1800, the Methodist organization had not forty thousand members, now they have more than one million two hundred and fifty thousand communicants; and, take all the strictly evangelical Churches together, they have more than ten times the number of communicants they had in 1800. The increase in the membership of the North Carolina Conference, for the year closing November 3d, is two thousand three hundred and thirty-seven. The sum of $6,200 was raised for missionary purposes. Dr. Rice, editor of the Presbyterian of the West, and pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, has had a call to St. Louis, by the congregation formerly under the charge of Rev. Dr. Potts, deceased. Professor Thomas C. Upham, of Bowdoin College, accompanied by the Rev. Mr. Thompson, of The Independent, is now on a tour through the east, and especially through Palestine and Asia Minor. The pastors and Churches belonging to the Presbytery of Philadelphia, are holding a united prayer and conference meeting once in three months. It is spoken of as an occasion of great interest. The location of the Baptist Theological Seminary for the north-west has been fixed at Galena, where a considerable sum of money has been pledged for its use. The Methodists in France held their first annual Conference at Nismes. An alteration was made in Church government, &c., that each district will name two representatives, who, with the President and Secretary of the Conference, will form the Stationing Committee. The Rev. Mr. Robinson, of the Ninthstreet Baptist Church, in Cincinnati, is mentioned as the successor of Professor Williams, as Professor of Theology in the Rochester Theological Seminary, New-York. Professor Williams retires on account of ill health. There are at this time in the employ of American religious societies upward of eighteen hundred missionaries and colporteurs, exclusive of those who are laboring in other capacities. The American Board has one hundred and sixty-one ordained missionaries, besides assistants, physicians, &c. The American Home Missionary Society has not far from one thousand and sixty missionaries. The American and Foreign Christian Union has one hundred and fourteen missionaries, of whom eighty-five are employed in the home field, and additions to this number are constantly being made. The American Seamen's Friend Society has nineteen chaplains, wholly or in part sustained by it-two having recently been added, one at Marseilles, France, and one at St. John's, NewBrunswick. A very interesting account has been received from Mr. Cochran, missionary among the Nestorians, of a friendly and useful visit paid him and the mission family by Lieutenant Colonel W. F. Williams, the British Commissioner for settling the boundary between Persia and Turkey. This gentleman and his entire party turned aside from their course to spend a couple of nights in the neighborhood of the mission, and contributed by their presence and sympathy greatly to the encouragement of the missionaries; and it is believed that this notice of them will be of essential service to the missionaries in the entire region of Koordistan. Late reports from the Nestorian mission inform us that there was no diminution in the interest of the people, either in preaching or in education. Almost the whole of the congrega tion at Oroomiah, numbering in summer about one hundred and fifty, attends the Sabbath school. The school at Geog Tapa is double this number. On a recent occasion eight hundred attended preaching on the Sabbath, although the whole population of the place is At Ada, sixty adults only about one thousand. attend the Sabbath school. The Sandwich Island Churches have manifested very great interest in the mission to Micronesia, having contributed freely to the support of those who have gone forth to these islands, and they show a readiness to volunteer to go personally as Christian missionaries. The missionaries say that there will be no difficulty in getting thirty, sixty, or even one hundred Sandwich Islanders to go out as assistant missionaries, if they should be needed. Four have gone, and several others offered their services. The opening of the new Kingswood School, England, has been lately announced in the foreign publications; a discourse was delivered on the occasion by the Rev. W. M. Bunting. The school is designed for the education of the sons of Wesleyan ministers. Several hundred dollars have been raised in this country, and some five thousand in France, to enable Dr. Newman to meet the expenses of his late trial in the affair of Dr. Achilli. The late Journal of Mr. Preston from the Gaboon, Africa, gives us an interesting account of Nengenage, an island three miles in circumference. It contains a town inhabited by Shikans and Bakeles, and was selected for a station on account of its central position, ap parent healthfulness, and good landing. Mr. Preston gives some account of the manners of the people. As yet, he says, they wear but little European cloth, but wear garments made from the bark of a tree. The color of the people here is not much darker than oak-tanned leather; but they smear themselves with palmoil and red-wood. They work iron of their own smelting with much neatness, and also in brass, purchased from traders. Their houses are built on a single street, which is wide and very clean. Two or three large houses stand in the middle of the street, in which they hold their discussions and transact business. The people are much under the influence of superstition, but are accessible to the white men in almost every direction,-and the whole tenor indicates the fact, that Africa is open to the gospel. The whole number of laborers under the care of the American Missionary Association is one hundred and thirty-three, scattered over the Foreign and Home fields. Art Intelligence. THE Messaggiere di Modena states that the