country
bumpkins by unsexing herself for feats of horsemanship, or for other
athletic diversions, she is always anxious to produce a sensation,
anxious to stir up the gentle public to a roar.

Still, with all her infirmities of taste and temper, Mrs. Kemble is a
woman of unquestionable and very decided genius; a genius frequently
displayed in literature, where its growth may be traced, in prose, from
her foolish "Journal in America" to her more artistic "Year of
Consolation;" and in poetry, where its development is seen from its
budding in "Frances the First" to its most perfect blossoming in the
recent collection of her "Poems." As an actress, her powers and
qualifications are probably greater than those of any other _tragedienne_
now on the English stage; and her characteristics and supremacy are
likely to be far more profitably as well as distinctly evinced in her
"Shakspeare Readings" than in any appearance before the footlights.


* * * * *


LITERATURE IN AFRICA.

The Bible has been translated into the principal language of eastern
Africa, and the American Bible Society has lately received a copy of
"EVANGELIO za avioondika LUCAS. The Gospel according to St. Luke,
translated into Kinika, by the Rev. JOHN LEWIS KRAPF, Phil. Dr.; Bombay
American Mission Press: T. Graham, printer; 1848." The Kinika language
is spoken by the tribes living south of Abyssinia, toward Zanzibar. Dr.
Krapf is a German missionary, in the service of the Church Missionary
Society. He is now in Germany for the recovery of his health. The
language resembles in some particulars the dialects used in Western
Africa. The _Independent_ copies, as a philological curiosity, the Lord's
Prayer in Kinika:

"Babawehu urie mbinguni, Rizuke zinaro. Uzumbeo uze. Malondogo gabondeke
hahikahi ya zi, za gafiohendeka mbinguni. Mukahewehu utosao, hu-ve suisui
ziku kua ziku. Hu-ussire suisui maigehu; hakika suisui kahiri
huna-mu-ussira kulla mutu akos saye zuluyehu. Si-hu-bumire suisui
magesoni, ela hu-lafie suisui wiini."


* * * * *


[Illustration: SIR DAVID BREWSTER, PRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH
ASSOCIATION.]

THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING.


The British Association for the Advancement of Science assembled this
year at Edinburgh, and its first general meeting was held on Wednesday,
the 31st of July, when Sir DAVID BREWSTER, upon taking the chair,
delivered a very interesting address upon the history of the Association,
and the progress of the Sciences. On Thursday, business began in all the
sections, and in the evening Prof. Bennett delivered a lecture on the
passage of the blood through the minute vesicles of animals, in
connection with nutrition. On Friday, a party of about seventy started
under the direction of Mr. R. Chambers, to examine into the groovings on
the western face of Corstophine Hill, and the striae on the sandstone
near Ravelstone. They afterward visited Arthur's Seat and St. Margaret's,
where they examined the striated rocks and stones. In the evening there
was a conversazione and promenade. Saturday was devoted to excursions. On
Monday afternoon upward of two hundred members dined together, Sir David
Brewster presiding. In the evening, Dr. Mantell delivered a lecture on
the extinct birds of New Zealand. On Tuesday evening there was a
full-dress promenade and _soiree_. On Wednesday, the general committee
assembled to sanction the grants that had passed the Committee of
Recommendations: and in the afternoon of the same day the concluding
general meeting of the Association, for the accustomed ceremonial
proceedings, was held. The next annual meeting is to take place at
Ipswich, and Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal, will preside. The meeting,
altogether, was one of unusual interest; among the persons present were
the chief lights of science, in the empire and from the continent, and
our own country was represented by Prof. Hitchcock and several other
scholars. The papers read in the various sections were numerous, and some
of them are described as of very remarkable freshness and value. They
will soon be accessible in the published Transactions, which will this
year be more voluminous than ever.

