FREDRIKA BR Aran's APPEAL FROM HER TRANSLATOR.—Miss Fredrika Bremer has
published "A Card," setting forth a certain protest which she feels bound to make against "misconceptions as to words and meanings of the Swedish original" of her Homes of the New World. Miss Bremer in- dulgently recognizes the difficulty of the translation, vouches for it as good and faithful on the whole, and in parts excellent. But examples of the de- viations are certainly serious. " In the first letter from New York, I find it said about a lady as amiable as highly gifted—' She seemed to me a beauti- ful soul, but too angular to be happy.' The Swedish word translated by angular' is finkanslig,' which signifies delicately sensitive.' " Another deviation consists in publishing passages which, at the request of the author, the translator had agreed to omit, and which are omitted in the Swedish edition. " As I cannot explain the disagreement in these last cases, I can only state that so it is. And Miss Bremer calls for a corrected edition of her book.
GHOST STORIES.—Left Holland House in time to get to Rogers's, where Sir W. Scott was to call for us. Called at three to take us to dine with his son, Major Scott, at Hampton. Scott very agreeable on the way. Told him our conversation at Holland House about ghosts, which brought on the same topic. His own strong persuasion, one night, that he saw the figure of Lord Byron. Had been either talking of or reading him ; and on going into the next room, was startled to see through the dusk what he could have sworn was Byron, standing as he used to do when alive. On returning into the dmwingroom, he said to his daughter, " If you wish to see Lord Byron, go into that room." It was the effect of either the moonlight or twilight upon some drapery that was hanging up, which, to his imagination, just then full of Byron, presented this appearance. Rogers's story of the young couple at Berlin in their opera-box, between whom, at a distance, there always appear- ed to be a person sitting, though on going into their box, it was found that there was no one there but themselves. From all parts of the house this supernatural intruder could be seen ; but people differed as to its appearance, some saying it was a fair man, others a dark ; some maintaining that he was old, and others that he was young. • It should be mentioned, that there was some guilty mystery hanging over the connexion between these young peo- ple; and as, at last, no one ventured to visit their box, they disappeared from Berlin. This anecdote Lord Wriothesley Russell 'brought with him from abroad. Scott (who evidently did not like the circumstances being left unexplained) proceeded to tell a story of Mrs. Hook, the wife of Dr. Hook, who wrote the Roman History ; " it being as well," he said, " to have some real person to fit one's story on." Mrs. Hook becoming acquainted and intimate with a foreign lady, a widow, at Bath ; their resolving to live to- gether on their return to London. Mrs. Hook, on coming down stairs one day at this lady's lodgings, meeting a foreign officer on the stairs, saying to • her friend next day, " You had a visitor yesterday ?" the other answering, " No ; she had seen no one since Mrs. Hook left her." Mrs. H. thinking this odd, going another day into her friend's dressingroom by mistake, and seeing the same officer there alone stretched on the sofa. Being now sure , there was something not right, determined to mention it to the lady ; who, ' at first, said it was impossible, but, hearing a description of how the officer was dressed, fainted. Mrs. Hook, convinced that it was some improper liaison she was carrying on, determined gradually to give up her acquaintance. The foreign lady soon after was preparing to go to London ; and Mrs. Hook, being in the room when her maid was packing, (the lady herself not being present,) saw a miniature-case fall out of the portmanteau ; and taking it up and opening it, saw the portrait of the very person whom she had met on the stairs. " That," said the maid, " is the picture of my mistress's husband." " Her husband ?" "Yes," answered the maid; "he died a short time be- fore we left Germany." In a few weeks afterwards, there arrived an order in England to have this foreign lady arrested on a charge of murdering her husband !—Moore's Diary.
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