Pope has charged M. Jacometti, the sculptor, with the execution of his fine group of "The Kiss of Judas," in marble. It is to adorn the vestibule of the Christian Museum now organizing in the Palace of the Lateran. A magnificent monument, in honor of Daguerre, has been inaugurated at the French village of Petit Brie. A deputation of all the savants of Paris congregated on the spot, and the mausoleum was consecrated in the most impressive manner. A bust of Daguerre, sculptured by M. Hasson, was much admired. The death of Horatio Greenough, the distin guished American sculptor, occurred recently at Boston. Mr. Greenough was a man of liberal and varied accomplishments, of attractive manners, and of a vigorous intellect. His loss will be deeply felt in the private circles of which he was an ornament, no less than in the world of Art, where he had attained to a wide celebrity. His principal productions are the colossal statue of Washington in the Capitol; the Chanting Cherubs, executed in 1828 for Mr. Fenimore Cooper; the Medora, finished in 1831 for Mr. Gilmore, of Baltimore; the Rescue; and busts of John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy, and several other eminent personages. He had recently been engaged on the equestrian statue of Washington, to be erected in Union Park, NewYork city. A terrible storm which raged over Athens for five hours, lately brought down, it is stated, one of the antique ornaments of the Grecian capital-a column of the temple of Jupiter Olympus near the Adrian gate. Cleopatra's Needle. This obelisk, long since presented to England, and so long lying neglected in the sands at Alexandria, is at length to be removed, and erected in the grounds of the New Crystal Palace, Sydenham. The British government will, however, retain power hereafter to reclaim it, on payment of all expenses incurred in the transit. Abbas Pacha promises every assistance at Alexandria in shipping the obelisk; and it is hoped that other monuments from Luxor and Karnak will accompany this venerable antiquity from Egypt. Mr. Crawford, the American sculptor, it is said, has received a commission from a munificent fellow-countryman, for a bronze statue of Beethoven, which is to be placed in the MusicHall of Boston. Notwithstanding the idolatry of the Viennese for this great musical genius, he is still without a statue in that city. From Antwerp, we learn that the season there for artists has been a most favorable one. The Art Union has purchased works of art to the amount of thirty-seven thousand franes, and the sale of amateurs has been set down at ninety thousand francs, making a sum of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand francs, or about thirty thousand dollars. A copperplate engraving of Raphael's picture of the Madonna della Scaggiola has been completed by Edward Schaefer, Professor of the Stadel Mu seum, in Frankfort; it is said to be far superior to any engraving of the same picture which has yet appeared. It has had the unqualified approval of Passavant, and the Emperor of Austria has presented Professor Schaefer with the large gold medal of art and science. The first impression has been purchased by the Empress of Russia for three thousand thalers. Cornelius and Rauch, the sculptors, have been appointed honorary members of the Academy of Arts in Antwerp. The opening of the French Annual Exhibition of Living Artists is announced for the 15th of March next. Works intended for it are to be 15th of February. sent to the Palais Royal between the 1st and The sale of the Art Union pictures recently took place at the rooms of the Union, where they had been for some time on exhibition. Among these pictures were some by Leutze, Huntingdon, Gray, Richards, Kensett, Hicks, and almost every other American artist of any repute. A large number of engravings were sold at the same time. The pictures, so far as known, were not sold to dealers, but to persons There was a desiring them for their own use. spirited competition throughout the sale, and the paintings brought a very fair price as a general thing. Some of them were sold at their full valuation. One hundred and fifty paintings were disposed of in about one hundred and eighty minutes, on the first day of the sale. Portions of a letter were read recently at the London Antiquarian Society, from Mr. Harris, of Alexandria, describing the progress of the excavations at Mitrahinny. A great many small broken statues have been turned up; among them those of a lady of the time of Thothmes IV., as also a mutilated kneeling statue of the fourth son of Rameses II. Nothing could be verified anterior to that age. Mr. Ainsworth read a paper "On the meaning of the Cones in the Assyrian Sculptures." Mr. Bonomi read a short descripcartouche, according to Mr. Sharpe, the name tion of an Egyptian cylinder, which bore on a of Amunmai Thor, or the conqueror beloved by Thor, the ninth king after Menes, and the last of his dynasty, though the first Theban king that is known to us. The ruins of the ancient city of Shusan have been discovered; the marble pillars and pavement, as described in Esther i, 6, still exist; a tomb, supposed to be that of Daniel, near by, has the figure of a man sculptured upon it bound hand and foot, with a huge lion in the act of springing upon him. The men who made the discovery are the commissioners employed to run the boundary line between Persia and Turkey-not interested, of course, in shedding light upon the Scriptures. Clot Bey, a French physician of Cairo, converted to the Mussulman religion, has lately presented his valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities, consisting of bronzes, sculptured wood, figures of divinities, mummies, &c., to the Louvre at Paris. Some of these articles date from the oldest Egyptian dynasties. Scientific Items. Ar a late meeting of the New-York Historical Society, an