riedly composed, in somewhere about a month, | Bentham heard of him through some of his disci

these two volumes made an immense sensation. They contained notices,—

ples, who had met him at a club, and invited him to dinner. The philosopher was pleased with his original character, and soon after, at his request, Mr. Neal removed to his house, in Queen's Square, which was his home until the conclusion of his residence in London. There,' he says in his biography prefixed to the translation of the Principles of Legislation from the French of Dumont, I had a glorious library at my elbow, a fine large comfortable study, warmed by a steam-engine, exercise under ground, society, and retirement, all within my reach. In fact, there I spent the happiest, and I believe the most useful days that I passed at that period of my life.' He left London early in 1827 for Paris, and after travelling a short time in France, returned to the United States."

"of the most prominent statesmen, orators, authors, artists, and other public characters of the time, who were criticized in it with unhesitating freedom, in a style peculiarly his own, and often with great keenness and discrimination. A sketch of William Pinkney, in which that eminent laywer had full justice done to his abilities and acquisitions, gave offence to his son, Edward Coate Pinkney, then a midshipman in the navy, and afterwards distinguished as a very graceful and elegant poet. Young Pinkney was a sort of sentimental Quixote, so sudden in quarrel as to be avoided as much as possible by his peace-loving acquaintances, but was so skilful in finding causes of feud, that the most careful of them would not at any time have been surprised by his challenge. Mr. Neal denied that he could be held accountable for the contents of an anonymous and unacknowledged publication, and as he had been for several months writing against the custom of duelling, would probably, for the sake of consistency, have refused under any circumstances to fight. On receiving his answer, Pinkney posted him as a 'craven,' and for a week afterwards walked two hours every day before his office, that he might have ample opportunities of taking satisfaction on his person. But our author, whose courage, or rashness even, appears not to have been doubted, was preparing a different revenge, and soon printed the correspondence, gave a fac-simile of the 'posting,' and What we have quoted from the volume before turned the whole affair into ridicule, in a post-us sufficiently indicates its character. We may script to his next new novel. This was 'Errata, or the Works of Will Adams,' completing eight stout volumes in a single year, in addition to his essays in the periodicals, and his labors in the courts, which are said to have been quite sufficient to have kept on the rack the mind of a common lawyer."

Neal was not a man to stick at trifles. His resolutions were sudden but sure. Two novels of his, 'Logan' and 'Seventy-Six,' having been reprinted in London, he determined at once on visiting England; satisfied that, happen what would, if people gave any thing for books here they would not be able to starve him, since he could live upon air and write faster than any man that ever yet lived."

"Mr. Neal arrived in Liverpool in January, 1824. He soon became a contributor to various periodicals, for which he wrote, chiefly under the guise of an Englishman, numerous articles to correct erroneous opinions which prevailed in regard to the social and political condition of the United States. He made his first appearance in Blackwood's Magazine, in Sketches of the Five

American Presidents and the Five Candidates for the Presidency, which was followed by numerous other papers in the various gazettes, magazines, and reviews, and by a novel in three volumes, entitled Brother Jonathan. Jeremy

We shall pursue the life of this remarkable person no further. His literary merits may be readily conceived. Abundance of impulse and fancy, with little care or judgment, distinguish him both as verseman and as proseman. If any author, however, were likely to exhibit national characteristics we should expect them from such a man as Neal. Credit is, accordingly, given him for their possession. He is still living.

"Mr. Neal continues to reside in Portland. His youth was passed in tumult and adventure; and he waits the approach of age in independence and ease, -a model in his relations as a man and as a citizen."

In Mr. add a few sentences in conclusion. Prescott, the historian of Mexico and Peru, and Mr. Bancroft, that of the United States, the New World has two worthy sons, by whom her literature is promoted in rank. Of her lighter writers, in addition to those already mentioned, Kennedy, Bird, and Ware are names of which the New World is confessedly proud- but not with equal justice. The second is a dramatist as well as a novelist-a rara avis in American authorship, and therefore much prized. We believe that this gentleman's tragedies though acted have not been printed. They are The Gladiator,'' Oraloosa,' and 'The Broker of Bogota.' The first was some years ago performed in England, on the occasion of Mr. Forrest's engagement at Drury Lane; when it was far from being successful or deserving success. had an opportunity at the time of reading the MS.; and recollect well that though apparently written in blank verse, the author was no craftsman in that form of composition. Neither was he a poet, only "wanting the accomplishment of

We

verse." The fine sense was as much absent as

the correct rhythm. The piece, in fact, had no
and that of a poor
merit but as a melo-drama,
description.