The retiring President, Dr. Robinson, at the opening meeting,
congratulated himself on being able to surrender his dominion to his
successor in a more prosperous condition than he had received it, and
spoke in glowing terms of the character and scientific achievements of
that successor, of whose labors he gave a brief but glowing history. Sir
David Brewster, who was one of the founders of the Association, is a
native of Jedburgh, in Roxburgshire; where he was born December 11, 1781.
He was educated for the Church of Scotland, of which he became a
licentiate; and in 1800 he received the honorary degree of M. A. from the
University of Edinburgh. While studying here he enjoyed the friendship
of Robison, who then filled the Chair of Natural Philosophy; Playfair, of
Mathematics; and Dugald Stewart that of Moral Philosophy. In 1808, he
undertook the editorship of the "Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," which was only
finished in 1830. In 1807 he received the honorary degree of LL. D. from
the University of Aberdeen; and in 1808 was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh. Between 1801 and 1812 he devoted his attention
greatly to the study of Optics; and the results were published in a
"Treatise on New Philosophical Instruments," in 1813. In 1815 he received
the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for one of his discoveries in
optical science; and soon after was admitted a Fellow of that body. In
1816, the Institute of France adjudged to him half of the physical prize
of 3000 francs, awarded for two of the most important discoveries made in
Europe, in any branch of science, during the two preceding years; and in
1819, Dr. Brewster received from the Royal Society the Rumford gold and
silver medals, for his discoveries on the Polarization of Light. In 1816
he invented the Kaleidoscope, the patent-right of which was evaded, so
that the inventor gained little beyond fame, though the large sale of the
instrument must have produced considerable profit. In 1819, in
conjunction with Dr. Jameson, he established the "_Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal_"; and subsequently he commenced the "_Edinburgh
Journal of Science_," of which sixteen volumes appeared. In 1825, the
Institute of France elected him a Corresponding Member; and he has
received the same honor from the Royal Academies of Russia, Prussia,
Sweden, and Denmark. In 1831, he received the Decoration of the
Hanoverian Guelphic Order; and in the following year, the honor of
Knighthood from William the Fourth.

Sir David Brewster has edited and written various works, besides
contributing largely to the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Transactions of the
British Association_, and other scientific societies, and the _North
British Review_. Among his more popular works are "A Treatise on the
Kaleidoscope;" an original Treatise on Optics for the _Cabinet
Cyclopaedia;_ and Letters on Natural Magic and a Life of Sir Isaac Newton
for the "Family Library." The latter work has been translated into
German.

Sir David Brewster is likewise one of the editors of the _London and
Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine_.

The discoveries of Sir David Brewster range from the kaleidoscope to the
law of the angle of polarization, the physical laws of metallic
reflection, and the optical properties of crystals; and the venerable
philosopher is the author of an immense number of facts and practical
applications in every branch of optics.

* * * * *

The AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION assembled this year at New Haven, and
Was presided over by Alex. D. Bache, LL. D. of the Coast Survey. It was
attended by many of the most eminent men of science in this country,
among whom were President Woolsey, Professor Denison Olmsted, the elder
and the younger Silliman, E. C. Herrick, and E. Loomis, of Yale College;
Professors Louis Agassiz, E. N. Hosford and Benjamin Pierce of Harvard
University; Lieutenant Charles H. Davis, U. S. N.; Professor O. M.
Mitchell, Superintendent of the Cincinnati Observatory; Dr. A. L. Elwyn
of Philadelphia; Professor Walter R. Johnson of Washington; Professor
Joseph Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; William C.
Redfield of New York; and an unusual number of amateur scholars from
various parts of the Union. There were several papers of remarkable
value, among which that of Mr. Squier, our Charge d'Affaires for Central
America, was perhaps at this period of the most general interest. Others
were puerile, and as unfit in subject as in ability for presentation in
such an assembly. It is to be regretted that the Association does not
adopt the only protection against such discreditable annoyances, by
insisting upon the submission of everything offered for its consideration
to a competent private committee.

* * * * *

A GREAT NATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, is said to have
been discussed recently at the meetings of inferior societies, and we
have read a circular upon the subject, which contemplates a convention of
scholars and men of letters, at Washington, some time in the coming
winter. The American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, and made
respectable by the labors of many eminent men, is no longer in authority,
and its proceedings command little attention. The various societies for
the cultivation of the natural sciences, in Philadelphia, Boston, and
New York, are undoubtedly accomplishing much good, but the spheres and
degrees of their influence would be greatly enlarged under a central
organization. In such a design, the initiative should be taken by men of
nerve as well as men of abilities, so that the dead weights of mediocrity
so constantly obtruding into and making ridiculous the present societies,
should be altogether excluded.

