Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art

Among the budget of anecdotes so profusely strewn through the book, the following may be given at random. The following is from a letter of Lady Ashburton to Croker, and reflects severely on one of the suave defects of Sir Robert Peel, then recently returned from office: “I must tell you an anecdote of Sir Bobby. If you read the list of people congregated to see his pictures, you will have seen there, not only all the artists, drawing-masters, men of science, but reporters and writers for journals. Thackeray, who furnishes the wit for ‘Punch,’ told Milnes that the ex-Minister came up to him and said, with the blandest smile: ‘Mr. Thackeray, I am rejoiced to see you. I have read with delight every line you ever wrote,’ Thackeray would have been better pleased if the compliment had not included all his works; so, to turn the subject, he observed that it must be a great gratification to live surrounded by such interesting objects of art. Sir R. replied: ‘I can assure you that it does not afford me the same satisfaction as finding myself in such society as yours!!!’ This seeking popularity by fulsome praise will not succeed.”

Here we have a capital French story:

“Old Languet, the celebrated Curé of St. Sulpice, was remarkable and disagreeable for the importunity with which he solicited subscriptions for finishing his church, which is not yet finished. One day at supper, where Cardinal de Fleury was, he happened to say that he had seen his Eminence’s portrait at some painter’s. The old Cardinal, who was stingy in private as well as economical in public expenditure, was glad to raise a laugh at the troublesome old curé, and replied, ‘I dare swear, then, you asked it (the picture) to subscribe;’ ‘Oh, no, my Lord,’ said Languet, ‘it was too like!’”

The richness of the following situation could hardly be paralleled:

“Every one knows the story of a gentleman’s asking Lord North who ‘that frightful woman was?’ and his lordship’s answering, that is my wife. The other, to repair his blunder, said I did not mean her, but that monster next to her. ‘Oh,’ said Lord North, ‘that monster is my daughter.’ With this story Frederick Robinson, in his usual absent enthusiastic way, was one day entertaining a lady whom he sat next to at dinner, and lo! the lady was Lady Charlotte Lindsay – the monster in question.”

These chance excerpts (and just as good things lie scattered on every page, so as to make a veritable embarras des richesses), indicate the character of the book, and how amply it will repay, both for pleasure and instruction, the reader who sits down to peruse it. Few works of recent times are so compact and meaty in just those qualities which make a work valuable alike for reference and continuous perusal.

The Story of My Life. By J. Marion Sims, M.D., L.L.D.. Edited by his son, H. Marion Sims, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The great name of Dr. Marion Sims in gynæcology, or the treatment of women’s diseases, has never been equalled in the same line in America, and the story of his life related in language of the plainest homespun is quite a fascinating record. Dr. Sims has several titles to fame, which we think will secure the perpetuity of his name in the annals of surgery and medicine. These are: his treatment and care of vesico-vaginal fistula, a most loathsome disease, before deemed incurable; his invention of the speculum; his exposition of the true pathology and method of treatment of trismus nascentium, or the lockjaw of infants; and the fact that he was the founder and organizer of “The Woman’s Hospital, of the State of New York,” the first institution ever endowed exclusively for the treatment of women’s diseases.

J. Marion Sims was a native of Alabama, and was educated academically in the Charleston College. His account of his early struggles for an education (for though born of a well-to-do family, money was not over plenty in his father’s home), is very entertaining, and the anecdotes of his juvenile life among a people full of idiosyncracies, are marked by humor and point. His medical education was completed at Jefferson College, Philadelphia, an institution which, ranking very high to-day, had no rival in the country half a century since. It is to be observed that Dr. Sims has a very graphic and simple method of telling his story, showing a genuine mastery of the fundamental idea of good writing, though he is always without pretence, and takes occasion from time to time to deplore his own faults as a literary worker. Yet no contributions to medical literature, aside from their intrinsic value have been more admired than his for their simple, clear force, and luminous treatment. After practising for several years as a country doctor, our great embryo surgeon moved to the city of Montgomery and began to devote himself more exclusively to operative surgery, the branch in which his talents so palpably ran. It was at Montgomery that he became specially interested in women’s diseases, and began to experiment on methods of treating one of the most loathsome and hitherto incurable diseases, which afflict woman, vesico-vaginal fistula, a trouble so often produced by childbirth. Dr. Sims practised on slave women, and turned his house and yard into a veritable hospital, spending a large part of his income in his enthusiastic devotion to the great discovery on the track of which he was moving. At last, he perfected the method of the operation, and made peculiar instruments for it. What had been impossible, he now performed with almost unerring certainty, and rarely lost a case. This became heralded abroad, and the name of Dr. Sims was discussed in New York and Philadelphia, as one who had made one of the most extraordinary discoveries in operative surgery.