We may catalogue, too, to complete our view | lesque; and they are as a class, our readers well over this collection, the names of Osborne, Irv- know, exceedingly quaint and peculiar. In ing, Longfellow, Hall, Thomas, Mathews, Haw- England we have to translate, as it were, in orthorne, Willis, W. P. Simms, and Poe, in addi- der to relish them. Such is the case both with tion to Bryant and Dana- not to pretermit the Sands and Neal:- but Clarke and Sanderson ladies, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Elizabeth Okes Smith, may be favorably quoted as exceptions. So nuand Mrs. Kirkland. The following piece of merous, however, are the comic and satirical literary history and criticism may be worth re- writers that an account of them within reasonacording in this place- though the facts are not ble limits is impossible. The essayists of Amernew to some of our readers. ica are chiefly philosophical; the best and most influential being of the transcendental schoolthe next best their immediate opponents. A class of writers has been created by the national practice of delivering addresses on festival occasions and before societies, in the United States, by scholars, jurists, and statesmen. These men contribute an important and significant body of literature; and among them the names of Franklin, Channing, Everett, and Emerson are distinguished. The critics are, of course, a numerous class:- and the reader will find a sufficient account of them in Mr. Griswold's volume.

"Mr. Paulding and Mr. Irving commenced so nearly together that it is difficult to say which had precedence in point of time. The marriage of Paulding's sister to an elder brother of Irving led to the acquaintance of the youthful wits, both of whom had already written some trifles for the gazettes, and it was soon after proposed in a gay conversation that they should establish a periodical, in which to lash and amuse the town. When the next met, each had prepared an introductory paper, and as both had some points too good to be sacrificed, they were blended into one, Pauding's serving as the basis. They adopted the title of Salmagundi, and soon after published a small edition of their first number, little thinking of the extraordinary success which awaited it. Upon the completion of two volumes a disagreement with their publisher suddenly caused a suspension of the work, and the sequel to it was written several years afterward while Irving was abroad, exclusively by Paulding, Salmagundi entitles its authors to a very high rank among the comic writers. In this miscellany, The Mirror for Travellers, John Bull and Brother Jona

than, and his other writings, Mr. Paulding has given almost every sort of facetious and satirical composition. He deals more largely than Irving in the whimsical and the burlesque, and he is wanting in the exquisite refinement which lends such a charm to Geoffrey Crayon's humor. The follies of men are often confirmed, rather than cured by undisguised attacks. Mr. Cooper by honest and sensible commentaries upon a class in our American society, gathered the scattered vulgar into a mob. Paulding, who took greater liberties, was perhaps a more efficient reformer, without startling them by an exhibition of their deformities, or attracting their vexed rage to himself. The motley crowds at our watering places, the ridiculous extravagance and ostentation of the suddenly made rich, the ascendancy of pocket over brain in the affairs of love, and all the fopperies and frolic in our mimic worlds, are described by him in a most diverting manner; while the more serious sins of society are treated with appropriate severity. Besides his occasional coarseness, however, Mr. Paulding has the fault, in common with some others, of labelling his characters, gay, sedate, or cynical, as the case may be, in descriptive names, as if doubtful of their possessing sufficient individuality to be otherwise distinguished. If a hero cannot make himself known in his action and conversation he is not worth bringing upon the boards."

SELF-MADE MEN.-"If you are to be an exception," said Mr. Crabbe to his young friend, "you will be the first in all my observation and experience. You may take the whole population of Maryland, and select from it the fifty men who are most distinguished for talents, or any description of public usefulness, and, I will answer for it, they are all, every one of them, men who began the world without a dollar. Look into the public councils of the nation, and who are they that take the lead there? They are men who made their own fortunes- self-made

men, who began with nothing. The rule is universal. It pervades our courts, State and Federal, from the highest to the lowest. It is true of all the profession. It is so now; it has been so at any time since I have known the public men of this State or the nation; and it will be so while our present institutions continue. You must throw a man upon his own resources to bring him out. The struggle which is to result in eminence is too arduous, and must be continued too long, to be encountered and maintained voluntarily, or unless as a matter of life and death. He who has fortune to fall back

upon will soon slacken from his efforts, and finally retire from the competition. With me it is a question whether it is desirable that a parent should be able to leave his son any property at all. You will have a large fortune, and I am sorry for it, as it will be the spoiling of a good lawyer. These are my deliberate sentiments, and I shall be rejoiced to find, in your instance, America has many writers of humor and bur- I shall have been mistaken."

