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THE COURANT ; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL 197

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The Courant.

COLUMBIA, S. C., THURSDAY, OCT. 20, 1859.

THE COURANT.
Subscriptions for the Courant will be received at the Bookstore
of Mr. P. B. GLASS, in this City, where single copies can
be obtained every week.

The office of the Courant has been removed to No. 144 Richardson
Street, over Flanigan's Shoe-Store.
WM. W. WALKER, JR., & Co.

The Mobile Tribune
Complains that the credit for two of its articles has been
given to some of its contemporaries, by the Courant. Very
likely, as both editors of this paper were absent at one time,
and the Editor-in-Chief had hardly any thing to do with the
selections, or even the editorial department, until the issue of
September 29, when he resumed his duties. The Tribune, is
one of our most valuable exchanges, and we regret extremely
that our pro tems have not "rendered unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar's." We shall see to it that such a thing does
not occur again.

Oysters.
We are indebted to our friends, D. P. MCDONALD & Co.,
for a keg of "bivalves" furnished us last week. They were
the first of the season, and tasted remarkably well. Messrs.
MCDONALD & Co. will, we understand, receive regular daily
supplies of these delicacies during the winter, and we hope
they may be well patronized.

Speaking of oysters, we are reminded that a new Restaurant
has been opened in our city by Messrs. STORK & HUSSUNG,
whose advertisement appears in to-day's Courant. Our tasting
reporter says that fine Lager Beer (he drinks nothing stronger)
can be had at this establishment, as well as excellent Oysters,
Game, etc.

Oscar Dugue.
We see by the New Orleans paper that OSCAR DUGUE, a poet
of great power, called by the Abbé ROUQUETTE "Le cygne de la
Lousianne," has taken charge of Jefferson College, in St.
James' Parish, La. Under his care it ought to prosper, for
from what we know of him, he must be a man of great enthusiasm,
and of equally high gifts of mind.

Appleton`s Cyclopaedia.
We learn, from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, that our
many-sided friend, CHARLES G. LELAND, has been added to the
list of editors of Appleton's Cyclopaedia. Heretofore, this
work has contained about as many errors as any of the very
cheapest Yankee "compendiums." Its blunders are often
shameful, and we wondered how the editors could let such
stupid mistakes—some of them evidently the result of sheer
ignorance—get into the work. Happily, they are only at the
seventh volume now, and we shall trust to the comprehensive
and really profound learning of Mr. LELAND for more correct
issues in future. He is truly a most valuable accession to the
corps of editors, for he is not only learned, but he is exact,
careful, scrupulous, no one of which adjectives could be applied
to the late administration. Ignorance, or prejudice caused
many of the errors in the articles—poor, noisy politicians and
political preachers occupy a great deal of space, and in twenty
years they will exist only in those volumes; miserable ephemera,
they will be utterly forgotten after their brief strutting
on this stage is over. This has been one of the worst faults of
the Cyclopaedia, up to this time. Men whose names cannot be
forgotten, because they belong to the literature of the English
language, are mentioned in the briefest possible way, while the
"Hon." or "Rev." John Smith Jones occupies a column or
two. Mr. LELAND will have the sense to mend this, we are
sure. On condition that the first six volumes be corrected, we
would recommend our readers to subscribe for it, although it
must be always a draw-back that these first volumes are so full
of errors of all sorts ; and we would suggest to the Messrs.
APPLETON to get out immediately a volume of errata. The
Pearl Bible had six thousand errata—APPLETON's six volumes
must have ten thousand, at least.

Illustrations of Cooper`s Novels.
The Home Journal says : ---" TOWNSEND & Co., the publishers
of COOPER'S works, are about to bring out the sixty-four illustrations
by DARLEY, drawn for the works of the great novelist,
in a new form. Such has been the demand for proofs of these
drawings, that they are about to produce them in eight folios,
each folio containing eight of the engravings. Each plate
will be faced with a page of letter-press descriptive of the
scene illustrated by DARLEY. Each illustration will be an
artist's proof, printed before lettering the plate, on India paper.
The folios will be published by subscription, at three dollars
each, and as the number is necessarily limited to five hundred
copies, the lover of American art will do well to secure an early
copy. These illustrations are engraved by the best talent in
the country--ALFRED JONES, the SMILLIES, RICE, HINSHELWOOD,
PHILLIBROWN, GIRSCH, MARSHALL, PARADISE, and
others--in line, the purest style of the art of engraving."