Hitherto, in this city, the most reputable and dignified association
connected with the advancement of learning, has been the Ethnological
Society. It is to be feared that with the death of Mr. Gallatin, its
president, and the dispersion of so many of its active members in the
diplomatic service, its action hereafter will deserve less consideration
than has thus far been awarded to it.


LAMARTINE'S APOLOGY FOR HIS CONFIDENCES.

Lamartine has just commenced the publication of a second part of his
Confidences, in the feuilleton of _La Presse_, and precedes it by the
following letter to the editor of that paper, which we translate for _The
International_ from _La Presse_ of July 30. It relates to the way in
which he came to publish the work, and gives a deeply interesting account
of the pecuniary embarrassments under which he had for some time been
laboring, and then eloquently defends the publication of what is real,
and glowing in private life and experience.

_To M. de Girardin:_

In addressing to you, my dear Girardin, this third volume of private
notes, to which the public have given the name of _Confidences_, I cannot
repress an emotion of pain. What I foresaw but too well has happened. I
have opened my life, and it has evaporated. This journal of my
impressions has found grace, indulgence, interest even, with some
readers, if I may judge from the anonymous friends who have written me.
But the unsparing critics, men who mingle even our tears with their ink,
in order to give more bitterness to their sarcasms, have not pardoned
those outbursts of a soul of twenty. They have believed, or have
pretended to believe, that I was seeking a miserable celebrity in the
ashes of my own heart: they have said, that by an anticipation of vanity,
I desired to gather and enjoy in advance, while yet living, the sad
Flowers which might one day grow after me upon my tomb. They have cried
out at the profanation of the inner feeling; at the effrontery of a soul
shown naked; at the scandal of recollections made public; at the venality
of sacred things; at the _simony_ of the poet selling his own fibers to
save the roof and the tree that overshadowed his cradle. I have read and
heard in silence all their malign interpretations of an act, the true
nature of which had been revealed to you long before it was to the
public. I have answered nothing. What could I say? The appearances were
against me. You alone knew that these notes had long existed, shut up in
my casket of rosewood, along with the ten volumes of the notes of my
mother; that they were intended never to be taken thence; that I rejected
the first suggestion of publishing them, with all possible warmth of
resolution; that I refused the ransom of a king for those leaves of no
real value; and that finally, one day--a day for which I reproach
myself-constrained fatally to choose between the necessity of selling my
poor _Charmettes_--_Charmettes_, as dear and more holy than the
_Charmettes_ of the _Confessions_--and the necessity of publishing these
pages, I preferred myself to suffer rather than cause suffering to good
old servants, by selling their roofs and their vines to strangers. With
one hand I received the price of the _Confidences_, and with the other I
gave it to others in order to purchase time.

Behold here all the crime that I am expiating.

And let the critics rejoice till their vengeance is satiated. This
sacrifice was in vain. It is in vain that I have cast upon the wind these
leaves, torn from the book of my most pious memories. The time that their
price procured has not proved sufficient to conduct me to the threshold
of that abode where we cease to regret anything. My _Charmettes_ have
been sold. Let them be content. I have had the shame of publishing these
_Confidences_, but not the joy of having saved my garden. Steps of
strangers will efface there the steps of my father and mother. God is
God, and sometimes he commands the wind to uproot the oak of a hundred
years, and man to uproot his own heart. The oak and the heart are his, we
must yield them to him, and yield him therewith justice, glory, and
benedictions!

And now that my acceptance of these critics is complete, and that I
confess myself guilty, and still more, afflicted--am I as guilty as they
say, and is there no excuse, which, in the eyes of indulgent and
impartial readers, can extenuate my crime?