image found in Tennessee was presented, through Dr. John W. Francis, by Mr. J. Roach, of Vicksburgh, Miss. This is an aboriginal relic found in Williamson county, eleven miles from Nashville, Tennessee. The top of the mound from which it was taken was six or eight feet above the ground, and about fifty feet in circumference. The mound sustained, among other trees of large size, a gigantic sycamore of six feet diameter, indicating very great antiquity. When the trees were removed, and the mound dug away to the depth of some eight feet, the explorers found a shelving lime-stone rock, which, being removed, disclosed a chamber ten feet in depth, walled up with slabs of lime-stone, very carefully smoothed and set up. Numerous bones were found in this chamber, besides relics of pipes, arrow heads, cooking utensils, and this image. The sum paid by salesmen for china, porcelain, earthen and stone ware, imported into the United States during last year, was probably not less than five millions of dollars. would probably serve to protect travelers and others from guats, which in many places are such intolerable pests, even the highest latitudes being infested with them in summer; and he had suggested it to Sir John Franklin as likely to be of service on that Expedition the uncertain issue of which excites so much interest. Captain Peel, the traveler, says that the water of the Nile is of a deep brown color, and when poured into a glass is still more strongly colored. The earth it contains is called in Arabic "abluz," signifying fat or grease. When poured over the body, Nile water runs like oil; and when filtered, it is deliciously light to drink. The total extent of telegraph in England is nearly four thousand miles, representing an outlay of about $1,500,000. The staff of employes may be taken at upward of eight hundred persons. M. Niepce de Saint Victor laid before the Paris Academy of Sciences, lately, daguerreotypes upon which he had succeeded in fixing, more or less permanently, colors by the camera obscura, M. Niepce states that the production of all the colors is practicable, and he is actively engaged in endeavoring to arrive at a convenient method of preparing the plates. "I have begun," he says, “by reproducing in the dark chamber colored engravings, then artificial and natural flowers, and lastly dead nature-a doll, dressed in stuffs of different colors, and always I have obtained with gold and silver lace. all the colors; and, what is still more ex A very interesting relic of antiquity, relating to the period of the Pharaohs, was exhibited at a recent meeting of the New-York Historical Society, through the courtesy of Dr. Abbott, of Cairo, by Mr. Depeyster. The present specimen was a massive gold ring, bearing the oval-shaped signet of Shoupon, the Cheops of Herodotus, and handsomely engraved with hieroglyphics, some of which were inconceivably minute. The ring weighs three English sovereigns, and is in excellent preservation. Dr. Abbott states that it was found by an Arab in the tomb of a high-traordinary and more curious is, that the priest, a circumstance which is accounted for by the fact that the signet of the monarch was held in the possession of the spiritual head, and gold and the silver are depicted with their metallic lustre; and that rock-crystal, alabaster, and porcelain, are represented with the lustre was by him employed to enforce the authority images of precious stones and of glass we ob which is natural to them. In producing the of the king's commands. An Egyptian pebble, bearing a Greek inscription, was also exhibited. The House Line of Telegraph, now in operation to Washington, transmits, in Roman characters, at the rate of eighteen hundred words per hour. The line will most probably be extended to New-Orleans. Mr. Spence read a note lately before the London Entomological Society, on the "Fly-blight" of Australia, by which designation is known the attack of a small fly on the eyes of persons in that country, resulting in inflammation and temporary loss of sight. The name of these insects is not known. It had been discovered that they could be kept from the face by open nets suspended over it, and fixed under the hat; for although the meshes were large, and therefore offered no obstruction to the passage of air, yet the flies would not go through them. Mr. Spence observed that the principle was evidently the same as that of the Italian window-nets, introduced to the notice of that Society eighteen years ago, and proved by the late Bishop of Norwich to be quite effectual in preventing flies from entering apartments. The same plan serve a curious peculiarity. We have placed before the lens a deep green, which has given a yellow image instead of a green one; while a clear green glass, placed by the side of the other, is perfectly reproduced in color." At a recent meeting of the New-York Historical Society, the Rev. Dr. Robinson read a detailed account of a journey made by him through Palestine, in company with Rev. Dr. E. Smith and others. Starting from Beirut, the travelers went along the coast to Sidon, and then struck off eastwardly into the southern parts of Mount Lebanon. They crossed the plain of Esdraelon to Lejjun, the ancient Megiddo; and on the way to Nablus were able to find the long-sought Dothan, where Joseph was sold by his brethren. on what is still the great road from Jezreel to Ramleh and Egypt. From Nablus they struck down to Lydda, visited Ajalon, Emmaus or Nicopolis, and Zorah, the birth-place of Samson, and thence turned their course to Jerusalem. They visited Succoth, near the Jordan, and, fording that river, were able to identify the site of the long-lost Pella. It is EDGAR ALLAN PO E. If we 10 write a satisfactory paper on Poe is no easy task, there is so much that is unsatisfactory in Poe himself. mention his vices, we are very likely to be blamed; and if we do not mention them, the chances are that we shall still be blamed. In this dilemma, the only alternative is either to write just what we think, or not write at all: it not suiting us to do the last, we shall try the first. We may err in our opinions-not being the Pope, we lay no claim to infallibility-but we are honest in them; not only in regard to Poe, but to all the literary men that we have written, or may hereafter write about. We shall give the facts of Poe's life, barely and simply, with but little comment, a short critique on his writings, and, what VOL. II, No. 3.