pose being to exhibit the progress of Ronge's church. He did this, by designating the religions of the various localities by various devices, such as mitres, crosses, &c., &c. To secure himself against persecution he applied to several censors of the capital, who decided that the map was not subject to censorship. He took the precaution to appeal to the High Court of Censorship, which confirmed the judgment, so far as his maps were concerned. He accordingly published them, and sold an immense edition. Another censor, however, entered a complaint against Herr Lowenberg himself, and another against the High Court of Censorship, by which his publication had been permitted. Both cases remain to be tried.

A series of paintings, of the time of Henry VIII., has been discovered upon the end of Carpenter's Hall, in London. It has been examined by a committee of artists, and measures have been taken to preserve it. The painting is almost three feet in depth, and extends the entire width of the wall. It is divided into four subjects, all bearing allusion to the craft of carpenters. The first represents God ordering Noah to build the ark, and the consequent progress of the work. The second is a group of figures with a regal personage enthroned, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Henry VIII.! An inscription states, that the picture is intended for King Josias ordering the money collected in the temple to be delivered to the carpenters for repairing the building. The third exhibits Joseph at work at his trade; Mary is seated beside him busily engaged in spinning, and the child Jesus, with a halo round his head, is picking up the chips and putting them into a basket. The fourth subject is Jesus teaching in the temple. These paint

ings are executed in distemper, and are said to be an excellent illustration of this art in the time of their execution.

Of new publications in England, there have been few worthy of special notice. Southey's posthumous poem, Oliver Newman, is in press in this city, and will probably be before the public before our magazine has been issued. The hero is a son of one of the regicides who fled from England after the accession of Charles II., and the scene of the Poem is laid in this country. We notice among our foreign papers a remark made by a person, who has been favored with a perusal of Wordsworth's great poem, the Recluse, of which the Excursion is a part, that it abounds in personal allusions to eminent British Statesmen of the time of the French Revolution, of the utmost bitterness. It is suggested that this may have been one among the reasons which have combined to delay its publication so long. Dickens' Italian Sketches, it is said, are to be first published in the Daily News, the new paper of which he is to be the literary editor. The first number was to be issued on the 21st of January.

We have before us a great amount of valuable and interesting matter for our Miscellany, in the reports of the doings of the Paris Academy of Sciences, those of the various British scientific, literary and artistic associations, and in the literary journals of England and the Continent. A lack of space, however, compels us for the present to lay them aside, and to close this hasty and inadequate summary. Hereafter, we shall endeavor to make this department a more complete and satisfactory rehearsal of the various matters of interest, in all departments of thought, of speech and of action, which may reach us from foreign lands.

HART'S BUST OF CLAY.

IT was said by an acute and brilliant man here at the North, several years since, "that American Art must come out of the great West." Now, what renders this worth quoting at all is the fact that it had been said before Powers was known. It would look like being owlishly oracular upon a "foregone conclusion," to expatiate now, with pretension to originality, upon such an assertion, since Clevenger had first

surprised men into the suspicion that this would prove true, and the world-renown of Powers has left no room for doubt. We can all see now why it should be so, naturally enough. We have to be reminded some two or three times a century that true Genius does not and cannot grow in hot-houses. That masterful and concentrated quiet of energy necessary to make itself felt, like an unheard volcano, in the shaking of its times, must have large, healthful lungs, which do not often grow

so amidst the cutting dust of Resort. Its strength comes to it unconsciously, as it does to Nature's sublimest creatures out of the repose of her elements. The same solitudes of air, sun, dews and storms in which the thews of the oak have grown knotted through its century-shading arms, are favorable to the formative period of the Creative Power. Amid her grand objects and fresh life, Genius assumes that individuality, those garments of strength, the world is to know it by through all time. When it is thus fully clothed, the period for its ACTION has come, and it goes forthno matter from or through what obscurityit must make itself recognized. There are soine everywhere with the prophetic vision and the open hand, who are not slow to help. The law and necessity of action in it is to ascend. Its mission has to be expressed.

