Cooper's Clarksburg register. [volume] (Clarksburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1851-1861, 1854-11-01

2 His book processes to give the history o
!, City years, but the reader will find that il
embraces seventy, and makes him &C
quainted with half the people in the world.
In Europe and America, let him wander
where he would, he never, of late years,
failed to find an old acquaintance. Men
recognized him through the dust clouds
of Odessa, as in the bar-roonns Of Natchez-
underline Hill. Napoleon, at the age OF
"a, examined him. Victoria has given
him private audiences. He watched the
rise and fall of Louis Philippe. after wit
Messing the accomplishment of the catas-
trophc of the Restoration. He has doffed
his hat to Ferdinand of Austria, in Trieste,
and shaken hands with the savage kings
west of the Mississippi. He was Ger
man citizen of the United States. born in
Italy, and lived all over. He built fat
boats at Pittsburg for the navigation of
the Ohio, and shouted among the crowd
who cheered Robert Fulton's steamboat
as the first started from the wharf at New
York. He has been wrecked off the coast
Of Florida, and imprisoned in the Queens
Bench at London. He was suspected of
having the plague at Malta, and had the
yellow fever in New Orleans. He peeped
|
by the earthquake at Louisville. Napo-
Icons whole career and Aaron Burr's con-
spiracy are made a couple of items in his
| extraordinary existence.
| This Yankee cotton speculator arranged
the conversion of a loan for his holiness
the Pope. This confidential adviser of
the Austrian premier Won kueback was a
soldier of General jackson at the battle of
| New Orleans. This commissary of Louis
| Philippe and Duke Charles of Brunswick
was the intimate friend of the republican
Lafayette. This lover of Livornese opera
girls was mingled in the plans of Nicholas
Biddle. This handler and possessor of
untold thousands, Of millions of money,
I-lived on bread and cheese in Venice; and
to get even that much, translated some
| English title deeds for the monks of San
| Lorenzo. .
The very names in this volume are Won
derful. Kings, EmperorS, Presidents and
POpes josLle each other through its pages.
Poets and Printers are criticised and gos-
Siped about-Chantrey and Noliekcns.
Delaroche and Dclacro:x. Merry and Land
seer. Now you have story of Goethe,
and again an anccdote of Chataubraind.
Byron and Lamartine, Kotzebue and
Cooper come quite Familiarity to the tip of
his pea, and when tired Of telling what he
knows about these, he writes verses him
self-verses Of great medjocrity.
One Of the richest of modern merchants
and most daring Of spectators, he yet new
cr neglected his love for art nor his tai!
cnt with the crayon. When his CONNER
cial greatness had eliminated and waned,
he became every thing by turns-com
missary for arms and provisions; agent for
! Il machine to engrave circular lines; edi
tor Of the little free port newspaper of
Hamburg; political squib. writer in the
| United States; clerk in a third class house
of business; translator of manuscript for
| Italian friars.
Vain, amusing, garrulous, scandaIous
old fellow; with the drycst common sense,
that is not 10 be trickcd; with the keenest
| eye for a defect either in person or in char
actcr, and bitter or comic humor to help
him in describing it. Mr.. Vincent Nolte
presents to our eyes one of the most curl
Gus life-panoramas that it is possible to
| see.
You must take his personalities. espe-
cially about people here, come grano sails.
He seldom looks at the bright side Of
character, and dearly loves-he confesses
ia bit OF scandal. But he paints we'll,
describes WELL seizes characteristics which
make clear to the reader the nature of the
man whom they illustrate.
We proceed to make some extracts from
| Nolte's autobiography, beginning with his
first visit to the United States in :8O6:
JouN JACOB AsroR.--The argument
which Parish had made use of with Mr.
GaIlatin, for the purpose of procuring per-
mission to send out ships in ballast, to
bring back sums of money from abroad
that were due in the United States, had
found favor in the eyes of a man who had
distinguished himself from the mass Of
German emigrants by his important sue
cesses, his speculative spirit and his great
wealth, and had won certain celebrity.
/ This man was John Jacob Astor, the foun-
der Of the American colony of Astoria, on
the northern coast of the Pacific ocean,
which has been SO graphically and pictu-
resquely described by the pen of Wash
ington Irving. Astor was born at Hell
deIberg, where the original name of his
family is said to have been Aschthor, and
had come to New York as furrier's ap-
prentice. His first savings, that is to say,
the wages he got in the peltry warehouse
for beating out and preparing bear, doe
and other skins. he invested in the pur-
chase of all kinds of peltry, bear, mink
and rabbit skins, which he got from Indi-
ans, who at that time wandered about the
streets of New York; and so soon as he
had collected certain quantity. he sent
them to Europe, particularly to the Leip-
sic fair. There he traded them off for
Nuremberg wares. cheap knives, glass
beads and other articles adapted to traf-
fck with the Indians on the Canadian