[Footnote 1: The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. Two volumes. Harper & Brothers. 1850.] * * * * * LAMARTINE'S NEW ROMANCE. The great poet of affairs, philosophy, and sentiment, before leaving the scenes of his triumphs and misfortunes for his present visit to the East, confided to the proprietors of _Le Constitutionel_ a new chapter of his romanticized memoirs to be published in the _feuilleton_ of that journal, under the name of "Genevieve." This work, which promises to surpass in attractive interest anything Lamartine has given to the public in many years, will be translated as rapidly as the advanced sheets of it are received here, by Mr. Fayette Robinson, whose thorough apprehension and enjoyment of the nicest delicacies of the French language, and free and manly style of English, qualify him to do the fullest justice to such an author and subject. His version of "Genevieve" will be issued, upon its completion, by the publishers of _The International_. We give a specimen of its quality in the following characteristic description, of Marseilles, premising that the work is dedicated to "Mlle. Reine-Garde, seamstress, and formerly a servant, at Aix, in Provence." "Before I commence with the history of Genevieve, this series of stories and dialogues used by country people, it is necessary to define the spirit which animated their composition and to tell why they were written. I must also tell why I dedicate this first story to Mlle. Reine-Garde, seamstress and servant at Aix in Provence. This is the reason. "I had passed a portion of the summer of 1846 at that Smyrna of France, called Marseilles, that city, the commercial activity of which has become the chief _ladder_ of national enterprise, and the general rendezvous, of those steam caravans of the West, our railroads; a city the Attic taste of which justifies it in assuming to itself all the intellectual cultivation, like the Asiatic Smyrna, inherent in the memory of great poets. I lived outside of the city, the heat of which was too great for an invalid, in one of those villas formerly called _bastides_, so contrived as to enable the occupants during the calmness of a summer evening--and no people in the world love nature so well--to watch the white sails and look on the motion of the southern breeze. Never did any other people imbibe more of the spirit of poetry than does that of Marseilles. So much does climate do for it.