Read Ebook: Harper's New Monthly Magazine No. XXIII.—April 1852.—Vol. IV. None by Various

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On the 20th of February Carvajal attacked Camargo with a force of over 500 men, but he was repulsed with decided loss. He succeeded in escaping to the American side of the Rio Grande. Of his whole force it is stated that only 84 were Mexicans.

GREAT BRITAIN.

The political events of the month in England have been of striking interest and importance. The expulsion of Lord Palmerston from the Cabinet, mainly for offenses against etiquette--the meeting of Parliament, and the subsequent defeat and retirement of the Russell Ministry, with the reinstatement of a Protectionist Cabinet, are certainly events of more consequence than are usually crowded into a single month.

Parliament met on the 3d of February, and was opened in person by the Queen. Her speech announced that she continued to maintain the most friendly relations with Foreign Powers. She had reason to believe that the treaty between Germany and Denmark, concluded at Berlin year before last, will soon be fully executed. Although tranquillity has prevailed throughout the greater part of Ireland, certain parts of the counties of Armagh, Monaghan, and Louth have been marked by the commission of outrages of the most serious description. Bills have been prepared founded upon the reports of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and proceedings of the Superior Courts of Law and Equity, which are commended to deliberate attention. The act of 1848 suspending the previous act which conferred representative institutions on New Zealand, expires early next year; and no reason exists for its renewal. The large reductions of taxes which have taken place of late years have not been attended with a proportionate diminution of national income. The revenue of the past year has been fully adequate to the demands of the public service, while the reduction of taxation has tended greatly to the relief and comfort of the people. The Queen states that it appears to her that "this is a fitting time for calmly considering whether it may not be advisable to make such amendments in the act of the late reign, relating to the Representation of the Commons in Parliament, as may be deemed calculated to carry into more complete effect the principles upon which that law is founded." She had "the fullest confidence that, in any such consideration, Parliament would firmly adhere to the acknowledged principles of the Constitution, by which the prerogatives of the Crown, the authority of both Houses of Parliament, and the rights and liberties of the people are equally secured."

FRANCE.

SPAIN.

CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE.

No events of special importance have occurred in any of the continental nations. All the governments seem to be more or less agitated by rumors of differences with England and France, and their policy is somewhat affected by them. The suspicion of hostile intentions on the part of Louis Napoleon toward Belgium has enlisted a good deal of suspicion, and letters from Brussels, dated the 19th February, state positively that a convention had been entered into, by which Russia agrees to furnish 100,000 men for the defense of that territory in case it should be invaded or seriously menaced by France. Prussia has also promised similar assistance, and the Prince de Ligne is said to be now in Berlin for the purpose of arranging the details. These important statements, however, do not seem to be made on authority sufficient to command full credit.

In AUSTRIA, it is said, that Prince Schwartzenberg is preparing a general statement of the views of Austria concerning the state of Europe, and an indication of the line of policy which she will pursue. The mediation of Austria between Sardinia and the Pope has also been proposed, and amicable relations are again to be established between the Sardinian and Austrian governments. A new treaty has been concluded, by which Austria is to supply Russia annually with large quantities of salt.

The government of the Duchy of HOLSTEIN was formally transferred by the Commissaries of Prussia and Austria to the Commissary of Denmark, Count Reventlow-Criminil, on the 8th of February, in an official conference held at Kiel.

In both GREECE and TURKEY there have been changes of Ministry. In the former country the change has no general importance. In Turkey, it is significant of reaction. Reschid Pacha, the most liberal and enlightened minister ever placed at the head of affairs in the Ottoman empire, has been dismissed, and is succeeded by Raaf Pacha, a man upward of eighty years of age, who was prime minister in 1838. The negotiation in regard to the Holy Sepulchre has been abandoned, and the French minister was to leave Constantinople forthwith.

Editor's Table.