"And what if Art, an ardent intercessor, Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, Checks the great Mother, stooping to ca ress her, And cries, Give me, thy child, Dominion Dominion is its right, which it will have if it be true to itself. Healthy strength is resistless. Diseased strength may be expected to defeat its own purposes. How. ever sublime its wings, they are not oiled; and when the rains come, it sinks floundering.

We could hardly avoid such a course of thought in this connection. We have been strongly impressed with the image, that from the mighty shadows of our remote and vast interior, beneath which such countless throngs of hardy, daring Life are moving, there must come forth many a quick-eyed Shape-large-boned and largehearted-whose tread the age will feel They will come redolent of their native airs rude but intense-the physical embodiments of that yet clouded but magniticent Force which is to constitute our National Character. And as they come, if they be true Expressions, let us welcome them no matter from what source-into the light. We must shake off from our thews and nerves the venom of that TransAtlantic taunt that we are unoriginal in our Literature and imitative in our Art! That we can and shall do this has been already significantly intimated from various quarters in our science and literature, and is beginning to be even more so in our Art. The respect for Art, and a feeling that its encouragement among us is necessary to our self-respect in view of our reputation and recognition among nations, we are pleased to see, is becoming every day developed with more emphasis.

An Association of Ladies (Heaven bless, as it kindled them!) has determined to embody in monumental expression the indignant sense of the injustice done by his country to one of her greatest statesmen, and the glory conferred by him upon his

countrymen! This Association has, in characteristic good taste, selected as the Artist who is to crown their enduring dedication with the statue of Mr. Clay, the Sculptor who has executed the only true bust of him in existence, and who is in addition from his own State. Hart's bust of Clay has surprised connoisseurs in many respects. There is not only a remarkably minute and it would seem at first painfully skillful elaboration of the slightest and most delicate play of his (at present) at tenuated muscles, but you are surprised to find united with this the daring and dash. ing vigor of general effect which could alone express the ensemble of his powerful character. Though to some degree acquainted personally with the chivalric Hero of modern statesmanship, we were not prepared to realize how fully the cool but keen-glittering spirit of the man shone through his physique, until we had studied this white, dumb articulation. Nor did we feel a less yearning, intense interest in the artist who had produced this magical work, when we learned that he came from that region of remote massive shadows we have mentioned; and that, too, it was beneath the deepest obscurations of a poverty and ignorance unusual even there-with no other light than that which came down upon him, self-attracted, out of Heavenhe had toiled patiently and unsmiled upon. That still, small light, though, has been sufficient to guide his boyish leanings towards Plastic Art, through the rude brown forms of squirrel, bird and horse in clay, up to this blancheu sublimation in the pure Parian stone. We congratulate the courtry that such a man has been already so significantly rewarded, and hope, as we believe, this Artist of the West is to chisel his way through a triumphant career of "marble achievement." He shall not only transfer to "monuments eterne" the Actual and the Real in the living subject. The Ideal is built up from the Real; and the Sculptor who can reproduce in stone the whole varied expression of a countenance so exceedingly mobile as Mr. Clay's, cannot fail, in the development of much study, to give free embodiment to the visions of high Imagination

"Making the pale stone show the Shapes of Thought,

Where on long ages shall in wonder gaze."

In

The Life of Mozart, including his Correspondence. By EDWARD HOLMES, author of a "Ramble among the Musicians of Germany." New York: HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 Cliff street. 1845. THE character of Mozart is one of the most remarkable of modern history. some respects, it is the absolute anomaly of all times. Nature seems, in this case, to have taken a mischievous delight in setting at naught all these signs she herself had accustomed the nations to regard as peculiarly marking the idiosyncrasies of

