Volume 1 — "MARKS OF BARHAMVILLE."

We were summoned one evening some three or four months ago to the house of an eminent New Yorker to hear read the manuscript verses of a gentleman from South Carolina, who was quite sure that he had earned for himself a name that should endure forever as a part of the national glory. We had good wine and the choicest company, and these kept us from sleep through numerous scenas and cantos, and if we formed any judgment in the premises we believe we did not express one. In due time Messrs. Appleton published the book, and as it has not been noticed much here, we copy from the June Fraser the following paragraphs about it, premising that our author had no faith in American criticism, but was quite willing to abide the decisions of English reviewers:

"The general fault of carelessness and clumsiness runs through the volume of poems, apparently, of a Trans-atlantic author, 'Marks of Barhamville.' The book is just three times as large as it should have been—as is usually the case nowadays. When will poets learn that 'brevity is the soul of wit:' and more, that saying a thing in three weak lines is no substitute whatsoever for the power of saying it in one strong one? Of the first poem in the book, 'Elfreide of Guldal,' we are unable to speak, having been unable to read it; but it evinces at least more historic information than is common just now among our poets, who seem to forget utterly that ex nihilo nihil fit, and that the brains of man may be as surely pumped dry as any other vessel, if nothing be put in to replace what is taken out. Mr. Marks cannot avoid, too, giving us, like every one else, a set of clinical lectures on the morbid anatomy of his own inner man, under the appropriate title of 'Weeds from Life's Sea-shore;' forgetting that sea-weeds must be very rare and delicate indeed to be worth preserving in a hortus siccus, instead of being usefully covered out of sight in the nearest earth-heap, there to turn into manure. He is, however, more objective than most of his self-exenterating compeers; but he wants the grace and cheerful lightness of the American school. A large part of his volume is taken up with 'Maia, a masque'—an imitation of Milton's manner, but not, alas! of his melody and polish; as, for instance:—

"'Not a warbler wakes his lay, Not a dewdrop pearls the spray, Not a fleecy cloud-rack sails 'Fore the warm-breath'd summer gales, Shedding blessings on the earth, But heavenward points its primal birth. "Hark! the green-sedg'd chiming rill, Weeding down yon cot-crown'd hill, The torrent's dash, the river's gush, The mighty wind-resounding crush Of the fallen monarch of the wood, Re-echo'd by the distant flood.

"However, this masque is readable enough, though Flora and Zephyrus, Oberon and Titania, not much wanted anywhere in the nineteenth century, seem oddly out of place amid 'whippoor-wills,' and 'mockbirds,' and other Yankee nationalities, pleasing and natural as they are in themselves. How did they get into the Alleghanies? By liner or steamer? In the main cabin or the steerage? And were they, were they sea-sick? One would fear it from the unwonted huskiness of their new utterances.

"The best thing in the book is 'Semaël,' though the plot is neither very apparent nor very novel, the imagery as trite as need be, the blank verse heavy and monotonous, without breaks, grouping, or relief, and the accents as often as not on the prepositions:—

"'Thé felucca there With lateen-sail, seen ín th' horizon-skirt Shaping its course t'ward thé Egyptian shore, "(Which Egyptian shore?) "Gives tó the moon the silv'ry foam, which breaks "(Could it give the foam from the moon?) "'Gainst thé sharp keel, and tracks the wave with light. While just beneath him bounds the lighter skiff With bird-like speed; and darting tó the shore, Lowers íts white sail, "(Not another bark's, mind!) and moors its painted prow "(Oh, schoolboy's phrase!) "Close tó the cliff. Disporting ín the sheen....

"And so forth.

"And yet this whole passage, and what follows, is really imaginative and picturesque, but spoilt by carelessness, carelessness, carelessness. Either write verses, we say again, or prose. And unless the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and sugary as Mr. —— Who's?"

