Page:The Southern Literary Messenger - Minor.djvu/221

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Literary Messenger
197

one, "Honoria Vane;" so have Amie, Mabel, Hayne, English and Timrod. Simms is still absent, but his place is fully supplied by Adrian Beaufain, with his "Areytos; or Songs of the South."

Mr. G. P. R. James, as British Consul, had come from Norfolk to Richmond and is now about to change officially to Venice. His friends present him with a silver julep bowl, properly inscribed, and Mr. Thompson adds a complimentary poem. We can not concur in his estimate of Consul James. To us he was not a gentleman; but a selfish and exacting John Bullite.

Putnam's spiteful monthly has "gone where the woodbine twineth;" but Mr. Thompson has to watch the rising Atlantic Monthly, which is decidedly anti-Southern. Charles Dana is now connected with the once friendly Tribune, and has published his "Cyclopedia of American Literature." Mr. Thompson shows up its one-sided injustice to the South. He is generous to all his brother and sister poets and to some competing literary ventures, especially Russell's Monthly, of Charleston, S. C. His sketch of the great French actress, Rachel, with a contrast between her and Charlotte Bronté, is a good specimen of his style and sentiments. It is, too, a sort of postscript to his "Notes of Foreign Travel," for he had two interviews with Rachel, in Paris.