Part 32 (1/2)
Mr. TICKNOR'S admirable _History of Spanish Literature_ by no means fails of the high consideration to which it is ent.i.tled from the best critics of Europe. One of the best translations of it is in Spanish, by Don PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS Y DON ENRIQUE DE VEDIA (_con adiciones y notas criticas_), Mr. Ticknor having communicated some notes and corrections to the two translators, who have added from their own store. A second translation is coming out in Germany, also containing important additions, in part from material and suggestions furnished by the accomplished author.
ARVINE'S _Anecdotes of Literature and the Arts_ is an agreeable miscellany; but the neglect of the editor to give credits in cases where he adopts entire pages from well-known books, deserves rebuke. The eighth number has been published by Gould & Lincoln of Boston, and it completes the work.
The work of Mr. STILES, which we have noticed elsewhere in this number of the _International_, we understand, will be published by the Harpers, in two large octavo volumes, about the first of May. It contains a complete history of the revolutionary proceedings in the Austrian empire in 1848. Mr. Stiles witnessed much that he describes. Each section is introduced by an historical survey of the country where the events described occurred. Thus Venice, Prague, and Vienna are brought before the reader in all their past glory and recent political vicissitudes.
The Hungarian war is amply chronicled. The work is moderate in tone, authentic, fresh, and abounding in interesting facts. It will be ill.u.s.trated by engravings, executed in Germany, of the Emperor, Archduke John, Kossuth, and other chief characters.
Dr. A. K. GARDINER, whose clever book about Paris, under the t.i.tle of _Old Wine in New Bottles_, is well known, has just published a noticeable lecture, delivered before the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the _History of the Art of Midwifery_. It is most conclusive upon the point of the unfitness of women for any of the more delicate and important duties in obstetrics, and is a sufficient argument for the immediate abolition of the so-called ”Female Colleges.”
We recommend it to the attention of readers who feel any interest in the subject.--(Stringer & Townsend.)
Mrs. H. C. CONANT, wife of the learned Professor of Hebrew in the Rochester University, has published (through Lewis Colby, Na.s.sau-street) another of NEANDER'S Commentaries, done into terse and vigorous English--_The Epistle of James Practically Explained_. It is needless to praise the great German, and it will readily be believed, by those who are acquainted with the fine abilities and thorough scholars.h.i.+p of Mrs.
Conant, that this translation is in all respects admirable.
We are soon to have a new dramatic poem from Mr. GEORGE H. BOKER, whose _Calaynos_, _Anne Bullen_, and _Ivory Carver and other Poems_, have secured to him very high and well-deserved reputation as a literary artist. We do not think any sonnets written in this country are to be preferred to Mr. Boker's, and his _Ballad of Sir John Franklin_, published a few months ago in this magazine, is full of imagination, and is marked throughout with the nicest skill in execution.
The last work of the late Professor STUART, a _Commentary on the Book of Proverbs_, has been published by M. W. DODD, in a large duodecimo volume. It contains a full account of the princ.i.p.al commentaries written on this book, and the translations and paraphrases made into different languages, with a new version, and exegetical remarks. A memoir of Professor Stuart is in preparation.
Mr. RICHARD B. KIMBALL, the accomplished author of _St. Leger_, leaves New York in a few days for a tour through Europe. No one among our younger authors has risen more rapidly in the public regard, or established a good reputation in literature upon a surer basis.
Imagination, scholars.h.i.+p, and profound reflection, characterize nearly all his performances. The admirable story written by him for the present number of the _International_, we believe, is true in every essential but the name of the heroine. It is a reminiscence of Mr. Kimball's student life in Paris, where, for a time, he walked the hospitals with his friend, the well-known Dr. O. H. Partridge, now one of the most distinguished physicians of Philadelphia, who is one of the dramatis personae of _Emilie de Coigny_.
Mr. JOHN P. KENNEDY p.r.o.nounced, in Baltimore, on the anniversary of the birth of Was.h.i.+ngton, a very eloquent and wise discourse, in which the state of the nation with respect to possible entanglements in foreign affairs, and implications by needless artificial ties in the vicissitudes of European politics, were treated in a manner worthy of a statesman of the school of the Great Chief. The occasion was also improved in Philadelphia by the Rev. Dr. BOARDMAN, who, in a discourse ent.i.tled _Was.h.i.+ngton or Kossuth_ (published by Lippincott, Grambo, & Co.), discusses the same great subjects in a masterly argument for the observance of the principles of the Farewell Address.
An elaborate attack on the Society of Friends appeared lately in Dublin, and has been republished in Philadelphia, under the t.i.tle of _Quakerism, or the Story of My Life_. It was written by a Mrs. GREER, the daughter of an eminently respectable Irish Quaker, who was herself connected with the society for forty years, and so had abundant opportunities of becoming familiar with the peculiarities of the system. But the book is vulgar, malignant, and evidently altogether undeserving of credit in regard to facts. The points obnoxious to ridicule are broadly caricatured, and the most distinguished and blameless characters are introduced in the most offensive manner, as if to gratify personal spleen or a disposition to slander.
The Neander Library, recently purchased by the University of Rochester, consists of 4,500 volumes, and the price paid was only $2,300. About 350 of the volumes are large folios, and many of the works in the collection are of the choicest and rarest editions. We observe that an attempt to show that there was even the slightest possible degree of unfairness on the part of the Rochester faculty in obtaining this library, which was much desired by a western college, has most signally failed.
We commend to our readers as the best literary journal in this country, the _To Day_, recently established in Boston by CHARLES HALE, a thoroughly educated and judicious editor.
_Recent Deaths_
WILLIAM WARE was born at Hingham, in Ma.s.sachusetts, on the third of August, 1797. He was a descendant in the fifth generation from Robert Ware, one of the earliest settlers of the colony, who came from England about the year 1644. His father was Henry Ware, D. D., many years honorably distinguished by his connection with the Divinity School at Cambridge, and the late Henry Ware, jr., D. D., was his elder brother.
His only living brother is Dr. John Ware, who also shares of the literary tastes and talents of his family, and has written its history.
William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was on the 18th of December, 1821, settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New-York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called _The Unitarian_, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the t.i.tle of _Zen.o.bia, or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance_. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston. The romance of Zen.o.bia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circ.u.mstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author had been a successful student of the inst.i.tutions, manners and social life of the age he attempted to ill.u.s.trate.