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268
LITERARY.
WILLIAIH W. IHANN, Editor.
SATURDAY', JAN. 14, 1869.
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TO CORRESPONDENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS.
We have received during the week the fol
lowing contributions:
“ 'Tis better to laugh than be sighing." by
Harry Joy.
My Early Dream.
The Wife’s Recall, by Louise Manhiem.
True Statesmanship, by J. N. E.
Our Littlo Pet, by Jno. R. Thompson.
Communication, etc., from Osceola.
A Fragment, by H. A. Carr.
The Rhyme of Emmie Endivers, by same.
“ Love is the Theme for me,” by same.
A Dream, by Charlie T. Bates.
The following poetical contributions are re
spectfully declined:
“ All things pass away”; “Rain,” by same;
and “ Weep not for him,” by Vir.
We promise humbly to endeavor to profit r rom
the counsels and instructions of Master ,
of Penfield, Ga. We cheerfully accord to him
all the wisdom of sixteen, which he kindly dis
penses with the authority of sixty, and the air
of a patron. He quotes, applying to himself,
the Latin line, “ Homo sum," Ac. With duo
deference and modesty, we suggest that if
again he should incline to quote that line, ho
write the penultimate word alienum, not ali
enem,” —and that, if he again make application
to himself, he, with very permissible and justifi
able license, put puer instead of “ homo," and
puerilis instead of “ humani This would
show, perhaps, a more just self-appreciation on
the part of Master .
■— -
OUR PARIS CORRESPONDENCE.
Paris, December 16, 1859.
Since last New Year's day, when Louis Napo
leon paid those famous compliments of the sea
son to his brother Emperor, Franz Joseph’s am
bassador at the Tuilleries, which threw all Eu
rope into an anxious foreboding of troubles
which the following spring justified, there has
been no so quiet week as the present. “Grim
vißaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front.
Our stern alarums are changed to merry meet
ings," and we hear of “nothing but peace and
gentle visitation.” “ Here is like to be a great
presence of worthies,” “trim gallants, full of
courtship and of State.” In fine, to drop Shaks
peare, we are to have the Congress, without
doubt, soon assembled here. Meantime, and as
necessary preliminaries, England and France
are for the* moment on the most loving terms.
And on the strength of this new temporary
entente cordiale, which will be broken within six
months, and re-soldered within twelve, and bro
ken again within eighteen, and so on, da capo
and ad infinitum —national bullying on one side,
and national gasconding on the other, with a re
covery of national common sense, then, on one
side, and of national politeness on the other—
a radical difference of race underlying their dif
ference of institutions and manners, furnishing
a permanent basis for quarrels to spring from;
an essential community of political, social and
commercial interest, furnishing preponderant
reasons for keeping the peace—old smoldering,
hereditary enmity, not yet extinguished, always
easily fanned into a blaze, but modern enlight
ened moral sense and enlightened self-interest
growing daily more enlightened—one strik
ing proof of which is that, to-day, the Legitimists
and Romanists, (the Romanists or ultramontanes
aro not to be confounded with French Catholics)
arc the most violently anti-anglican, while all
the organs of liberal opinions are more or less
friendly to England But where was I ? At
the entente cordiale t Well, on the strength of
it, as confirmed in these last days, commerce
has taken courage in all its departments: and at
the Bourse, in the factories and in vhe shops in
Paris, and throughout France, there reigns a
confidence and consequent activity, such as lias
not enlivened the marts of speculation and legit
imate commerce for the past year.
The fact that the Congress will meet, is the
only fact acquired as yet. What that body will
do, what it can do, toward the permanent set
tlement of Italy and Europe, are questions infi
nitely puzzling, and as good as insoluble to the
thoughtful inquirer. But the mass are loosely,
yet instinctively, as it were, and therefore, per
haps, soundly confident that, somehow or other,
in some way or other, it must come to some sort
or other of a settlement; that any immediate
resumption or outbreak of hostilities between
the great powers is, for two or three years, at
least, impossible, and that they will make any
hostilities between the little powers impossible.
