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PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

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now becomes every intelligent American to be informed of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ou selves, but because the nations seem to be hastening through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee.

Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very fully acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, progress of the movement-to Statesinen, Divines, Law the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the yers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Chris- and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that tian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with hope to make the work indispensable in every well-inthe best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, formed family. We say indispensable, because in this Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Mag-day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against azines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite ase of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our must be gratified. variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

The steamship has brought Europe, Asia and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it

TERMS. The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by E. LITTELL & Co., corner of Tremont and Bromfield sts., Boston; Price 12 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mailing the work, orders should be addressed to the office of publication, as above.

Clubs, paying a year in advance, will be supplied as follows:

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We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff," by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste.

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ences.

Postage.-When sent with the cover on, the Living Age consists of three sheets, and is rated as a pamphlet at 44 cents. But when sent without the cover, it comes within the definition of a newspaper given in the law, and cannot legally be charged with more than newspaper postage, (14 cts.) We add the definition alluded to:

A newspaper is "any printed publication, issued in numbers, consisting of not more than two sheets, and published at short, stated intervals of not more than one month, conveying intelligence of passing events."

Monthly parts. For such as prefer it in that form, the Living Age is put up in monthly parts, containing four or five weekly numbers. In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in

Binding.-We bind the work in a uniform, strong, and good style; and where customers bring their numbers in good order, can generally give them bound volumes in exchange without any delay. The price of the binding is 50 cents a volume. As they are always bound to one pattern, there will be no difficulty in matching the future | eighteen months. volumes.

WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845.

this

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind n the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 289.-1 DECEMBER, 1849.

From the Examiner. THE PRESIDENTS OF FRANCE AND AMERICA.

To be pacific is as good a reason for French hostility as to be weak. Italy was so inviting that no wonder was excited at French invasion or French perfidy; but there is hardly an example in history of policy so blind and erroneous. Detested as the French always were by every other people, the Italians, always deceived by them, always plundered, always trampled on and cast off, continued to look toward them as protectors. Napoleon bartered Italy for a worthless wife; his nephew gives her up for an imperial crown under a papal consecration. He conciliated both Austria and Russia by abstaining from the consolidation of freedom throughout all the states of Europe, which might have been effected by the pressure of his foot, by only one step onward. And what has he gained by this alliance with despotism? The hatred of all free nations, the contempt even of the enslaved, not only of those who were reduced to this condition | under his eye and his connivance, but also of the wretches born to servitude, the very nails and rivets of the chain that now encompasses the globe.

To what a height of glory might the President of France have attained if he had sprung up with her in her ascent toward freedom, if he had seconded and directed her energies, if he had abstained but from falsehood and fraud! History neither will nor can dissemble them; the eternal city bears the eternal testimony. The words of Mazzini are not the words of an angry zealot, but are registered in the archives of every honest heart. He accuses no man without the proof of all he utters; and there was a time when such an accusation, so confirmed, would have driven the delinquent beyond the pale of honorable men's society. A bold front and swaggering gait may reduce the cowardly to silence in presence of the ferocious; not an inch further. It has been tried of late against the Americans, and with what success? A receiver of stolen goods is defended in his roguery by a French envoy. The French envoy is requested by the American government to reconsider the propriety of his protection; the American government is answered with the same insolence as the Roman was on its calm and just expostulation. The matter was submitted by the American government to the French cabinet. The French cabinet defends at once both the insolence and the fraud. Passports are delivered to the envoy; he returns to France.

Arrogance is broken into foam when it dashes on the western shores of the Atlantic. America knows equally her interests and her dignity. Averse to war, averse to the politics of Europe, she is greatly more than a match against the united powers of that continent. France owes her money; and she

