Silver Vase Testimonial to Gen. Jackson. -A Columbia, S. C., paper says: Admirers of the beautiful and rare will see on exhibition at Capt. Stanley's a silver vase which has a history. It was originally presented by the ladies of South Carolina to Gen. Jackson, as a testimonial upon his victory at New Orleans. In his will ex-President Jackson directed this vase to be given to the bravest South Carolinian in the next war. It was confided, in 1858, to Gov. Allston, to be disposed of according to the bequest. Gov. A. presented it to Capt. Stanley, President of the Palmetto Association, as the representative of the regiment which, as a regiment, won the place designated by

the testator-" the bravest of the brave ". where no one individual stood pre-eminent.

The Daniel Webster farm and homestead in Franklin, N. H., has been sold for $15,000.

Paducah. In the early days of Western emigration, an intelligent Irishman, known as Pat Doogan, settled on the Kentucky side of the Ohio river, where he built a little dock and supplied steamboats with wood. The place was called Pat Doogan's Landing. It was soon shortened into "Pat Doogan's," then into "Padoogans," and finally to the euphonious name which now appears on all the maps, Paducah.-Sun.

Cannon found in the "Devil's Den," R. I.-At a recent meeting of the Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, James S. Brown, of Pawtucket, presented a cannon cast by his father for the government in the year 1800, from iron dug in the state. It is remarkable for its history, it having been stolen during the famous Dorr rebellion, and kept hidden for many years in the "Devil's Den."

It has been said that to write anything new about the Byron Controversy would not be an easy thing. We do not propose to add a single line, but merely to select a few from the thousand and one articles which have appeared from the time when Mrs. Stowe first stirred up the reeking pot of scandal in her True Story of Lady Byron, until, compelled by the storm of popular indignation, we find her attempting a defence in The True Story of Lady Byron Vindicated.

The controversy has served to some purpose, however, in the interests of literature. An unpublished Poem and Letter of Byron are brought to light. To these attaches an unusual interest, as they both bear directly on the separation, thereby carrying with them the force of documents.

Another interesting contribution is Mr. Murray's Account of the Destruction of Byron's Autobiography, which, with the Poem and Letter we will presently give to our readers.

One feature of the controversy is not quite so pleasant, showing as it does the disposition of some publishers to trade upon the popular scandal. Here is the respect

able house of Fields, Osgood & Co., of whom it is said that they "have been incited by a passage in Mrs. Stowe's Byron book to bring out a cheap pamphlet edition of Godwin's famous but little read novel, Caleb Williams." The paper from which we copy this says further, Godwin's story is one of the most powerful and painful works of fiction in the language. It is a story rather to be admired and wondered at than to be liked; and the fact that it is now, so to speak, picked out of the filth of the Byron discussion does not make it any less disagreeable."

VINDICATIONS OF BYRON.

The Vindications of Lord Byron in newspapers, magazines, and reviews are so numerous and unanswerable, that we think the shade of the poet may rest secure behind the ramparts of his defenders, without fear of any immediate danger. Three of the latest magazine articles we mention-one in the New Monthly (English magazine) called Lord Byron and his Libeller, by Cyrus Redding, who was well acquainted with the poet and his widow; another, in the Galaxy on Byron as Man and Poet, by "Philip

Quilibet," and a third in one of the English magazines (reprinted in pamphlet form by Loring, Boston), called William Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway, which is a clever and witty, satire on Mrs. Stowe's article in the Atlantic Monthly. Nothing in book form had been produced until the recent appearance of Medora Leigh; a History and an Autobiography, by a New Witness, Elucidating the Byron Mystery, edited by Dr. Charles Mackay. Medora Leigh, however, receives a cudgelling from the Saturday Review, which says: "As a literary work it is contemptible in execution; as a controversial work it is valueless, and almost entirely beside the point really at issue, and which it affects to meet; as a moral work it is entirely reprehensible, and immoral and offensive in the extreme."

Harper & Bros. reprint this book in America.

The German literary journals are uncommonly decided in their denunciation of the author of the scandal, which they stigmatize as "the greatest literary crime of the century." The Countess Guiccioli, too, is terribly incensed at this shabby treatment of her lord, and is, or is said to be, writing a reply to Mrs. Stowe. This book of the Countess is to be a memoir of her husband, the Marquis de Boissy, as well, under the title of Lord Byron's Life in Italy.

Moreover, Rumor saith that Mrs. Stowe's scandal disturbed into motion the metrical machine of the imperturbable Tupper. Our vision hath not been blessed with a sight of his poetical effusion, and we are, therefore, unable to decide upon its merits. But is not Tupper's name enough?

