The International Monthly, Vol. II, No. I December 1, 1850

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Title: The International Monthly, Vol. II, No. I

December 1, 1850

Author: Various

Release Date: October 28, 2011 [EBook #37872]

Language: English

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THE

INTERNATIONAL

MONTHLY

MAGAZINE

Of Literature, Science, and Art.

VOLUME II.

DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.

NEW-YORK:

STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY.

FOR SALE BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

BY THE NUMBER, 25 Cts.; THE VOLUME, $1; THE YEAR, $3.

PREFACE.

On completing the second volume of the International Magazine, the publishers appeal to its pages with confidence for confirmation of all the promises that have been made with regard to its character. They believe the verdict of the American journals has been unanimous upon the point that the International has been the best journal of literary intelligence in the world, keeping its readers constantly advised of the intellectual activity of Great Britain, Germany, France, the other European nations, and our own country. As a journal of the fine arts, it has been the aim of the editor to render it in all respects just, and as particular as the space allotted to this department would allow. And its reproductions of the best contemporary foreign literature bear the names of Walter Savage Landor, Mazzini, Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, Barry Cornwall, Alfred Tennyson, R.M. Milnes, Charles Mackay, Mrs. Browning, Miss Mitford, Miss Martineau, Mrs. Hall, and others; its original translations the names of several of the leading authors of the Continent, and its anonymous selections the titles of the great Reviews, Magazines, and Journals, as well as of many of the most important new books in all departments of literature. But the International is not merely a compilation; it has embraced in the two volumes already issued, original papers, by Bishop Spencer of Jamaica, Henry Austen Layard, LL.D., the most illustrious of living travellers and antiquaries, G.P.R. James, Alfred B. Street, Bayard Taylor, A.O. Hall, R.H. Stoddard, Richard B. Kimball, Parke Godwin, William C. Richards, John E. Warren, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Mary E. Hewitt, Alice Carey, and other authors of eminence, whose compositions have entitled it to a place in the first class of original literary periodicals. Besides the writers hitherto engaged for the International, many of distinguished reputations are pledged to contribute to its pages hereafter; and the publishers have taken measures for securing at the earliest possible day the chief productions of the European press, so that to American readers the entire Magazine will be as new and fresh as if it were all composed expressly for their pleasure.

The style of illustration which has thus far been so much approved by the readers of the International, will be continued, and among the attractions of future numbers will be admirable portraits of Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Halleck, Prescott, Ticknor, Francis, Hawthorne, Willis, Kennedy, Mitchell, Mayo, Melville, Whipple, Taylor, Dewey, Stoddard, and other authors, accompanied as frequently as may be with views of their residences, and sketches of their literary and personal character.

Indeed, every means possible will be used to render the International Magazine to every description of persons the most valuable as well as the most entertaining miscellany in the English language.

CONTENTS:

VOLUME II. DECEMBER TO MARCH, 1850-51.

THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE

of Literature, Art, and Science.

OUR DIPLOMATIC SERVANTS.

CHARLES B. HADDOCK,

CHARGE D'AFFAIRES FOR PORTUGAL.

[With a Portrait, Engraved by J. Andrews.]

OLD notions of diplomacy are obsolete. The plain, straightforward, and masterly manner in which Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton managed the difficult affairs which a few years ago threatened war between this country and England have taught mankind a useful lesson on this subject. We perceive that the London Times has been engaged in a controversy whether there should be diplomatists or no diplomatists, whether, in fact, the profession should survive; arguing from this case conducted by our illustrious Secretary and Lord Ashburton, that negotiation in foreign countries is plain sailing for great men, and that common agents would do the necessary business on ordinary occasions. We are not prepared to accept the doctrine of the Times, though ready enough to admit that it is to be preferred to the employment of such persons as many whom we have sent abroad in the last twenty years—many who now in various capacities represent the United States in foreign countries. Upon this question however we do not propose now to enter. It is one which may be deferred still a long time—until the means of intercommunication shall be greater than steam and electricity have yet made them, or until the evils of unworthy representation shall have driven people to the possible dangers of an abandonment of the system without such a reason. We design in this and future numbers of the International simply to give a few brief personal sketches of the most honorably distinguished of the diplomatic servants of the United States now abroad, and we commence with the newly-appointed Charge d'Affaires to Lisbon.