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will have it, although, like many a civil suit, the contest may cost her greatly more than her demands. She is not to be shuffled off, or brought to a compromise, by a minor piece of trickery; the amount of money is not in question. The question is, whether the Americans are to be treated as ignominiously and superciliously as the Italians. At the head of the United States is a brave, a temperate, a sagacious man; no falsehood of word or deed could ever be objected to him. Americans, I hope, will pardon me in comparing their president (the indignity is unintentional) with the President of France. In one we behold the grave, sedate, veracious Englishman of England's commonwealth, animated not indeed by a better spirit, but a spirit moving over vast and discordant populations with strength to direct their energies and assign their courses; the other without any first principles, any determinate line of conduct, swearing to republicanism before the people, abjuring it before the priest hood, undermining it at home, battering it down abroad, delighted at transient cheers on a railroad, deaf to the distant voice of history, following his uncle where the way is tortuous, deviating where it is straight, and stopping in the midst of it to bow with equal obsequiousness to the heads of two religions. Symbolical of such a character is the tree of liberty; a tree unsound at root, shrivelled at top, shedding its leaves on the laborers who plant it, and concealing the nakedness of its branches in the flutter of the garlands that bedizen it.

Sometimes a preference makes poor amends for a comparison; but America will pardon me thus weighing a sound president against a hollow one. Temperate and strong as she is, she will treat arrogant petulance with calm derision. The resources of France, she well knows, are inadequate to set afloat, with soldiers and stores, any fleet that could make an impression. Her soldiers would find no field of operations, until by the humanity and munificence of their captors they should be employed in levelling the road to California. Beside, the Americans would rather see them perform an easier and more voluntary duty. Not only in common with the nations of Europe, but infinitely beyond them, those on the Atlantic see with abhorrence the wrongs and cruelties committed against the bravest and longest free of any on our continent. Europe and Asia rise up simultaneously from a deathlike lethargy, which long held both against more outrageous insolence, more unprovoked ferocity. The god of Mahomet is called the Merciful; and his worship is not the worship of lip or knee. Because the disciple of Mahomet is merciful to the follower of Christ, a Christian potentate threatens him with a war! America will not strike down the arm of France if she defends for once the cause of humanity and honor. From no sympathy wil' she

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ever do it, but from jealousy lest England should | facility, long cherished designs against the indebecome more popular and more powerful in the pendence and integrity of Turkey, is a truth we East.

Oct. 5.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

From the Examiner, 13 Oct.

RUSSIA.

AN eloquent and well-informed writer in the Edinburgh Review thus speculated, three months ago, on the possible triumph of Russian arms in Hungary:

have repeatedly insisted on. No one acquainted with past history, or with the present condition of the Danubian populations, could resist this conviction. The scheme of the Austrian cabinet to consolidate a powerful empire, has been effected by means that bar the possibility of any such conRussian help has forever dislocated and disabled the Austrian empire, and the first important step has been taken to the humiliation and degradation of the Ottoman.

solidation.

Kossuth has addressed a letter to Lord Palmer

The following affecting passage occurs in Kossuth's letter:

If through Russian aid Austria be victorious, the last barrier is swept away from the road to Constantinople. Austria herself will, from that time ston from Widdin, calculated to strengthen the forward, need the bayonets of the czar to keep down feeling of sympathy for the writer which we her discontented subjects, and must sink to the level believe to exist very generally throughout Engof a secondary power. Its policy will be the pol- land. It appears from this letter that the mission icy of St. Petersburg; and the dream of a Panscla- of Prince Radzivil, even though foiled in its thirst vic empire will not end in the suppression of the for blood, will not have been without one effect "proud Magyars," but in the reduction of Eastern aimed at by its author, in exhibiting the weakEurope into a Russian province. If history has The ness of the government of the sultan. meaning in it as well as words, we are not predicting without sufficient warrant. Russian prounconditional hospitality offered to the Hungarians tection and Russian intervention have for a century before Radzivil's arrival was sought to be encumpast been equally fatal. The poor ally non equitem bered with disgraceful conditions immediately after dorso, non frænum depulit ore. "Where is Ha- his departure. The Turkish ministers, urged and math and Arphad, Sepharvaina and Ivah?" was the threatened by a majority of the council under Rusquestion of the Babylonian envoy. What, with sian influence, appear to have had no confidence in equal pertinence, we may ask, have been the fruits of Russian aid to Turkey and Persia, to Warsaw their power to protect the exiles but by inducing This and Finland, in Asterabad and Bessarabia, and now the latter to embrace Mahommedanism. in Moldavia and Wallachia? To all these lands extraordinary proposal has accordingly been delibits hatred has been dangerous, but its embrace erately made; and in this state, for the present, deadly. Nor is Russian policy the work of a sin- the matter remains. gle man, or a single generation. Four sovereigns of the house of Romanoff have consistently walked in the same track. Yet it is not the policy of Catherine, of Paul, of Alexander, or of Nicholas, but What steps it may be expedient that you should of Russia. It bides its time; and the purpose of take, what we have a right to expect from the wellthe fathers is accomplished by the third or fourth known generosity of England, it would be hardly generation of the children. It employs, with equal fitting for me to enter on. I place my own and my readiness, fraud or force. Muscovite, Pansclavism, companions' fate in your hands, my lord, and in the and the Greek church, are as much its instruments name of humanity throw myself under the protecas the gold of the Ural and the Cossack's lance. It tion of England. Time presses-our doom may proscribes at Warsaw, it bullies at Constantinople, in a few days be sealed. Allow me to make an it flatters France, and is coldly courteous to Eng- humble personal request. I am a man, my lord, land. It has at once the versatility and fixedness prepared to face the worst; and I can die with a which the ancients attributed to destiny-лoor free look at heaven, as I have lived. But I am ovouúton μoqqi uía. Its journals and proclamations also, my lord, a husband, son, and father; my poor boast of its paternal sway and vigilance; while it true-hearted wife, my children, and my noble old peoples Siberia with the children of its victims, mother, are wandering about Hungary. They and fills their cities and homes with spies. It has will probably soon fall into the hands of those Ausa vulture's scent for the tainted portion of nations, trians who delight in torturing even feeble women, and holds out every lure to the indolent, the venal, and with whom the innocence of childhood is no and the ambitious. Hardly ten years have elapsed protection against persecutions. I conjure your since England encountered, in Central Asia, the excellency, in the name of the Most High, to put a intrigues of Russia. The Muscovite is now step-stop to these cruelties by your powerful mediation, ping westward"-not with emissaries or protocols, and especially to accord to my wife and children an but with "war in procinct," to subvert by its bat- asylum on the soil of the generous English people. talions that national independence by which Austrian arms and arts were equally discomfited. Austria, however, is at present merely a stage in the progress of Russia: the road to Constantinople is as direct by Vienna as by Bucharest.

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It is not long since the Times affected to disbelieve the wanton and barbarous cruelties here pointed at; and though, from day to day, it eagerly seizes on every apochryphal rumor that That the overthrow of the Hungarians, and the can damage the defeated patriots, it has omitted to consequent reduction of Austria to a state of utter protest against an act of fiendish barbarity recorded dependence on Russia, would strengthen the czar four days ago in its own columns, and which we in the traditional policy of the Russian cabinet, believe to be without parallel in any civilized or and enable him to carry out, with comparative uncivilized country. How striking is the simple

intensity of language in the letter recording this does not know the topography, much less the feelunparalleled act of shame! ings and requirements.

Ruskby, September 18. I will narrate to you the fate of my family with calmness and composure, for my heart is become stone. In our neighborhood an army of Hungarians surrendered, 10,000 men with forty cannon. Two days later the Austrian troops entered our town. They consisted of a detachment of Lichtenstein light horse, commanded by Capt. Graber, a native of Werschitz. It is possible that the great domestic happiness which I enjoyed may have stirred envy and gained me enemies in Ruskby, but of no other crime am I guilty. Two families, low and coarsely bred, and set this captain on his horrible crime. I was torn from the arms of my husband, from the circle of my children, from the hallowed sanctuary of my home, charged with no offence, allowed no hearing, arraigned before no judge. I, a woman, wife, and mother, was in my own native town, before the people accustomed to treat me with respect, dragged into a square of soldiers, and there scourged with rods. Look, I can write this without dropping dead. But my husband killed himself. Robbed of all other weapons, he shot himself with a pocket pistol. A cry of horror filled the air. I was dragged further to Karansebes. The people rose, and would have killed those who instigated these horrors; but their lives were saved by the interference of the military. My eldest son was taken prisoner with the army of Görgey, and sent as a common soldier into Italy; and so is the measure of my grief full. Can you picture to yourself the state of my mind? You knew not my husband. I tell you that no nobler, more elevated, more adorable character, does or ever will exist. The productions of his intellect are known. He was the inventor of iron bridges. In him the world has sustained a great loss. My misfortune is boundless, and unexampled are the tortures which I have endured. My grief will be eternal. You will conceive that I can dwell on nothing but my sorrow. One only wish still keeps my body and soul together -to liberate my son. They have transported him to Gratz. If you have friends there, think of my poor boy of eighteen.

