Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

POETRY.-Before Vicksburg, 499. To-morrow, 499. Unwritten, 499.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Cheap Travelling in Switzerland, 516. Science of Bell-Ringing, 516. A heavy Snorer, 521. Mrs. Jameson's last Publication, 526. Discord about a Cord, 526.

NEW BOOKS.

*LINDISFARN CHASE will very soon be published by Messrs. Harper and Brothers, by arrangement with us; and we shall have copies for sale. It is said to be by T. Adolphus Trollope, a brother of Anthony Trollope.

Since we announced the sale of the Stereotype plates of the First Series, there has been an increased demand for full sets of the whole work, so that we are obliged to reprint many numbers of the Second and Third Series, in order to complete our orders. We take occasion to ask that everybody who means to make his set perfect, will buy now such volumes or numbers as may be necessary for that purpose. These we will gladly supply at the old prices until the first of October, when the new Terms, according to the subjoined notice, will take effect.

POSTAGE. Hereafter we shall pay postage on "The Living Age" only when Six Dollars is paid in advance for a Year. Persons paying a smaller sum must pay their own postage. FIRST SERIES LIVING AGE, 36 vols., Morocco backs and corners, $90 a Set.

66

66

Cloth Binding,

72 66

WE have, at last, with great regret, sold the stereotype plates of the First Series of The Living Age, to be melted by type-founders. We have a small number of copies of the printed work remaining, which we shall be glad to receive orders for so long as we can supply them. Persons desirous of buying odd volumes or numbers, to complete their sets, would do well to order them without delay.

ATTENTION is respectfully requested to the following

66
NEW TERMS OF THE LIVING AGE.

The Publishers have resisted as long as they could the growing necessity of advancing the price of this work. But when paper costs three times as much as before, and a remittance to London more than twelve dollars for a pound, and every other expense of manufacture is greatly increased (saying nothing of the expense of living), it is evident that sooner or later the Proprietors must follow the course of The Trade.

The change is made only after every other resource has been exhausted; and we confidently appeal to the kindness and justice of our old friends, asking them, not only to continue their own subscriptions, but to add the names of their friends to our list.

On the first of October, the prices will be—

$8 a Year, free of postage.

18 Cents a number.

Bound Volumes, $2.75.

Complete sets, or sets of the First, Second, or Third Series, $2.50 a volume, in Cloth.
First Series, 36 volumes, Morocco backs and corners, $100.

Price to The Trade will be advanced 3 Cents a number.

BINDING. The price of Binding is now 75 Cents a Volume.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL, SON, & CO.,
30 BROMFIELD STREET, BOSTON.

ADVANCE OF PRICE OF THE LIVING AGE. fords a pleasant resource in evil days, and its

[The following letter is from a subscriber who has the whole work from the beginning. We shall promote his object by printing his letter, and thank him not only for the money, but for the hearty good-will which is even more valuable.

We credit his account not for a year, as he offers, but for a year and a quarter.

O! si sic omnia!]

DEAR MR. EDITOR,-I notice in the last number your announcement of an intended increase of charge for The Living Age, beginning with the 1st of October. It did not come upon me unprepared.

I had supposed that, in common with business of every other kind, The Living Age must necessarily feel the pressure of the times; the more especially that people are not always as punctual as they should be in paying their subscriptions; and had determined to raise mine voluntarily with the coming year. Your announcement leads me to anticipate that intention. Please credit me with ten dollars—herewith enclosed-and charge me with a like sum annually hereafter.

I am not a moneyed man, but am dependent upon my daily labor for the support of my family, and yet I would rather cut off some bodily wants-wear homespun, dispense with gloves, etc.—than lose the mental improvement and pleasure which I derive from your valuable weekly visitor. It is always warmly welcomed and eagerly perused; for it af

varied contents are uniformly excellent, interesting, and instructive. But this is not all that we owe you. While you thus endeavor to improve the mind, and refine the taste, by the diffusion of sound literature,-(often, I doubt not, at pecuniary disadvantage, for public benefaction and private good are not inseparable,)—I am, in common with many others, under lasting obligations to you for the influence which you also incidentally exert in behalf of our arduous struggle for national existence. The Living Age has given unequivocal proof of its opposition to the most wanton, wicked, and frantic rebellion that ever sullied the page of history; and would deserve on that account, if no other, the hearty support of every patriot.

