With all its stubborn John Bullism, the London _Athenæum_ is compelled to pay a flattering tribute to the literary merits of our distinguished countryman, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: “Among the sterling pleasures which, though few, make rich amends for the many grievances and misconstructions that await honest critics, there is none so great as the discovery and support of distant and unknown genius. Such pleasure the _Athenæum_ may fairly claim in the case of Mr. Hawthorne. Like all men so richly and specially gifted, he has at last found his public—he is at last looked to, and listened for: but it is fifteen years since we began to follow him in the American periodicals, and to give him credit for the power and the originality which have since borne such ripe fruit in ’The Scarlet Letter’ and ’The House of the Seven Gables.’ Little less agreeable is it to see that acceptance, after long years of waiting, seems not to have soured the temper of the writer—not to have encouraged him into conceit—not to have discouraged him into slovenliness. Like a real artist Mr. Hawthorne gives out no slightly planned nor carelessly finished literary handiwork.” ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Among the list of passengers who perished by fire on board the Amazon steamer, we find the name of Mr. ELIOT WARBURTON, the author of “The Crescent and the Cross,” a book of Eastern travel—“Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers”—and the novels “Reginald Hastings” and “Darien.” Mr. Warburton, says a correspondent of the _Times_, had been deputed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to come to a friendly understanding with the tribes of Indians who inhabit the Isthmus of Darien: it was also his intention to make himself perfectly acquainted with every part of those districts, and with whatever referred to their topography, climate, and resources. “To _Darien_, with the date of 1852 upon its title-page,” says the _London Examiner_, “the fate of its author will communicate a melancholy interest. The theme of the book is a fine one. Its fault consists chiefly in the fact that the writer was not born to be a novelist. Yet, full as it is of eloquent writing, and enlivened as it is with that light of true genius, which raises even the waste work of a good writer above the common twaddle of a circulating library, _Darien_ may, for its own sake, and apart from all external interest, claim many readers. External interest, however, attaches to the book in a most peculiar manner. Superstitious men—perhaps also some men not superstitious—might say that there was a strange shadow of the future cast upon its writer’s mind. It did not fall strictly within the limits of a tale of the Scotch colonization of Darien, to relate perils by sea; yet again and again are such perils recurred to in these volumes, and the terrible imagination of a _ship on fire_ is twice repeated in them.” ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