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imprisonment, Maroncelli composed a number of poetical works, some of which were committed to paper, others lost for the want of it. In this country he has published a volume entitled “Additions to the Memoirs of Silvio Pellico,” containing numerous anecdotes of the captivity not recorded in Pellico’s work, and an “Essay on the Classic and Romantic Schools,” the author proposing to divide them anew and designate them by novel distinctions. There is at least some scholarship and some originality in this essay. It is also brief. Maroncelli regards it as the best of his compositions. It is strongly tinctured with transcendentalism. The volume contains, likewise, some poems, of which the “Psalm of Life,” and the “Psalm of the Dawn” have never been translated into English. “Winds of the Wakened Spring,” one of the pieces included, has been happily rendered by Mr. Halleck, and is the most favorable specimen that could have been selected. These “Additions” accompanied a Boston version of “My Prisons, by Silvio Pellico.”

Maroncelli is now about fifty years old, and bears on his person the marks of long suffering; he has lost a leg; his hair and beard became gray many years ago; just now he is suffering from severe illness, and from this it can scarcely be expected that he will recover.

In figure he is short and slight. His forehead is rather low, but broad. His eyes are light blue and weak. The nose and mouth are large. His features in general have all the Italian mobility; ­their expression is animated and full of intelligence. He speaks hurriedly and gesticulates to excess. He is irritable, frank, generous, chivalrous, warmly attached to his friends, and expecting from them equal devotion. His love of country is unbounded, and he is quite enthusiastic in his endeavors to circulate in America the literature of Italy.

LAUGHTON OSBORN.

Personally, MR. OSBORN is little known as an author, either to the public or in literary society, but he has made a great many “sensations” anonymously or with a mon [[nom ]] de plume. I am not sure that he has published anything with his own name.

One of his earliest works — if not his earliest — was “The Adventures of Jeremy Levis, by Himself,” in one volume, a kind of medley of fact, fiction, satire, criticism, and novel philosophy. lt is a dashing, reckless brochure, brimful of talent and audacity. Of course it was covertly admired by the few, and loudly condemned by all of the many who can fairly be said to have seen it at all. It had no great circulation. There was something wrong, I fancy, in the mode of its issue.

“Jeremy Levis” was followed by “The Dream of Alla-Ad-Deen, from the romance of ‘Anastasia,’ by Charles Erskine White, D.D.” This is a thin pamphlet of thirty-two pages, each page containing about a hundred and forty words. Alla-Ad-Deen is the son of Aladdin, of “wonderful lamp” memory, and the story is in the “Vision of Mirza,” or “Rasselas” way. The design is to reconcile us to death and evil, on the somewhat unphilosophical ground that comparatively we are of little importance in the scale of creation. The author himself supposes this scale to be infinite, and thus his argument proves too much; for if evil should be regarded by man as of no consequence because, “comparatively,” he is of none, it must be regarded as of no consequence by the angels for a similar reason — and so on in a never-ending ascent. In other words, the only thing proved is the rather bull-ish proposition that evil is no evil at all. I do not find that the “Dream” ­elicited any attention. It would have been more appropriately published in one of our magazines.

Next in order came, I believe, “The Confessions of a Poet, by Himself.” This was in two volumes, of the ordinary novel form, but printed very openly. It made much noise in the literary world, and no little curiosity was excited in regard to its author, who was generally supposed to be John Neal. There were some grounds for this supposition, the tone and matter of the narrative bearing much resemblance to those of “Errata” and “Seventy-Six,