Lord Brougham, who next to the Duke of Wellington is now unquestionably the first man of the British Empire, a few days ago in the House of Lords complained of an instance of libel of a species which is extremely common in the United States, and which is of all species the most irritating and offensive. Lord Brougham observed, that no one who had lived so long as he had in Parliament had ever taken notice so seldom of any libellous matter published, or of any breach of privilege committed against him. He might also add, that no person had ever been more the object of the most indiscriminate, and he might say the most absurd and the most unfounded abuse. Nevertheless, in all such cases he had adopted a neutral course, and had left the truth to come out in the natural lapse of events. There was, however, one species of breach of privilege which he had never been disposed to pass unnoticed. Attacks one must undergo. To be exposed to attacks was the fate of all men who lived in public. No man ought to shrink from or be too sensitive to attacks; but, under pretence of stating what a lord had said in Parliament, to put words into his mouth which he had never uttered, for the purpose, the express purpose, of calumniating him,—words which the writer of the calumny must have well known that he had never uttered, to put such words into his mouth for such a purpose, formed a case in which he thought that the party calumniated was bound to bring the party so offending under the notice of their lordships. Lord Brougham proceeded to arraign the Daily News for an example of this crime which would have done no dishonor to the inventive faculties of the Literary World.

A Mock Guillotine.—Delirium Tremens on The Stage.—It is stated in Galignani's Messenger that at the end of the late carnival two married women of Vidauban Department of the Var manufactured a lay figure, entirely in white, and, after attaching a chain round its neck, placed it in a small cart. Many of the inhabitants then paraded it through the village in solemn procession, accompanied by a crowd of men carrying axes, &c., and singing revolutionary songs. After a while they formed a sort of revolutionary tribunal, and the figure, which was called "Blanc," was gravely tried, and, by the majority of the votes of the crowd, condemned to death, the principal judge, a man named Arnaud, saying, "Blanc! you prevent us from dancing farandoles, and therefore we condemn you to death!" Thereupon, a man seized the figure, placed it on a plank, and at one blow with his axe severed the head from the body. A bottle of wine had been placed in the neck of the figure, and, this having been broken by the blow, a resemblance of blood was produced. The head was then cast into the crowd and torn to pieces by them. This scandalous scene created a most painful impression throughout the department. A few days afterward, four men who played a principal part in the affair, and the two women who made the figure, were brought to trial on the charge of exciting citizens to hatred of each other. The men pleaded drunkenness as an excuse—the women declared that they had only intended to amuse their children. Four of the accused were acquitted, and the other two, who had acted as judge and executioner, were condemned to four and three months' imprisonment. It is a pity that by the application of some such law, the disgustingly vulgar and brutalizing piece called The Drunkard, which has lately been played with "immense success" at Barnum's Theatre, (and in which the chief characters appear in all the stages of degradation until one of them is nearly dead with the delirium tremens), cannot be suppressed. With all its pretensions to morality, the play is irredeemably bad and base.

The Cincinnati Art Union advertises Powers's Greek Slave as one of its prizes, and publishes an engraving of it which should frighten away all subscriptions.

American Extension and Conquest.—The Daily News thus opens an article upon the recent attempt to invade Cuba:

