1859. LITERARY LETTER. THE Bibliography of State of Maine, AND OTHER PAPERS OF INTEREST; TOGETHER WITH A CATALOGUE OF A Large Collection of Works UPON BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AMERICA. CHARLES B. NORTON, AGENT FOR LIBRARIES, APPLETONS' BUILDING, NEW YORK. 1859. NO. 4. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by CHARLES B. NORTON, in the Clerk's office of the Distric Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. VALUABLE PRIVATE LIBRARY, COMPRISING AN Extensive and Select Collection CHOICE OF BOOKS, IN EVERY DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. Embracing FINE LONDON EDITIONS of the BEST STANDARD WORKS, and an immense number of RARE, CURIOUS, AND RECHERCHE BOOKS, in General Literature, Poetry, Belles-Lettres, Fiction, Facetiæ, Voyages and Travels (particularly in North, South, and Central America, and the Arctic Regions), History, Biography, Illustrated Literature, the Fine Arts, Painting, Sculpture, Illuminations, Picture Galleries, &c.; among which may be mentioned Sylvestre's Paleography; Aldine Poets, complete in 53 vols., red morocco; Catherwood's Central America; Catlin's Indians; Costumes of the Clans; Coronation of George IV.; Musee Napoleon; Finden's Royal Gallery; Pitti Palace Gallery; Gilray's Caricatures; Jones' Illuminated Works of the Middle Ages; Meyrick's Ancient Armour; many valuable Missals; Murphy's Arabian Antiquities; also, A WORK OF GREAT VALUE! THE ONLY COPY IN THIS COUNTRY, AND THE ONLY KNOWN COPY IN THE WORLD FOR SALE! A RARE AND RICH TREASURY OF ENGRAVINGS COMPRISED IN THE Chalcographie du ffinsee Royal. IN 78 VOLS., LARGE FOLIO, UNIFORMLY BOUND, IN HALF RED MOROCCO, CONTENTS LETTERED, CONTAINING OVER 3,000 OF THE FINEST LINE ENGRAVINGS EVER EXECUTED, AT AN EXPENSE OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. THE WHOLE FORMING THE PRIVATE LIBRARY OF A GENTLEMAN, Collected in Europe and America, without regard to expense, during many years. A large portion of the splendid London Editions are in the richest bindings, in Full Turkey Morocco, Extra Gilt; including many of the superb specimens of skill in the Bookbinding art which were exhibited at the Crystal Palace, and obtained the highest premiums. WITHO THE WHOLE TO BE SOLD AT AUCTION, WITHOUT RESERVE, BY GEO. A. LEAVITT & CO., TRADE SALE ROOMS, 377 AND 379 BROADWAY, N. Y. SALE COMMENCING ON MONDAY, MAY 16, And continued daily in the order of the Catalogue. SALE TO COMMENCE EACH AFTERNOON AT 3 O'CLOCK. TUESDAY, MAY 10, LARGE THEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL LIBRARY, Belonging to Rev. J. J. WOOLSEY, Norwalk, Conn., Comprising many Rare and Curious Old Works in Theology, American History, etc., Rare Old Tracts, Sermons, etc.; also, BRANDT'S REFORMATION, 4 vols., folio; BURNET'S Do., 2 vols., folio; Fox's MARTYRS, 1 vol., folio, illuminated; CLARK'S MARTYR- NEAL'S HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND; HUTCHINSON'S MASSACHUSETTS; GORDON'S REVOLUTION; SMITH'S NEW YORK, &c., &c. GEO. A. LEAVITT & CO., 377 AND 379 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. Humboldt in his Library. From a Water-color Drawing by E. Hildebrandt. Professor Edward Hildebrandt, Painter in Ordinary to His Majesty the King, has represented the Traveller, his friend of many years' standing, at work in his Library. The familiar objects, which daily surround the person represented in his wonted haunts, are so apt to heighten the interest of his picture by their characteristic individuality, that we are induced to mention a few of the most easily recognized among them :-the bust in bronze of the King of Prussia, by the great master, Christian Rauch; the statuette of Her Majesty the Queen, in classical style, seated; the very rare bust of the renowned navigator and discoverer, Don Henrique, Duke of Visco, after a miniature painting of the Infante, discovered in a Spanish MS. of the fifteenth century, at Paris, by M. Ferdinand Denis; a model of the Obelisk of Luxor, now at Paris, executed by the able sculptor L. Sussmann, after a drawing by Dr. Brugsch, the ingenious Egyptologist. Among the oil-paintings we would notice :-a very faithful representation from nature, by Professor Bellermann, of the picturesque entrance to the Cave of Caripe (Cueva a del Guacharo), in South America, in the Missions of the Chaymas Indians, westward of the mouth of the Orinoco, first described by HuмBOLDT; the design for the grand historical composition, the Death of Leonardo da Vinci, a gift of the celebrated Dominique Ingres; an excellent design for Gustav Wegener's great historical landscape (in His Majesty's collection), the hermitage of St. Basilius, on the Armenian river Iris; and the attractive likeness of the accomplished artist, Signora Emma Gaggiotti-Richards, painted at Ancona, and presented by herself. In the small apartment in front of the library, the further wall of which is ornamented by the grand Panorama of Rome (an engraving by Giuseppe Vasi), we observe a portion of the Collection of Birds, and among them the Nightbirds (los Guacharos, Humboldt's Steatornis Caripensis), found by thousands in the above-mentioned Cave near Caripe, remarkable on account of their extreme scarcity in zoological collections. The same apartment, which serves as ante-room, contains eighty-three folio volumes of the "Chalcographie du Musée Royal, the splendid gift of His late Majesty, King Louis Philippe. A portion of the magnetic, astronomical, and meteorological instruments, the Traveler's faithful companions in the basin of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers, in the Cordilleras, in the Mexican Tableland, and in Northern Asia, remind us of long years of varied travel and research. It gives us a high idea of artistic genius, to see how well the unity of effect is preserved, notwithstanding the multiplicity of objects surrounding the principal figure, which naturally tend by their detail to disturb the general impression; and how, in the original (*), repose and harmony are spread over the whole by means of a masterly gradation of color, to which even the best reproduction can not without difficulty attain. (*) The original has been exhibited since the 14th of September, 1856, in Baron Humboldt's apartments, at Berlin (at the house, No. 67 Oranienburger-Strasse, purchased in the year 1844 by Mr. Joseph Mendelssohn). It is the friendly gift of the artist to Mr. John Seifert, who accompanied the Traveler on his Siberian Expedition under the government of the Emperor Nicholas. 火 WE form judgments of men from little things about their house, of which the owner, perhaps, never thinks. In earlier years, when traveling in the West, where taverns were either scarce or in some places unknown, and every settler's house was a house of "Entertainment," it was a matter of some importance and some experience to select wisely where you would put up. And we always looked for flowers. If there were no trees for shade, no patch of flowers in the yard, we were suspicious of the place. But, no matter how rude the cabin, or rough the surroundings, if we saw that the window held a little trough for flowers, and that some vines twined about strings let down from the eaves, we were confident that there was some taste and carefulness in the log cabin. In a new country, where people have to tug for a living, no one will take the trouble to rear flowers, unless the love of them is pretty strong; and this taste, blossoming out of plain and uncultivated people, is, itself, like a clump of hare-bells growing out of the seams of a rock. We were seldom misled. A patch of flowers came to signify kind people, clean beds, and good bread. But, other signs are more significant in other states of society. Flowers about a rich man's house may signify only that he has a good gardener, or that he has refined neighbors, and does what he sees them do. But men are not accustomed to buy books unless they want them. If, on visiting the dwelling of a man of slender means, I find the reason why he has cheap carpets and very plain furniture to be that he may purchase books, he rises at once in my esteem. Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house. The plainest row of books that cloth or paper ever covered is more significant of refinement than the most elaborately carved étagére, or sideboard. Give me a house furnished with books rather than furniture! Both, if you can, but books at any rate! To spend several days at a friend's house, and hunger for something to read, while |