threw the administration elected in May previous, and
took the President, Don Jose Laureano Pineda, and all
his cabinet, except Dr. Jesus de la Rocha, prisoners,
and sent them to Port La Union, Tigre Island, from
whence the British steamer took them (report says) to
San Juan de la Concordia. The Senate immediately
assembled at Granada, for Munoz held Leon, the
capital, and elected a provisional administration with
Don Jose Montenegro as President. Munoz's faction
assembled at Leon, and elected a president and a
ministry. Munoz's government then sent their orders
to the employés of the different departments and office-
holders throughout the country, but almost all of them
refused to acknowledge them. The American Chargé
d'Affaires returned to Granada, and presented his
credentials to President Montenegro, and was cordially
received. The government were providing ammunition,
arms, &c., and seemed determined to resist the insurgents.
Public sentiment is said to be against Munoz in
this rebellion, although heretofore he has been one of
the most popular men in the country.
The Emperor of Hayti, Faustin I., who imitates
Napoleon in everything, is said to be most anxious to be
crowned with all the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic
Church. He recently sent an ambassador to Rome to
beg for a bishop, if it were only one in partibus, to
consecrate him an Emperor by the grace of God and of the
holy see. The Pope, who is displeased at the cavalier
manner in which Faustin declared himself the head of
the Haytian church, has flatly refused. But the
Emperor does not despair; and he has spent the
enormous sum of £30,000 sterling in buying a throne,
a praying desk, crosses, velvet, and silk. He has also
built a throne-room with sumptuous decorations. He
lately made a tour of his dominions, followed by an
escort of 8000 men, whose appearance upon the frontiers
of the Spanish part of the island, caused a panic in the
minds of the inhabitants, who suspected an invasion of
the Dominican republic. But it is stated that the
officers in command of the French and English ships
then gave notice that in case of any aggression they
would jointly blockade Hayti.
NARRATIVE OF LITERATURE AND ART.
THE flattest season of the literary year received a temporary fillip the other day from the revelation of a
curious literary imposture. The so-called "Baroness Von Beck," whose lately-published personal
memoirs had recounted a series of extraordinary adventures and incidents in the Hungarian struggle
which excited considerable interest in England, turns out to have been no baroness, but a common spy, who
could not possibly have encountered such scenes or enjoyed such experiences as the book professes to record.
The strangest part of the affair is, that none of the Hungarian exiles now in England, even those to whom
many details in the narrative (if true) must have been minutely and personally familiar, appear to have
seen reason to doubt its authenticity on the internal evidence merely. It will doubtless be discovered
ultimately that whoever the writer of the book may have been (for if the facts attending the exposure be true
it could hardly have been "the baroness"), such of the scenes narrated as had actually occurred were not
unfamiliar to him, though probably much exaggerated in the telling. At any rate the incident is a curious
one; and the memoirs of the soi-disant baroness may now take their place on that shelf in English libraries,
which contains too many similar examples of literary skill debauched by imposture. That the book is
clever and entertaining there can be no doubt whatever.
The books of the month worth mention are very briefly
recounted. That which we think most noticeable for
the original thought and speculation that is in it (offering
here no opinion as to its philosophical value),
appears to be an importation from America, though
published first in England. It is called Vestiges of
Civilisation; or the Ætiology of History, Religious,
Æsthetical, Political, and Philosophical, and it will
probably succeed in exciting attention. From America
also we receive a well-written and animated history of
the campaigns of the celebrated Indian chief, Pontiac,
during his gallant "conspiracy" to expel the English
colonists after the conquest of Canada. It is principally
interesting for the picture it gives of the chief himself;
and for a more favourable view of his plans, and of the
sagacity winch informed and shaped them, than Englishmen
have been prepared for in the case of any chief of
those tribes. To a foreign source are we likewise
indebted for almost the only other book of importance in
the month's list of publications. Mignet's second volume
of the Life of Mary Queen of Scots has appeared,
confirming all that was said of the merits of his first volume.
The book is a clear and singularly impartial narrative,
written in all fairness to both queens, and with as little
abatement of Elizabeth's weakness and severity as of
Mary's guilt and temptations. The value of the second
volume consists mainly in the light thrown from foreign
archives on the conspiracies against Elizabeth set on
foot by Mary's Roman Catholic friends. Of English
books the most interesting has been a collection of the
poetical remains of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, a man who
had as much of the true poetical faculty in him as any
writer of this generation, though a strange impatience
and waywardness of spirit, combined with some
disadvantageous incidents of fortune, intercepted the fruit
it should have borne. Still the volume now published,
which contains his fragments, and the very interesting
memoir accompanying them, will be always prized by a
select and influential class of readers and critics. To a
very different branch of the department of biography
the month has contributed a third volume of the
Life of Dr. Chalmers; and in that of fiction we have
to name Marian Withers, a novel by Miss Jewsbury,
which has excited some attention; The Fate, another of
Mr. James's agreeable gossipping narratives, half-
historic half-domestic; a sylvan romance called Smugglers
and Foresters: some tales edited by Lady Dormer; and
a social novel called John Drayton, of which the object
is generally to uphold beliefs and institutions as they
are. When we have added that sundry Illustrated
Catalogues, Handbooks, and other publications
connected with the now closing Exhibition, have likewise
made their appearance (including a pleasant squib by Mr.
Richard Doyle, and a more solemn and remarkable squib
by Mr. Samuel Warren), together with some medical and
some law books, a new edition of Sir Howard Douglas's
Treatise on Naval Gunnery, a republication of his
political tracts on the influences of the popedom by Mazzini, a
new and most complete Mercantile Navy List, and a very
lively account of a visit to the Californian diggins under
the title of Golden Dreams and Waking Realities,—a
very fair idea will have been given of the class of books
that have been published during the month just closed.
Mr. Keith, of Edinburgh, has published a very good
likeness of Mr. Macaulay, the historian, in mezzotint.
A further portion of the sculptured remains, recovered
from the Ruins of Nineveh by the exertions of Mr.
Layard, has been received at the British Museum. The
whole of the collection will be arranged in the new
gallery of sculptural antiquities during the recess.
The Syrian gallery, the Elgin room, and Egyptian
gallery are now arranged.
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