Kitabı oku: «The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851», sayfa 30

Horace Everett, LL.D., formerly a distinguished representative in Congress from Vermont, died at Windsor in that State on the 30th of January, in the seventy-second year of his age. Elected to Congress by the opponents of General Jackson, he entered the House of Representatives in 1829, and was continued by his constituents, inhabiting one of the strongest and most enlightened whig districts in the Union, for fourteen consecutive years—his last term expiring in March, 1843. During his career in Congress, he was one of the most prominent whigs of the House, occupying the front rank, as one of the most able of parliamentary debaters, distinguished also as much his good sense and acquirements, as for his eloquence. Among his best speeches, were several on the Indian Bill, so called, growing out of the difficulties between Georgia and the Cherokees.

The London Morning Chronicle has a brief notice of James Harfield, who was connected with that journal more than twenty years. His reading, in every department of literature, was prodigious, and his memory almost a phenomenon. On all matters connected with Parliamentary history, precedent, and etiquette in particular, Mr. Harfield was an encyclopædia of information, while the stores of his learning, in every department, were always freely at the command of his friends and colleagues. In early life, Mr. Harfield was a protégé of, and afterwards acted as secretary to, Jeremy Bentham, who acknowledged his sense of his young friend's services by bequeathing to him a magnificent library.

William Wilson, a painter of considerable reputation, died in Charleston, S. C, on the 28th of January. The Charleston Evening News says:—"He was a native of Yorkshire, England, but for the last twenty years has resided in this country, and during the last eleven, in Georgia and South Carolina. In all the relations of life, as husband, father, son, and brother, he was irreproachable, while his gentle and winning manners conciliated general esteem and regard. At his death Mr. Wilson had attained a distinguished reputation as a portrait painter, in which department he first attracted attention in 1836, by the exhibition of a portrait of an intimate friend at the first exhibition of the "American Art-Union," at the Apollo Gallery. In 1837 he exhibited several heads of the Academy of Design, which attracted much attention. In 1844 he exhibited a head of a brother artist, which was more generally admired than any similar production for years. In 1846 Mr. W. received a commission from the State of Georgia to execute two portraits—one of William H. Crawford, former Secretary of the Treasury, and the other of Gen. Jackson. After a tedious and troublesome journey to the North, in search of Jarvis's portrait of Crawford, which could not be traced, he returned to Charleston, and while copying from Vanderlyn's portrait of Gen. Jackson in the City Hall, he was presented by Charles Fraser, Esq., with a proof engraving of Jarvis's Crawford, from which, on his return to Augusta, he produced a most striking portrait of Georgia's greatest statesman. These pictures of Jackson and Crawford, which adorn the State House at Milledgeville, will be lasting memorials of his excellence as an artist."

James Wallace, D.D., the distinguished Mathematician, several years Professor of Mathematics in Columbia College, New-York, died in Lexington District, South Carolina, on the 15th of January. After completing his course of Theology, he was ordained a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, and was then appointed to the chair of Mathematics in Georgetown College, D.C. A few years later he removed to Columbia, S. C., and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in South Carolina College. While in New-York he published his justly celebrated "Treatise on Globes and Practical Astronomy," and had prepared materials for an entire course of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, but was compelled to relinquish his design on account of ill-health and advanced age. He was also the author of numerous scientific articles in the Southern Quarterly Review. He possessed one of the choicest and most extensive scientific libraries in the United States, which was almost entirely destroyed by the great conflagration of 1837: the remnant of it, with his scientific apparatus, was bequeathed to the Catholic Theological Seminary of Charleston. He was a resident of South Carolina during the last thirty-eight years.

Joshua Milne, the author of the celebrated treatise on "Annuities and Assurances," we see by the English papers died recently near London at the advanced age of seventy-eight. He is said to have left behind him the most complete collection extant on subjects connected with the statistics of vitality, of which a portion at least will probably be given to the public.