If I w-ere a merchant, or moneyed man, I should
hold to this opinion as a sufficiently safe base of
operations. As an unmoneyed newspaper man,
and “own correspondent,” of course, my specula
tion aims to looks further into the millstone.
But as my views in that direction will keep very
well for a week, I pretermit conjecture, and
prophecy for to-uay.
In Italy things, that is political things, are al- j
most as quiet, that is externally quiet, as here. !
The Italians of the Romagna and the Duchies i
m somsn m and
are steadily going on their way of provisional as
similation and annexation to Piedmont. Since
the retirement of Garibaldi, there is no longer
talk of a collision between the troops of the
league and those of the Pope and his ally, the
king of Naples. Farrini, who unites in his
person the dictatorship of Modena, Parma, and
the Romagna, and Ricasoli, who rules Tuscany
with prudent firmness, seem decided to await,
though they by no means promise to abide by,
the decisions of the Congress; strengthening,
meanwhile, with great judgment and practical
wisdom, the proofs and practice of their right to
govern themselves, and annex themselves to Sar
dinia. The so-called regency of M. Buoncam
pagni, the sub-designated substitute of Prince
Carignan, lias come as near as may be to noth
ing. King Victor Emmanuel stands by the Cen- •
tral Italians (and his own interests) with as
brave words as ever. He, too, awaits the Con
gress. Two facts may be properly mentioned
here. The first is. that there are-about 50,000
French troops in Piedmont, and twice as many
Austrian troops in Venetia—France and Austria
being now, it is said, good friends; the second
is, that Piedmont or Sardinia is governed to-day,
as it was during the war, not by a parliamen
tary, but by an absolutely monarchical, at best
ministerial, regime, and that the three Duchies
and the Romagna are governed by two equally
irresponsible dictators.
This continuance of an arbitrary regime is
very probably sound, perhaps the only safe pol
icy under the present circumstances, and it is
not to bo denied that Victor Emmanuel is a lib
eral as kings go, and that the two dictators have
approved themselves nobly patriotic men; but it
cannot be pretended that the Italians are, as yet,
in the practico of free government.
Naples remains under petticoat gnver - :.nt.
The country is nominally ruled by a King, but
he is ruled by the Queen dowager, his step
mother, and by the Queen regnante. As the
widow of King Bomba and the wife of Francis
11. do not agree on all points, the young King
vibrates between these two feminine authorities.
He inclines to the step-mother out of the relig
ious respect lie bears for the memory of his
father, who, though one of the worst of the Euro
pean kings as king, was very amiable and much
beloved in his family—and inclines to his wife
out of love. Until quite recently, the filial sen
timent has been the stronger, but now there is
hope that the conjugal sentiment is getting the
upper hand. And this is a grave matter, so
grave that therein lies the hope of an ameliora
tion of the political condition of a whole nation,
numbering more than nine millions of souls.
For the queen dowager continues the traditions,
and draws about her the partisans of the last
reign. The severity of manners which she and
they affect, and which she desires to impose on
the whole court, favors and strengthens her sys
tem of government.
Tho decision that there shall be no court balls
this winter, and no carnival, although the ordi
nary period of mourning for the late king has
expired, is considered as her triumph, and re
joiced over by the absolutists. Tho reigning
queen, not that she is a liberal in politics, but
simply because she is young, desires more
gaiety, and so works against the widowed queen,
and so is become a sort of hope for the extreme
ly moderate progressists of the court. The
courtiers say that the king is a liberal when he
rises in the morning, a conservative when he
has seen his ministers, and an absolutist at night,
when he has seen his step-mother. A week ago
last Saturday night, the Count of Syracuse, uncle
of the king, and of well known liberal tende c
cies, was to give a grand ball. Tho question of
the day, the political question of the day, was:
Will the king attend? The ball came off and
went off brilliantly, but the king did not appear.
