NEW BOOKS AND REPRINTS. Writings of Rev. Wm. Bradford Homer, with an Introduction on the influence of Theological Seminaries, and a Memoir. By Professor E. A. PARK, of Andover. 2d edition: T. R. Marvin, Boston.

"May be I should.' "The old man's face lit up joyously, but he smiled and shook his head. "They would not let me, B, they would not let me?" Perhaps the old Shaker's imagination wandered for a moment from the very straight path of the brotherhood, but it was but a moment. His face reverted to its placid passiveness, and he said, "I am THERE are some faces whose expressive beauty perfectly content. I have enough to eat and drink -everything good after its kind, too-good clothes no pencil can transfer to canvass, so there are some to wear, a warm bed to sleep in, and just as much characters which no pen can fully delineate. Howork as I like, and no more." All this and mer is one of these. Professor Park has given an heaven too" of which the old man felt perfectly for the filling up the mind turns instinctively to the outline which must charm and profit the reader, but sure, was quite enough to fill the measure of a Sha-original, and there sees excellence which cannot be transferred to paper. has been called for.

ker's desires.

66

Now, B-," said he, "you think so much of your dances, I wish you could see one of our young sisters dance, when we go up to Mount Holy. She has the whirlwind gift; she will spin round like a top on one foot, for half an hour, all the while seeing visions, and receiving revela

tions."

This whirling is a recent gift of the Shakers. The few world's folk" who have been permitted to see its exhibition, compare its subjects to the whirling Dervishes.

"Have you any other new inspiration?" I asked. "Gifts, you mean? Oh, yes; we have visionists. It's a wonderful mystery to me. I never was much for looking into mysteries-they rather scare me!" Naturally enough, poor childlike old

man !

66

What, brother W- -," I asked, “do you mean by a visionist?"

"I can't exactly explain," he replied. "They see things that the natural eye can't see, and hear, and touch, and taste, with inward senses. As for me, I never had any kind of gifts, but a contented mind, and submission to those in authority, and I don't see at all into this new mystery. It makes me of a tremble when I think of it. I'll tell you how it acts. Last summer I was among our brethren in York State, and when I was coming away, I went down into the garden to take leave of a young brother there. He asked me if I would carry | something for him to Vesta. Vesta is a young sister, famous for her spiritual gifts, whirling, &c."I could have added, for I had seen Vesta-for other less questionable gifts in the world's estimation—a light graceful figure, graceful even in the Shaker's straight jacket, and a face like a young Sybil's."Well," continued brother W

The influence of such works We are glad a second edition must be highly salutary upon the young, especially cation; and the candidate for the sacred ministry, upon the young student in every stage of his eduor the young pastor, may see here a singleness of aim which he need not fear to imitate.

sketch of the character of the father of Homer, to
The present edition contains in an Appendix a
whose excellences the mercantile community of
Boston paid so deserved a tribute.— Vt. Chronicle.
Anesthesia; or, The Employment of Chloroform and
Ether in Surgery, &c. By J. Y. SIMPSON, M.
D. Philadelphia. Lindsay & Blakiston.
THIS timely and useful book contains a vindica-
tion of the new methods of annihilating pain, in the
practice of surgery, &c.; and although addressed
to the profession alone, yet the subject is so inter-
esting that it will be highly acceptable to every
class of readers. All the objections to the use of
these agents, whether philosophical or religious,
are here examined and refuted, by an author whose
scholarship, experience and exalted reputation en-
title him to be heard. Dr. Simpson dwells at great
length on etherization in surgery, dealing in facts
and statistics chiefly, and for the purpose of demon-
strating much greater success in this department
when the patients have been subjected to anæsthet-
ic agents, than when they are dispensed with.
The main purpose of the book, however, is to prove
the propriety and safety of employing chloroform in
midwifery.-N. Y. Com. Advertiser.
Layard's Nineveh, and its Remains. Published by
George P. Putnam, New York.