Charles Brickett Haddock was born at Salisbury (now Franklin), New Hampshire, on the 20th of June, 1796. His father, William Haddock, was a native of Haverhill, Massachusetts. His paternal grandfather removed from Boston to Haverhill, and married a sister of Dr. Charles Brickett, an eminent physician of that town. The family, according to a tradition among them, are descended from Admiral Sir Richard Haddocke, one of ten sons and eleven daughters of Mr. Haddocke, of Lee, in England. Richard Haddocke was an eminent officer in the Royal Navy. He was knighted before 1678, and returned a member of Parliament the same year, and again in 1685. He died in 1713, and was buried in the family vault at Lee, where there is a gravestone, with brass plates on which are engraved portraits of his father, his father's three wives, and thirteen sons and eleven daughters.

The mother of Dr. Haddock was Abigail Webster, a favorite sister of Ezekiel and Daniel Webster, who, with Sarah, were the only children of the Hon. Ebenezer Webster by his second wife, Abigail Eastman, who survived her husband and all her daughters. Mrs. Haddock was a woman of strong character, and greatly beloved in society. She died in December, 1805, at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two sons, Charles and William, one about nine and the other seven years of age. Her last words to her husband were, I leave you two beautiful boys: my wish is that you should educate them both. The injunction was not forgotten; both were in due time placed at a preparatory school in Salisbury, both entered Dartmouth College, and without an academic censure or reproof graduated with distinction.

The younger, having studied the profession of the law, married a daughter of Mills Olcott, of Hanover, and after a few years, rich in promise of professional eminence, died of consumption at Hanover, in 1835.

The elder, Charles B. Haddock, was born in the house in which his grandfather first lived, after he removed to the river, in Franklin; though his childhood was chiefly spent at Elms Farms, in the mansion built by his father, and now the favorite residence of his uncle, Daniel Webster,—a spot hardly equaled for picturesque and tranquil beauty in that part of New England. How much of his rural tastes and gentle feelings the professor owes to the place of his nativity it is not for us to determine. It is certain that a fitter scene to inspire the sentiments for which he is distinguished, and which he delights to refresh by frequent visits to these scenes, could not well be imagined. Every hill and valley, every rock and eddy, seem to be familiar to him, and to have a legend for his heart. His earliest distinct recollections, he has often been heard to say, are the burial of a sister younger than himself, his own baptism at the bedside of his dying mother, and the death of his grandfather; and the first things that awakened a romantic emotion were the flight of the night-hawk and the note of the whippoorwill, both uncommonly numerous and noticeable there in summer evenings.

From 1807 he was in the academy during the summer months, and attended the common school in winter, until 1811, when, in his sixteenth year, he taught his own first winter school. It had been his fortune to have as instructors persons destined to unusual eminence: Mr. Richard Fletcher, now one of the justices of the Superior Court of Massachusetts; Justice Willard, of Springfield; the Rev. Edward L. Parker, of Londonderry; and Nathaniel H. Carter, the well-known poet and general writer. It was under Mr. Carter that he first felt a genuine love of learning; and he has always ascribed more of his literary tastes, to his insensible influence, as he read to him Virgil and Cicero, than to any other living teacher. His earliest Latin book was the Æneid, over the first half of which he had, summer after summer, fatigued and vexed himself, before the idea occurred to him that it was an epic poem; and that idea came to him at length not from his teachers, but from a question of his uncle, Daniel Webster, about the descent of the hero into the infernal regions. When a proper impression of its design was once formed, and some familiarity with the language was acquired, Virgil was run through with great rapidity: half a book in a day. So also with Cicero: an oration at a lesson. There was no verbal accuracy acquired or attempted; but a ready mastery of the current of discourse—a familiarity with the point and spirit of the work. In August, 1812, he was admitted a freshman in Dartmouth College. It was a small class, but remarkable from having produced a large number of eminent men, among whom we may mention George A. Simmons, a distinguished lawyer in northern New York, and one of the profoundest philosophers in this country; Dr. Absalom Peters; President Wheeler, of the University of Vermont; Governor Hubbard, of Maine; and Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of Vermont, since so honorably known as the learned translator of Neander, and as being without a superior among American scholars in a knowledge of the profounder German literature. The late illustrious and venerated Dr. James Marsh, the editor of Coleridge, and the only pupil of that great metaphysician who was the peer of his master, was of the class below his, and was an intimate companion in study.