In order to judge as to this, I have but one question to ask you, and the
public, which deigns with distracted finger to turn these pages. My
question is this:

Is it to myself, or to others, that the published pages of these
_Confidences_ can have done injury in the view of those who have read
them? Is there a single man now living, is there a single memory of one
of the dead, on whom these recollections have cast an odious or even
unfavorable light, whether on his name, his family, his life, or his
grave? Have they brought sadness to the soul of our mother in the heaven
where she resides? Has the manly face of our father been lessened in the
respect of his descendants? Has _Graziella_, that precocious and withered
flower of my early manhood, received aught beyond a few tears of young
girls shed on a tomb at Portici? Has Julia, the worship of my young
enthusiasm, lost in the imagination of those who know the name, that
purity which she has preserved in my heart? And my masters, those pious
Jesuits, whose name I love not, but whose virtue I venerate; my friends,
dearest and first harvested, Virieu Vignet, the Abbe Dumont, could they
complain, returning here below, that I have disfigured their beautiful
natures, discolored their noble images, or soiled one place in their
lives? I appeal to all who have read. Would a single shade command me to
efface a single line? Many of whom I have spoken are still living, or
their sisters, or their sons, or their friends: have I humiliated them?
They would have told me.

No! I have embalmed only pure recollections. My shroud was poor, but it
was spotless. The modest name I have wrapped there for myself will
neither be adorned nor dishonored by it. No tenderness will reproach me;
no family will accuse me of profanation in naming it. A remembrance is an
inviolable thing because it is voiceless, and must be approached with
piety. I could never console myself if I had allowed to fall from this
life into that other life, whence no one can answer, one word which could
wound those absent immortals whom we call the dead. I desire that not a
single word, thoughtfully uttered, should remain after me against one of
the men who will one day be my survivors. Posterity is not the sewer of
our passions--it is the urn of our memories, and should preserve nothing
but perfumes.

These _Confidences_ have then done injury or caused pain to no one, among
the living or among the dead. I mistake, they have done injury to me, but
to me alone. I have depicted myself such as I was: one of those natures,
alas! so common among the children of women, wrought not of one clay
only, not of that purified and exceptional substance which forms heroes,
saints, and sages, but moulded of every earth which enters into the
formation of the weak and passionate man; of lofty aspirations, and
narrow wings; of great desires, and short hands to reach whither they are
extended; sublime in ideal, vulgar in reality; with fire in the heart,
illusion in the mind, and tears in the eyes; human statues, which attest
by the diversity of the elements that compose them, the mysterious
failings of our poor nature; in which, as in the metal of Corinth, we
find after the fire the traces of all the melted metals which were
mingled and confounded in it, a little gold and much lead. But, I repeat,
whom have I injured but myself?

But they say, these unvailed exposures of sentiments and of life offend
that virginal modesty of soul, of which outward modesty is but an
imperfect emblem? You show ourself unvailed, and you do not blush! Who
then are you?

Alas! I am what you see, a poor writer; a writer, that is to say, a
thinker, in public. I am, less their genius and virtue, what were St.
Augustine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Montaigne, all those men
Who have silently interrogated their souls and replied aloud, so that
their dialogue with themselves might also be a useful conversation with
the century in which they lived, or with the future. The human heart is
an instrument which has neither the same number nor quality of chords in
every bosom, and on which new notes may eternally be discovered and added
to the infinite scale of sentiments and melodies in the universe. This is
our part, poets and writers in spite of ourselves, rhapsodists of the
endless poem that nature chants to men and God! Why accuse me, if you
excuse yourselves? Are we not of the same family of the _Homeridae_, who
from door to door recount histories, of which they are by turns the
historians and the heroes? Is it, then, in the nature of thought to
become a crime in becoming public? A thought, vulgar, critical,
skeptical, dogmatic, may, according to you, be unvailed innocently:
a sentiment, commonplace, cold, not intimate, awaking no palpitation
within you, no response in others, may be revealed without violation of
modesty; but a thought that is pious, ardent, lighted at the fire of the
heart or of heaven, a sentiment burning, cast forth by an explosion of
the volcano of the soul; a cry of the inmost nature, awaking by its
accent of truth young and sympathetic voices in the present age or the
future: and above all, a tear! a tear not painted like those which flow
upon your shrouds of parade, a tear of water and salt, falling from the
eyes, instead of a drop of ink, falling from the pen! This is crime! this
is shame! this is immodesty, for you! That is to say, that whatever is
cold and artificial is innocent in the artist, but what is warm and
natural is unpardonable in the man. That is to say, modesty in a writer
consists in exposing what is false, immodesty in setting forth what is
true. If you have talent, show it, but not your soul, carrying mine away!
Oh, shame! What logic!

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