WE have received from the publisher the second volume of Layard's Nineveh, a work of which we "he put his have before, more than once, spoken with high hand in his pocket as if to take out something, and then stretching it to me, he said, I want you to praise, while noticing the first volume. The presgive this white pear to Vesta.' I felt to take ent volume is, if possible, still more deeply intersomething, though I saw nothing, and a sort of a esting than its predecessor, and it has the advantrickling heat ran through me; and even now, when tage of a map, and a very large number-upwards I think of it, I have the same feeling, fainter, but of eighty-illustrations, respecting the extraordithe same. When I got home I asked Vesta if she nary relics of the Assyrian empire, and its "exknew that young brother. Yea,' she said. I put which these unburied sculptures of stone, some not ceeding great city of three days' journey;" of my hand in my pocket and took it out again, to all earthly seeming as empty as it went in, and stretched very authentic chapters of profane history, and a it out to her. Oh, a white pear!' she said. As I few solemn and fearful passages in Holy Writ are hope for salvation, every word that I tell you is with the mounds of desolation that mark the true," concluded the old man. It was evident he place of Nineveh on the banks of the Tigris-the believed every word of it to be true. The incredu-volume is occupied with the narrative of Mr. Laysole vestiges and memorials. One third of the lous may imagine that there was some clandestine in-ard's final excavations; the remainder, forming Part tercourse between the " young brother" and "young II. of the work, is devoted to a highly interesting sister," and that simple old brother Wilcox was series of chapters on Assyrian history, character, merely made the medium of a fact or sentiment, manners, arts, letters, &c.; in fact, a general archsymbolized by the white pear. However that may be, it is certain that animal magnetism has penetra-æological disquisition in regard to this ancient peoted into the cold and dark recesses of the Shakers. ple; in which Mr. Layard's discoveries at Nimroud -Sartain's Magazine. come into requisition with great force, and exhibit their true importance and value.-U. S. Gazette.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Solid Milk, 332; New Books and Reprints, 335.

POETRY.-The "Good Old Times," 310.

PROSPECTUS.-This work is conducted in the spirit of | now becomes every intelligent American to be informed Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 262.-26 MAY, 1849.

THE PALACE OF MARLY. TRANSLATED FROM THE MUSEE DES FAMILLES, BY ANNE T. WILBUR.

1. HOW THE KING LOUIS XIV. BECAME A HERMIT.

FAME is as capricious as fortune. She has not trumpets enough to celebrate the palaces, the chateaux, the scenery and the chronicles of Versailles, of Fontainebleau, of Meudon, of St. Germain, &c., whose reputation is indeed merited; and leaves in the obscurity of oblivion one of those localities in the kingdom of France most enchanting to the eye, and most fruitful of interesting associations. It is time to avenge Marly for the neglect of Fashion, who has obliterated it from her tablets for a hundred years past; the forgetfulness of M. Vatout, who has not even inscribed its name among the Royal Residences; of travellers and artists, who have not bestowed upon it a page or a picture; finally, of princes, who have scarcely deigned to visit there the shade of Louis XIV.

Marly-Le-Roi, it is true, figured but a moment in history; but with what eclat, what glory, and what originality! To these we are about to call your attention.

After having admired it in its greatness, we will not imitate those who have abandoned it in its decline; we will love it in the majesty of its ruin, so beautiful and so smiling still.

One may go to Marly now by railroad from St. Germain or Versailles. Active pedestrians may go by Rueil or by Bougival, whence they reach their destination over the hills and through the woods of Louvecienne.

You have often contemplated, from St. Germain, that aqueduct, with its colossal arches, which reminds you of the finest works of Rome, and which so admirably crowns, on the south, the celebrated view from the terrace-when the sun, already set to the woods which it overlooks, still gilds its summit with a lingering ray. Marly reposes at the foot of this aqueduct, an immortal relic of its splendor.