A triumph for the absolutists! But the follow
ing Sunday, his Majesty was at the theatre, and
twice applauded, with his royal hands, the mi
raculously agile danseuse, Amina Boschetti. A
triumph for the liberals!
Tho Spartans were used to show a drunken
Helot to their children, byway of temperance
lecture. This spectacle of Neapolitan royalty
may teach an analogous lesson to your young
republican readers.
Nor shall there be balls at tho Court of Ma
drid till the Moorish war be ended. So say their
Spanish majesties, who attended in the royal
chapel the other day, the ceremony of blessing
the two flags presented by them to their army
in Africa; the Queen’s flag represents the royal
arms on one side and “ the Immaculate Concep
tion” on the other; the King’s flag represents
on one side sacred images of Our Lady, and on
the other a crucifix. These look wonderfully
like true crusaders’ banners, the proper ensigns
of a war to the death between tho Crescent and
the Cross. The Moors will not be likely to fight
less fiercely if they are to consider their religion
as well as their territorial independence staked
on the issue. One would think that Spain un
dertook a sufficiently long, difficult, and expen
sive job when she eommenced'this attack on
Morocco to avenge her injured honor: but there
are numerous indications, like this of the flags,
that she is more and more disposed to add to
the difficulties of a warlike expedition the diffi
culties of a missionary enterprise, to tho labori
ous task of killing the Moors, the onerous duty
of converting the survivors. There has been a
new engagement, not much more than a skir
mish between the Moors and the Spaniards, in
which the latter confess to a loss of forty men,
and, of course, represent that of the enemy as
more considerable. As the unlucky Morrocoons
have no “own correspondents” in the newspa
pers, we have not had their side of the story.
But as in this, and in the previous much more
serious combat, the Spaniards declare them
selves to have displayed the greatest courage,
it is to be supposed there was a call for it. The
third Spanish corps d'armee has effected its land
ing at Ceuta. It is expected that a great battle
will soon be fonght under the walls of Tetuan.
Austria is keeping the promises of reform
made by Franz Joseph last summer, with her
usual good faith. The press, after having been
permitted to catch its breath a little, is choked
and gagged more tightly than ever. Alarmed
by the revival of the national spirit in Hungary,
the government pretended to make certain lib
eral concessions, which were in fact worse than
nugatory, a mockery of the national want, and
have tended to extend and irritate the agitation
which it was foolishly thought they would allay.
Orders now have been sent from Vienna, to civil
and military officers in Hungary to redoublo
their vigilance and activity, and, if need be, em
ploy force to repress “ all the elements of na
tional or religious agitation whose public mani
festation should seem to them dangerous to the
cause of order in Hungary.” Prosecutions are
instituted against several members of the Prot
estant clergy. Your readers will bear in mind
that the movement against which these meas
ures are directed is not of the Kossuth sort. Its
leaders and partisans,e., nearly all the nobles,
reputable citizens and Protestant clergy of
Hungary, do not ask to be made an independent
j State, but only to recover so much of their na
| tionality as was recognized to be their sight by
I Austria, itself, up to 1847. I need not say that
while desiring to return to their old political po
sition in relation to Austria, they have no wish
to restore such of the great internal abuses, po
litical and civil, as then existed, and which were
effectively swept away by tho revolution of
1848.
The actual emperor is not a bad man, but he
has «been badly educated. He came to the
throne just as a revolution was being closed up,
repressed, suppressed, oppressed, compressed
by brute force. With the natural ardor of a
young man he devoted himself to military af
fairs, and made the woful mistake, in which his
military surrounding as naturally encouraged
him, of regarding the State as a camp. Demand
for reform, however well justified, is mutiny.