-P seems to us, a fair and truthful estimate of his character. For the biographical part of the paper we claim no credit; it is mostly made up from the memoir in the collected edition of Poe's works; but wherever, in fact, we have found anything that would answer our purpose, we have used it. Edgar Allan Poe was born at Baltimore, in the month of January, 1811. His family was one of the oldest and most respectable in the State. His grandfather was a quarter-master-general in the Revolution, and the friend of Lafayette. His great-grandfather married a daughter of McBride, the British admiral. Through him they are related to many of the most illustrious families in England. Edgar Poe's father was several years a law- Allan's refusing to settle with some of his student in Baltimore, but becoming enam- creditors, he quarreled with him, and went ored of a beautiful actress, named Elizabeth off Quixotically to join the Greeks, then Arnold, he eloped with her, and was in the midst of their war with the Turks. discarded by his friends. Then he went He failed to reach his destination, and we upon the boards himself; but neither he know nothing of him for nearly a year. nor his wife possessing real talents for By the end of that time he had made his the stage, they lived very precariously. way to St. Petersburgh, where both his Playing in the principal cities of the South, money and enthusiasm were exhausted, they came at last to Richmond, where the and he got into a quarrel with the Russian lady became a favorite, more on account authorities-cause unknown. He was of her beauty than her acting, and where near adding some knowledge of the knout they both died of consumption within a few and Siberia to his already extensive weeks of each other, leaving three children knowledge of men and manners, and was -Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie-in utter glad enough to accept the intervention of destitution. What became of the other the American Consul, and his aid to return two we have never heard; but Edgar was home. His meeting with Mr. Allan was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy and not cordial; but that gentleman declared kind-hearted merchant of Richmond. himself willing to serve him in any way From his foster-father he derived his that should seem judicious; and, when Poe middle name, and it was generally under- expressed a desire to enter the Military stood that he was to be the heir to his Academy, he procured his appointment to estate, Mr. Allan having no children of a scholarship. Mrs. Allan, whom Poe his own. In 1816 he accompanied his regarded with much affection, and who new parents on a tour through England, had more influence over him than any one Scotland, and Ireland. They returned to else, died in 1829, just before he left this country, leaving him at school at Richmond for West Point. For a short Stoke Newington, near London, where time he applied himself attentively to his he remained four or five years. In studies, and became a favorite with his "William Wilson," one of his finest tales, mess, and the officers and professors of he gives an account of his life at this the Academy. But his old habit of dissischool, and, it is said, an accurate descrip- pation returned; he neglected his duties tion of the school itself. In 1822 he and disobeyed orders, and in ten months returned to Richmond, and continued his from his matriculation was cashiered. studies, under the best masters which the He went again to Richmond, and was city afforded, for two or three years again received into the family of Mr. Allan, who was still disposed to be his friend; but they soon parted in anger. Allan had married a young wife, and his foster-son is said to have behaved uncivilly to her. Be this as it may-there are many stories afloat in relation to the affair-they parted, and from that time Mr. Allan declined seeing, or in any way assisting him. Dying in 1834, he left three children to inherit his estate, and left Poe nothing. more. In 1825 he went to the University of Virginia. The university was at that time a most dissolute place, and Poe was known as the most dissolute youth in it. He was already a fine classical scholar, and he made rapid strides in mathematics, botany, and other branches of the natural sciences. But at the same time he drank, gambled, and indulged in other vices-was a "little wild" as the saying is-till he was expelled from the place. At this period of his life he was noted for feats of strength and agility, and on one occasion, a hot June day, he swam from Richmond to Warwick, a distance of seven miles and a half. He was expert at fencing, had some skill in drawing, and was a ready and eloquent declaimer. His allowance of money at college had been liberal, but what with drinking and gaming he quitted it very much in debt. On Mr. Mr. Soon after leaving West Point, in 1831, Poe had published a small volume of verses, and the favorable manner in which it was received by the reviewers led him to believe that he might succeed in literature. It was the old story. He wrote for newspapers, compiled and translated for the booksellers, made up brilliant articles for the reviews, and spun tales for the magazines. But, although publishers willingly put them forth, they paid the |