Book 9 — Recent Deaths.

Augustus Sidney Doane was born, of a highly respectable family, in Boston, on the second day of April, 1808. He was educated at Harvard College, from which he received the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine, in 1828, a few months before attaining his majority. He soon after went to Europe, where he passed two years in travel, and in attendance upon medical and surgical lectures, in Paris; and returning, in 1830, was married to Miss Gordon, the daughter of an eminent merchant of Boston, and settled in the city of New-York, where he continued to reside until his death, at Staten Island, on the morning of the 27th of January. Although at all times an earnest student and successful practitioner in his profession, Dr. Doane, for several years after his settlement in New-York, devoted considerable attention to political, historical and general, literature, and from the first, he was an industrious writer on medicine and surgery. When the cholera first broke out in this country, in 1832, he was the earliest to address the profession in a scientific and practical discussion of its character, and the ability, untiring industry, bravery and benevolence which he exhibited during that melancholy season, established his popularity with the people, and secured for him a degree of respect from his class which they have seldom bestowed on one so young. Among his earliest contributions to medical literature, was his edition of Dr. Good's Study of Medicine, in which he embodied, not only very important discussions and notes of fact by himself, but the best views of the medical writers of the United States on the various subjects treated in that celebrated performance. He inscribed his edition of the Study of Medicine to the common friend of the author and himself, the learned and excellent Dr. John W. Francis. He also translated Maygrier's great work on Midwifery, and several standard authorities on Anatomy and Surgery; among which are Dupuytren's Surgery, Lugol's Researches on Scrofulous Diseases, Bayle's Descriptive Anatomy, Blandin's Topographical Anatomy, Meckel's Anatomy, Scoutetten on Cholera, Ricord on Syphilis, and Chaussier on the Arteries. His editorial contributions to Surgery Illustrated, and many occasional papers in the medical journals also increased his fame and usefulness. It was, perhaps, his chief distinction as an author, that, being familiar with the languages of France, Germany and Italy, and personally acquainted with the living lights of medical science in those countries, and with the practice which obtained in the chief foreign hospitals, he was among the first, as he was the most diligent and successful, in translating the chief works of the European physicians into our language, and adapting them to our habits and necessities. In 1839, he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the University of New-York, but he soon resigned, with his colleagues. In 1840, he received from Governor Seward, the place of Health Officer and Physician in Chief to the Marine Hospital, and, with Dr. Turner, Health Commissioner, and Dr. McNevin, Resident Physician, constituted the Board of Commissioners of Health, which then exercised all the functions of the present Commissioners of Emigration. Fearless and energetic in the discharge of his official duties, (which he always attended to in person, and not, as the custom of some is, by deputies), he protected the city from unnecessary fear, as well as from disease, and presented bills of mortality scarcely paralleled in the hospitals of the country—averaging but seven per cent. The Commissioners in general superintendence of the Quarantine, in reports to the Legislature, awarded to him the highest praise for his administration, and when, in consequence of a change in the political character of the government, he was superseded, in 1843, both the Irish and German Emigrant Societies tendered him expressions of gratitude for his unwearying zeal and humanity in behalf of the class most dependent upon his services. In 1848, he was appointed one of the consulting physicians of the Bellevue Hospital, but declined the office, in consequence of holding the agreeable and profitable post of physician to the Astor House. During the prevalence of the cholera in New-York in 1849, he was one of the ward cholera physicians, and devoted himself with his customary earnestness, to practise among the poor of his district. In 1850, he was again appointed Health Officer by Governor Fish, and he discharged his duties until he followed Drs. Treat, Ledyard, Baily, De Witt, and others, in the sacrifice of his life to them. He was seized with the ship-fever on the 14th of January, while inspecting the packet Great Western, which arrived from Liverpool early on the morning of that day, with nearly seven hundred immigrants, of whom a large proportion were sick. He spent several hours in examination and the supervision of removals to the hospital, during which several deaths occurred, and was soon after, with Mr. Lewis B. Butler, the humane and efficient steward, who had been honorably associated with him in both terms of his administration as Health Officer, attacked with the fever in its most malignant form. Dr. Doane died on the 27th of January, and Mr. Butler on the 6th of February. These deaths were public as well as private calamities. Dr. Doane must be ranked among the most generous, wise, and active citizens—the most warm-hearted and respectable men—as well as among the most eminent physicians, of our time, in New-York. On the 15th of February, an eloquent discourse upon his life and character was delivered by his friend, the Rev. E. H. Chapin, in his church in Murray-street, of which Dr. Doane was a member.