F. VON MADERSBACH.

Side by side with this damnatory letter appeared the announcement that in Vienna alone, in one day, the sum of twenty-six millions had been subscribed towards the loan. We wish the Viennese joy of it, and honestly counsel the English to keep out of it. That is the sum of our philosophy in the matter, and all we think it needful to urge on the dispute still raging between Mr. Cobden and the Times. Before the orator of free trade published his letter, we had protested against all sympathy with any adventurous capitalist in this loan, either here or abroad, who should subsequently find his interest reduced to one half, or (by some alteration in the currency) his capital reduced to one fifth, or should be victimized by any of the pleasing varieties that have hitherto distinguished the numerous national bankruptcies of Austria. We were happy to find Mr. Cobden wisely adopting the same tone at Monday's meeting. He did good service by his happy exposure of Austrian beggary and knavery; and if any one wants to complete the picture, he has but to turn to the account which Mr. Paget gave, ten years ago, of the conduct of Austria at the close of the war against Bonaparte, when her treasures had been exhausted, her resources dried up, and her credit ruined. There was one honest course left to her, yet she preferred committing the greatest of political frauds. She reduced the value of her paper money successively from 100 to 20, and from 20 to 8! so that a person who possessed a hundred florins in 1811, found himself, in 1813, in every part of the Austrian dominions, worth exactly eight! With the same proportionate diminution, all contracts, loans, trusts, and debts were paid off; and the consequent confusion and misery may be imagined. "Had the spirit of evil," says Mr. Paget, "sought by one act to demoralize a whole people, his ingenuity could scarcely have found a more happy means of accomplishing his object than this master-stroke of policy of the Austrian financier."

The Times correspondent at first affected to doubt the authenticity of this letter, and said he Let every subscriber to the present loan be could not find Ruskby marked in the map. No-warned that he is, in all human probability, conbut he might have found Ruskberg there, which tributing to another such act of national infamy, the smallest modicum of knowledge of the country not a little of the misery of which will fall to his he so freely writes about would have served to own share. He has already the comfort of reflectidentify. Ruskberg is not only to be found in ing that, whatever may turn out in that respect, common Austrian maps, (such as Artaria's,) but is he has proclaimed himself the fast and friendly ally even in the very small map prefixed to Mr. Pa- of the Haynaus and the Gräbers-floggers of get's Hungary, and is observed at once to be not unoffending women, gaolers of girls and children, far distant from the Iron Gate pass, through which butchers of gallant and unfortunate men. the high road from Karansebes, also mentioned by The Times tells us that the czar is retracing Madame Madersbach, conducts into Transylvania. his steps, and that there will be no war for the The internal evidence of the letter is, alas! but present. We never thought there would be. If too favorable to its truth. Ruskberg is celebrated he had resolved to persist in his arrogant and for its iron works, which most travellers in Hun- iniquitous demand, after England and (however gary have heard of, if they have not seen, and in lukewarmly) France declared against it, we should connection with which the most distinguished firm believe his intellect to have been affected by the of manufacturers was that of Hofmann and Mad- progress of his Hungarian campaign, and that he ersbach. But there is nothing so easy as for attributes to his own superior intelligence and his our Viennese correspondent" to dogmatize daily" mission," that success which only by the follies about the weal and woe of a nation, of which he and vices of despotic governments, and by intrigues

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tional countries, he has been enabled to obtain. The time is yet to come when, in the full and impious confidence that no earthly power is capable of withstanding him, he will rush headlong to his own destruction.

which have paralyzed his opponents in constitu- rious, and mean, it was the French expedition to Rome. And yet M. Thiers likens it to the feats of Arcola and of Lodi ! There needs no further proof of how completely the French Moderates are lost to sentiments of either truth or decorum, when M. Thiers could give utterance to such a flagrant, such a comical absurdity. It displays, indeed, an utter contempt for the people and for the Assembly, when any one, even M. Thiers, can dare to come forward and plead that the expedition to Rome has reaped such an immense crop of glory, that there is no need whatever of looking for any more solid advantages from it, for either French character or Roman freedom.