His own health had been bad for years; and, as a Southern climate did not agree with him, he went to New York to live in 1852. Though at first he had a hard struggle, he fought his way with the same rugged pertinacity which he had previously shown. He was assailed with the bitterest professional jealousies, but, nothing daunted him, and he finally succeeded in founding his woman’s hospital, through the help of the wealthy and generous women of New York. His great discovery was attempted to be stolen from him by his envious rivals, but he had no trouble in establishing his right to the glory. He overbore all the opposition made against him, and settled his own reputation as one of the greatest surgeons of this or any age. In 1861, when the war broke out, Dr. Sims, who was strong in his secession sympathies, determined to take his family to Europe, so bitter was the feeling against him in New York. He went to Paris, and in a very short time his remarkable and original method of treating vesico-vaginal fistula, by means of silver sutures, gave him a European reputation, and honors were showered on him from all sides. The great surgeons of Europe freely credited him with the glory of having struck out an entirely new and splendid path in surgery, and his operations in the leading hospitals of Paris, London, Brussels and Berlin, were always brilliant ovations, always attended by the most prominent men in the profession, and a swarm of enthusiastic students. He also secured a very lucrative private practice, and performed cures which were heralded as phenomenal in medical books and journals. At different times he was the physician of the Empress of the French, of the Queen of England, and of other royal and distinguished personages. Patients came to him from the most distant quarters, and though a large portion of his time was given to hospital practice, his fees were very large and lucrative. His fame was now established on a secure basis, and the greatest men in Europe freely acknowledged in Dr. Sims their peer. Though the most seductive offers were made to him, to settle permanently both in London and Paris, his heart was among his own countrymen. So at the close of the war he returned to New York. His most important work thenceforward was in connection with the Woman’s Hospital, though he treated innumerable private cases among the wealthy classes. The memoir proper ends with his Parisian career, and the rest of Dr. Sims’s life is told in the preface. He died in 1883, and so indomitable was his professional devotion, that he took notes and memoranda of his own disease up to a brief period before death. The life of Dr. Sims, while interesting to the general reader, will be found peculiarly valuable and attractive by professional men. A large portion of the book is given to a detailed description of the various steps which he took in experimenting on vesico-vaginal fistula, and of the difficulties which he so patiently and at last so triumphantly surmounted. In addition to his professional greatness, Dr. Sims was greatly beloved for the virtues of his private life. He was in the latter years a most sincere and devout Christian, and succeeded in avoiding that taint of scepticism, which so often shows itself in the medical fraternity.

Our Great Benefactors. Short Biographies of the Men and Women most Eminent in Literature, Science, Philosophy, Philanthropy, Art, etc. Edited by Samuel Adams Drake, Author of “New England Legends and Folk-Lore,” etc. With Nearly One Hundred Portraits Emblematically Embellished. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

This volume of something over five hundred pages, is very briefly, but yet truthfully, summed up in its title. The biographies are short and well written, and the author knows how to be graphic and picturesque without being in the least diffuse. He has selected the great leading personages in the arts of peace, who have exemplified human progress among the English speaking races, and given short sketches of them in chronological order. Boys will be specially interested in such a volume, and find in it both amusement and benefit. History has been defined as “philosophy teaching by example.” If this is the case with history, it is still more true of biography, for the concrete flesh and blood facts are brought much nearer home to the imagination than can be possible in history. The sketches vary from five to fifteen pages long, and are completely given, omitting no essential fact in the career, or essential trait in the character of those treated. The book is beautifully embellished with portraits.