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The History of "Dum Spiro Spero."
"Quelqu'un" writes to us saying that he knows that one of
the legends on our State arms, "animis, opibusque parati," is
taken from the second book of Virgil's Aeniad ; "but," says
he, "I can find no clue to the history of the other legend."

If our correspondent will look in vol. 1, p. 37, of BELOE'S
"Anecdotes of Literature," he will find the following statement :

"King Charles the First, on the night before his execution,
wrote in a copy of Shakespeare, which was in his room, 'Dum
spiro spero'— this book he gave to Sir THOMAS HERBERT, says
BELOE. Reverence for his memory probably caused this State
to be named for him (CAROLUS), and for the same reason his
motto may have been adopted. (As to the derivation of the
name, see Carroll's Catechism, ¶ 115, p. 38.)

Allibone`s "Dictionary of English and American Authors."
What does our friend of the Home Journal mean by saying
that the first volume of ALLIBONE'S Dictionary has just been
published by CHILDS & PETERSON? It was out, to our certain
knowledge, last May. The praises of the Home Journal are
very justly expressed in the following : "This work is a complete
encyclopaedia of British and American authors, living
and deceased, from the earliest accounts to the middle of the
nineteenth century, and contains thirty thousand biographies
and literary notices, with forty indexes of subjects. The importance
and value of such a work to the great mass of the
people are beyond estimation. The present volume comprises
more than one thousand pages ; the authors' names are alphabetically
arranged, and include all of any note, the initial letters
of which come before K. No work has ever been published
in this country so arduous in its undertaking, and
which has been crowned with such perfect success. The author
has evidently spared no efforts to make it the greatest
book of the age."

A Poor Creature.
The New York Tribune has a charming and brilliant correspondent,
who writes in the following exceedingly smart style
about the great WEBSTER. Be it remembered that WEBSTER
favoured the Fugitive Slave Law, and therefore incurred the
hatred of all the negro-worshippers. When are they going
to pull down his statue at Boston? After all that has been said,
they surely ought to crown their work by an achievement like
this :

"He was a first-rate judge of chowder, the English classics
and old otard. He was an expert fisherman, though timid in a
boat, a poor shot, and had the best hogs in Plymouth county.
He attended church with considerable regularity, and his respect
for the Methodist clergy was great. He hated a lean ox,
an unfilled can and Abbott Lawerence. He loved brook trout,
Peter Harvey and his country. He left to his family a splendid
legacy of unpaid debts, and a sincere love of good liquor. He
was a good-looking man, Powers to the contrary notwithstanding."

Moreover, immortality is assured to him who will strike off
the head of POWERS' magnificent statue : "Wendell Phillips, in
a recent lecture in Boston, is reported to have said that 'the
man who would strike the head from the statue recently erected
to Webster, would do a great service, and his name would be
immortalized.' If Mr. Phillips was as patriotic as he wishes to
be considered, or as ambitious as he seems, he would undertake
the 'service' himself."

THE Providence Journal recounts the following incidents respecting
the late Professor GEORGE BUSH, of New York city :--
"The Professor was twice married, the second time ten or
twelve years ago, when his circumstances were somewhat improved.
For several years he occupied a very small room in
the fourth or fifth story of a building on the corner of Beekman
and Nassau streets, in New York, the walls of which were
lined with old books—Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German preponderating.
On the floor, were piles of huge volumes in vellum ;
Bibles, commentaries and lexicons in the Oriental languages.
A pine table, two or three wooden chairs, a small
stove, which retained its place the year round, and a cot-bed,
constituted his furniture. For years neither brush nor broom
disturbed the accumulated dust of this secluded retreat, and
here the Professor wrote those translations of, and learned
commentaries on, several books of the Old Testament, which
have made his name widely known among theologians of
Europe and America. On his second marriage, this sanctum was
abandoned, and he removed his books to his dwelling-house in
Howard street, where he lived many years. Professor BUSH
was particulary fond of attending book auctions. It gave him
a little harmless excitement, brought him in contact with literary
men, who, like himself, were ever mousing about for rare
and choice books, and enabled him to procure the books he
wanted at low prices. Indeed, it may be said that nine-tenths
of his books were purchased at auction ; besides, as there were
few competitors for the literature he sought, he often got old
Latin, Hebrew, German, and various Oriental books, for a mere
song. After using his books a few years, and getting from
them all he required, he would send them to auction, to make
way for others."