When it grows too loud and there aro other
dangers to be attended to, as this late Italian
war for instance, it scares him, not persuades
him. He yields to it from fright. And now he
is frightened at his yielding. In one sense he
is logical enough. To grant to the Hungar.ans
what they demand, would be in fact a yielding
of the principle of absolute divine right and pa
ternal authority, on which Ins theory of govern
ment rests. And it is pretty certain, too, that,
if the Hungarians obtained that part of their
rights which they now demand, they would
soon, like Oliver Twist and men in general ask
for more. And again, were he to grant their re
quest, it would be a confession that his favorite
policy of assimilation and centralization, pur
sued for the last ten years, is wrong. Now
Franz Joseph, though a badly educated man, is
not a bad man, and it is barely possible that he
thinks the Hungarian request should be granted.
But ho is a very obstinate man, though not a
very firm man. Hence he cannot grant it; but
hence a bare possibility that the rumor just now
got ailoat may have a foundation of truth. * The
rumor is that he purposes to abdicate in favor of
his infant son. I put the smallest faith in it.
But you know that is the standing resource of
modern European monarehs, —though they gen
erally abdicate too late. Franz Joseph came to
the throne himself by abdication of his foolish
old uncle, who found the seat untenable.
Paris is in its high winter season, of gaiety
and dancing in public and private saloons, aud
shivering in poor garrets; the ground is covered
to-day with snow and the dead walls aro lively
with particolored posters in blue and red and
yellow, announcing all manner of amusements—
among them the first masked ball of the carni
val at the Grand Opera next Saturday night, or
rather next Sunday morning, for it begins at
midnight and the mad folly keeps up till day
light. Tho great annual ball of the dramatic
artists came off there last Saturday and Sunday.
Such a jam! More than 7000 tickets sold and
something like a thousand late comers unable to
insert so much as tho toe 3 of their feet into the
dazzling, brilliant suite The parterre was floor
ed and formed, with tho stage opened to its full
depth, one grand room, and filled, packed,
- squeezed, stuffed as it was with high and low
dressed fair women and bravo men, (they need
ed to bo bravo to i isk themselves there,) was a
sight to behold from the upper boxes, not to be
described by mortal pen. To say that it looked
like an enormous bed of thick planted dahlias,
is as good a comparison as another; or, say a
congress of those variegated old-fashioned patch
work bedquilts, Turkey carpets and double dah
lias and Dutch tulips—l mean, such a congress
in a row, with Strauss for speaker and his fine
band discoursing music.
The receipts were over seventy thousand
francs, of which ten thousand went to the poor.
It is a graceful French trait this, that a large
tax for tho benefit of the miserable is levied on
the receipts of all places opened for the amuse
ment of the happy in Paris. So that when you
laugh over comedy at the Palais Royal or cry
over tragedy of the saddest description at the
Gaite (despite its name, the favorite heme of
scenic woes,) your smiles and tears are involun
tarily benevolent, and the hardest or emptiest
hearted fop or belle who never opens his haud
to charity, cannot swing a foot at a public ball
without kicking a sous into the poor box. Here
Dame Nature, full of womanly kindness, and
ingenious and graceful in her characteristic traits
as the French themselves, plays into their hands.
By one of those happy provisions of hers, simi
lar to that so frequently remarked on, which
brings all the large rivers to run past large cities
and large harbors up to tho very wharves of
large commercial towns, she makes the special
season for public amusements to coincide with
the season when poverty is specially hard to
bear.
Old Prince Jerome, the ex-king of Westpha
lia, is dangerously ill with an inflammation of
the lungs. Weakened by a previous illuess from
which he recovered but a few weeks ago, borne
down by the heavy burden of seventy-live win
ters, this is likely to be his la3t. He has the
best of nurses in his daughter-in-law the Prin
cess Clotilde, poor child. Her good, pious na
ture seemed to have found a sort of consolation
for her exile and—her marriage, in caring for
the old man last autumn. Speaking of the
family reminds mo to correct, if correction be
needful to any reader of tho Field and Fireside,
a remarkably absurd paragraph that I have
seen in the New Y'ork papers. The “ well in
formed ” paragraphist states that our American
Baltimore Bonaparte “refused tho dignity of
Sena tor of France offered him by his father, Prince
Jerome .” Now, though Prince Jerome is old,
and has been ill, and was never a strikingly wise
man, wo hereabout never heard that he was in
sane ; but he must have been insane to offer the
dignity of Senator to his son by his first mar
riage or to any one else, the old gentleman hav
ing as little right to offer or power to confer that
“ dignity ” as your correspondent. •
Paris, Dec. 22, 1859.
