Madame de Poplinière, in the time of Madame de Tencin, was only short-lived, like the good fortune of the lady herself. In her house there assembled members of the great world who were addicted to carousing and debauchery, and learned men who sought to obtain their favor and approbation. The same sort of society was afterward kept up in the house of Holbach. A smaller society, which frequented the house of the farmer-general Pelletier, consisted of unmarried people, who were known as persons who indulged in malicious and licentious conversation. Collé, the younger Crébillon and Bernard, who, notwithstanding his helplessness, was called le gentil, played the chief characters in this reunion, and the Gascon nature of Marmontel, which was always forward and intrusive, helped him into this society also. Baron Holbach, who was a native of the Palatinate, and the able Helvetius who was wanton merely from vanity, brought together expressly and intentionally at a later period, around their well-spread table, all those who declared open war against religion and morality. We must, however, return to these men in the following period.
Holbach for a whole quarter of a century had regular dinner-parties on Sundays, which are celebrated in the history of atheism. All those were invited, who were too bold and too out-spoken for Geoffrin; and even D'Alembert also at a later period withdrew from their society.
Grimm, whose copious correspondence has also been published in the nineteenth century, gives minutes and notices of all the memorable sayings and doings that served to entertain and occupy the polite world in Europe. Grimm also entertained and feasted these distinguished gentlemen. He was not at that time consul for Gotha, or employed and paid by that court or the Empress Catherine to collect Parisian anecdotes, neither had he then been made a baron, but was merely civil secretary of Count von Friese. Both J.J. Rousseau and Buffon belonged at first to these societies; but the former, in great alarm, broke off all intercourse with the people who then played the first parts in Paris, and the other quietly retired.
THE ATHENÆUM UPON HAWTHORNE. 2
The London Athenæum, of the 15th June, has the following remarks upon the last work of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE:
"This is a most powerful and painful story. Mr. Hawthorne must be well known to our readers as a favorite of the Athenæum. We rate him as among the most original and peculiar writers of American fiction. There in his works a mixture of Puritan reserve and wild imagination, of passion and description, of the allegorical and the real, which some will fail to understand, and which others will positively reject,—but which, to ourselves, is fascinating, and which entitles him to be placed on a level with Brockden Brown and the author of 'Rip Van Winkle.' 'The Scarlet Letter' will increase his reputation with all who do not shrink from the invention of the tale; but this, as we have said, is more than ordinarily painful. When we have announced that the three characters are a guilty wife, openly punished for her guilt,—her tempter, whom she refuses to unmask, and who during the entire story carries a fair front and an unblemished name among his congregation,—and her husband, who, returning from a long absence at the moment of her sentence, sits himself down betwixt the two in the midst of a small and severe community to work out his slow vengeance on both under the pretext of magnanimous forgiveness,—when we have explained that 'The Scarlet Letter' is the badge of Hester Prynne's shame, we ought to add that we recollect no tale dealing with crime so sad and revenge so subtly diabolical, that is at the same time so clear of fever and of prurient excitement. The misery of the woman is as present in every page as the heading which in the title of the romance symbolizes her punishment. Her terrors concerning her strange elvish child present retribution in a form which is new and natural:—her slow and painful purification through repentance is crowned by no perfect happiness, such as awaits the decline of those who have no dark and bitter past to remember. Then, the gradual corrosion of heart of Dimmesdale, the faithless priest, under the insidious care of the husband, (whose relationship to Hester is a secret known only to themselves,) is appalling; and his final confession and expiation are merely a relief, not a reconciliation. We are by no means satisfied that passions and tragedies like these are the legitimate subjects for fiction: we are satisfied that novels such as 'Adam Blair,' and plays such as 'The Stranger,' maybe justly charged with attracting more persons than they warn by their excitement. But if Sin and Sorrow in their most fearful forms are to be presented in any work of art, they have rarely been treated with a loftier severity, purity, and sympathy than in Mr. Hawthorne's 'Scarlet Letter.' The touch of the fantastic befitting a period of society in which ignorant and excitable human creatures conceived each other and themselves to be under the direct 'rule and governance' of the Wicked One, is most skillfully administered. The supernatural here never becomes grossly palpable:—the thrill is all the deeper for its action being indefinite, and its source vague and distant."
The Emperor Nicholas has just published an ordonnance, which regulates the pensions to which Russian and foreign actors at the imperial theaters at St. Petersburgh shall be entitled. This ordonnance divides the actors (national as well as foreign) into four classes. The first class obtains, after twenty years' service, pensions averaging from 300 to 1140 silver rubles. The others, after fifteen years' service, will receive pensions from 285 to 750 silver rubles.
THE HAIR
CHEMICALLY AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED.—Each hair is a tube, containing an oil, of a color similar to its own. Hair contains at least ten distinct substances: sulphate of lime and magnesia, chlorides of sodium and potassium, phosphate of lime, peroxide of iron, silica, lactate of ammonia, oxide of manganese and margaim. Of these, sulphur is the most prominent, and it is upon this that certain metallic salts operate in changing the color of hair. Thus when the salts of lead or of mercury are applied, they enter into combination with the sulphur, and a black sulphuret of the metal is formed. A common formula for a paste to dye the hair, is a mixture of litharge, slacked lime, and bicarbonate of potash. Different shades may be given by altering the proportions of these articles. Black hair contains iron and manganese and no magnesia; while fair hair is destitute of the two first substances, but possesses magnesia.
No one ever possessed all the requisites of masculine or feminine beauty without a profusion of hair. This is one of the crowning perfections of the human form, upon which poets of all ages have dwelt with the most untiring satisfaction. However perfect a woman may be in other respects; however beautiful her eyes, her mouth, teeth, lips, nose or cheeks; however brilliant her expression, in conversation or excitement, she is positively disagreeable without this ornament of nature. The question is sometimes asked, "What will cure love?" We answer, scissors. Let the object be shorn of hair, and you may take the word of a physiologist, that the tender passion will lose its distinctiveness; it may subside into respect: it is more likely to change into a less agreeable emotion.
In man, the hair is an excellent index of character. As the beard distinguishes man from woman, so its full and luxuriant growth often indicates strength and nobleness, intellectual and physical; while a meager beard suggests an uncertain character—part masculine, part feminine. Was there ever a truly great man, or one with a generous disposition, with a thin beard and a weazen face? On the other hand, show me a man with "royal locks," and I will trust his natural impulses in almost every vicissitude. When we see a genuine man, upon whom Nature has declined to set this seal of her approval, we cannot help an involuntary emotion of admiration for the virtuous and persevering energy with which he must have overcome his destiny.
Pertinent hereto: we have read with unusual satisfaction the arguments for Beards in Dr. Marcy's Theory and Practice of Medicine and the pleasant essays in the same behalf which John Waters has printed in the Knickerbocker. Our conservatism yields before these reformers, who would bring custom to the proprieties of nature.
WHAT'S IN A NAME?—A good deal, sometimes. Thus, the truth of the adage of "give a dog a bad name," &c., has lately been exemplified in a singular manner. Eugene Sue, you may remember, causes some of the most terrible
The Scarlet Letter: a Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Ticknor & Co.