"Shortly after the American war; a sapient French statesman, writing from Louisiana to his royal master in Paris, advised the French government to cultivate a close and intimate alliance with the Cherokee Indians, who, occupying as they did the defiles of the Alleghanies, would form a permanent bulwark between the young Anglo-Saxon republic and the French possessions on the Mississippi. But the permanent bulwark could no more resist the advancing wave than a lath and plaster breakwater could withstand the seas of the Channel. In a few short years not a vestige of it was to be found, and in less than a quarter of a century both French and Cherokees had disappeared from the scene. Not only were the defiles of the Alleghanies opened, but the Alleghanies themselves have since been virtually removed. Ever since the foundation of the republic, our American kinsmen have been anxious to emulate and surpass us in indulging that desire for territorial acquisition, which seems to be, for the present at least, the ruling passion of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Confined at first between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, they gradually spread westward to the Mississippi, of both banks of which, from its sources to its embouchure, they possessed themselves as early as 1806. Their coast line, which, originally, did not extend beyond the St. Mary, was soon afterward carried round the peninsula of Florida, and along the northern shore of the Mexican Gulf, westward to the mouth of the Sabine. Not satisfied with this, they planted themselves in Texas, and some years afterward transferred their boundary to the Rio Grande. Oregon, New Mexico, and California, fell in quick succession within the grasp of the confederacy. The entire disappearance of the Spaniard from the continent is a consummation, not even doubtful, but simply awaiting the convenience of the encroaching Anglo-Saxon. For the accession of Canada, time is implicitly relied upon—the idea of conquest in that quarter being out of the question—and thus it is that even sober-minded men are beginning to believe that the time is not far off when the glowing prophecies of the most sanguine will be realized, that the boundaries of the republic would yet be the Isthmus, the North Pole, and the two oceans."

Ledru Rollin's new work, "The Decline of England," of which the first volume only has appeared, is, as might have been anticipated, savagely attacked in most of the British journals. The Times observes:

"M. Ledru Rollin professes to be a philosopher and a statesman, and, being induced by somewhat peculiar circumstances to reflect upon the condition of this country, he was, he tells us, driven to the conclusion that we are a declining people, destined in no short period to exhibit to mankind a fearful spectacle of misery and ruin. Some persons have thought, that the many manifestations of material wealth and power which must have presented themselves to the eyes and mind of M. Ledru Rollin, even on the most casual observation, should have induced him in his character of philosoper to hesitate in deciding so hastily, and with such emphasis, that our destruction is imminent. But in our opinion there are events of everyday occurrence connected with our social habits and customs—events which from their frequency cease to excite our attention—which should be deemed still more important and significant, and which to one really deserving the name of a philosopher would appear more powerful guarantees for the future happiness of a people among whom they occur than any afforded by mere proofs of great wealth, power, or skill. It is much the fashion with those who delight to deal in doleful vaticinations as to the future destiny of England, to dwell with great emphasis upon the amazing diversity of conditions to be seen here—to exaggerate the suffering of the millions of our poor, and to place them in a sort of rhetorical contrast with the extravagant wealth of a favored few. But there is still something in the mutual relations of all classes of society in this country that proves a healthy condition to exist in our body politic, that shows that we are really brethren, and that whether interest or kind sympathies govern us we are still one people—with great differences of opinion among us indeed, openly expressed by all, but still with a feeling prevalent in all classes of the community that we form one people, and that we are, from the most powerful to the most weak, bound together by ties of great regard as well as national brotherhood."

The Late Catastrophe on Lake Erie.—Our whole country has been once more shocked by an appalling and unnecessary loss of life, from the burning of the steamer Griffith. We use the expression, unnecessary loss of life, not from any hasty impulse, or undue excitement, but in view of the evident and undeniable fact, that two hundred and fifty human beings have been sacrificed for a culpable neglect on the part of the proprietors of the steamer to furnish suitable protection. No one competent to judge will doubt that every individual on the Griffith might have been saved had she been provided with life-boats. The avarice of proprietors has generally prevented their use, though the cost of a sufficient number for each steamer would not exceed one thousand dollars. The lives of hundreds of men, women and children are of little account to a corporation, when weighed against a thousand dollars of their capital stock. Life-boats cannot save their burning property, and why impair their own interests for the saving a few hundred lives now and then? We have the approbation of every disinterested citizen, when we suggest to Congress some law which shall compel steamboat owners to protect their passengers in case of accident, by suitable life-saving apparatus. Fire-proof paints and other incombustible materials are very wisely demanded, but our navigation is exposed to a thousand other dangers, which can be guarded against by no other means so effectually as by life-boats; and it should be within the duties of the inspectors to see that steamers are in all instances furnished with a sufficient number of them to contain their full complement of passengers.

M. Lamartine has left Paris to visit his estate in the East.