The political news of tho week is less deserv
ing than usual, on the score of importance, to
hold the first place in the record. A novelty of
a very different sort is just now occupying the
eager attention of the “ Parisian world,” that is
of the medical world, and of many of the other
worlds. It may be well to remark here, paren
thetically, that there are, at least, fourteen
worlds in the Paris system, each one of which
styles itself “ all the world,” and regards the
thirteen others as mere new-formed nebulous
bodies or nobodies. To classify these worlds
now would bulge out my parenthesis too much,
and leave no room to speak of the novelty, which,
both as a sensation topic of the day and for its
intrinsic interest, has acclaim to be treated of at
some length.
All the world, then, is talking and thinking aud
experimenting about and with the “ new anes
thetic method,” that is a method of producing a
nervous sleep or artificial catalepsy, the subject
of which may then have teeth drawn, arms cut
off, bo pinched, pulled, pricked, and in any oth
erwise worried by the bystanders, without pain,
nay, without consciousness. The method is
this: Hold any small bright object, a knife-blade
or a gold pencil, for example, at the distance of
ten to fifteen inches from the eyes of the person
to be operated upon, and in such a position that
he turns them inward and slightly upward in
the effort to look at it. Y'ou direct him to fix his
eyes steadily on the object and to concentrate his
mind on the idea of the object. The immediate
physical effect produced, is, of course, what may
be defined a little pedantically but accurately a
“ convergent superior strabismus.” At the end
of one or two minutes the patient reaches the
state of cataiepsy, nervous sleep, and is insensi
ble. You now commence to tickle, prick and
pull or to amputate—it is all one to him.
Such is the general outline of a large number
of cases in the Paris hospitals within the last
fortnight, where the operators bear the names of
Velpeau, Trousseau, Trelaton, and others of the
highest rank in the medical nobility of Paris.
These names alone furnish as strong proof as
can bo drawn from authority merely, argrunen
tum ad reverentiam, that this is no humbug.
A word now on the historical side of the new
anesthetic method. In the first place it is not
properly new. Dr. James Braid, a physician of
Manchester, published as long ago as 1843 a
work entitled Xeurypnology,” (from the Greek
neuron—ripnos — logos, Newsleepology in Eng
lish,) or the Rationale of nervous sleep, considered,
in relation.with animal magnetism, in which he
describes this method a process of artificial cata
lepsy, which he designates by the hard name of
hypnotism. At a much later date Dr. Azam, of
Bordeaux, who had read Braid's book, repeated
the experiments therein described and confirm
ed their exactitude. Azam, however, did not
venture upon any surgical operations on his cat
aleptics, testing their insensibility only by treat
ing them as pincushions and in other similar
playful ways. Nor did he publish his experi
ments to the world nor to the medical societies
of France. Ho was afraid to endanger his re
spectable medical reputation by attaching his
name to performances that seemed to be nearly
akin to thoso of vulgar professors of animal mag
netism. Dr. Azam, in fact, seems one of that
lamentably large class of us, who “ lack the cour
age of our opinions.” But instead of censuring
him for this defect, let us try to correct it in our
selves, (you have it, Madam, in your composition
quite as strong a3 Dr. Azam; e. g. your exces
sive regard for Mrs. Grundy,) and be thankful
for his curiosity, which led him to procure Braid’s
book and, faithful, test its statements For curi
osity seems a rare quality with the French doc
tors : the Dictionnaire de Xysten, a text book in
the bauds of all French students of medicine
since 1835, gives a succinct but complete and
clear account of Braid’s hypnotism. But to go
on. Some time last month Dr. Azam came to
Pans, and then first in conversation with an old
fellow student, Dr. Broca, one of the eminent
Parisian surgeons, spoke of the singular facts
at which he had arrived by following the pre
cepts of Braid.