If you arrive there by this route, you will have turned a hundred times to cast a glance upon the richest valley of the Seine.

his head, and addressed his companions, whose conversation was limited to respectful replies.

This man was clad more simply than the others; a pourpoint of black velvet, almost plain; a vest of red cloth finely embroidered; no rings on his fingers; a few jewels on his shoes, and garters; the edge of his hat trimmed with Spanish lace; a cane with golden tassels between his knees; these were all. The countenance of this personage, still youthful and vigorous, wore an expression of majesty equalled only by its sadness. One would have thought him a courtier weary of pleasures and of grandeur, withdrawing, still young, from the court and from the world. Nevertheless, his escort was far from announcing a hermit, for a throng of cavaliers preceded and followed his equipage.

Having reached the summit of the hills of Louvecienne, (or Louvienne,) the two carriages stopped, and the seven travellers alighted. He whom we may call the master, the man with the cane, was immediately surrounded by the six others. They established themselves on a natural terrace and cast their eyes over the country.

On all sides the prospect was admirable, much more so than at present; for nature, left to herself, had freely lavished her riches. The eye embraced on the east the course of the Seine, Bougival, Croissy, Chatou, the towers of Paris, Montmorency, Argentueil, &c.; on the south, the woods of Lucienne, of La Celle, of Versailles, &c.; on the north, St. Germain, with its terraces, the river at its feet, in the distance the houses and the heights of Andrezy, Chanteloup, &c.; on the west the hills and the valleys of Marly of L'Etang, of Fourqueux, of Mareil. &c.; all these tapestried with green fields, flowery meadows, waving forests, interspersed with ancient steeples, gray turrets, white houses, water-courses like silvery ribbons, long roads winding like serpents among the verdure.

When these seven personages had examined the panorama, a scene took place among them which reminds one of Jesus upon the mountain, tempted by Satan.

"Well," said the servants to the master,

By the road from Versailles the prospect is" have you fixed your choice?" less extensive and less varied. The eye loses itself in a horizon of villas, parks and forests.

It was on this road that, about the middle of the reign of Louis XIV., on a beautiful and mild morning of the spring of 1676, two carriages were advancing, each drawn by six horses. Three men were in the first, four in the second, all in the costume of the court, with enormous perruques falling over their shoulders and plumed hats on their knees. One only from time to time covered VOL. XXI. 22

CCLXII.

LIVING AGE.

The master hesitated, turned three times, and asked their opinions. One counselled him to select Louvecienne, as the site most pleasing to the eye, and best situated for a habitation.

"Too well situated, indeed; I should expend millions there."

The objection made the noblemen smile with astonishment.

"Yes," resumed the man with the cane, "it is not a palace I would seek, it is not even a

M. Le Comte de Hocquart has now in his possession a clock which is called La Cavoise.

chateau; it is a hermitage wherein to expiate charming villa there.
our sins, a cottage where I may dine and sleep
two or three times a year. In a word, I want a
nothing; the only requisite is that it please me."
Another praised La Celle St. Cloud; a third,
Bougival; a fourth, Monbuisson, &c.

The master still shook his head, and replied: "These would cost too much!"

At last, he himself pointed out, towards the west, a little steeple rising between two valleys. "What village is that?" asked he.

"It is Marly-Le-Chastel."

When the valley of Marly had been purchased and drained, Louis XIV. returned thither with Mansard.

The great address of the architect of Versailles was to flatter the king better than any one else, and here is a specimen.

Arrived at Marly, the master and the servant discussed the plan of the hermitage. Mansard, as usual, proposed imperfect edifices and impossi

"Well, Marly pleases me. I will build my ble gardens. Louis XIV. had the less trouble in

cell there."

completing the first and rectifying the second, that his counsellor ingeniously put him in the way of doing this, insinuating his own secret ideas by their very contrast with those suggested.