The Hungarian General Bem, expired with the half-century. Born at Tarnon, a Pole, he died at Aleppo, a Turk. In early youth he served in the Russian army against Napoleon in his disastrous campaign. He was the friend, companion, and favorite of the Grand Duke Constantine, until certain indignities to himself and cruelties to his countrymen made him the implacable foe of Russia. He joined the Polish insurrection of 1831, and performed prodigies of valor at the battle of Ostrolenka. Like many others, he became a fugitive and a wanderer. Unsuccessful patriotism reduced the companion of royalty to be a pensioner on the charity of the friends of Poland in London. 1848 gave Bern once more a career. He went to Vienna, and when the people were in the ascendant, in October, he held a command. But the Viennese could not trust the Pole. Incompetent men were placed over him. Vienna fell before the artillery of Windischgratz and Jellachich in November. Slaughter, terror, violation reigned. Never will the Viennese forget the red cloaks of the Croats. The educated youth of Vienna were shot in clusters. Robert Blum was led out to perish. The Odeon, although used as an hospital, was laid in ashes, with the wounded in it. Great rewards were offered for the apprehension of the popular leaders and generals still alive. The search for Bem was vigilant. He doffed the costume of a hackney coachman, filled his vehicle with a Hungarian family of nurses and children, mounted the box under the eyes of spies and soldiers, laughed at inspection, and drove off to Hungary. For ten mouths he was victorious there over the Austrians. "Bem beat the Ban." Splinters from an old wound escaping from his leg all the time, and able only to sit on horseback.

T. S. Davies, F.R.S., F.A.S., and a Professor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, died on the 6th of January at Shooter's Hill, Kent, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Mr. Davies was a very distinguished mathematician, and the author of several works on mathematics. He possessed, also, extensive and varied acquirements in different branches of science and literature. Nor was he unmindful of the claims of the more humble aspirant to mathematical honors; his encouragement and advice were liberally bestowed, as many deserving young men could testify.

Henry Christian Schumacher, the celebrated Danish Astronomer, died at Altona on the 28th of December, aged about seventy years. He commenced his professional career at the age of twenty-five, as professor of astronomy in the University of Copenhagen. In 1822, his royal master, Frederic VI., caused to be built, expressly that Schumacher might be placed at the head of it, the Observatory of Altona. From 1820 to 1829 he published his "Auxiliary Tables of Astronomy", in ten volumes, quarto. His Astronomical Annals, continued from 1830 to the date of his death, have, with his Tables, given him a high and wide reputation. In 1832 the King of Denmark established the reward of a golden medal for the discovery of new microscopic comets; and it was upon his favorite Schumacher exclusively that he devolved the duty of verifying the title of claimants and assigning the medal. Since 1847 Schumacher has been the correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of Paris.

Maxwell, the Irish novelist, and author of innumerable humorous sketches in the periodical literature of the day, expired on the 29th of December, at Musselberge, near Edinburgh. His generally vigorous health had of late broken down, and he crept into the retirement of this sequestered village to die. He had been in early life a captain in the British army, and was of course the delight of the mess-room, and a general favorite in social circles. He subsequently entered the church, and was some years prebendary of Balla, a wild Connaught church living, without any congregation or cure of souls attached to it; though it afforded what he was admirably capable of dealing with, plenty of game. Of a warm-hearted, kind, and manly temperament, he made friends of all who came within the range of his wit or the circle of his acquaintance. He was the founder of that school which counts the "Harry Lorrequers" and others among its humble disciples; but the "Story of my Life," and "Wild Sports of the West," will not be easily surpassed in the peculiar qualities of that gay and off-hand style of which he was the originator. Among his other more successful works are "Stories of Waterloo," "Hector O'Halloran," and "Rambling Recollections of a Soldier of Fortune." Besides his novels, he wrote "Notes and Reflections during a Ramble in Germany," "Victories of the British Armies," and a "Life of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington".