No-there will be no war just now. Turkey needs no colossal assistance to turn the scale in her favor. She can do without France this time. No one knows better than the czar how necessary it is for him to limit his enterprises to those objects for which he may reasonably calculate no more than one campaign to be necessary. Austria, in her present condition, can give him no help to the dismemberment of the Turkish empire. The nonsense of this is so complete, so entirely So he will make a virtue of necessity, offer pro-transparent for even the most simple not to see fessions of magnanimous moderation, and save us through, that it is impossible not to suppose it to from the horrors of war. He has succeeded, nev-be the aim of the French to allow the Pope to ertheless, in two objects he has much at heart. He has displayed the weakness of the Turkish government, and (if it be true, as the Times announces, that France is "disposed, at any price, to avoid a rupture with the Northern Powers") he has lowered the pride of Frenchmen to a possible acquiescence in the future scheme of a Protectorate designed for Eastern Europe.

From the Examiner, 13th Oct. FRANCE AND THE ROMAN QUESTION. THERE is no explaining the policy recommended, and the sentiments expressed, by eminent and influential French statesmen on the questions of Rome and of Italy, without coming to the conclusion that they consider it the interest of France that Italy should not be pacified. To establish a good, wise, and well-working constitutional government in Central Italy, would form a kind of a star for the rest of Italy to gaze at and admire; and by and by this would form a nucleus to attract the rest, and around which they might rally.

restore his old stupid despotism, by the side of similarly stupid despotisms in Naples and in Lombardy, in order to leave the foundation, or to create facilities for a future French regeneration and conquest of the country. In fact, what the short-sighted politicians of France and Austria both require, is a divided, disturbed, and oppressed Italy-an Italy which shall be available as a field of battle for the future campaigns of either diplomacy or armies.

It is greatly to be wished that the liberal French would see through this, and denounce it as clearly as the Italians must discern it. In the hearts of the latter it cannot fail to produce a horror of the French name. The liberals of the Paris Assembly, however, see nothing in such manoeuvres but a love of military discipline; whilst the French ministerialists see in such denunciation nothing but a patronizing of republicanism and disorder. In fact, these two miserable French parties have so blinded each other's opinions on all subjects, that they have lost every genuine sentiment of liberty, of true pride, or even of just decorum. Oudinot compared to Napoleon, and the sapping of the Porte St. Pancrazio to Lodi !-and this by the great historian of the great revolution!

It is much to be feared that the French, not indeed the nation, which is generous and liberal, but their politicians, who are quite the contrary, do not want to see the Italians enjoying freedom and good government without French aid and protection. Italy is looked on by French statesmen as their appanage, or domain, where wealth, Kavanagh; a Tale. influence, and honor are to be won. All want to LONGFELLOW. Boston, 1849.

From the Examiner.

By HENRY WADSWORTH

play benefactor towards it, and fight for it in Evangeline; a Tale of Acadie. By H. W. LONGFELLOW. Boston, 1848. order to dominate it. But of an Italy setting up for itself, the French have no idea. They abhor Mazzini quite as much as they do Radetski. Both are equally the enemies of French supremacy in Italy.

After all, the Italians would not be so angry with the French if they had the courage proportionate to their pretensions, and if, determined to dominate Italy, they would really have the courage to conquer it. But, like the dog in the manger, the French will neither take Italy itself, nor let the Italians have it themselves.

ONE source of the pleasure derived from the perusal of Mr. Longfellow's writings is the quiet truth of their local coloring. In the writings of some of his countrymen we detect a continuous and painful effort to be American. Mr. Longfellow, on the contrary, is contented to be what nature made him. And hence the impressions and modes of thought unconsciously received from the scenery and society amid which his mind has formed itself, reveal themselves with equal unconsciousness. Mr. Longfellow delineates American life with singular

If ever there was an act unwarrantable, inglo- | felicity.

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