From the beginning of his college life it was his ambition to distinguish himself. By the general consent of his classmates, and by the appointment of the faculty, he held the first place at each public exhibition through the four years in which he was a student, and at the last commencement was complimented with having the order of the parts, according to which the Latin salutatory had hitherto been first, so changed that he might still have precedence and yet have the English valedictory. During his junior year, his mind was first decidedly turned toward religion, and with Wheeler, Torrey, Marsh, and some forty others, he made a public profession. The two years after he left college were spent at Andover, in the study of divinity. While here, with Torrey, Wheeler, Marsh, and one or two more, he joined in a critical reading of Virgil—an exercise of great value in enlarging a command of his own language, as well as his knowledge of Latin. At the close of the second year he was attacked with hemorrhage of the lungs, and advised to try a southern climate for the winter. He sailed in October, 1818, for Charleston, and spent the winter in that city and in Savannah, with occasional visits into the surrounding country. The following summer he traveled, chiefly on horseback, and in company with the Rev. Pliny Fisk, from Charleston home. To this tour he ascribes his recovery. He soon after took his master's degree, and was appointed the first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres in Dartmouth College. From that time a change was obvious in the literary spirit of the instruction given at the institution. The department to which he was called became very soon the most attractive in the college, and some of the most distinguished orators of our country are pleased to admit that they obtained their first impressions of true eloquence and a correct style from the youthful professor. He introduced readings in the Scriptures, and in Shakspeare, Milton, and Young, with original criticisms by his pupils on particular features of the principal works of genius, as the hell of Virgil, Dante, and Milton; and the prominent characters of the best tragedies, as the Jew of Cumberland and of Shakspeare; and extemporaneous discussions of æsthetical and political questions, as upon the authenticity of Ossian, the authorship of Homer, the sincerity of Cromwell, or the expediency of the execution of Charles. He also exerted his influence in founding an association for familiar written and oral discussions in literature, in which Dr. Edward Oliver, Dr. James Marsh, Professor Fiske, Mr. Rufus Choate, Professor Chamberlain, and others, acted a prominent part.

He retained this chair until August, 1838, when he was appointed to that of Intellectual Philosophy and Political Economy, which he now holds, but, which, of course, will be occupied by another during his absence in the public service—the faculty having declined on any account to accept his resignation or to appoint a successor.

Dr. Haddock has been invited to the professorship of rhetoric in Hamilton College, and to the presidency of that institution, the presidency and a professorship in the Auburn Theological Seminary, the presidency of Bowdoin College, and, less formally, to that of several other colleges in New England.

In public affairs, he has for four successive years been a representative in the New Hampshire Legislature, and in this period was active in introducing the present common school system of the State, and was the first commissioner of common schools, originating the course of action in that important office which has since been pursued. He was one of the fathers of the railroad system in New Hampshire, and his various speeches had the effect to change the policy of the State on this subject. He addressed the first convention called at Lebanon to consider the practicability of a road across the State, and afterward a similar convention at Montpelier. For two years he lectured every Sabbath evening to the students and to the people of the village, on the historical portions of the New Testament. For several years he held weekly meetings for the interpretation of Scripture, in which the ladies of the village met at his house. And for twenty years he has constantly preached to vacant parishes in the vicinity. He has delivered anniversary orations before the Phi Beta Kappa Societies of Dartmouth and Yale, the Rhetorical Societies of Andover and Bangor, the Religious Society of the University of Vermont, the New Hampshire Historical Society, and the New England Society of New York; numerous lyceum lectures, in Boston, Lowell, Salem, Portsmouth, Manchester, New Bedford, and other places; and of the New Hampshire Education Society he was twelve or fifteen years secretary, publishing annual reports. The principal periodicals to which he has contributed are the Biblical Repository and the Bibliotheca Sacra. A volume of his Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings was published in 1846, and he has now a work on rhetoric in preparation.