And here, we think, may be found an argument for the existence of Deity, built on stronger and more assuring ground than is furnished by any of the ordinary positions of natural theology. It is an argument derived from one of the most interior wants of our moral constitution. There is no doubt that in our fallen state a feeling of pain--at times of intense pain--may connect itself in our minds with the recognition of the Divine idea; but there is also an element of happiness, and, if cherished, of the highest and most serious happiness, in the thought that there is One Great Soul that does penetrate into our most interior spirituality. There is one Soul that is ever as intimately present with us as our own consciousness--that holds communion with us, and with whom we may hold communion, in a manner impossible for any other. There is One that thinks our thoughts, and feels our feelings, even as we think them, and as we feel them, although, along with this, in another manner, too, of its own, that transcends our thinking "even as the heavens are high above the earth," and is as far removed from all the imperfections of our own spiritual exercises. There may seem an inconsistency in this apparent mingling of the finite and the infinite in the Divine Nature, but it is the belief of both which unlocks for us the meaning of the Scriptures, and sheds light over every page of revelation and of providence. There is a higher Soul that pervades our spiritual entity, not as an impersonal or pantheistic abstraction, but as the most distinctly personal of all personalities--not as a mere Law of nature, but as a Father "who careth for us," as a Guardian "who numbereth the very hairs of our heads," as a Judge who taketh note of every thought, and gives importance to all our forgotten sins, while He is, at the same time, present with, and caring for every other individual soul in the universe. As in some previous musings of our Editorial Table, we might have adverted to the Divine physical power as the ever-present dynamical entity in the seeming vacuities of space, and binding together the isolated material worlds, so here we may regard the Higher Spiritual Presence as the true bond of union among all those isolated souls that fill the spiritual universe. Thus viewed, the fact of such communion would be the highest truth in philosophy, as a belief in the reality of its possible consciousness would be the highest article of faith.

HISTORY IS PHILOSOPHY TEACHING BY EXAMPLE.

Such artificial records of history may be highly useful in their connection with the interests of particular classes and occupations. The time also may come in which they may gather around them an antiquarian value, blending with some of the more universal emotions of our common nature. But aside from this, although they may furnish rich materials for other departments of useful knowledge, they are not history, simply because they lack that catholic element, by which alone they enter into the common memory, and thus become a part of the common national mind.

Editor's Easy Chair.

The town has just woke up from its wintry carnival of sleighs and bells, and wears much the aspect of a reveler who is paying the penalty for too free over-night potations. Broadway no longer flows along like a stream of molten silver, but resembles nothing so much as the mud-river of Styx--"darker far than perse" of the great Florentine; and instead of the fairy-like sleighs of the month gone by, is traversed only by the lumbering omnibuses, scattering far and wide the inky fluid. To cross the street dry-shod is not to be thought of, save at one or two points where philanthropic tradesmen, mindful of the public good--and their own--have subsidized a troop of sweepers to clear a passage in front of their doors. We accept the favor with all gratitude, and do not inquire too closely into the stories of silver goblets, presented by grateful ladies to these public benefactors. Under such circumstances all lighter matters of gossip are things of the past--and of the future, let us hope.

Into the current of graver talk several pebbles have been thrown, which have rippled its surface into circlets wider than usual. The meeting in commemoration of COOPER was a worthy tribute to the memory of one who has shed honor upon his country by adding new forms of beauty to the intellectual wealth of the world. It was singularly graceful and appropriate that the funeral discourse of the greatest American Novelist, should have been pronounced by the greatest American Poet--and should we say the greatest living poet who speaks the tongue of Milton and Shakspeare, who would dare to place another name in competition for the honor with that of BRYANT?

Public "Lectures," or the "Lyceum," as one of the lecturing notabilities not very felicitously denominates the institution, had begun to assume a somewhat mythical character in the estimation of townsmen, as relics of ages long gone by, of which man's memory--the Metropolitan man's, that is--takes no note. We have indeed had rumors from the "Athens of America," and other far-away places, that Lectures had not fallen into utter desuetude; but we were, on the whole, inclined to put little faith in the reports. During the last few weeks, however, the matter has again forced its way into the town talk. The "Tabernacle" weekly opens its ponderous jaws, for the delivery of the "People's Lectures," where, for the not very alarming sum of one shilling--with a deduction in cases where a gentleman is accompanied by more ladies than one--a person may listen for an hour to the mystic elocution and seer-like deliverances of EMERSON, or may hear KANE depict the dreamy remembrances of those Hyperborean regions where sunrise and sunset are by no means those every-day occurrences that they are in more equatorial regions. To us, as we sit in our Easy Chair, it seems as though this system of cheap popular public lectures were capable of almost indefinite expansion. Why should not SILLIMAN or GUYOT address three thousand instead of three hundred hearers? Why should they not unswathe the world from its swaddling-clothes before an audience which would fill our largest halls? Why should not ORVILLE DEWEY discourse on the great problems of Human Destiny and Progress before an assemblage which should people the cavernous depths of the "Tabernacle," as well as before the audience, relatively small, though doubtless fit, assembled before the frescoes of the Church of the Messiah? We throw these suggestions out lightly, by way of hint; a graver consideration of them would belong rather to our Table than to our Easy Chair discourses.