Life of Mary Woolstonecraft. By Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

This last volume in the “Famous Women” Series is one of much interest. The wife of William Godwin (the author of “Political Justice,” “Caleb Williams,” “St. Leon,” and other books distinguished in their day) and the mother of the wife of the poet Shelley, her life was one of singular intellectual significance and full of pathetic personal romance. Mary Woolstonecraft was born and bred under conditions which fostered great mental and moral independence. She chafed under the restraints of her sex, and was one of the first to embody in her life and theories that protest against the position of comparative inequality in her sex, which has of recent years been the battle-cry of a very considerable body of both men and women. It is only just to say, however, that very few of her successors have carried the doctrine of personal rights so far as she did; for it is a fact beyond dispute that she lived openly as the mistress of two men successively, Gilbert Imlay an American, and William Godwin. The latter she married only to legalize the birth of the child which she expected soon to bring into the world, and whose birth was at the price of the mother’s life. While her social errors are to be deplored, even those most downright in condemning such departures from the established order of things, when they look into all the circumstances of her life are disposed to palliate them. Certainly it must be admitted that, in spite of her deviation from that path which society so rigidly and properly exacts from woman, Mary Woolstonecraft was a person of singularly noble and pure instincts. We cannot go into the full explanation of this paradox, and only hope that many will read the full account of her life, if for no other reason, to find an illustration of the fact that a sinner may sometimes be as noble and upright as the saint, and that doctrinarianism in morals as well as in politics, finds many an exception to the truth of its logic. Mary Woolstonecraft worked enthusiastically for the elevation of her sex, nor did she ever seek to enforce as a rule to be followed, that freedom of action which she conceived to be justified by her own case. The earlier part of her life was singularly stormy and tragic, and when her lover, Imlay, whom she looked on as her husband, deserted her, she attempted to commit suicide. When, at last, she met Godwin, her spirit had recovered from the shock she had received, she was recognized as an intellectual force in England, and her society was sought for and valued by many of the worthiest and most distinguished people in England. Her connection with Godwin, which was finally consecrated by marriage, was one of great personal and intellectual happiness. Her labors for the rights of woman, her fine appeals for national education, and her many tractates on not a few social, political, and moral questions, are marked by acuteness, breadth, and eloquence of statement. The author, Mrs. Pennell, has performed her labor with a nice and discriminating touch. While she does not pass lightly over the errors of her heroine, she recognizes what was peculiar in her position, and how a woman of her views could deliberately act in such a manner without essentially falling from her high pedestal as a pure woman. The author has given the world an interesting book not unworthy of the series, and one that happily illustrates the fact that two and two may make five and not four, though it would not do for the world to figure out its arithmetic on this principle.

Principles of Political Economy. By John Stuart Mill. Arranged with Critical, Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes, and A Sketch of the History of Political Economy, by J. Laurence McLaughlin, Ph.D., Ass’t. Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University. A Text-Book for Colleges. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The views of John Stuart Mill, one of the clearest and strongest thinkers on this and kindred subjects, of our century, on political economy, have been so often discussed in all manner of forms, from elaborate disquisitions to newspaper articles, that it is not needed now to enter into any explanation of the differences which distinguished him from the rest of his brother philosophers. The object of the present edition is to add to the body of Mill’s opinion the results of later thinking, which do not militate against his views; with such illustrations as fit the Mill system better for American students, by turning their attention to the facts peculiar to this country. Mill’s two volumes have been abridged into one, and while their lucidity is not impaired, the system is put into a much more compact and readable form, care being taken to avoid technicality and abstractness. Prof. McLaughlin’s own notes and additions (inserted into the body of the text in smaller type) are printed in smaller type so as to be readily distinguished. This compact arrangement of Mill’s economical philosophy will attract many readers, who were frightened by the large and complete edition.

A Review of the Holy Bible. Containing the Old and New Testaments. By Edward B. Latch. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Whether this work will be regarded as throwing any light on the sacred Scriptures, depends on the credulity of the reader, and his pious sympathies. After a casual perusal of the work, it is difficult to see any good end it serves, except so far as all exegetical comment may be of value. The number of such books is already legion, and their multiplication is a weariness to the flesh. The comments made by Mr. Leach, whom we judge by implication to be a layman, are such as any good orthodox preacher might make from his pulpit or in the prayer-meeting room. While they are not distinguished by any noticeable freshness and originality, they are soundly stated, accurate orthodoxy. We fancy that many a poor pious soul in the depths of country farm-houses will get spiritual refreshment, and certainly she will not be likely to find much to clash with her prejudices.