Alexander Macdonald, well known to the public as an antiquary, died early in January at Edinburgh. He was one of Mr. Thompson's earliest assistants in the publication of the "Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland," and other works, undertaken by the Record Commissioners. He was long a most active member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; and the library and museum of that body owe much to his industry and intelligence. He edited several volumes of the Maitland Club, to which he contributed "The Register of Ministers in the year 1567"—the earliest extant record of the ecclesiastical appointments of the Reformed Church in Scotland. Mr. Macdonald also largely supplied the materials of Sir Walter Scott's notes and illustrations of the "Waverley Novels." He held many years the office of Keeper of the Register of Deeds and Protests in Scotland.

Scientific Miscellanies

Mr. Walsh writes from Paris to the Journal of Commerce, in the last month, as follows:

The Annuaire, or Annual for the present year, has been issued by the Board of Longitude. M. Arago has appended to it nearly 200 pages on the Calendar in which he treats of all the divisions of time among the ancients and the moderns. This celebrated astronomer does not belie, in this notice, his reputation for handling scientific subjects so as to make them clear to common apprehension. He announces, in his second page, that he has completed and will soon publish a Treatise of Popular Astronomy; a desideratum for France. Sir John Herschel has supplied it for English readers, in his Outlines. The present history and explanations of the Calendar may be recommended, as material, to your Professor Loomis. In the section concerning the period at which the Paris clocks were first regulated on the mean or true time, Arago observes: "It will not happen again that an astronomer shall hear for a half hour, the same hour struck by different clocks, as Delambre told me he had often experienced. M. Chabrol, the Prefect of the Department of the Seine, before he would introduce this useful change, required, as a guaranty for himself, a report from the Board of Longitude: he was fearful that the change might provoke the working population to insurrection; that they might refuse to accept a mid-day or noon which, by a contradiction in terms, would not correspond to the middle of the day; which would divide in two unequal portions the time comprised between the rising and the setting of the sun. But this sinister anticipation was not realized; the operation passed without being perceived." It is all important, on the railroads, that the clocks at the different stations should be so regulated. Arago remarks that among the ancients it would have been dangerous to announce the existence of more than seven planets, owing to the "mysterious virtues" ascribed to that number; to complete it the sun was counted among the planets. He discusses the point—which is the first day of the week, and decides for Sunday. He devotes a section to the question—"Will the period come when the days will be equal between themselves, and have the same temperature throughout the year?" He concludes, of course, in the negative. He decides, also, that the nineteenth century began only on the 1st of January, 1801. Particular interest may be attributed to the section on the long series of ages which the ancients invested with the title "The Great Year." The high names of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, should not prevent us from regarding the opinions of antiquity on the relations of the great year, with the events of every kind observable on the earth, as among the crudest conceptions that have descended to the moderns.

At the sitting of the Academy of Sciences on the 24th ult., M. Augustin Cauchy read a memoir on the transversal vibrations of ether, and of the dispersion of colors. He furnished a simple, and easily intelligible mathematical theory of the various phenomena of light, and particularly, the theory of the dispersion of colors. Lord Brougham read a paper of his Researches, Experimental and Analytical, on Light. His Lordship's ambition is to shine in optics, as in every thing else; but you will see by a London paragraph that his researches have nearly cost him his eyesight. Dr. Aran submitted a Memoir, which seems to be quite important, on local anesthetic medication. "In the medical point of view," he remarks, "the number of cases in which local anesthetic applications may be employed, is truly immense. My experiments and researches, during many months, have conducted me to this practical result, which is worthy of all attention. Whenever an acute pain exists in any part of the animal economy, whether the pain constitute the malady in itself or be only an integral and principal part of it, the physician can relieve the patient of it for a longer or shorter time, by one or various local anesthetic applications. Great service, too, may be rendered by the precedent use of them in various surgical cases. The medication is wonderfully useful in articular acute rheumatism."

"Local anesthetic properties belong to all the agents in which the general have been found. They depend on the degree of fixity of the substance. A number of the anesthetics are irritating for the skin; chloroform in particular. According to Dr. Aran, the best agent for topical use is éther chlorhydique chloré. This is efficacious in a few minutes. Monsieur Recamier has submitted to the Academy of Medicine a galvanic cataplasm, by which, when it is applied to the skin, the benefit of electricity is fully conveyed, without the least pain. The reporter exclaims, 'Yes, who would have thought it? Electricity is transformed into cataplasm. This mysterious power, which, perhaps, is life itself, is reduced to an humble and common part in pharmaceutical science.'

"At the sitting of the Academy of Sciences on the 30th ult., a very interesting memoir (the 4th) was read by M.A. Masson, with the title, Studies of Electrical Photometry. He thinks that he has ascertained the cause of electrical light. He ascribes the Aurora Borealis to currents of great intensity situate in the higher regions of our atmosphere." The Report of Lieut. J.C. Walsh on his soundings, was referred for examination to Duperroy, the member most eminent in hydrography.

Monsieur Pouillet, the great Professor of Physics, has published in Paris a work entitled General Notions of Natural Philosophy and Meteorology, for the use of young persons; and Mr. Boussingault, eminent as a scientific agriculturist, the second edition of his Rural Economy considered in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics, and Mineralogy. The Treatise of Mineralogy by Dufresnoy, the celebrated Professor, who is of the Academy of Sciences, is complete, and at least equal to any other extant. There are four volumes octavo. The 22d volume of the memoirs of the Academy was ready in September last; the 23d is in the press; the 11th volume of Foreign Communications will appear this month. Twelve vacancies from death of foreign correspondents, are soon to be filled by election. All merit is ascribed to the work of Dr. Fairet, entitled Clinical Instructions respecting Mental Maladies. The author, pupil and successor of Pínel and Esquirol, is the physician of the Salpetriere. Along with the able Doctor Voison, he has a noble Lunatic Asylum of his own, not far from the capital.

Sir David Brewster, it seems, has become a convert to that part of Animal Magnetism called Electro Biology, and which consists in willing a person to be somebody else. After describing some wonderful experiments, made in the presence of several scientific gentlemen, by a Mr. Darling, he says, "they were all as convinced as I was, that the phenomena which we witnessed were real phenomena, and as well established as any other facts in physical science. The process by which the operator produces them—the mode by which that process acts upon the mind of the patient—and the reference of the phenomena to some general law in the constitution of man—may long remain unknown; but it is not difficult to see in the recent discoveries of M. Dubois Reymond and Matteucia, and in the laws which regulate the relative intensity of the external and internal impressions on the nerves of sensation, some not very indistinct indications of that remarkable process by which minds of peculiar sensibility are temporarily placed under the dominion of physical influences developed and directed by some living agent."

Ladies' Fashions for Early Spring

More attention than previously for many seasons appears to have been given this winter to ladies' fashions, and some that have come out are remarkably tasteful, while generally in fabric and manufacture they appear to be unusually expensive. We compile this month mainly from the London World of Fashion.

Bonnets are remarkable for a novel form, the front of the rims continuing large and open, the crowns round, low, and small. Of an elegant style are those made of Orient gray pearl, half satin, half velours épinglé, having a very rich effect, and decorated with touffes Marquises, composed of marabouts. Then, we see bonnets of green satin, ornamented at the edge, over the front, and upon the crown, with a stamped velvet imitating lace, and decorated upon the left side with a small plumet in a weeping feather, the ends of which are tied or knotted with green, of two different shades; this is a very favorite and recherché style. Also a bonnet of grayish green velvet, ornamented with a bunch of feathers composed of the grèbe and the ostrich. Drooping low feathers of every description are in request for decorating bonnets.

Ball Dresses of light materials are most in vogue, and are generally made of two and three skirts; as white tulle, with three skirts, trimmed all round with a broad, open-worked satin ribbon; the third skirt being raised on one side, and attached with a large bouquet of flowers, whilst the ribbon is twisted, and ascends to the side of the waist, where it finishes; the same kind of flowers serves to ornament the sleeves and centre of the corsage, which is also trimmed with a deep drapery of tulle. Feather trimmings are in vogue, disposed as fringes of marabout, and placed at the edges of the double skirts of tulle. Another pretty style, composed also of white tulle, and à double jupes, the under one having a border of white marabout fringe sprinkled with small golden grains falling over them in a perfect shower; the second jupe having attached to the edge of the hem a narrower fringe; the two sides of the upper skirt being open to the waist, is ornamented upon each side with an embroidery of gold and white silk, caught at regular distances with nœuds of white and gold gauze ribbon, the floating ends of which are edged with fringe; body à la Grecque.

Capotes of velvet are considerably lightened in appearance, by a novelty consisting of a kind of open stamped velvet, which is placed over satin; either a pretty contrast in color, or of the same hue; whilst those of plain velvet are relieved with trimmings of black lace, with mancinis formed of the convolvulus, made in green velvet. The form of the present style of capotes is very open in front, flat upon the top of the head, and shallow and sloping at the back. Some are of green satin, trimmed with ribbons of an open pattern in black and green. Others are decorated with rows of fancy ribbon-velvet, the interior having loops of narrow ribbon-velvet of two colors, charmingly blended.

I. A high dress of green silk, the body opening in front à la demi cœur; the waist is long and rounded in front; the sleeves, reaching a little below the elbow, are moderately wide, and finished either by a rûche or rich guimpe trimming; the skirt is plain, long, and full. Pardessus manteau of claret velvet, fastening to the throat; it is ornamented with a narrow silk trimming: this manteau is lined with white silk, quilted in large squares. Bonnet of green velvet, with feathers of the same color placed low at the left side.

II. Robe of blue brocade; the high body opens in the front nearly to the waist; the fronts of the skirt are lined with amber satin, and a fulling of the same is placed on the edge of the fronts, graduating in width towards the top; it is carried round the neck of the dress; the sleeves are very wide from the elbow, and lined with amber satin; the edge of the sleeve is left plain, but there is a rûche of satin round the middle of the sleeve, just above the elbow. Under dress of jaconet muslin, trimmed with lace or embroidery. Cap of tulle, with blue trimmings.

III. A dress of pink tulle, spotted and brodé in silver; the jupe composed of three skirts, each waved round the lower part; plain close-fitting body, made very low, and pointed at the waist; the upper part decorated with a narrow cape, descending in a point upon the front of the corsage, and decorated with a splendid bouquet of roses; a second row of frilling forms the loose short sleeve; the whole worn over a dress of pale pink satin; a narrow row of white blonde encircling the neck. The hair is arranged in a similar form to figure I; the only difference being that the nœud of ribbon is replaced by a beautiful drooping branch of pink shaded roses and light foliage; a spray of the three green leaves being placed upon the centre of the front, just over the parting of the hair.

IV. A dress of green satin; the skirt, long and full, has four rows of braid up the front; the body is high, open a little in the front, the braid being carried round it; it is plaited from the shoulder to the waist; wide sleeves, with broad cuffs turned back; they have three rows of braid on them. Mantelot of grey cachmere, the sleeves à la Maintenon; the edges are all scalloped and trimmed with braid. Bonnet of ultra marine velvet; a broad black lace is turned back over the edge; it has a deep curtain.

For a Young Lady's Dress, Capote formed of rows of narrow pink fancy ribbon. Frock of dark blue cachmere; the skirt trimmed with two rows of ribbon-velvet; the cape formed of narrow folds, open in the front, continued across with bands of velvet. Pantaloons of embroidered cambric.