He has been twice married—the last time to a sister of Mr. Kimball, the author of St. Leger, &c. He has three children living, and has buried seven.

In agriculture, gardening, and public improvements of all kinds, he has taken a lively interest. The rural ornaments of the town in which he lives owe much to him. He may be said to have introduced the fruit and horticulture which are now becoming so abundant as luxuries, and so remarkable as ornaments of the village.

In 1843 he received the degree of D.D. from Bowdoin College. Of Dartmouth College nearly half the graduates are his pupils. While commissioner of common schools, he published a series of letters to teachers and students which were more generally republished in the various papers of the country than anything else of the kind ever before written. Perhaps no one in this country has discussed so great a variety of subjects. His essays upon the proper standard of education for the pulpit, addresses on the utility of certain proposed lines of railway, orations on the duties of the citizen to the state, lectures before various medical societies, speeches in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, letters written while commissioner of common schools, contributions to periodicals, addresses before a great variety of literary associations, writings on agriculture and gardening, yearly reports on education, lectures on classical learning, rhetoric and belles-lettres, and sermons, delivered weekly for more than twenty years, illustrate a life of remarkable activity, and dedicated to the best interests of mankind. Unmoved by the calls of ambition, which might have tempted him to some one great and engrossing effort, his aim has been the general good of the people.

The following extract from the dedication, to his pupils, of his Addresses and Miscellaneous Writings, evinces something of his purpose:

It is now five-and-twenty years since I adopted the resolution never to refuse to attempt anything consistent with my professional duties, in the cause of learning, or religion, which I might be invited to do. This resolution I have not at any time regretted, and perhaps I may say, I have not essentially violated it. However this may be, I have never suffered from want of something to do.

Professor Haddock's style is remarkable for purity and correctness. His sentences are all finished sentences, never subject to an injurious verbal criticism, without a mistake of any kind, or a grammatical error.

We have not written of Dr. Haddock as a politician; but he is a thoroughly informed statesman, profoundly versed in public law, and familiar with all the policy and aims of the American government. He is of course a Whig. He has been educated, politically, in the school of his illustrious uncle, and probably no man living is more thoroughly acquainted with Mr. Webster's views, or more capable of their application in affairs. It is therefore eminently suitable that he should be on the list of our representatives abroad, while the foreign department is under Mr. Webster's administration. The Whig party in New Hampshire have not been insensible of Dr. Haddock's surpassing abilities, of his sagacity, or his merits. Could they have done so, they would have made him Governor, or a senator in Congress, on any of the occasions in many years in which such officers have been chosen. Considered without reference to party, we can think of no gentleman in the country who would be likely to represent the United States more worthily at foreign courts, or who by his capacities, suavity of manner, or honorable nature, would make a more pleasing and desirable impression upon the most highly cultivated society. Those who know him well will assent to the justness of a classification which places him in the same list of intellectual diplomats which embraces Bunsen, Guizot, and our own Everett, Irving, Bancroft and Marsh.

No. I.—WINGED HUMAN-HEADED BULL.

DR. LAYARD'S RECENT GIFTS FROM NIMROUD.