The Young Folks’ Josephus. The Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish Wars. Simplified by William Shepard. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Every year sees more of that sort of emasculation of standard historians, annalists and others, adapted to make their matter not only cleanly, but easily within the childish grasp. While there are many reasons to deplore the necessity of doing this on the same principle that one hates to see any noble work mutilated even of its faults, there is enough advantage to justify it perhaps. The author has simplified and condensed the history of the Jews by their great annalist with taste and good judgment, by no means as easy a task as it looks. We get all the stories of a special interest very neatly told, properly arranged in chronological order, and put in sufficiently simple language to meet the intelligence of youngsters. The work is handsomely illustrated, beautifully printed, and altogether a creditable piece of typography and binding. It will make a nice holiday book for reading boys and girls, and we fancy that this is the special reason for its being.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES

Japanese newspaper enterprise is making rapid progress. It is stated that no less than three vernacular newspapers published at Tokio and one at Kobe have sent special correspondents to report the events of the war in China.

From various quarters of the world reports are received of the operations of the Society for Propagating the French Language, which receives the full support of the Government and officials of the Republic. It is doing its work in some places where English would be expected to be maintained. For the promotion of our language no effort is made, as an attempt of the Society of St. George met with no practical result. It is true that the growth of population is adding to the hundred millions of the English-speaking races, but there are many regions where the language is neglected.

The event in literary circles in Constantinople is the appearance of the second volume of the history of Turkey by Ahmed Jevdet Pasha. How many years he has been engaged on this work we do not know, but at all events a quarter of a century, and as he has been busy in high office throughout the time his perseverance is the more remarkable. He was among the first of the Ulema to acquire European languages, which he did for the express purpose of this work. He has also co-operated actively in promoting the local school of history.

At the last meeting but one of the New Shakspeare Society, Mr. Ewald Flügel, of Leipsic, read some early eighteenth-century German opinions on Shakspere which amused his hearers. They were from the works of his great-grandfather Mencke, a celebrated professor of his day, who was also the ancestor of Prince Bismarck’s wife. In 1700 Mencke declared that “Certainly Dryden was the most excellent of English poets; in every kind of poetry, but especially as a writer of tragedies. In tragedy he was neither inferior to the French Corneille nor the English Shakspere; and the latter he the more excelled inasmuch as he (Dryden) was more versed in literature.” In 1702, Mencke reported Dryden’s opinion that Shakspere was inferior to Ben Jonson, if not in genius, yet certainly in art and finish, though Hales thought Shakspere superior to every poet, then living or dead. In 1725, Mencke quoted Richard Carew’s opinion (in Camden’s Remaines, 1614) that Catullus had found his equal in Shakspere and Marlowe [Barlovius; Carew’s “Barlow”]; and in his dictionary, 1733, Mencke gave the following notice of Shakspere, “William Shakspere, an English dramatist, was born at Stratford in 1654, was badly educated, and did not understand Latin; nevertheless, he became a great poet. His genius was comical, but he could be very serious, too; was excellent in tragedies, and had many subtle and interesting controversies with Ben Jonson; but no one was any the better for all these. He died at Stratford in 1616, April 23, 53 years old. His comedies and tragedies – and many did he write – have been printed together in six parts in 1709 at London, and are very much appreciated.”

There are now in London two societies for philosophical discussion – the Aristotelian and the Philosophical. The latter society was founded last winter under the chairmanship of Mr. J. S. Stuart-Glennie. Green’s Prolegomena to Ethics having been the general subject of discussion during the year, the chairman brought the first year to a close last month with a valedictory address on “The Criteria of Truth.” It is proposed to continue the discussion of this subject in taking up Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Psychology, and beginning with Part VII., “General Analysis.” The society meets at Dr. Williams’s Library at eight o’clock on the fourth Thursday of every month from October to July.

Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte is now so far advanced with the history of the University of Oxford, upon which he has been engaged for some years, that an instalment of it, tracing the growth of the University from the earliest times to the revival of learning, is likely to be published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. early in the coming year. This volume will be complete in itself, and accordingly provided with an index of its own.

