The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844

‘John Sanderson was a man of genius, a man of talent, a man of feeling. He was a Philadelphian, and by his life and writings he added to the good reputation of his country. To natural abilities of a high order, he added a calm, chaste scholarship, an intimate knowledge of mankind, a singularly amiable disposition, and a frank and high-bred courtesy. His departure is lamented not alone by those who enjoyed his society and his friendship; he is mourned by our republic of letters; America as well as our city, has lost one of her most accomplished sons. Mr. Sanderson has long been known as a writer. His first publication was the collection of Memoirs of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, in nine octavo volumes; a work embracing a vast amount of original and authentic information; and his last, excepting contributions to the literary journals, was ‘The American in Paris.’ He was a man of most excellent humor, blending happily the characteristics of Rabalais and Sterne and Lamb. When with his chosen associates, we doubt whether even Coleridge was more entertaining or instructive. Turn to his Parisian letters and see the union of wit and humor, of playful satire and nice observation which pervade them. Examine all the pleasant books of travel of which this age has been so prolific, and answer whether they have been surpassed. ‘You know Sanderson,’ we said a few weeks since to a French Deputy who was travelling here. ‘Know John Sanderson? I derived from him my knowledge of Paris.’ ‘But you are a Parisian?’ ‘Je ne sache pas qu’il y ait eu un Français qui ait plus connu Paris et son monde.’ In that home of the gay, the brilliant and the profound, of all that in life or art attracts the man of genius, or learning, or taste, Mr. Sanderson was the favored guest of the most celebrated savans and wits, many of whom since his return to the United States, have waited anxiously for his restoration to their circles. And he himself looked forward with happy anticipations to the renewal of his old friendships. In a few months he was to reöccupy his apartments in the Rue Rivoli. ‘There,’ he said to the writer of these recollections but a week ago, ‘there with congenial spirits I shall spend the residue of my days.’ How much those friends will sorrow when they learn that John Sanderson is no more!

He was a wit; he had a most delicate perception of the beautiful, and a keen sense of the ludicrous. But those who knew him can tell with what care he directed his powers. He never summoned a shadow to any face, or permitted a weight to lie on any heart. He was as amiable as he was brilliant. He was no man of the world. He knew society, its selfishness and its want of honor, but he looked upon it less in anger than in sadness. He was no cynic, no Heraclitus; he deemed it wisest to laugh at the follies of mankind. Through all his experience he lost none of his natural urbanity, his freshness of feeling, his earnestness and sincerity. The late Theodore Hook, the first humorist and most celebrated bon-vivant of our day, was employed by his publisher to edit Mr. Sanderson’s ‘American in Paris.’ He read it, adapted it as well as he could to the English market, and returned it with the observation that ‘there was never a book which suffered more from slightest change.’ Had the author devoted the chief portion of his time to letters, he would have been little less distinguished in the same department than his famous friend. But he lived a quieter and happier life; he died a happier death, suddenly, but in a home, and with his friends about him.’

The following ‘Lines to a Bouquet of Flowers,’ are from the pen of the lamented Governor Dickinson, whose melancholy suicide will be fresh in the minds of many of our readers. We learn from the friend through whom we derive them, that they were handed to him by the author, while sojourning for a short time in Albany:

Emblem of life and loveliness,Welcome, sweet harbingers of Spring!Clad in thy beauteous summer dress,And wafted on Time’s fairy wing.Would thou wert fadeless as the sky,All redolent of hope and gladness,But soon, alas! thou’lt lonely lie,Emblem of Death, of Grief, of Sadness.Emblem of Life! thing of an hour,How soon thou’lt hang thy sickly head,And bow beneath the conqueror’s power,And lie among the sleeping dead!Emblem of Life! beyond the tomb,Thy flowers again shall form a wreath;Shall germinate amid the gloom.And triumph o’er the monster Death!D. S. D.