COUNT HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK'S REMINISCENCES.*

The reminiscences of Count Henckel von Donnersmarck, of whom we propose to give our readers some slight account, have no pretensions whatever to literary merit, but they are not the less amusing or instructive for this defect. They were written after the author had passed his fiftieth year, and were the solace of his leisure hours. Besides giving a curious picture of the life of a straight-forward, honest soldier of the old school, these memoirs afford us glimpses of manners now long extinct. Count Henckel's military career began just previous to the time when the ragged and undisciplined bands of revolutionary France astonished Europe by the rapidity of their early victories, and demolished in Prussia the prestige which till then attached to the school of discipline founded by Frederick the Great. While perusing the sketches of manners scattered about Count Henckel's book,| we distinctly trace some of the causes why the vast unwieldy fabric of the Germanic empire crumbled away at the first rude shock it received. "Even before the blow struck us from France," says an eminent German critic, "how miserably ill-managed, how corrupt, was every thing in Germany! Some few individual princes and statesmen and such are never wanting worked out beneficial reforms within the limits of their own narrow circles, but produced no effect over the empire at large. The nation was too much divided and overlaid by obsolete forms; it possessed, moreover, no organ of improvement within itself: literature had as yet made no progress." Germany did not so much yield to the force of arms as to a sort of necessity; its fall was owing more to its own want of union, and to the absence of any leading principles of action, than to any external pressure:· it was rotten at the core;-and it was only after much long-suffering, after terrible reverses, and after the misfortunes had reached their ut

most limits, that Germany summoned all her sons into the field, and succeeded in throwing off the iron yoke of the conqueror. The veteran whose life we will now proceed to sketch, has known Prussia in all its stages: he has seen it at its worst period, and has lived to see it rise to its present high position in Europe from the depths of despair in which it was plunged.

Wilhelm Ludwig Victor, Count Henckel von Donnersmarck, was born at Potsdam, in the

Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben (Reminiscences of My Life), by W. L. V. Count Henckel von Donnersmarck. Zerbst. 1846.

year 1775. His father had served with distinction in the Prussian campaign against the Turks in 1769, as well as in the Seven Years' War, of both which campaigns he has left journals of considerable value. Our author's grandfather, during the course of a very long life, had managed to dissipate the whole of a large fortune, and left his son so poor, that Frederick II., with a view to benefit a promising young soldier without entailing any expense on the state, gave him a letter of recommendation to a rich merchant of Halberstadt, of the name of Wackershagen, who was ordered by the king forthwith to bestow his daughter upon the young penniless -soldier. This was accordingly done; Wackershagen was made an honorary privy councillor, duly provided with the proper number of ancestors, and ennobled. It appears that, in after life, Count Henckel, who, like all Silesian nobles of that day, was extremely proud of his sixteen quarterings, did not much relish any allusion to this match. In course of time, his first wife died, after giving birth to two daughters, to whom all the mother's fortune immediately went. Count Henckel was again so poor, that his second wife, a woman of old family, the mother of our author, had to pay the expenses of their marriage. To come, however, to our author.

In his fourteenth year, after being received into the order of the Knights of St. John, to which only the scions of nobility were admissible, young Henckel was ordered to join Count Platen's dragoon regiment, stationed at Insterburg, in Lithuania. In those days, the fact of a man's entering a cavalry regiment was conclusive evidence that he had no zeal for the military service, and that he knowingly gave up all hopes of preferment in his profession: all the higher posts were invariably bestowed upon infantry officers.

666

held this opinion, said to me, when he placed "My father,' says Count Henckel, who the brevet in my hands, Your life, my son, will be a very simple one. On arriving at Insterburg, the first thing you will probably do, will be to fall desperately in love with some apothecary's daughter, and it will be fortunate if, at the end of a few months, you are not forced to marry her; you will remain a lieutenant all your life, and if you are in luck, you may in time possibly become postmaster in some small village.'

Such was the career which his father anticipated for him, and part of his father's prophecy

Count Henckel attended his father's funeral: | the joint, Count Henckel seized the meathe saw his body lowered into its last resting- a delicious leg of mutton-with which he place, in the grave-yard of the Lutheran church, marched off in triumph, spite of the indignant at Königsberg, and could scarcely bear his grief. protestations of mine host. His mother had informed him, on the first opportunity, of what he was to expect from her. "Once for all," said she, "you will have ten reichsthalers (about thirty shillings) a month; and I warn you never to expect me to pay one stiver more for you, under any circumstances whatever."