I hope, sir, that considerations such as have weighed with me may induce others, if not to exceed your terms, at least to acquiesce cheerfully in their proposed increase; and by the punctuality of their remittances, cheer the heart of him who furnishes their weekly feast of good things. Nearly two hundred pages monthly of well-selected reading are than worth all that you ask.

more

*

Very respectfully, etc.,

25th August, 1864.

From The Edinburgh Review. Life of Edward Livingston. By Charles Havens Hunt. With an Introduction by George Bancroft. New York: 1864.

having had strong temptations to overcome; for that pedigree is remarkable alike for its clearness and its respectability. It is modestly commenced with Sir Alexander Livingston, of Calendar, who on the death of James I. of Scotland, in 1437, was appointed one of two joint regents during the minority of James II., and was made keeper, of the king's person, his associate Crichton being chancellor. The murder of Earl Douglas in Edinburgh Castle by these worthies, has done more to perpetuate their memories than any good or wise action performed by either of them; but as was pointedly said by Gibbon, "treason, sacrilege, and proscription

We have rarely been more struck or interested by any biographical work than by this book. It reanimates and elevates its theme by dint of truth and earnestness, without exaggerating a merit or palliating a defect; and we speedily found ourselves following with anxious admiration the career of a legislator and jurist, whose rejected System of Penal Law has hitherto been thought to constitute his sole title to European attention or celebrity. This effect may be partly owing to the light thrown by his speeches and cor- are often the best titles of ancient nobilrespondence on the causes and growth of the ity." The Livingstons had their fair share internecine dissensions of the once United of this sort of illustration, having generally States; but the grand attraction may be managed to lose their peerages nearly as fast traced to the fact that his checkered life, quite as they got them by taking the losing side in independently of its manifold and momen- 1715 and 1745. The destinies of the foundtous relations to public measures and events, er of the American branch, Robert, were is fraught with useful lessons in conduct swayed, in his own despite, by the indepenand deeply colored with romance. We may dent and insubordinate spirit of his race. simultaneously deduce from it, by way of He was born in Teviotdale, in 1654, the son moral, that honesty and energy of purpose of the Reverend John Livingston, who played must succeed in the long run, and that the a prominent part in Scottish ecclesiastical development of the highest talents, or the history, and passed the last nine years of his prosecution of the loftiest aims, may be fa- life (from 1663 to 1672) at Rotterdam, under tally checked by pecuniary embarrassments sentence of banishment for Nonconformity. resulting from neglect. It is a welcome Robert was bred up amongst Dutchmen, and change to turn from the sanguinary conten- as soon as he came to man's estate, he started tions, the sordid passions, and the shattered for New York, took up his residence in Alcondition of the American people at the pres- bany, then a Dutch village, and proceeded ent time, to the wisdom, the dignity and the to amass landed property in a fashion which love of freedom which marked the great citi-will sound strange to the conveyancers of zens of the commonwealth in its earlier Lincoln's Inn. The first purchase, we are years. Of these men Edward Livingston told, was of two thousand acres, on Roelof Jansen's Hill. The deed, bearing date July The master passion of a prosperous family 12, 1683, was executed by two Indians and in the New World is to prove its descent two squaws, with names defying pronunciafrom one of traditional nobility or gentility tion and orthography. The consideration in the Old. A member of the transatlantic consisted of three hundred guilders and a tribe of Warrens has printed a comely quarto strange medley of assorted goods and articles to prove that the last Earl de Warrenne (who to be paid or delivered in five days. The left no issue) was their lineal ancestor; and other conveyances were of the same characa Bright of Boston has devoted a royal octavo ter, and at the foot of one of them is this of three hundred and forty-five pages to receipt:"The Brights of Suffolk ; " in which, strange to say, he lays no claim to relationship with his distinguished namesake, the Member for Birmingham. We may consequently consider ourselves as let off cheaply by Mr. Hunt, when he disposes of the Livingston pedigree in a single chapter, of moderate length,

was one.