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LITERARY NOTICE.
SYLVIA'S WORLD-CRIMES WHICH THE LAW DOES NOT REACH.
By the author of "Busy Moments of an Idle Woman," "Lily,"
etc. New York : Derby & Jackson. M D CCC LIX.

In writing books, as in almost every thing else, women have
a method which is very different, and characteristically different,
from that of the male writers. The reasons are obvious :
they are profoundly ignorant of many matters which come
under the daily observation of men ; they are, of necessity,
excluded from much which every man must encounter in the
every-day friction of the world of business ; they spend the
chief part of their time at home, with cares and duties
of such description that it would be absurd to expect even
the most observant and astute of the sex to conform in
feeling or opinion to the received ideas of men of the world.
In "society," the feminine quickness of perception shews itself
most remarkably ; and yet, how very often does it occur that
some utterly worthless fellow is the universal favourite, while
young men of real merit, but of great modesty--the mark of
the true gentleman—are looked upon as dull and uninteresting !
It is our settled conviction that no unmarried woman is any
sort of judge of the characters of men. Married women learn
so much from their husbands that they become the most wonderfully
accurate judges of character in a very short time.
The darker shades of the male character, "the mixed motives
by which important affairs are controlled" to a particular result,
ability to form a just estimate of the probabilities in cases
in which men with any prominent passion are aroused--these are
matters which very few married women comprehend fully, and,
we think, no single woman in the world. But, as Lord Jeffrey
has it, "in perception of grace, propriety, ridicule ; in detection
of artifice, hypocrisy and affectation," they are very far
our superiors. It is for these reasons that many women of
great mental endowments have no proper conception of the very
works which are the glory of our literature, and which are admired
by all men of culture. We know of sensible women
who have no sort of appreciation of Dickens ; others who can
not be made to read Bulwer, while the glory of their sex,
Charlotte Bronte, is not, we believe, at all popular amongst
them. Miss Bronte is far more admired by men, we have observed,
which probably is owing to the fact that she had a
masculine mind : for,

"There is a sex in souls,"

as may very well be seen by comparing Madame DeStaël, or
the Countess Hahn-Hahn, with Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Osgood.

Mrs. KING is altogether feminine in her views of society, and
her ideas of life. "Society" is the great theme of all her
stories, and in "Silvia's World," as in all of her other writings,
the incidents are those which might occur at any large ball, or in
any mixed company. These stories, in the volume before us, are
of precisely the same stamp as the "Busy Moments" and
"Lily ;" always the follies of young people, the usual adventures
in courtship, lovers' quarrels and estrangements ; and
all containing a demi-semi moral lesson or two. What is the
use ? Young people will read these books, and will straightway
go and perpetrate the very piece of folly which has been
so well described in these most graphic stories and that, too,
when the consequences of such a course of action have been
traced out with the skill of one who knows how to reason a
priori in all such cases.

Mrs. KING has a very rare knack of describing the conflict
of characters, which are brought, as it were by Nature, to cross
and vex each other. Unsuitable matches, engagements between
persons who do not sympathize, the auction of Beauty for
Gold, the ill-starred love of a true heart for some one who does
not deserve it, false friends, deceit of society in general,—all
these she touches with great power. It seems to us, while we
are reading Mrs. KING'S stories, that we are listening to some
clever woman who is telling us, from her own observation,
occurrences which illustrate some point under discussion. The
descriptions are all so natural, the sympathy always so manifest,
that we are invariably impressed with the subjectiveness of
the narratives, to such a degree, that we scarcely remember
them as stories which are "printed in a book."

Now we are going to find fault : and our first charge is, that
these stories are over-run with French, and the worst of it is,
that it is the nomenclature of the boudoir, which no dictionary
contains. Then, there is not yet a proper appreciation of male
character ; of course, women judge by what they know—but
surely our author knows that there are men who are not fops,
not drunkards, not flirts, not one-half fool and the other villain.
Do let us see how she would pourtray one of the noble men
whom she must have seen. Of course, there are many wicked
men, as there are abominable women—but why must an author
always choose the darker side?

The style is clear, simple, and usually very conversational.
There is a description in the volume which we will quote as a
sample of her power of language :

"The beach of Curlew Island ? Did you ever visit this
patriotic spot ! Did you ever take a plunge in the surf which
rolls up twenty yards from the very steps of the Ocean House ?
Did you ever try to shoot a curlew as it came circling over the
ground ? Did you ever go out at daylight after a spring-tide,
furnished with a stick, and knock over marsh-hens by the