All the gentlemen looked at one another with stupefaction. Very soon those who always flattered the principal personage, who froze when he was cold, and perspired when he was warm, exclaimed Mansard would then exclaim admiringly: "I at the wonderful discovery, the beauty of the should never have thought of that! Your majesty site and landscape, the unparalleled taste and dis- is indeed in the right. I am but a scholar beside cernment of the master; they declared them-you. Judge and speak, lord and master; your selves blind, imbecile, stupid, not to have dis-mason will listen and obey." tinguished the superb Marly at once. A few, perhaps less weak, seeing the man with the cane laugh at the first, timidly hazarded an objection on the insufficiency of the place for so great an inhabitant! One only, the same who had proposed Louvecienne, dared to speak plainly his thoughts, which were those of every one else.

The architect was doubly interested in thus addressing the king. He was at once ensuring and increasing his favor and his fortune.

Louis XIV. had, besides, too good an eye and too acute a perception of great things, to recoil at Marly any more than at Versailles, before the suggestions of Mansard.

The first day a simple dwelling and a few parterres were drawn on paper. The next day lodgings for the guards and the officers were added; another day, for the gentlemen and ladies of the court.

"One cannot build at Marly excepting in the valley towards the east. Now this valley is narrow, deep, with steep sides, inaccessible by its marshes, enclosed by hills on every side; it is a sink for all the gutters in the neighborhood, a receptacle for serpents, carrion, lizards and frogs." The ladies once admitted, fêtes became indis"I am of your opinion, sir," replied the mas-pensable. Now, how were fêtes to be given ter, to the great consternation of the flatterers; without apartments of reception? And then how "and this is exactly the reason why I prefer Marly. I cannot, whatever may happen, spend money in this sink, without prospect, destitute of water, and so limited. It will be sufficient to cleanse it and build a cottage there. I am weary of greatness and a crowd; I want littleness and solitude. I could not have chosen better."

And the courtiers applauded anew, declaring Marly as modest as they had pronounced it superb.

66

So, it is decided," resumed the anchorite with the jewelled garters. "Let it be purchased, the marshes drained, and let Mansard, our architect, be summoned. We will come next year, gentlemen, to hunt the stag at Marly-Le-Chastel, which shall henceforth be called Marly-Le-Roi."

The man who spoke thus was indeed the king, the king par excellence, for it was Louis XIV.

He had taken on this day a fancy for a hermitage, because Madame de Montespan had had a headache at Versailles, and the grave Maintenon was now on the ascendency.

The nobleman who had dared to contradict him, was M. de Cavoye, the courtier who learnt his profession of Racine. He did not forget the hill

could one walk but in a park, a park watered by streams? To open channels for these, was to open a vein for millions. This supposed, should things be half done? Prudence would be folly, and economy, extravagance; it became necessary to return to the grand or renounce the beautiful.

Louis XIV. nevertheless hesitated, and the labors, commenced in 1679, were suspended ten times; but the architect returned with his new suggestions, and the eye of the master continually saw reasons for the enlargement of his plans.

"We might put four pavilions here," said Mansard.

"Put twelve!” replied Louis XIV.

"I do not know where to place the chapel."

"Since we have water, we may as well use it. I will have here a jet d'eau of sixty feet, there three bouillons, there five others. And what should of Louvecienne, which he avenged at a later prevent our making a river flow through this aveperiod, for the king's neglect, by establishing a nue?"

"How, sire, a river?"

"Once brought upon this mountain, the water will descend of itself. I see that from here, Mansard; an enormous bunch of sheaves at the summit; on the declivity, a hundred steps will form as many cascades; a few bold jets at the right and left; at the foot an immense basin, with groups of marble and bronze.”

And Mansard exclaimed, clapped his hands with enthusiasm, and confessed that no architect in the world could have conceived such an idea. For once, he told the truth.

66

"A hundred thousand livres for you, Mansard, if that is done in two months!"

Then was seen at Marly a spectacle in which one could scarcely believe one's eyes. "A forest fully grown," says St. Simon," removed from

Nothing is wanting to execute all these won- Compiegne, and a still greater distance, in giganders, but water," stammered he.