Happily for the new method, and for such of
us unhappy laymen as may hereafter fall under
a surgeon's knife, M. Broca belongs to “ that
young surgical generation who claim that the
practice of surgery should not rest on a know
ledge of anatomy alone, but on physiology and
a rational study of the normal acts of our organ
ism.” Broca immediately began experimenting,
at first in his private practice and then at the
hospital Nccker with the aid of the surgeon of
that institution ; where, among other trials, they
opened an abscess in a patient extremely sensi
tive and pusillanimous in her normal state, who
was entirely unconscious of pain during the op
eration. He then made a note or memoir of liiij
experiments, which wa3 read two weeks ago
before the Academy of Sciences by M. Velpeau.
Here your lay readers must bear two or three
things in mind: As that Ve'poau, who is at the
head of French surgery, is a most scrupulous ex
perimentalist, and by virtue of that and other
qualities of his mind and his age, is the man in
the world least inclined to credulity or to the pa
tronage of new fangled notions in his depart
ment of science; as that, up to the present time,
in spite of an immense number of facts (loosely
styled of late years facts animal magnetism, and
facts trance, eestaey, convulsions, &e.) strewn
throughout all history and occurring more or less
within almost every one’s experience, physicians
generally, and your respectable sensible persons
generally, persistently deny and ridicule tho
state of artificial somnambulism —that is, up to to
day they have generally refused a serious study
of these facts, wrapping themselves up over
their eye 3 in the diguity of their profession, and
leaving these facts to the abuse of charlatanism
and superstition. M. Velpeau did not “indorse,”
as we Americans say, the memoir of Broca, but
the fact of its being read by him before the
Academy of Sciences, gives a brevet rank of le
spectabihty to Hypnotism, and to scientific in
vestigation of its phenomena. The result al
ready is that scientific iuvesligation,that is, can
did observation of facts, careful empiricism, out
of which all scientific truth comes, is going on
on a most extensive scale. Patients are set
squinting convergently and superiorly drfily and
hourly in all the hospitals, in fine, all over Paris
—straightforward eyes, no longer having the
fear of ridicule and loss of medical reputation
(the doctors’ Mrs. Grundy, madam,) before
theirs, watching them closely.
I have given above, the general facts of a
case of artificial catalepsy. I have not space
here to go into details, which would be for the
rest more in place in a medical journal; but
will add, what I trust will interest the general
reader, byway of qualification to the general or
type case, a few words. The object is not nec
essarily a bright one; anything that will best fix
the patient’s gaze is what is needed; the dis
tance at which it should be held depends upon the
patient’s sight, and may vary from ten to twenty
inches, but must be inside the limits of easy,
distinct vision; the tiling is, apparently, to strain,
concentrate, and fix the brain, benumb it, as it
were, as you benumb a limb by holding it strain
ed and fixed ; the time required to produce the
nervous sleep varies with different tempera
ments, from less than one to several minutes ;
not all subjects yield to the process; women
and children yield more readily than men; the
sleepers may sleep open-eyed, or with the eyes
shut; the sleep docs not necessarily close the
mind to reception of ideas communicated by
sight or hearing; the sleeper is awakened by
slightly rubbing upon the eyes, and blowing cold
air upon them and the forehead.
To conclude, and to excuse, if apology be re
quired, this long but yet too brief talk of this
new form of old nervous sleep. Should it provo
to be all that Dr. Broca and others hope and are
daily gathering reason to think, it will be inval
uable as an anesthetic agency. Its superiority,
in certain respects, over chloroform, to which
many temperaments offer grave, and some tem
peraments fatal objections, is patent. But it is
to be regarded from another and higher than a
surgical point of view.