The Cercle de la Librairie at Paris intends to open an exhibition of the designs of Gustave Doré for the illustration of books. Many noted French firms – Hachette, Mame, Jouvet, Hetzel, and Calmann Lévy – will contribute, and so will Le Journal pour Rire, the Monde Illustré, &c. Foreign publishers are also invited to take part.

At the opening of the winter season of the Arts Club in Manchester, Mr. J. H. Nodal stated that more books were written and published in Manchester than anywhere else in the kingdom, with the exception of London and Edinburgh, and that he believed that Manchester as a music-publishing centre came next to London.

MISCELLANY

Heligoland as a Strategical Island. – Regarded from a strategical point of view, the situation of Heligoland, only a few miles off from the mouths of the Elbe and Weser rivers, and commanding the sea entrance to the important trade centres of Bremen and Hamburg, is of considerable importance. Although any hostile differences between England and Germany are not very probable, in military circles in Germany an agitation has been going on for some years to ensure its possession by that country, as a necessary part of the coast defence of the empire; and this suggestion has been powerfully supported by Vice-Admiral Henck in the German Review, vol. ii. 1882. It has been proposed to purchase the island from England, but a great many object to the cost of the purchase, and the expense of the fortifications. Some, indeed, go further than the military strategists, and say that the abolition of the Heligoland Constitution in 1868 was illegitimate, because it was in violation of old rights and explicit assurances; destitute of well-grounded justification, because its ostensible objects could have been more successfully attained by other means; inadequate, because it failed to secure in any considerable degree the results which it proposed to seek. It must be here mentioned that a very good reason against any cession, voluntary or by sale, of the island to Germany, is the probability of the misconstruction of such an act by France, who, liable at any moment to a war with that country, would see in England handing over Heligoland to her possible foe, for the purpose of being formed into a marine fortress to defend the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, or into a naval depôt, an aid to Germany in defence against that which France possesses, next to England, the most powerful means of attacking, namely, her preponderance in naval power. England and Germany are not likely to be embroiled in war, England and France are too closely connected all over the world to wish to be so. If Germany and France unfortunately come to blows again, England can exercise the benevolent neutrality of 1870, and proudly, firmly, but calmly, remain in possession of her distant island. —Army and Navy Magazine.

How the Coldstreams got their Motto. – The Coldstreams were raised in the year 1650, in the little town near Berwick-on-Tweed from whence the regiment takes its name. Their first colonel was the renowned George Monk (afterwards Duke of Albemarle), a General in the Parliamentary army and an Admiral of the fleet. It is owing to this latter fact that a small Union Jack is permitted to be borne on the Queen’s color of the regiment, a proud distinction enjoyed by no other corps in the service. In the year 1660 brave Monk and his gallant Coldstreamers materially assisted in the happy restoration of the English monarchy, and to perform this patriotic and eminently loyal act they marched from Berwick-on-Tweed to London, meeting with a warm and enthusiastic greeting from the inhabitants of the towns and villages through which they passed. After the Restoration was accomplished the troops were paraded on Tower Hill for the purpose of taking the oath of allegiance to the King, and among those present were the three noble regiments that form the subject of this brief history. Having grounded their arms in token of submission to the new régime, they were at once commanded to take them up again as the First, Second and Third Regiments of Foot Guards. The First and Third Regiments obeyed, but the Coldstreamers stood firm, and their muskets remained upon the ground. “Why does your regiment hesitate?” inquired the King of General Monk. “May it please your Majesty,” said the stern old soldier, “my Coldstreamers are your Majesty’s devoted soldiers, but after the important service they have rendered your Highness they decline to take up arms as second to any other regiment in your Majesty’s service!” “They are right,” said the King, “and they shall be ‘second to none.’ Let them take up their arms as my Coldstream regiment of Foot Guards.” Monk rode back to his regiment and communicated to it the King’s decision. It had a magical effect. The arms were instantly raised amid frantic cries of “Long live the King!” Since this event the motto of the regiment has been Nulli Secundus, which is borne in gold letters upon its colors beneath the star and garter of the Royal House. There also appear upon its colors the names of “Lincelles,” “Egypt” (with the Sphinx), “Talavera,” “Barrosa,” “Peninsula,” “Waterloo,” “Alma,” “Inkerman,” and “Sevastopol.” In the year 1850 this regiment held its jubilee banquet to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of its birth. —London Society.