The researches of no antiquary or traveler in modern times have excited so profound an interest as those of Austen Henry Layard, who has summoned the kings and people of Nineveh through three thousand years to give their testimony against the skeptics of our age in support of the divine revelation. In a former number of The International we presented an original and very interesting letter from Dr. Layard himself, upon the nature and bearing of his discoveries. Since then he has sent to London, where they have arrived in safety, several of the most important sculptures described in his work republished here last year by Mr. Putnam. Among them are the massive and imposing statues of a human-headed bull and a human-headed lion, of which we have engravings in some of the London journals. The Illustrated London News describes these specimens of ancient art as follows:

"No. I. is the Human-Headed and Eagle-Winged Bull. This animal would seem to bear some analogy to the Egyptian sphynx, which represents the head of the King upon the body of the lion, and is held by some to be typical of the union of intellectual power with physical strength. The sphynx of the Egyptians, however, is invariably sitting, whereas the Nimroud figure is always represented standing. The apparent resemblance being so great, it is at least worthy of consideration whether the head on the winged animals of the Ninevites may not be that of the King, and the intention identical with that of the sphynx; though we think it more probable that there is no such connection, and that the intention of the Ninevites was to typify their god under the common emblems of intelligence, strength and swiftness, as signified by the additional attributes of the bird. The specimen immediately before us is of gypsum, and of colossal dimensions, the slab being ten feet square by two feet in thickness. It was situated at the entrance of a chamber, being built into the side of the door, so that one side and a front view only could be seen by the spectator. Accordingly, the Ninevite sculptor, in order to make both views perfect, has given the animal five legs. The four seen in the side view show the animal in the act of walking; while, to render the representation complete in the front view, he has repeated the right fore leg again, but in the act of standing motionless. The countenance is noble and benevolent in expression; the features are of true Persian type; he wears an egg-shaped cap, with three horns and a cord round the base of it. The hair at the back of the head has seven ranges of curls; and the beard, as in the portraits of the King, is divided into three ranges of curls, with intervals of wavy hair. In the ears, which are those of a bull, are pendent ear-rings. The whole of the dewlap is covered with tiers of curls, and four rows are continued beneath the ribs along the whole flank; on the back are six rows of curls, and upon the haunch a square bunch, ranged successively, and down the back of the thigh four rows. The hair at the end of the tail is curled like the beard, with intervals of wavy hair. The hair at the knee joints is likewise curled, terminating in the profile views of the limbs in a single curl of the kind (if we may use the term) called croche cœur. The elaborately sculptured wings extend over the back of the animal to the very verge of the slab. All the flat surface of the slab is covered with cuneiform inscription; there being twenty-two lines between the fore legs, twenty-one lines in the middle, nineteen lines between the hind legs, and forty-seven lines between the tail and the edge of the slab. The whole of this slab is unbroken, with the exception of the fore-feet, which arrived in a former importation, but which are now restored to their proper place.

No. II.—WINGED HUMAN-HEADED LION.

No. II. represents the Human-Headed and Winged Lion—nine feet long, and the same in height; and in purpose and position the same as the preceding, which, however, it does not quite equal in execution. In this relievo we have the same head, with the egg-shaped three-horned head-dress, exactly like that of the bull; but the ear is human, and not that of a lion. The beard and hair of the head are even yet more elaborately curled than the last; but the hair on the legs and sides of the animal represents that shaggy appendage of the animal. Round the loins is a succession of numerous cords, which are drawn into four separate knots; at the extremities are fringes, forming as many distinct tassels. At the end of the tail, the claw—on which we commented in a former article—is distinctly visible. The strength of both animals is admirably and characteristically conveyed. Upon the flat surface of this slab, as in the last, is a cuneiform inscription; twenty lines being between the fore legs, twenty-six in the middle, eighteen between the hind legs, and seventy-one at the back.