To heal our bodies by new woundings, and
that without new pain, is well. But to cure dis
eased minds is better, as much better as mind is
better than body; and to prevent tho approach
es of the disease is better still.
The striking resemblance, not to say identity
of this artificial nervous sleep with the sonambu
lic state which magnetizers are able to produce
in some persons, will have escaped no reader’s
attention. And involuntarily he will have more
or less closely associated these phenomena with I
numerous analogous states, with events that su
perstition and weakness and ignorance and de- '
signing men who protit by these frailties of our
nature, have attributed to the Higher or the
Lower supernatural Powers. The mischief of
them all is to be attributed to the power of dark
ness and the mischief has been and is of the
greatest, as the records of ancient thaumaturgy
and modern insane asylums sadly tell. How
many have passed into howling madness or
sunk into thrice sodden stupid idiocy, because
they mistook the thing that seemed for a thing
that was; who have regarded as the result of
enchantment, magic, fascination, or intervention
of spirits from other spheres, phenomena iden
tical with or analagous to what Dr. Broca shows
us simply as a physiological state produced by
the simplest of physical processes! “No man
is a hero to his valet-de-chambre,” a saying
which, Carlyle happily says, is applicable only
to sham heroes. So the sham supernatural
loses its imposing and dangerous power as
science becomes familiar with it.
To the musical world the return of Roger to
the opera has been the great event of the week.
Roger, as every ono knows, is the finest of
French tenors. A first-class tenor, as every one
knows, is much rarer than a first class general,
statesman, orator or author. "Why, there are
but two in France, I mean of French birth.
Roger is the first of the two. Well, Roger, who
has acquired large wealth by his profession, was
out shooting, at his country seat, one day last
August and managed, as French sportsmen so
often do, to discharge his gun into himself. The.
consequence was that he lost an arm, and that
there was great question whether he could ap
pear on the stage again. Could a man sing
with a wooden arm? Would such a man sing
with a wooden arm ? Might he sing with ono
arm ? Ought there not to be an opera and li
bretto composed and written expressly for a hero
with one arm? These grave questions were
satisfactorily solved by the Great Roger last
Thursday evening, when a benefit was given
him at the Grand Opera and he re-appeared at
the scene of his past triumphs and sang as well
as ever, with ono arm It required close observ
ation, indeed, to tell which of the two arms he
wielded on that occasion was his own and
which only possessed by lum. The audience ap
plauded loudly. They were in the best of hu
mor with Roger and with themselves; which
was heightened by the presence of the Kmperor
and Kmpress. For this was taken as a sign
that Prince Jerome was improving in health;
and a large part of this audience feel a very sin
cere interest in the health of that old gentleman.
For if he should die, then there would be
no court balls and ministers’ balls and other
high official balls this winter, which would
be a grave loss to the high dancing world,
the world that is the world; and, conse
quently, there would be no furnishing of lights
and decorations for the balls; of jewelry and
robes and shoes and head-dresses for ladies at
the balls: of ices and ingenious-made dishes
and wines for the supper-tables at the balls; of
eloquent and elegant newspaper accounts of the
balls, etc., etc. So that there is hardly a mer
chant or tradesman in Paris who does not ear
nestly pray that Prince Jerome’s life may bo
prolonged—till Lent. It is curious to see how
these so widely different worlds, the highest
flying courtier world, and the humblest cross
legged tailor world, diplomats and silk dealers,
marchionesses and milliners, the Faubourg St.
Antoine worlds, and the Faubourg St. llonoro
worlds, all gravitate around this old man’s sick
bed. By the side of it sits the tender, watchful,
patient, good little Princess Clotilde, and thanks
to her, and perhaps to the doctors, but probably
more to his tough nature, Prince Jerome still
holds quite strongly to life.