Since the above notice of Dr. Doane was written, we have received from one of the most eminent physicians of the United States the following estimate of his character and abilities:

"The character of Dr. Doane commends itself to our consideration for many striking traits. His whole life, from his boyhood, was marked by a devotion to the acquisition of knowledge. His attainments enabled him to enter Harvard University at an early age, and he was recognized in that admirable school as a young man of splendid abilities and thorough scholarship. His medical theses there were exhibitions of knowledge such as is but rarely possessed by the students, whose aim is chiefly for the doctorate. He received the highest medical honors of his Alma Mater, with the warmest approbation of the professors. By that rigid economy of time which through life distinguished him in all his pursuits, he found leisure, amidst multiplied cares and responsibilities, to become an excellent satirist and Grecian, and to this he added a knowledge of the French, German, and Italian languages. From his literary labors we might infer that his chief excellence was in the promptitude and ability which he evinced in the preparation of so many works of writers abroad, in translations for the American public. But this view of the case would hardly do justice to the stature of his mind, and his talents for original observation. Struggling with many difficulties and urged by the necessities of a family, it became his imperative duty to give his best efforts to those occasions which might prove most available for his wants; and hence we find him more busily employed in the promulgation of the doctrines and opinions of others, than in recording the results of his immediate practical wisdom. His most labored effort is unquestionably his translation from the German of the large work by Professor Meckel, on Human Anatomy. In his admirable edition of Good's Study of Medicine, we notice more of the immediate observer, and the man of extensive medical and physiological reading. This great treatise by the learned Good found in Dr. Doane a worthy editor. His edition is enlarged by numerous notes by the cis-atlantic scholar, and as they embrace the theoretical and practical views of the physicians and writers of the United States, it has always held a conspicuous place among books referred to for the doctrines, in theory and in practice, of a large number of the best original observers our country has occasion to boast of. This contribution to the science of healing has met with an extensive sale with the profession, and like other efforts of Dr. Doane in the departments of physical science, been productive of great benefit to the noble calling of which he was so conspicuous a member."

R. A. Davenport, an English writer, whose histories of America and India, and some of whose poems, were formerly well known, died in Camberwell, on the 21st of January, at the age of seventy-five. The attention of a police officer was attracted by moans issuing from Brunswick-cottage, Park-street, the residence of the deceased. He broke into the front parlor, and found Mr. Davenport lying in the passage, nearly dead, with a bottle that had contained laudanum in his hand. A surgeon was sent for, but a few minutes after his arrival, he expired. Several bottles containing laudanum were found in his bedroom, of which he was in the habit of taking large quantities while writing. The house presented an extraordinary appearance; the rooms were literally crammed with books, manuscripts, pictures, ancient coins, and antiques of various descriptions. Mr. Davenport has resided in it more than eleven years, during which time it had never been cleansed, and the books, beds, and furniture were rapidly decaying, every thing being covered with dust. The windows were all broken, the whole place presenting a most dilapidated appearance. Verdict was "That the deceased died from inadvertently taking an overdose of opium."

The eminent Italian poet, Giovanni Berchet, died near the first of January. Born, says the Athenæum, at Milan, in 1788, he imbibed at an early age that hatred of the rule of Austria which a few years afterwards inspired his muse. It was when the well-known political events of 1821 forced him to leave his country, that his active mind, fervently devoted to the principles of rational liberty, burst forth in those powerful and touching strains which are to this day deeply graven on the heart of every Italian patriot, and which, during the sanguinary contest of 1848, beguiled the weary march of the troops, and animated the combatants in the conflict. He was the first who had the courage to forsake the old beaten track of insipid sonnet-making. His poems stand alone, unrivalled in the novelty of their language and conception, and in the noble spirit which pervades every line. Few Italians can repeat his Clarina, his Matilde, or the Hermit of Mont Cenis, without feeling strong emotion. But by far the best of his productions, which unfortunately are not numerous, are the Fantasie. The language and versification are beautiful and varied, and we strongly recommend all Italian students to leave, with all due respect, Tasso and Petrarch for a while, and read a page of Giovanni Berchet. This distinguished patriot-poet was for some time member of the Sardinian parliament, and his loss is deeply mourned in all Italy.