"This day, the 18th July, 1687, a certain Cripple Indian Woman named Siakanochqui satisfaction by a cloth garment and cotton Shift of Catskil acknowledges to have received full for her share and claim to a certain Flatt of Land Situate in the Manor of Livingston; Which Witness, &c."

In this way Robert Livingston became the proprietor of a territory embracing upwards of one hundred and sixty thousand acres, which was erected by patent from the crown into the lordship; and he fondly looked forward to its perpetuation, one and undivided, like an ancestral manor in Great Britain, in a succession of representatives. But the force of democratic institutions was too strong; and the third possessor parcelled it out amongst his children with as prouda contempt for primogeniture and aristocracy as if he had been a cotton lord or manufacturer, —perhaps prouder. In allusion to the resulting loss of concentrated influence and importance, Mr. Hunt exclaims,

ways did and always will respect a man who becomes conspicuous by force of high capacity and virtue, in spite of humble birth and imperfect education; but surely, it would be better if public opinion should restrain politicians from aspiring to the presidency without a respectable knowledge of grammar and the proprieties of life.”

Unluckily it is this very public opinion which encourages these unlettered and unmannered" statesmen," as they are called by courtesy, and it will be well if they transgress no higher rules than those of grammar and propriety. The democratic principle, however, was only just beginning to operate when Edward Livingston was approaching manhood its foundations had hardly been so much as laid when he came into the

"What a change has the intervening halfcentury wrought, not merely in the affairs world; and he had all the advantages at of this house, but in those of all like estab- starting which the wealth, position, and conlishments in this country! The Livingstons nections of progenitors and parents can beare now a multiplied host of for the most stow. part energetic and successful individuals, and their aggregate wealth and influence exceed the probable dreams of their ambitious anYet the strength which comes of combination is gone from them. Our democracy divides every clan, minces every estate, individualizes everybody, disintegrates everything. Each man is the head of his own family; no man can be the head of the family of

cestor.

his ancestors."

Down to this point the writer seems to favor the inference that the change is for the best. But in the very next paragraph we are shown the reverse of the medal, and are warned to anticipate a consummation which is already more than half completed :

His father was a judge of the Supreme Court of the Colony of New York, and was so highly esteemed that one of his most intimate friends, William Smith, the historical writer, was accustomed to say," If I were to be placed in a desert island, with but one book and one friend, that book should be the Bible, and that friend Robert R. Livingston. His mother, Margaret Beekman, a woman of a large and heroic mould, is described as a meet mate for such a man.

An anecdote of Edward's boyhood proves both his own sweetness of temper and the maternal sagacity on which the formation of character in children so materially depends. One of his sisters came with a complaint to the mother of having been roughly accosted "Then go into or unkindly treated by him.

"In the United States, we seem to be outheroding this tendency of the times, Our political leaders, representatives, and even judges, are now too often individuals whom the corner. I am sure you have been very many an obscure, well-bred person would naughty, or Edward would not have done so. not meet in the same drawing-room for all His only battle at school was in vindication the world. We are certainly making some of his veracity, when assailed, like that of progress in bridging the gulf which once gen- Bruce in the centre of Africa, for the stateerally separated low manners from high po- ment of a familiar fact. "The occasion," sitions. Such progress is one of the worst of our present evils; it threatens us with the most palpable of our future dangers. How far the effrontery of ill-bred ignorance and incapacity will carry itself towards monopolizing places of dignity, power, and trust, is truly a question of moment. It is frightful to contemplate the possibility that the entire government in all its branches of so great and prosperous a country may, some day, be given permanently over to unlettered and unmannered statesmen. The whole world al

says Mr. Hunt, "was the moral necessity of backing up a statement which he casually made among his fellows, to the effect that at Clermont they had an ice-house in which ice was preserved for family use through the summer,- a statement which one of the boys, because he had never heard of such a thing before, honestly but indiscreetly pronounced to be-a lie." He was not remarkable for diligence at school; but no degree of idleness

for his finical attention to his dress had earned him the title of Beau Ned; and at a still later period he wrote on the fly-leaf of his Longinus,—