As a sort of pendant to the nine-days' talk of the Forrest divorce case, we notice the unanimous verdict of approval which has been accorded to the exemplary damages awarded in the case of a savage and cowardly assault committed by one of the principals in that scandalous affair. Though no pecuniary award can make reparation to the person who has suffered the infliction of brutal personal outrage, yet as long as there are ruffians whose only susceptible point is the pocket-nerve, we are glad to see the actual cautery applied to that sensitive point.

This is not the place to discuss the stringent "Maine Liquor Law," which is proposed for adoption in the Empire State; but we can not avoid chronicling the almost sublime assumption of one of its opponents, who challenged its advocates to name any man of lofty genius who was not a "toddy-drinker." As this side of the measure seems sadly in want of both speakers and arguments, we consider ourselves entitled to the gratitude of the opponents of the law, for insinuating to them that the defense of punch by Fielding's hero, that it was "a good wholesome liquor, nowhere spoken against in Scripture," is capable of almost indefinite extension and application.

A somewhat characteristic reminiscence of JOHN NEWLAND MAFFITT has been lying for a long while in our mind; and we can not do better than accord to it the honors of paper and ink. It happened years ago, when that eccentric preacher was in the height of his reputation; when he was, or at least thought he was in earnest; before the balance of his mind had been destroyed by adulation, conceit, vanity, and something worse.

Maffitt determined to labor in this uninviting field. He commenced preaching, and soon gathered an audience; for preaching was something new there; and besides, Maffitt's silvery tones and strange flashes of eloquence would at that time attract an audience any where. Those who knew the man only in his later years know nothing of him.

Day after day he preached, but all to no purpose. He portrayed the bliss of heaven--its purity and peace--in his most rapt and glowing manner. It was the last place which could have any charms for his Woodville audience.

He portrayed the strife and turmoil of the world of woe. Apart from its physical torments--and they felt a sort of wild pride in defying these--they rather liked the picture. At all events, it was much more to their taste than was his description of heaven.

So it went on, day after day. Not a sigh of penitence; not a wet eye; not a single occupant of the anxious seat. His labors were fruitless.

Finally, he determined upon a change of tactics. He spoke of the decay of Woodville; how it was falling behind every other town on the river--"Oh!" said he, "might but the Angel of Mercy be sent forth from before the Great White Throne, commissioned to proclaim to all the region round that there was a revival in Woodville, and what a change there would be! The people would flock here from every quarter; the hum of business would be heard in your streets; the steamers, whose bright wheels now go flashing past your wharf, would stay in their fleet career; these dense forests, which now lour around, would be hewn down and piled up for food for these vast leviathans; and thus a golden tide would pour in upon you; and Woodville would become the wealthiest, the most beautiful, and the happiest place on the banks of the great Father of Waters!"

A chord had been touched in the hitherto insensible hearts of the Woodvillers. Thought, emotion, feeling, were aroused; and soon the strange electric sympathy of mind with mind was excited. The emotion spread and increased; the anxious seats were thronged; and a powerful, and to all appearance genuine revival of religion ensued. The character of Woodville was entirely changed; and from that time it has continued to be one of the most moral, quiet, thriving, and prosperous of all the minor towns upon the Mississippi.

An occasional claw is however protruded through the velvet paws upon which French society creeps along so daintily in these critical days, showing that the propensity to scratch is not extinct, though for the present, as far as the President and his doings are concerned, "I dare not waits upon I would" in the cat-like Parisian salon life.

The subject of gossip most thoroughly French in its character, which has of late days passed current, is one of which the final scene was Genoa, and the prominent actor unfortunately an American. We touch upon the leading points of this as they pass current from lip to lip.

In due course of years the Chevalier grew older if not wiser, and became anxious to assume the responsibilities of a wife--provided that she was possessed of a fortune. It chanced that, about these times, a lady whom he had known for many years, without having experienced any touches of the tender passion, was left an orphan with a large fortune. The sympathizing Chevalier was prompt with his condolences at her irreparable loss, and soon established himself in the character of confidential friend.