"There it is," replied Louis XIV., pointing to the Seine, at nearly a league's distance, five hundred feet below Marly. "You will bring it upon the hill of Louvecienne; you will build there two conduit-houses, an aqueduct with thirty or forty arches, a little further three vast reservoirs, and the river will be our very humble servant. As for the machine which is to work this miracle, demand it of the learned men of Europe!"

"Give me till to-morrow!" exclaimed Mansard," and the water shall ascend to heaven, if it please your majesty!"

Nevertheless it took long years to accomplish this. The king beguiled the interval by spending new millions on Versailles. At last his wishes were fulfilled. The Seine was brought into the gardens of Marly.

"Sire," resumed the architect, "you have spoken of a tableaux, of statues of marble and of bronze; will this disposition of them please you?" And the tempter presented a new bait, at which his majesty nibbled beautifully.

tic trees, three fourths of which died, and were instantly replaced. Then, the king, changing his opinion, according to his success or failure, these spaces improvised with dense woods and obscure alleys were suddenly converted into immense sheets of water, traversed in gondolas; then, again, these were transformed into forests impervious to the light of day. And all this before my eyes, in less than six weeks!" adds the veracious historian.

It was so with the parterres and apartments; Louis XIV. remodelled them in 1696, twenty years after they were commenced. Witness the reports of Mansard, wherein we find notes by the king's own hand.

numerous

So that, at the end of the account, this maisonnette of Marly, this cottage, this hermitage, this cell, this nothing, chosen and undertaken expressly to avoid expense, cost, says St. Simon, 66 more dear than Versailles such as we have seen it!" "And if to this we add the expenses of these continual journeys, which became as as those from Versailles, and lasted to the close "From fifteen to twenty statues? Thirty pic of the king's life, this being his favorite residence, tures? What are you thinking of, M. Mansard? we cannot but say of Marly, It cost its millions.” Do you take us for a bourgeois of La Marais? will have pictures and statues by hundreds, and II.-PORTRAITS AND ANECDOTES OF THE COURT. everywhere. Since this place must look well, So the Chateau of Marly, as soon as it was art must aid nature. Summon Lebrun, Vander- habitable, became, as St. Simon has said, the privmeulen, Mignard, Fontenay, &c. Let them peo-ileged residence of Louis XIV. After having exple with all the gods of Olympus these apartments, hausted all other marks of distinction, he made these basins, these groves, and these parterres ! visits to Marly special favors, methods of distinYou know that we never go anywhere without guishing or mortifying more surely those who these gentlemen." pleased or displeased him.

I

Nothing remained but to draw the park, arrange the prospects, and remove the inequalities of the ground.

Everywhere else, at Versailles, at Paris, at Trianon, it was sufficient to have the entrée at court to approach the king. To be a guest at

"Sire, this hill conceals the Seine from us, and Marly required a special invitation. The day bethis valley is a miserable marsh."

"Throw the hill into the valley, Mansard," and thousands of arms executed this tour de force. And the architect exclaimed anew, on seeing the perspective opened on all sides: "How well your majesty chose your location! How clearly have you comprehended what might be made of it! How well divined the pearls concealed in this ditch!"

It was true-Louis XIV. had demolished hills, dug basins, elevated terraces, transformed the whole country with his magic wand.

fore the departure, all the aspirants defiled, in the morning, before his majesty, saying, as they bent to the ground, these words only: Sire, Marly! Glory and happiness to him who received a word or a gesture of assent! Disgrace and misfortune to him who obtained no reply! The ladies were designated, in the evening, at the grand couvert of supper, and added, at a royal sign, to the list of the chosen.

How many illustrious gentlemen knocked all their lives at the door without ever seeing it opened to them! And yet, however obstinate the "We want a forest, Mansard!" said he one refusals, it was necessary that the entreaties