We have repeatedly in these pages ‘borne testimony’ in behalf of a more general cultivation of the fine arts, and especially in the department of architecture. We have had too much reason to concur with Jefferson in the opinion that ‘the genius of architecture never yet condescended to visit the American Republic.’ The Count Renault St. Jean D’A– was wont to say, while residing among us, that ‘more was to be learned by viewing Grace-Church in Broadway, touching the state of mental culture among us in the science of architecture, than by all the methods of reasoning which philosophy could furnish on any abstract point of knowledge;’ and yet we believe the plan of this edifice was the result of a confederation of intellectual powers! Moreover, as our old friend, the late Gen. Morton, was wont to say, we must bear in mind that beside the several recognized orders of architecture, we have also an order by the corporation! We may have more to say on this theme on another occasion. We have been led to these incidental remarks, by the recent death in this city of a man of rare genius, and unwearied effort in the promotion of a kindred branch of art—Thomas Horner, of England, the well-known draftsman and painter of the wonderful panorama of London, which constitutes the attraction of the great collosseum in that metropolis. The labor to affect this great work, the result of years of toil and severe exposure to the inclemencies of a noxious atmosphere, doubtless predisposed to that prolonged suffering which wasted his physical strength; while sad disappointments, and the precarious means of existence which he derived from his art in this country, may be justly regarded as concurring causes in hastening his final departure from among us. For a period of about fifteen years, he had devoted himself to the taking of sketches of numerous rural views and edifices in different parts of our northern states, and of the public buildings of our prominent cities. His delineation of the city of New-York is perhaps the most conspicuous of the efforts of his pencil. He died in this city on the morning of the 18th of March, aged about sixty years. It may be gratifying to his relatives and friends abroad to know, that there were not a few of our citizens who were ready at all times to aid him by their benefactions; and that in his illness he found in Dr. Francis, whose name is a synonyme for considerate kindness, a constant friend and faithful medical adviser. His funeral was attended by some of our first citizens, among whom it was gratifying to observe Mr. Fowler, the President of the St. George’s Society, and other well-known countrymen of the deceased. ••• Our correspondent, Mr. Thos. Copcutt, has opened the present number with an admirable paper, compiled from Carlyle, on the never-tiring theme of Napoleon. We always associate, and at once, with Napoleon’s name, the dreadful scenes presented by his deserted battle-fields; such for example as marked the sanguinary contests of his Russian campaign. Here is a sketch of one, from the pen of an eye-witness: ‘The battle-field presented a terrible picture of ruin and carnage, especially on the left and centre, where the greatest efforts had been made to take, maintain, and retake the redoubts. Corpses of the slain, broken arms, dead and dying horses, covered every elevation and filled every hollow, and plainly indicated the progress of the action. In the front of the redoubts lay the bodies of the French; behind the works, showing that they had been carried, lay the Russians. On many points the heaps of corpses told where squares of infantry had stood, and plainly pointed out the size of the closely formed masses. From the relative number of the slain, it was easy to perceive that the Russians had suffered more than the French.’ And this is but one of hundreds of similar scenes! Yet, ‘had these poor fellows any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! Their Governors had fallen out!’ If one could indulge a ‘grim smile’ at any thing in relation to Bonaparte, it would be at the potential military standard to which he reduced every thing. Do you remember his order on the appearance of the Mamelukes in Egypt? Form square; artillery to the angles; asses and savans to the centre!’ Characteristic; but complimentary that, to the ‘learned savans!’ ••• We have bestowed but little of our tediousness upon the reader in this department of the present number, whereat he may felicitate himself, since our excellent correspondence will be found a welcome substitute for much that we had written, and which ‘lies over’ until our next. The Quod Correspondence will arrest the attention of every reader. No two chapters of the entire series excel the present in power of delineation, or depth of interest. For ‘Babyhood,’ addressed to ‘Julian;’ ‘Excelsior,’ a parody upon Longfellow; ‘Punchiana, with clippings,’ and various Gossip with Correspondents, whose favors were intended for the present number, we must refer all concerned to our next issue. ••• We have received the following works; and to such as we have found leisure to read, we shall here briefly advert: From the Brothers Harper, the first two numbers of a ‘pocket edition’ of select (and old?) novels, containing ‘The Yemassee,’ by Mr. Simms, and ‘Young Kate, or the Rescue:’ of the ‘Library of Select Novels,’ three issues—‘The Heretic,’ from the Russian; ‘The Jew,’ and ‘The Grumbler,’ by Miss Pickering: From Lea and Blanchard, Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre-Dame:’ From J. S. Redfield, Clinton Hall, ‘Napier’s History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France:’ From Leavitt, Trow and Company, ‘Poems by William James Colgan:’ From John Allen, 139 Nassau-street, ‘The Lady at Home, or Leaves from the Every-day Book of an American Woman:’ and from Little and Brown, Boston, Lives of Patrick Henry and La Salle, commencing the second series of Sparks’s ‘American Biography.’ Miss Pickering’s ‘Grumbler’ is one of the best and most interesting novels we have read for many a day; ‘The Hunchback’ of Hugo is too well known to our readers to require mention; and the same may be said of Napier’s excellent history. ‘The Lady at Home’ will commend itself to all readers, for its truly admirable lessons to American women. Colgan’s poems deserve more space than we can devote to them. The writer has the true poetical feeling, and his execution is often very felicitous, and always creditable. ••• The ‘Nile Story’ of our Boston correspondent; a notice of the Phreno-Mnemotechny of Professor Gouraud; of the Re-publication of English Magazines and Reviews; of New Music, and other late publications; are all unavoidably postponed, for reasons already stated, until our next number.

1

North’s ‘Examen.’

2

See letter to William Collins, Esq., Vol. 3., p. 424: Allen Cunningham’s Life of Sir David Wilkie.