The lady decides to visit the Continent to recruit her shattered health. The Chevalier--sympathizing friend that he is--is at once convinced that there is for him no place like the Continent.

The document proved to be a letter to another lady, a friend of both parties, announcing a deliberate intention of offering his fine person, though somewhat the worse for wear, to the lady who was reading the letter addressed to her friend. This proposal in the third person met with little favor, and the Chevalier received a decided negative in the second person.

The Chevalier, however, saw too many solid charms in the object of his passion to yield the point so easily. The lady returns to London, and lo! there is the Chevalier. She flees to Paris, and thither he hies. She hurries to Switzerland, and one morning as she looks out of the Hospice of St. Bernard, she is greeted with the Chevalier's most finished bow of recognition. She walks by the Lake of Geneva, and her shadow floats upon its waters by the side of that of her indefatigable adorer. He watches his opportunity and seizes her hand, muttering low words of love and adoration; and as a company of pleasure-seekers to whom they are known approaches, he raises his voice so as to be heard, and declares that he will not release the hand until he receives a promise of its future ownership. Bewildered and confused, the lady whispers a "Yes," and is for the moment set at liberty. No sooner is she fairly rid of him than she retracts her promise, and forbids her adorer the house.

But the Chevalier is now determined to make assurance doubly sure; and demands a written agreement to marry him, under penalty of the forfeiture of half her fortune, in case of refusal. To this the lady consents: and the ardent admirer leaves the room to order a carriage to convey her to her hotel. She seizes the opportunity to make her escape.

On the day following, the adventurous Chevalier involuntarily makes the acquaintance of the Intendant of Police, and finds that his "bold stroke for a wife" is like to entail upon him certain disagreeable consequences in the shape of abundant opportunity for reflection, while a compulsory guest of the public authorities of Genoa.

Ought not the Chevalier WYKOFF to have been a Frenchman?

Editor's Drawer.

The following anecdote of a legal gentleman of Missouri, was compiled many years ago from a newspaper of that State. There is a racy freshness about it that is quite delightful:

All this was uttered in the gravest and most solemn manner imaginable, and the effect was irresistibly ludicrous.

Washington Irving, in one of his admirable sketches of Dutch character, describes an old worthy, with a long eel-skin queue, a sort of covering that was "a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair." This was in "other times;" and here is a "Tail" of that remote period:

"A Tale I'll tell of "other times," Because I'm in the mind: You may have seen the tale before, I've seen it oft behind.

"There's no detraction in this tale, Nor any vile attack, Or slander when 'tis told, although It goes behind one's back.

"Impartial auditors it had, Who ne'er began to rail, Because there always was an ear For both sides of the tale.

"But oh, alas! I have forgot, I am not in the queue; The tale has just dropped from my head. As it was wont to do!"

A clergyman in one of our New England villages once preached a sermon, which one of his auditors commended.

This was told to the preacher. He resented it, at once, and called upon his parishioner to retract what he had said.

"I am not," replied the aggressor, "very apt to retract any thing I may have said, for I usually weigh my words before I speak them. But in this instance I will retract. I said you had stolen the sermon. I find, however, that I was wrong; for on returning home, and referring to the book whence I thought it had been taken, I found it there, word for word!"

The angry clergyman "left the presence," with an apparent consciousness that he had made very little by his "motion."

Lundy Foot, the celebrated snuff-manufacturer, originally kept a small tobacconist's shop at Limerick, Ireland. One night his house, which was uninsured, was burnt to the ground. As he contemplated the smoking ruins on the following morning, in a state bordering on despair, some of the poor neighbors, groping among the embers for what they could find, stumbled upon several canisters of unconsumed but half-baked snuff, which they tried, and found so grateful to their noses, that they loaded their waistcoat pockets with the spoil.

Lundy Foot, roused from his stupor, at length imitated their example, and took a pinch of his own property, when he was instantly struck by the superior pungency and flavor it had acquired from the great heat to which it had been exposed. Treasuring up this valuable hint, he took another house in a place called "Black-Yard," and, preparing a large oven for the purpose, set diligently about the manufacture of that high-dried commodity, which soon became widely known as "Black-Yard Snuff;" a term subsequently corrupted into the more familiar word, "Blackguard."

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