The International Monthly Magazine of Literature, Science and Art | Page 5

With this view, we print in the first number the initial portions
of the brilliant nautical romance now in course of publication in
Blackwood's Magazine, under the title of "The Green Hand," by the
author of the most celebrated fiction of its class in English literature,
"Tom Cringle's Log;" and other works will be selected and carried on
simultaneously, as they shall come to us with the stamp of sufficient
merit.
II. The foreign periodicals are continually rich in novelettes of from
two or three to a dozen chapters, which--being too short for separate
volumes--are rarely reproduced at all in this country. Of these the
INTERNATIONAL will contain the choicest selections.
III. Of the Quarterly Reviews the most admirable papers will be
presented in full; and those works will in all cases be carefully
examined for such valuable and striking passages as will be likely to
interest the American reader, to whom the entire articles in which they
appear may be unattractive.

IV. The Literary, Religious, Political and Scientific newspapers and
magazines will be consulted for whatever will instruct or entertain in
their several departments. The leading articles in the great journals,
upon Affairs, and Philosophy, and Art, which are now very
unfrequently reprinted in America, will appear in the
INTERNATIONAL in such fullness and combination as to display the
springs and processes of the world's action and condition.
V. But the work will not be altogether Foreign, nor a mere compilation.
In its republications there will be a constant effort to display what is
most interesting and important to the American; and in its original
portions it will be supported by some of the ablest and most
accomplished writers in all the fields of knowledge and opinion.
VI. As a Literary Gazette and Examiner, it is believed that it will equal
or surpass any work now or ever printed in the United States. It will
contain the earliest announcements of whatever movements in the
literary world are of chief interest to general readers; its Reviews of
Books will be honest and intelligent; and its extracts, when they can be
given in advance of the publication of the works themselves, will be the
choicest and most valuable possible. Without cant or hypocrisy, or the
influence of any clique of feeble-minded and ambitious aspirants in
letters, the INTERNATIONAL MISCELLANY will in this respect, the
publishers trust, win and preserve the respect and confidence of all who
look to published critical judgments as guides for the reading or
purchase of books.
With a view to the more successful execution of the design to make the
INTERNATIONAL MISCELLANY of the first class in Original
Periodical Literature, as well as in Selections and Abstracts of what is
already before the world abroad, contributors have been engaged to
represent the various departments of Science, and to furnish sketches of
manners, &c., from other countries, and the different sections of our
own; the proceedings of Learned Societies will be noted; History,
Biography, and Archæology will receive attention; and in foreign and
American Obituary, such a record will be kept as will be of the most
permanent and attractive value.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER.
The recent appearance of some half dozen editions--some of them very
beautiful in typography and pictorial illustrations--of The Proverbial
Philosophy of Mr. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, reminds us of the
observation of Dana, that something "resembling poetry" is oftentimes
borne into instant and turbulent popularity, while a work of genuine
character may be lying neglected by all except the poets. But "the tide
of time," says the profound essayist, "flows on, and the former begins
to settle to the bottom, while the latter rises slowly and steadily to the
surface, and goes forward, for a spirit is in it." We are not without the
hope that Richard H. Dana will one day be in as frequent demand as
Martin Farquhar Tupper is now.
The merits of this "gentleman of acknowledged genius and sovereign
popularity," we have never been able to discover. If oddity were always
originality, if quaintness and beauty were synonymous, if paradox were
necessarily wisdom, we should be ready to grant that Mr. Tupper is a
wise, beautiful and original thinker. But thought, after all, is an affair of
mind, and though a man of genius may write what is far more brilliant
than common sense ever is, yet no man can utter valuable truth on
mortal and prudential subjects, unless he possesses a vigorous and
powerful understanding. Now Mr. Tupper's art consists in contriving,
not thought, but things that look like thoughts; fancies, in imitation of
truths. The Proverbial Philosophy, in fact, appears to us one of the most
curious impositions we have ever met with. When you first read one of
the aphorisms, it strikes you as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom.
But