BYRON AND THE HEROES OF MRS.
STOWE'S NOVELS.

The editor of the Nation has this very pertinent suggestion: "Has anybody yet noticed, by the way, what a strong family likeness there is between Byron and all of the heroes of Mrs. Stowe's novels? Aaron Burr, as he is conceived of in "The Minister's Wooing;" Ellery Davenport, in " Old Town Folk;" Saint Clair in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," are all Byrons, more or less embryonic, to be sure, but still Byronic in essence. This is something not merely curious but really worth consideration by any one who cares to discuss exhaustively the remarkable chapter in literary history which Mrs. Stowe has offered us for perusal."

DESTRUCTION OF BYRON S AUTOBIOG

SIR:

RAPHY

Oct. 6. Albemarle Street.

There are a few points connected with the destruction of Byron's Autobiography upon which a great deal of misconception exists, and upon which I should therefore be glad to say a few words.

1. To those who doubt the entire destruction of the MS., I may state that I was eyewitness to the burning of it and of the only copy existing of it, in the drawing-room of 50, Albemarle Street.

2. The proposal to destroy it originated, I believe, with my Father, the late Mr. John Murray; and his reason for making it (as he has stated in a letter to Mr. R. W. Horton, printed in No. 185 of the Quarterly Review), was his "regard for Lord Byron's memory, and respect for his surviving family"... "since it was surmised that the publication might be injurious to the former and painful to the latter." The 66 united in friends of Lord and Lady Byron wishing for its destruction." The following persons were previously consulted, as a matter of courtesy, and were present at the burning-Mr. Hobhouse, as executor and friend of Lord Byron; Colonel Doyle, as a friend of Lady Byron (who had actually offered 2000l. for the MSS., which she did not pay); Mr. Wilmot Horton, as friend of the Hon. Mrs. Leigh; my Father, and Mr. Moore, who alone for some time opposed

the destruction.

3. The MS. was, at the time of its destruction, the absolute property of my Father, having been purchased by him in November, 1821, from Mr. Moore (to whom Lord Byron had given it) for 2000l., in consideration of which sum Moore covenanted to edit the papers, and to supply an account of the subsequent events of Lord Byron's life. On May the 6th, 1822, however, a second deed was executed, at Mr. Moore's request, giving to him the power of redeeming the MS., "during the life of the said Lord Byron," on the repayment by either of them of the 2000l. This condition Moore did not fulfil: consequently his interest in the MS. entirely ceased on Byron's death; by which event the value of the MS. was greatly enhanced, probably doubled. This fact, no doubt, rendered Mr. Moore more than ever anxious to recover the Autobiography, and he had secured the

advance of 2000l. on loan from friends in the city to enable him to do this.

The MS, however, by general consent, was destroyed, Mr. Moore, though reluctantly, concurring. Moore then paid to Mr Murray the 2000l., for which payment Byron's friends offered to reimburse him, but he refused. So matters rested until 1828, when the appearance of Leigh Hunt's Byron and his Contemporaries convinced my Father that an authentic life of Byron was demanded, for which only Moore and he were possessed of the necessary materials. He therefore arranged with Moore to prepare the Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron, published in 1830. For this Moore received the sum of 1600l. But (and this is the point which, in justice to my Father's memory, I am anxious to state) over and above the sum so paid, Mr. Murray discharged Moore's bond with his creditors, upon which he had raised the 2000l. paid by him immediately after Byron's death; together with the interest thereon and other charges, amounting to 1020l. Thus making a total of 4620l. (Signed) JOHN MURRAY. The Academy.

more.

Byron, on reading the excellent Memoirs of Coleridge, was struck with the idea of writing memoirs of himself for the information and amusement of posterity. To it, accordingly, he went, and soon finished a book wherein he freely exposed all his sores to the eyes of the world, and treated both of himself, and of all those in any way connected with him, with the levity and fearfulness of the author of Don Juan. "I am sorry," said he to Medwin, copy of my Memoirs to shew you; I gave

not to have a

them to Moore, or rather to Moore's little boy, at Venice. I remember saying, 'Here are two thousand pounds for you, my young friend.' I made one reservation in the gift --that they were not to be published till after my death.

"I have not the least objection to their being circulated; in fact they have been read by some of mine, and several of Moore's friends and acquaintances; among others, they were lent to Lady Burghersh. On returning the MS. her Ladyship told Moore that she had transcribed the whole work. This was un peu fort, and he suggested the propriety of her destroying the copy. She

did so by putting it into the fire in his presence. Ever since this happened, Douglas Kinnaird has been recommending me to resume possession of the MS., thinking to frighten me by saying that a spurious or a real copy, surreptitiously obtained, may, go forth to the world. I am quite indifferent about the world knowing all that they contain. There are very few licentious adventures of my own, or scandalous anecdotes that will affect others, in the book. It is taken up from my earliest recollections, almost from childhood-very incoherent, written in a very loose and familiar style. The second part will prove a good lesson to young men; for it treats of the irregular life I led at one period, and the fatal consequences of dissipation. There are few parts that may not, and none that will not be read by women." At another time he said to Medwin: "A very full account of my marriage and separation is contained in my Memoirs. After they were completed, I wrote to Lady Byron, proposing to send them for her inspection, in order that any misstatement or inaccuracy (if any such existed, which I was not aware of,) might be pointed out and corrected. In her answer she declined the offer, without assigning any reason; but desiring, if not on her account for the sake of her daughter, that they might never appear, and finishing with a threat. My reply was the severest thing I ever wrote, and contained two quotations, one from Shakespeare, and another from Dante. I told her that she knew all I had written was incontrovertible truth, and that she did not wish to sanction the truth. I ended by saying, that she might depend on their being published. It was not till after this correspondence that I made Moore the depositary of the MS."

It is known to all our readers that these Memoirs were sold to Mr. Murray, and on Byron's death burned in the presence of Mr. Moore, and with his consent, he returning the sum paid for the copyright. The perpetrators of this act committed a robbery on the public, and Mr. Moore committed a breach of trust-provided that it is not true what we have heard stated, viz., that Byron, some time before his going to Greece for the second time, had expressed a wish that they might not be published. If Mr. Moore will publicly acknowledge this, or if Mr. Hobhouse, or any of Byron's intimate friends, will declare such to have been the wish of

Lord Byron, then the public will rest satisfied, and add the whole passage about the Memoirs in the "Conversations to the many other unauthenticated rumors, clad with colloquial phrase in that volume. The Memoirs were well known to Byron's relations and intimate friends, and it was their earnest desire that they might be destroyed. The public may complain against Mr. Moore, but yet, soberly considering the matter, they must allow that he acted, and' sacrificed much, from the purest motives. The Memoirs must have been unfit for publication, otherwise they would not have been so speedily and so unanimously condemned. to the flames by Messrs. Hobhouse, Hanson, Murray, and Moore. It is more than likely these Memoirs were the effects of a sudden whim of Lord Byron's. They were written to cause a little deviltry, or, like the Confessions of Rousseau, to insult those who had been his admirers and advocates-to make a fool of those who had supported his character and name. They were written while he was just emerging from a sea of dissipation and licentiousness; and must have contained more of the feelings and the disgusts of the satiated debauchee than of the man. They were not the calm production of one desirous to preserve uninjured his reputation amongst posterity; nor were they the confessions of a repentant sinner. It is more than probable that Byron himself, before his death, wished them destroyed. Curiosity, and the love of scandal, may be disappointed by the fate of the Memoirs, but they who have seen them have treasured up in memory all that was important in them; and if some one do not now dissipate false rumors, or stamp a certainty on those that are true, then it must be supposed that, in burning his Memoirs, they have committed a murder on his memory. Their conduct is highly improper. If he was in the wrong, let it be shown-if others are in the fault, why should his memory suffer to save their feelings?

"Whate'er might be his worthlessness or worth, Poor fellow! he had many things to wound him. It was a trying moment that which found him, Standing alone, beside his desolate hearth, While all his household gods were shiver'd round him."

The greatest breach of confidence that can be conceived, is to suffer the memory of a departed friend to stalk through the world. unprotected the football of the crowd.

UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF LORD BYRON.

The following document is printed as a contribution to literary history. It was drawn up by Lord Byron in August, 1817, while Mr. Hobhouse was staying with him at La Mira, near Venice, and given to Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis for circulation among friends in England. It was found amongst Mr. Lewis's papers after his death, and is now in the possession of Mr. Murray.

The document speaks for itself sufficiently to need no comment on our part.

"It has been intimated to me, that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of Lady Byron, have declared their lips to be sealed up' on the cause of the separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up, they are not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will be to open them. From the first hour in which I was apprized of the intentions of the Noel family to the last communication between Lady Byron and myself in the character of wife and husband (a period of some months) I called repeatedly and in vain for a statement of their or her charges, and it was chiefly in consequence of Lady Byron's claiming (in a letter still existing) a promise on my part to consent to a separation if such was really her wish, that I consented at all; this claim and the exasperating and inexpiable manner in which their object was pursued, which rendered it next to an impossibility that two persons so divided could ever be re-united, induced me reluctantly then, and repentantly still to sign the deed, which I shall be happy-most happy-to cancel, and go before any tribunal which may discuss the business in the most public manner.

into

"Mr. Hobhouse made this proposition on my part, vix, to abrogate all prior intentions-and go Court the very day before the separation was signed, and it was declined by the other party, as also the publication of the correspondence during the previous discussion. Those propositions I beg here to repeat, and to call upon her and hers to say their worst, pledging myself to meet their allegations-whatever they may be -and only too happy to be informed at last of their real nature. (Signed) "BYRON.

banke," and after "he had been thrown over by Lady F. W. W. in favor of an illustrious warrior." By the courtesy of the present owner of Lord Byron's autograph copy (Lady Frances V. Harcourt), we (Pall Mall Gazette) are enabled to present our readers with a correct version of the whole piece, which has intrinsic merits independent of the special interest which at this juncture attaches to everything written by the muchassailed poet :

Go triumph securely, the treacherous vow
Thou hast broken, I keep but too faithfully now,
But never again snalt thou be to my heart
What thou wert, what I fear for a moment thou art.
To see thee-to love thee-what breast could do
more?

To love thee to lose thee-'twere vain to deplore.
Not a sigh shall escape from the heart thus beguil'd,
I will bear like a man what I feel like a child.

Though a frown cloud my brow, yet it lowers not on thee,

Though my heart should seem heavy, at least it is free.

But thou, with the pride of new conquest elate-
Alas! even Envy shall feel for thy Fate.

For the first step of Error none e'er could recall,
And the woman once fallen for ever must fall,
Pursue to the last the career she begun,
And be false unto many, as faithless to one.

And they who have loved thee will leave thee to

mourn,

And they who have hated will laugh thee to scorn;
And he who adored thee yet weeps to foretell
The pangs which will punish thy falsehood too well.

It may be as well to take this opportunity of correcting the erroneous date, 1812, assigned to the well known lines on the "Origin of Love." There can be no question (says the Pall Mall Gazette) that they were written as early as 1807, as that date is affixed, in the poet's own handwriting, to the original or copy, which he left at Eywood (Lord Oxford's seat), and which is now in the possession of Lady F. V. Harcourt.-European Mail.

BYRON AS A DEVIL.

An entirely new solution of the Byron mystery is furnished by a writer in The Madras Mail, who says that "his father had it from one of Lord Byron's most intimate friends. According to this lively correspondent, whose story we find in The Echo, "Lord Byron was, in a sense, a devil. Incredible as the thing may seem to the thoughtless, the handsomest man in England

had a small tail, a pair of rudimentary horns, and short, squab feet divided forwards from the instep into two parts, instead of being furnished with toes. Before he was born his mother had been once greatly terrified by seeing, when in a very delicate state of health, the celebrated picture of Satan Spurned, in the gallery at La Haye, and the result had been the fashioning of her child to some extent after the monstrous form of which the sight caused her alarm, and of which the continuous recollection could not be effaced by any means known to her physicians. At the time of her confinement it was at first suggested that the monstrosity should not be suffered to live, but the child's body, as a whole, was so perfectly shaped, and his face so wondrously beautiful, that the suggestion was forthwith put aside, and England was not deprived of what was to become in due time one of its chiefest ornaments. Poor Lady Byron never recovered wholly from the shock caused by her discovery of what her husband really was; andpartly through excess of imagination, partly in consequence of bad advice from persons who shall be nameless, she felt it to be her duty to insist upon her husband subjecting himself to certain painful operations. But this Lord Byron obstinately refused to do. He urged, and with considerable force, that the peculiar manner in which he wore his abundant curls effectually hid from view the rudimentary horns; and that, as he never appeared in public without his boots and trousers, none would ever suspect the existence of his other defects, with the exception of his valet, in whom he placed implicit confidence."

BYRON AND THE QUACK DOCTOR.

The circumstance may be worthy of being "noted," that when the noble lord was living with the quack doctor Lavender, in Nottingham, in the hopes of getting his club foot cured, he was treated with so little consideration, that he was sent to the public-house, across the street, to fetch the ale for the family dinner. The first time my informant saw him, he was crossing the street with a tankard in one hand and money in the other, on which his eyes were directed. "See," said a friend, "that is Lord Byron going to fetch a tankard of ale with one of Lavender's sixpences.' This man Lavender had the reputation of being a sixpence-maker; that