The death of the younger of the celebrated Misses Berry, is mentioned in the London Times. She died, after a short illness, at the advanced age of nearly eighty-eight, in the unimpaired vigor of all her faculties. Her varied talents and incomparable amiability threw light and life around the graver and loftier powers of her sister, and their union, unbroken for an hour through the greatest portion of a century, made them the charm of the most brilliant circles in Europe. Her sister, in her eighty-ninth year, equally unfaded in her great intellectual gifts, still lingers for a while on the scene.

The Paris papers report the death, in that city, in his eighty-fifth year, of M. Louis Bertin Parant, a painter on ivory and porcelain of great eminence. As early as the days of the First Consulship he was distinguished by Napoleon; and his works on ivory executed by sovereign order during the Empire found their way as Imperial gifts into the collections of various princes of Europe. The Journal des Débats refers particularly to his Table representing the great generals of antiquity, as having been presented by Louis the Eighteenth to the Prince Regent of England, and as being now in the possession of Queen Victoria.

The Paris Journal des Débats reports the death, in his fifty-fifth year, of M. Benjamin Laroche, a translator into French of some of the works of Shakspeare and of Byron, and an original poet of some traditional reputation—having been popularly known in early life for attempts which gave false promise of greatness.

Eugene Levesque, author of two volumes on the United States, and of a large work on the State of Russia died in Paris, Jan. 4, aged 81.

Mr. Thomas Williams, a well-known and much respected man of letters, for several years the consul of the government of Venezuela, for New-York, died suddenly, of disease of the heart, in this city, on the night of the second of February. We had known Mr. Williams a great many years, and shared in the general regard inspired by his amiability, and the quiet bravery of his life, of which many illustrations are known to his more intimate acquaintances. He was an Englishman, of good family, born in London in 1790, and educated we believe at one of the great universities. We have heard him say, that in early life he was as thin almost as Calvin Edson, but for the last fifteen or twenty years he was the most obese and plethoric-looking person in New-York—a sort of Lewis, or Lambert, of astonishing breadth and rotundity. We must not enter into details respecting his domestic life, but it may be mentioned that he was a party to a clandestine marriage, that his wife was an invalid for very many years, and that he toiled with his pen incessantly to promote her happiness. He was best known as a translator, and gave to the press a vast number of the novels of Dumas and other Frenchmen. He slept little, and it was his habit to sit by his table, in his chamber, from eight o'clock in the evening until nearly morning, plying his pen with neatness and rapidity, and with an unusual command of good English, though his style was sometimes defective in finish, and he never acquired much skill in punctuation. His original compositions, chiefly in magazines and newspapers, were very numerous, and on a vast variety of subjects, indicating a rarely equalled mastery of curious intelligence.