nature and interest, except to members of the profession, that they seldom come properly under our notice. The volume before us, however, is an exception, in almost every particular, from this class of books. It extends over a period of twenty years, is the work of one hand, and many of the cases it contains excited intense interest at the time of their occurrence, and have a peculiar and abiding importance. As our courts are constituted, it seldom happens that a criminal tribunal has such an extensive jurisdiction as that of the Municipal Court of the city of Boston; and it is still more rare that a judge of the learning, ability and reputation of the late Judge Thacher presides over such a court so long. Nothing need be said by us of his conscientiousness and integrity in the administration of justice, or of his learning and capacity as a lawyer. His high character as a magistrate was not only known to the profession in New England, but his published charges to grand juries, and occasional reports of important cases tried before him, had made him known throughout the country. It is almost the only American work deserving the name and authority of a book of criminal reports; and it will help to supply the want which the profession has long felt of books of criminal precedents and authorities in the United States.

But it is the general interest and importance of the work to which we intended particularly to allude. It has been well said that no one can write the history of a nation without reading its statute books; and if these, which are sometimes the landmarks and again the petrifactions of the genius of a people, are thus important, certainly the trials which arise under them are at once the guage of the force of the statute, and eminently illustrative of the character and habits of a people. Statutes are often dead letters; and the frequency and results of trials tell us which of them the moral sense of a community keeps alive and stringent, and which, from loss of virtue or freedom from bigotry, it allows to lapse into desuetude.

This volume, extending over so long a period, and embracing such a variety sf topics, is replete with local and historical interest. It illustrates New England morals, laws and life. It opens to us scenes where the passions or sympathies of a community noted for its sober certainties" were aroused, which eloquence soothed or stimulated, and which judicial learning, firmness and impartiality disregarded or tempered to a deeper respect for the law and its ministers. There are some

five important cases of libel, before and after the law admitting the truth in justification, in which the history and bearing of the law of libel are treated with great fullness and ability. The trial of Abner Kneeland for blasphemy, which excited

great attention throughout the country, is reported at length, and will be read with great interest. Among other important trials may be found those for conspiracy, dueling, forgery, perjury, counterfeiting, kidnapping, selling of lottery tickets and making false bank returns. The volume is large and beautifully printed.

Sketches of Modern Literature, and Eminent Literary Men. By GEORGE GILFILLAN. From the Second Edition. Appleton's Miscellany.

This is a capital book. It is light, flowing, exceedingly readable, and displays a peculiar acuteness. Like remarks by another about persons with whom we ourselves have been familiar, we do not take all the writer's opinions for our own. He occasionally makes too much of his subjectelevates his Hero a few numerals too close to the "seventh Heaven"-of invention. We can readily perceive the source of this error, and as it is a virtue not very common to Biographical analysts, we can readily pardon it. He seems to be a sort of sketchy Admirable Crichton-in his singular faculty of assimilation, a perfect literary Chameleon. He projects himself so vividly and forcibly into the mind he depicts, that he seems to become literally unified with it. In the chapter on Carlyle, you find yourself suddenly involved in the subtle mazes, and amused and astounded by the rugged and flashing grotesquery, peculiar to the style of that writer. So, in talking of Landor, he adopts the grand sententious march of his Orphic delivery. The sombre force of the gloomy and ascetical Foster is assumed to depict himself-so with the rattling versatility of Brougham, the subdued humor of Lamb, &c. He handles the different intensities of this various thunder with the grasp and freedom of a master. In this view the book is quite a phenomenon-a literary curiosity. Of Jefferey, Brougham, and Macaulay, Coleridge, Shelley, Wordsworth and Campbell, Hazlitt, Wilson, Landor, Lockhart, Lamb and Carlyle-a gossiping and pleasant article might, and may be made from the materials furnished by this book of Gilfillan's; but we advise the reader to read for himself.

We shall also take another opportuntiy of expressing again at length the high estimate which the country ought to set upon "The Farmer's Library and Monthly Journal of Agriculture." We cannot but think it well worth the fullest support of that greatest of our national interests.

Montezuma, the Last of the Aztecs: An

Historical Romance on the Conquests of Mexico. By EDWARD MATURIN.