On the subject of Eastern languages, an understanding of which is necessary to the just apprehension of these inscriptions, that most acute antiquary, Major Rawlinson, remarks:

"My own impression is that hundreds of the languages at one time current through Asia are now utterly lost; and it is not, therefore, to be expected that philologists or ethnologists will ever succeed in making out a genealogical table of language, and in affiliating all the various dialects. Coming to the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, we were first made acquainted with them as translations of the Persian and Parthian documents in the trilingual inscriptions of Persia; but lately we have had an enormous amount of historical matter brought to light in tablets of stone written in these languages alone. The languages in question I certainly consider to be Semitic. I doubt whether we could trace at present in any of the buildings or inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia the original primitive civilization of man—that civilization which took place in the very earliest ages. I am of opinion that civilization first showed itself in Egypt after the immigration of the early tribes from Asia. I think that the human intellect first germinated on the Nile, and that then there was, in a later age, a reflux of civilization from the Nile back to Asia. I am quite satisfied that the system of writing in use on the Tigris and Euphrates was taken from the Nile; but I admit that it was carried to a much higher state of perfection in Assyria than it had ever reached in Egypt. The earliest Assyrian inscriptions were those lately discovered by Mr. Layard in the north-west Palace at Nimroud, being much earlier than anything found at Babylon. Now, the great question is the date of these inscriptions. Mr. Layard himself, when he published his book on Nineveh, believed them to be 2500 years before the Christian era; but others, and Dr. Hincks among the number, brought them down to a much later date, supposing the historical tablets to refer to the Assyrian kings mentioned in Scripture—(Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, &c.). I do not agree with either one of these calculations or the other. I am inclined to place the earliest inscriptions from Nimroud between 1350 and 1200 before the Christian era; because, in the first place, they had a limit to antiquity; for in the earliest inscriptions there was a notice of the seaports of Phœnicia, of Tyre and Sidon, of Byblus, Arcidus, &c.; and it was well known that these cities were not founded more than 1500 years before the Christian era. We have every prospect of a most important accession to our materials, for every letter I get from the countries now being explored announces fresh discoveries of the utmost importance. In Lower Chaldea, Mr. Loftus, the geologist to the commission appointed to fix the boundaries between Turkey and Persia, has visited many cities which no European had ever reached before, and has everywhere found the most extraordinary remains. At one place (Senkereh) he had come on a pavement, extending from half an acre to an acre, entirely covered with writing, which was engraved upon baked tiles, &c. At Wurka (or Ur of the Chaldees), whence Abraham came out, he had found innumerable inscriptions; they were of no great extent, but they were exceedingly interesting, giving many royal names previously unknown. Wurka (Ur or Orchoe) seemed to be a holy city, for the whole country, for miles upon miles, was nothing but a huge necropolis. In none of the excavations of Assyria had coffins ever been found, but in this city of Chaldea there were thousands upon thousands. The story of Abraham's birth at Wurka did not originate with the Arabs, as had sometimes been conjectured, but with the Jews; and the Orientals had numberless fables about Abraham and Nimroud. Mr. Layard in excavating beneath the great pyramid at Nimroud, had penetrated a mass of masonry, within which he had discovered the tomb and statue of Sardanapalus, accompanied by full annals of the monarch's reign engraved on the walls! He had also found tablets of all sorts, all of them being historical; but the crowning discovery he had yet to describe. The palace at Nineveh, or Koynupih, had evidently been destroyed by fire, but one portion of the building seemed to have escaped its influence; and Mr. Layard, in excavating in this part of the palace, had found a large room filled with what appeared to be the archives of the empire, ranged in successive tablets of terra cotta, the writings being as perfect as when the tablets were first stamped. They were piled in huge heaps from the floor to the ceiling. From the progress already made in reading the inscriptions, I believe we shall be able pretty well to understand the contents of these tablets; at all events, we shall ascertain their general purport, and thus gain much valuable information. A passage might be remembered in the book of Ezra where the Jews, having been disturbed in building the Temple, prayed that search might be made in the house of records for the edict of Cyrus permitting them to return to Jerusalem. The chamber recently found there might be presumed to be the house of records of the Assyrian kings, where copies of the royal edicts were duly deposited. When these tablets have been examined and deciphered, I believe that we shall have a better acquaintance with the history, the religion, the philosophy, and the jurisprudence of Assyria, 1500 years before the Christian era, than we have of