66

could deprive a boy of his stamp, of the educa- | sented to this partition to the extent of
tion of events and circumstances; and these abandoning all claim to a share of the ladies;
were of the most impressive kind at the precise
time when his heart and imagination were
most prone to be moved and stirred by them.
Born on the 26 May, 1764, he was in his
thirteenth year on the day of the Declara-
tion of Independence: his first degree at
college, Nassau Hall, Princeton, was con-
temporary with the surrender of Lord Corn-
wallis in 1781; and his legal studies were
completed about the time when "a grave lit-
tle gentleman in black (John Adams) walked
up St. James's as first American ambassador.”
Before attaining his majority, he had min-
gled in the contest for the most sacred of
rights; he had played his part in popular
demonstrations; he had witnessed marches
and countermarches, advances and retreats;
he had seen all that was dearest to him re-
peatedly at stake; he had heard the angry
clamor of the market-place suddenly drowned
by the rattle of musketry; and when his
family were hastily decamping with their
household goods from their cherished home,
with the hostile soldiery at hand, he had
caught courage from the hearty laugh of his
mother at the figure made by a favorite ser-
vant, a fat old negro woman, perched in sol-
emn sadness on the top of a wagon. The
training supplied by scenes of this kind is at
least as valuable as that which the university
can confer; and Edward Livingston's mind
was fortunately steeled by them for vicissi-
tudes for which no ordinary culture would
have afforded an adequate preparation.

Longinus, give thy lessons o'er;
I do not need thy rules:
Let pedants on thy precepts pore,
Or give them to the schools.
"The perfect beauty which you seek,
In Anna's verse I find;
It glows on fair Eliza's cheek,

And dwells in Mary's mind."

The ladies in question were the daughters } of Mr. McEvers, a merchant of New York; and the Mary, whose perfect beauty dwelt in her mind, subsequently became his wife.

The division of labor which is rigidly enforced amongst English lawyers has never been held compulsory on the profession in America, where the callings of barrister and attorney are frequently combined. We must not, therefore, be surprised at reading that Livingston was admitted to practise as an attorney in January, 1785, and that he speedily became a formidable rival to the advocates of highest reputation at the New York bar. A sketch of these is given by Mr. Hunt; and amongst other names that have acquired more than provincial celebrity, are those of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. No particulars are given of our hero's forensic career,— of the prosecutions which he conducted, the accused persons whom he defended, or the causes that he led. We are simply assured that in the course of nine years' practice he had distanced the great bulk of his competitors, that he was Romilly or Scarlett of New

[ocr errors]

At the same time, we are not prepared to accept his own statement that he neglected the usual studies was deficient in the common round of attainments at school or col-York, and that his reputation as an eminently lege. The extensive knowledge of science accomplished orator led to his being elected and literature which he subsequently dis- a member of Congress for that city in 1794. played, must most of it have been acquired He was opposed by a Mr. Watts, a gentleman at least, the foundations of it must have been whose speciality was that he had never articulaid-in his student days; and that he was lated anything but "ay" and " no during not thought an idle boy by his friends appears his congressional career; and he was confrom (amongst other indications) a letter trasted for this very reason (his friends written by John Jay, from Paris, to Chan- thought favorably) with one whose ready cellor Livingston (his elder brother) in 1783: rhetoric was denounced as an unanswerable "I send you a box of plaster copies of med- proof of shallowness. als: if Mrs. Livingston will permit you to Livingston's most remarkable effort in his keep so many mistresses, reserve the ladies first session was the delivery of a speech, for yourself, and give the philosophers and occupying nearly a day, in support of the poets to Edward." It may certainly be right of Congress to question the policy of doubted whether Edward would have con- treaties with foreign countries, on which it

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »