The Sun.
London, England, 1849-08-29 00:00:00

SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 29, 1849.

LITERATURE.

MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF
SIR R. MURRAY KED H. Edlted by Mrs.
Gillespie Smyth. 2 Vols.
" There are," says the editress of this work, " in
the annals of every family, any of whose members
have filled conspicuous places in the public service,
some privileged epochs round which its own memories
have been fondly taught to congregate, and w hich it
would fain rescue from oblivion in those of others.
Such, during the long diplomatic career of Sir
Robert Murray Keith, was the episode of the revo-
lution in Denmark in 1772 ; and his spirited rescue,
as representative of Great Britain, of a daughter of
England,' and the sister of his Sovereign, from a
fate, the least disastrous probable issue of which
was imprisonment for life in a northern fortress.
The omission—probably from prudential motives—
of this most critical and important interposition, in a
foreign work of fiction recently translated, naturally
led to a search into those familiar archives where re-
posed the familiar letters and official correspondence
penned during the events themselves, and so honour-
able alike to the character, the feelings, and the fame
of him by whom they were written and received. To
weave those valuable, and hitherto inedited documents,
into a slight record of the charms, the sorrows, and
the injuries of the British Princess—to whom (in his
own striking words) it was a proud commencement
for the Envoy's chivalry to convey, through the
vaulted entrance of Hamlet's castle, the welcome
tidings of fraternal affection and liberty restored—
was felt to be alike a duty and a pleasure. To this
the following sheets would have been exclusively
limited, had not the reputation of Sir R. M. Keith
for political sagacity, on the one hand, and wit and
bonhommie on the other, suggested, on high literary
authorities, the propriety of a more extensive selec-
tion from his twenty years' correspondence, while a
resident at other foreign courts, than had been ori-
ginally designed." Such is the interesting nature of
this work, which has evidently been a labour of love to
Mrs. Smyth. Each volume is divided into three
parts ; the first contains—" Correspondence from St.
Petersburgh, Vienna, &c.;" " Memoirs of Caroline
Matilda, Queen of Denmark," and " Familiar Cor•
respondence with various Distinguished Writers."
The second volume contains—" Familiar Correspon-
dence with Marshal Conway, &c. ;" " Official and
Personal Correspondence from Vienna," and "Official
and Familiar Correspondence from the Congress of
Sistovo in Turkey, in 1791." These volumes con-
tains beautiful portraits of Queen Caroline Matilda
and Sir R. Murray Keith.

CROMWELL DOOLAN ; or, Life in the Army.
By the Author of " Echoes in the Backwoods." 2
Vols.
An amusing series of strange and laughable ad-
ventures, as may easily be supposed, when we say
the hero is at once a soldier and an Irishman ; for
whatever an Irishman may be on terra firma, in a
book he is always the most adventurous of mortals.
Cromwell Doolan is, however, a misnomer, for we
find, at the conclusion of the strange eventful history,
that Cromwell is not Cromwell after all, but another
individual who has been exchanged for him. The
real Simon Pure long since sleeps in his grave, and
the O'Neil presumptuously sends forth his own ad-
ventures under the name of a history of Cromwell
Doolan t

EXPEDITION to DISCOVER the SOURCES
of the WHITE NILE in the YEARS
1840-41. By Ferdinand Werne. From the
German, by Charles W. O'Reilly. 2 Vols.
This is a book of travels of that most interesting
kind which, together with a picture of foreign scenes
and customs, details the fortunes of an expedition of
inquiry. The writer of the preface speaks of this
work as presenting the liveliest views of the natural
productions and people of regions hitherto entirely
unvisited. "The surprising novelty," he adds, "of
the phenomena is described by a writer of much ex-
perience, bold energy, and intense devotion to the
land of the south. The discoverer of the sources
of the White Nile under the vertical rays of
the sun, in equatorial Inner Africa, will share
the same fate as his illustrious predecessor,
James Bruce, the discoverer of the sources of
the Blue Nile, if many of his statements should be
doubted, criticised, and misunderstood." Neverthe-
less, the writer of the above remark must be aware
that such is almost the inevitable lot of all things
human. This interesting work is illustrated by a
beautiful map of the White Nile, laid down from the
diary of Mr. Werne, and by many specimens of the
arms, &c. of the natives.

THE EMIGRANT FAMILY; or, THE
STORY of an AUSTRALIAN SETTLER.
By the Author of " Settlers and Convicts." 3 Vols.
This work contains " hints to emigrants " of a more
practical nature than those contained in the facetious
brochure of Percy Cruikshank. This Australian
handbook appears under the novel form of a novel.
" The main design in the composition of these
volumes," says the author," was the delineation of
the actual life of an emigrant family in the middle of
the nineteenth century..... With the single excep-
tion of the introduction of a character necessary to
furnish the tale with sufficient of plot to interest the
lovers of romance, everything exhibited is a simple
copy from actual daily life."