Colonel Wolfgang Baron Keményi belonged to the ancient family of Johan of Keményi, in former times sovereign of Transylvania. He was born in 1789, in Torda (Transylvania), and received his first education at the University of Nagy-Enyor. At seventeen he entered the Austrian army. He commenced his military career in the times of Napoleon, and took an active part in the French campaign from 1813 to 1815. After the termination of the war, he still continued, during a few years, in the same regiment, when, tired of the idle life in garrison, he left the army in 1824 as captain. From that moment he retired to his estates at Torda, where soon after he married the daughter of an Austrian general, and led, in this retirement until 1834, the quiet life of an agriculturist. The complexion of the times did not permit him to spend his whole time in solitude, and being a patriot, he soon entered the political field, became a zealous visitor of congress and the diets, and one of the most decided adversaries of Austria. He next became a member of the Transylvanian Diet, and through his participation in the discussions and struggles of that time, the storms of 1848 did not find him unprepared to brave them. He was one of those, who the first declared openly in favor of the unions question; at Torda, surrounded by Wallachian fanatics, he unfolded the banner of union. When it became Keményi's conviction that the crisis could not be removed in a peaceable way, he drew again his sword, and his heroic exploits during the memorable winter campaign under Bem, in Transylvania, contributed highly to the glory of the Hungarian arms. Having been appointed, by the Archduke Stephen, of Austria, Major of the Transylvanian National Guard, he distinguished himself eminently in the victorious battles at Szibo, Besstritz, and others; and afterwards he was nominated Lieutenant-Colonel in the Active Army, and at the same time charged by Bem with the command of a portion of his division. His most heroic deed was the battle of Ploki. Bem, at the head of a very small but audacious band, arrived victorious before Herrmannstadt, capital of the province; but there, surrounded and pressed by an overpowering number of enemies, he commissioned Keményi to march to the frontier, and take up a reinforcement. He immediately undertook that march, pierced the lines of the enemy, drew on the reinforcements, and a few days after, delivered that memorable battle in which, with 2,000 men and seven guns, he beat the whole Austrian force, consisting of 15,000 men and thirty cannons, out of the field. By this victory he not only averted the destruction of Transylvania, which a day before still appeared inevitable, but he also gave to Bem opportunity to establish that grand line of offensive operations which, in less than a month, swept Transylvania clear of the enemy. For the valor displayed in this decisive action, he was made Colonel, and received the order of valor, second class, having been decorated some time before with the same order of the third class. He took also a glorious part in all the important battles of the summer campaign. He was one of those superior officers of the Transylvanian army to whom Bem was mostly attached, and, possessing his entire confidence, were steadfast till the last moment. On the termination of the war, although proscribed, he lived for some time at his native place; but, searched for every where, he at last was obliged to fly to England. After Kossuth's arrival in London he became president of the administration of the Hungarian emigration. When he took the management, it was already in bad circumstances, but on the departure of Kossuth he had to overcome greater difficulties, because his solicitude extended itself not only to the emigrants residing in England, but to those who languished in France and Belgium. Notwithstanding the loss of his estates by sequestration, he still possessed some pecuniary means, and assisted, as far as he could, his distressed countrymen; and during the short time of his administration, he was always acting, with paternal care, for the good of his unhappy companions. Baron Keményi died suddenly in London, on Monday, the 5th of January, while listening to the reading of a letter respecting the management of his committee, addressed to the Daily News, by Mr. Toulmin Smith. He was sixty-three years of age.

Hebert Rodwell, for many years known in musical and literary circles as a composer and author died in London early in January. He possessed considerable taste and feeling, and produced ballads and concerted pieces of much sweetness. As a dramatic author, his efforts were principally confined to performances of a light and humorous cast, including burlesques and the openings of pantomimes. He produced two serial works of fiction, each of which had a fair success—Old London Bridge and The Memoirs of an Umbrella, Some scenes from the latter were dramatized, and had a run at the Adelphi.

General Sir Frederick Philipse Robinson, G.C.B., Colonel of the thirty-ninth Regiment, died at Brighton on the 1st instant, in his eighty-eighth year. He was the oldest soldier in the British army, having been within a month of seventy-five years in the service. He was a native of New-York, and a son of the well known royalist, Colonel Beverly Robinson, whose name is associated with that of Andre in the treason of Benedict Arnold, by a daughter of Frederick Philipse. He entered the British army as an ensign, in February, 1777, and for five years he was in the first American war, and was present in the principal battles fought during that period. Subsequently, in 1794, he went to the West Indies, and shared in the capture of Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe; he was also at the storming of Fleur d'Epée and the Heights of Palmiste. In 1812 Philipse Robinson joined the army in the Peninsula. At the battle of Vittoria he commanded the brigade which carried the village of Gamazza Mayo, without firing one shot. He also was present at the first and second assaults on San Sebastian, and was severely wounded at the second attack. He took part in the passage of the Bidassoa, the grand reconnaissance before Bayonne, the battle of the Nive (being there again severely wounded), in the blockade of Bayonne, and in the repulse of the sortie from that place, when he succeeded to the command of the fifth division of the army. In June, 1814, Major-General Robinson went to North America in command of a brigade, and he led the forces intended for the attack on Plattsburg, but received orders to retire, after having forced the passage of the Saranac. After the end of hostilities, he came from Canada to this city to embark for England, and on his way stopped at the old family mansion where he was born—two or three miles above West Point—and as he walked through the house (now owned by Mr. Richard D. Arden), he is said to have "wept like a child." Soon after the conclusion of the war he was appointed commander-in-chief and provisional governor of the Upper Provinces, which appointment he held until June, 1816. He had received the gold medal with two clasps for Vittoria, San Sebastian, and the Nive.