A splendid theme, certainly, has here been selected-onc little known and less

illustrated. The author deserves credit for his enterprise and industry. He has done what we could wish our American authors were more in the habit of doing-he has introduced his readers to what should be claimed by appropriation, as an exclusively American field-for, in a Literary sense, at least,

"The whole boundless continent is ours." The legendary and historical wealth of this entire hemisphere should be made ours by the bloodless conquest of the Pen. It is a duty we owe to our Literature, and each pioneer in a new field should be greeted with kindness. Mr. Maturin is a polite scholar, possessing great zeal and earnestness. We would suggest whether such capabilities and energies might not be successfully applied in bringing to light, through translations, many of those quaint old records of the Conquest, left behind by the Spanish monks, which would pleasantly illustrate those times of gorgeous romance and daring chivalric adventure. Such a work would be appreciated, and received with favor. Though we have the cream of most of them in Prescott's laborious work -yet there is an an antiquated character and fullness in their gossiping details, which would be highly interesting. This romance is a pleasing one-though the style is overcharged and wants vigor.

Wordsworth, a Poem, by WILLIAM WALLACE. New York: Huntington & Savage, 216 Pearl street.

We are pleased to perceive in the style and elegance of the little volume before us that the publishers have done their part not ungracefully in expressing the value of this fine poem, which, it will be remembered, appeared in our columns last month. In addition to the neatness of typography and beauty of externals, which do them great credit, they have embellished it with as good a portrait of the gray Seer of Winandermere as we remember to have

seen.

As for our contributor, we will let his poet-brother speak for us. Mr. Street, in an Albany Journal, says:

"Then succeeds a noble poem by William Wallace, entitled Wordsworth.' It purports to be a soliloquy of the crowned Bard,' upon whose tomb

'The dust of four great worlds will fall And mingle-thither brought by Pilgrim's

feet.'

This poem has the deep, solemn and majestic harmony of an organ. Its highlygifted author stands in the front rank among the young poets of our country."

Appleton's Literary Miscellany. Life of Schiller, by T. CARLYLE.

This volume and his life of Burns have Carlyle as his best books. The reason asbeen named by some of the admirers of signed for such preference is, that they were written in clear, smooth English, and before he had set himself to make our language bristle (monstrum horrendum) "with as many heads and horns as the beast in Daniel's vision !" We will not dispute tastes. The books are exceedingly good, unquestionably, and would make the reputation of half-a-dozen writers who come under the average of "scholarly and able,"-for they are "full as an egg is of meat;" but as contrasted with Sartor Resartus, the Lives of Mahommed, of Cromwell, &c., they remind us of "The man's thought dark in the infant's brain,"

or of two pictures we once saw-one a Peasant's Child just learning to walk, and clinging to the Grand Dame's arm-chair to support its tottering steps; the other-the same Child-a hirsute Chamois Hunter, vaulting sublimely the deep rifts of Alpine crags, while avalanches thundered down loosened beneath his daring, heedless tread! To us this image is satisfactory. It fully expresses the extremes of difference. These rude salient points complained of are the spiritual features of the man Thomas Carlyle. Around their rough exalted pinnacles "the lightning of his being plays." The quick illumination he throws down upon the "flattened earth" would not be his were it not glanced from these peaks and angles; neither would it brains of men but that it were disjected so pierce and fire the darkened hearts or just as it is. As an admirable book in itself, contrasted with other books of the sort, we like this one; but we think it is not to be regarded as the expression, more than remotely, of the present Carlylewho, as the matured critic of Schiller, would have made a very different book.

American Journal of Science and Arts,

Second Series. Conducted by PROF. SILLIMAN, B. SILLIMAN, JR., and JAMES D. DANA. New Haven, Conn. On the third page of our cover will be seen a prospectus of a new series of Silliman's Journal of Science. Of this work, for nearly thirty years the scientific periodical of the country, and of a European reputation, it is unnecessary to speak in terms of commendation. But we shall take occasion hereafter to speak at some length of the importance of such a work to the country. We hope, meanwhile, the new series will be largely subscribed to amongst the intelligent men of the community.