MEMOIRS of the HOUSE of ORLEANS
By W. Cooke Taylor, LL.D. 3 Vols.
These-three volumes, which contain " sketches and
anecdotes of the most distinguished characters in
France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries," are of a character which needs little commen-
dation to ensure them a favourable reception with
the general reader. They contain a mass of anec-
dotes, accounts of historic importance or mournful
interest, but fcr the most part of a light, gossiping, and
amusing nature. It is a work, perhaps, little calcu-
lated to benefit its readers, unless, perhaps, by making
them content with an humble station. They may
read in these records of royalty, as for example, in
the sad story of Maria Louisa, of Spain, how many
are the trials and temptations which beset the path of the
so-called great. One important object with the writer
in composing this work was to throw some light upon
Louis XIV. " secret," and also to inquire whether
Henrietta, of England (Madame) and her daughter,
Maria Louisa, Queen of Spain, really met with their
deaths by poison, as IA been suspected.

The CHURCH of ENGLAND QUARTERLY

REVIEW.

The nine articles in the last number of this Quar-
terly are of as varied and interesting topics, as "Jewel
and the Reformation," " Religious Doubters,"
" Sterling's Life," " Brampton Rectory," " Horatio
Nelson and Emma Hamilton," " Romanism and Civi-
lization," " Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, " The
Religion of Architecture," " Puritans and Pilgrim
Fathers," " Southey's Common-place Book," " Man
Primeval."

A MEMOIR of the COUNTESS DE ROSSI
(MADAME SONTAG). Published by Mr.
Mitchell, Royal Library, 33, Old Bond-street.
The career of Madame Sontag has been one of the
most brilliant, and, at the same time, one of the most
romantic ever recorded. It is in itself a drama,
a drama of intense and singularly varied inte-
rest. The pleasures and the pains of every station of
life, from the very highest to the very lowest, from
the garret of the struggling artist to the magnificent
salons of royalty, have been personally experienced by
Madame Sontag. She has by turns occupied every
step of the social ladder, and has been the orna-
ment of every station which she has occupied, and
after having retired from the stage, hailed by the
unanimous suffrages of the dilettanti of Europe as the
most perfect soprano singer the world ever saw, she,
after the lapse of twenty years, returns and resumes
her place, nemine contradicente, with powers improved
rather than impaired, and at once creates a greater
furore, and achieves a greater triumph than she had
done twenty years before. Her biographer thus
accounts for this surprising preservation of her vocal
powers:—
" The Countess Rossi's voice is a pure and perfect
soprano of the highest register, from the first settlement
of her voice—it is 'to the manner born.' Thus she has
never been comptlled to superadd to her studies of vocal
science those efforts by which most of the greatest vo-
calists have been obliged to transmute their contralto or
mezzo soprano tones, to polish their guttural or husky
tones, and—almost all of them—extend artificially their
register. On the other band, during their long seces-
sion from the stage, the love of musical art has always
remained predominant, and its science been constantly
cultivated, without necessity of taxing her powers, with-
out the exhausting exertions of other singers; whilst
her style of a aging is that of the high classical Italian
school, the only one that nurses the voice, whilst it dis-
plays all its melodic power. Had not the Countess
Rossi yielded up the German school—had she not re-
sorted to the Italian school to modify her singing, as her
great countryman Mozart did, to modify the form his
inpirations assumed—her voice would no doubt have
been injured, and she would have lost that marvellous
power of overflowing richness of embellishment, requir-
ing purity of tone, agility, and elegance, in which she
is unquestionably unrivalled."
Henriette Sontag was born at Coblentz, on the
3d of January, 1809. Her parents were artistes of
limited means. At seven years of age she became
celebrated for her exquisite voice, and at that
age, placed on a table, she has been heard
to sing the grand aria of " The Queen of Night" in
the Zaubojiiite, in a style that would have made
many a prinia donna burst with envy. At eleven
years of age she made her first appearance on the
stage at the theatre at Darmstadt, in a piece written
expressly for her, and entitled The Little Daughter
of the Danube, but, although her success was extra-
ordinary, her parents knowing the fate of infant
prodigies, withdrew her from the theatre and sent her
as a pupil to the Conservatoire of Prague.
" Scarce three years had elapsed since her matricula-
tion at the Conservatoire, and she had hardly attained
the op of fourtm, when she sawed the fortunes of that