The Rev. John Taylor Jones, D.D., of the Baptist Mission in Siam, died in Bangkok, on the 13th of September, 1851, after an illness of about one week. He was one of the best scholars and most uniformly successful translators in the missionary service of the American churches. He had been in Siam nearly twenty years, and, with the exception of the book of Genesis, had rendered the entire Bible into the Siamese language. He was well known and much respected by the best classes of the people of that country, and the king of Siam (who fluently speaks and writes English) marked his sense of the public bereavement by a letter of condolence to his widow.

The English West Indian steam-ship Amazon, left Southampton for a first voyage on Friday the 2d of January, and at a quarter before one o'clock on Sunday morning was discovered to be on fire; the flames had soon complete mastery of the vessel, and so swift was its destruction that many perished in their berths by suffocation, and many of those who, half naked, made their way to the deck, were burnt in ascending the ladders, and several passengers are described as having rushed up with their clothes in flames. In twenty minutes all was over but the last cruel agony. So rapid was the ravage, that it seems to have been more like an explosion than the ordinary progress of fire. The alarm and despair were almost simultaneous. The number of persons destroyed in this most pitiable and frightful catastrophe was 115, and among them was the accomplished author, Mr. Eliot Warburton. His career in literature had been unusually brief. It is only a few years since The Crescent and the Cross attracted general applause; Hochelaga, or, The Conquest of Canada, followed soon after; and last year gave us his Memoirs of Horace Walpole, and the story of Darien, or, The Merchant Prince. Mr. Warburton had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company, to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien. It was also the intention of Mr. Warburton to make himself perfectly acquainted with every part of these districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources, and he undoubtedly would have given the results of his visit in an interesting and valuable work on the subject, if he had lived.

Frederic Ricci, the composer, lately died in the prime of life and talent. He was stricken by apoplexy in the post-carriage between Warsaw and St. Petersburg. Ricci was the author of many operas, more successful in Italy than elsewhere, but whose names are well known to the musical public every where. The Prigioni d'Edimburgo is the most famous of his operas, among which Rolla, Estella, and Griselda are not unknown. His Corrado d'Altamura failed in Paris in 1844. He had recently produced at Venice I due Ritratti, an opera of which he composed both words and music, and last May was summoned to Russia, under the especial patronage of Field Marshal Paskewitch, and saw before him the promise of that brilliant career which the great wealth and cultivation of the Russian aristocracy secure to a few fortunate artists of every kind. On the 2d December he wrote to the distinguished tenor, Moriani, that, for the first time, fortune smiled upon him. He quotes from his own opera of Rolla, of which the tenor part was written for Moriani—"A nameless stone shall cover my grave"—smiles at the thought; says that it will be his own fault if it is so, and within a few weeks reaches the scene of his anticipated triumphs, a corpse.

Baron D'Ohson, a distinguished oriental scholar of Sweden, died at Stockholm early in January, at the age of seventy-two. He was of Armenian origin, and was born at Constantinople, November 26, 1779. His father, Ignace Muradgi, the author of a work on Turkish history, was first dragoman of the Swedish embassy in that city. He was educated at Paris, and among the manuscripts of the National Library, gathered the material for two works published in French, which gained him an enviable reputation. One was The Peoples of the Caucasus, by Abdul-Cassim, the traveller; the other The History of Mongolia, from Dschingis Khan to Timour; the second appeared at the Hague in 1835. M. D'Ohson served his country as ambassador for considerable periods at Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London.

Mrs. Harlowe, at the advanced age of eighty-seven, expired at her lodgings at Gravesend, near London, on New-Year's-day. She was a very popular actress in her time, principally attached to Drury-Lane Theatre. Many years since she retired from the stage, and had since received a pension from the Drury-Lane Fund, to which she was one of the original subscribers. Her annuity for the first ten years amounted to £140 per annum, but since was reduced to £112, the claimants on the fund having considerably increased. Mrs. Harlowe was the last of the old school of actresses.

Mr. Acheson Maxwell died in London, near the beginning of January, at the advanced age of ninety-one. He was a very early friend of the late Earl of Macartney, under whom he held various confidential employments at Madras, in the memorable embassy to China, and at the Cape of Good Hope. He also accompanied him in 1795, on a confidential mission to Louis XVIII., then residing at Verona. He afterward held for several years a place in the office of the auditor of public accounts, but in his last days he was in the enjoyment of a pension.