Speaking of tenors and doctors, reminds me
of the story of a celebrated one of the former,
who, it is said, was four years ago on the way
to distinction as one of the latter. He had al
ready written with credit on medical themes.—
But nature had given him a rare voice and a
strong taste for music, and he made his dkbut as
a singer in the famous musical salon of the fa
mous Dr. Orlila. Orfila was liimseif gifted with
remarkable musical talents, and had ho not pre
ferred to be the first toxicologist of Europe,
might have been a second Paganini. About
four yea is ago, our young doctor, unable to re
sist his passion any longer, left his patients to
get well at their leisure, went to Florence,
changed his name, and gained as triumphant a
success on the Italian stage as he had in the
apartments of his private friends at Paris. He aft
erwards returned for a little while to his graver
profession, but finally renounced Ksculapius for
Polhymnia, Mercury for Apollo, and has ac
quired fame—in our country as well as in Eu
rope, I think—as the Italian tenor, Salviani.
ma . .4.®.*.
NEW BOOKS.
[We publish, often, under this head, a lint of new
publications, carefully selected from all our exchanges.
The list embraces all works, Foreign and Domestic,
which we think may bo valuable, or to which circum
stances may give general or special interest, whether
Literacy or Scientific, History or Fiction, Prose or Poe
try, Religious, Moral «r Political. The notice simply
gives the title of the book, name of the anthor, place o
publication, and name of publisher.]
Leaders of the Reformation; Luther, Calvin, Latimer,
Knox, the Representative Men of Germany, France,
Kngland and Scotland. By John Tulloch, D. D. New
York: Sheldon A Co.
Parables of our Lord. In One Volume Folio; beauti
fully printed in Ornate Saxon Type, on tinted paper, and
magnificently illustrated with Kngravlngs on Steel.
Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott & Co.
Catalogue of a Collection of Pamphlets, written and
printed during the years 1515-1525. Containing editions
principesof the writings of Luther, Melanehton, llutter,
Zwingli, etc. New York: M. Ellinger A Co.
Irvingiana. A Memorial of Washington Irving. With
an Original Sketch by Darley, etched by Smtlie. Fac
simile of Rip Van Winkle: an interesting account of Mr.
Irving's Literary Career, by E. A. Duyckinck, Esq.;
Original Letters and Anecdotes, and Thirty-Six Papers
by Everett Brncroft, Longfellow, King. Francis, Tuck
erman, Willis, Cozzens, Curtis, Creighton, Osgood, Cha
pin, Morgan and Others. Making an interesting volume.
New York: Charles B. Richardson.
Biography of Self-Taught' Men. By Prof. B. B. Ed
wards. Bosjon: J. E. Tilton & Co.
Edgar Pot? and his Critics. 75 cents. New York:
Rudd & Carleton.
Morphy’s Games. A Selection of the Best Games
Played by the Distinguished Champion in Europe and
America. With Analytical and Critical Notes. ByJ.
Lowenthal. New York; D. Appleton A Co.
Seven Years. By Julia Kavanagh, author of Nathalie,
etc. Boston: Tlcknor A Fields.
Captain McClintock’s Narrative of the Voyage of the
Fox in the Arctic Seas, and of the discovery of the Fate
of Sir John Frankllnand his Companions. With a Pre
face by Sir Roderick Murchison, F. R. 8. With a Map
of the Arctic Regions, illustrating the track of the Expe
dition, a Geological Map, and Sixteen full-page Illustra
tions. Boston; Ticknor A Fields.
Four Years Aboard the Whale Ship. Embracing
Cruises in the Pacific. Atlantic, Indian and Antarctic
Oceans. By Wm. B. Whitcnr, Jr. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott A Co.
History and Progress of Education, from the Earliest
Times to the Present Intended as a Manual for Teach
ers and Students. By Philobiblius. With an Introduc
tion by Hon. He n~y Barnard, Chancellor of the Univer
sity of Wisconsin. New York: A. S. Barnes A Co.
Contributions to Operative Surgery and Surgical Pa
thology. ByJ. M. Carnoclian, Professor of Surgery in
the New York Medical College, Surgeon-in Chief to the
State Emigrants’ Hospital, etc. New York; S. S. AJ.
| Wood.