Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1880 — PERSONAL AND LITERARY. [ARTICLE]

PERSONAL AND LITERARY.

A statue is to be erected in the course of this year to George Sand. The lice proposed is the Valle© Noire, in Berry, the spot where so many of her romances had their birth. The Philadelphia papers recall tbe fact that Senator Blaine was a teacher in an institution for the blind in that city for two years, beginning with 1852. Miss Jenny Howe, a Philadelphia girl by birth, but educated in Paris, has made her debat at the Grand Opera House as Rachel in “La Juire,” and achieved at once a suooess that places her in the ranks of great singers and dramatic artists. Meissonikk, the distinguished Parisian painter, is sixty-seven, and has acquired a fortune of* about $200,000. He might have been worth thrice that sum, but he has the tastes of a millionaire, and is especially riven to the luxuries of the table. His “cave” is said to be of exceptional excellence. He works slowly, and asks from $3,000 to $5,000 for a portrait. » Mme. Colban is a distinguished Norwegian writer, who did not attempt authorship until she was nearly sixty years old. She has produced since then five romances, whioh are described as charming. Her children were established .in life, her health began to fail, and her duties and amusements as a woman of society grew irksome. So she went to live in Rome, where she has renewed her yonth in literary work. M. Georges de Cassagnac, just elected a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, is the youngest man that has been elected to that body, having only three days prior to his election attained the age (twenty-five) required by law for membership. The French journals speak of him as a man of fine ability and great promise, especially in financial matters, with which he is perfectly familiar. Dr. Holland, the editor of Scribner'*, was educated for the medical professou. At one time he was an editorial writer for the daily press. His first distinction was won under the nom de plume of “ Timothy Titoomb.” He is now about sixty years of age, and devotes himself entirely to the magazine whioh owes its success to his literary taste .and enterprise. Mr. James Russell Lowell, now just past his sixtieth year, was born in Cambridge, Mass., and has there lived in the house in which he was born—a fine old mansion of the Revolutionary period, square and three-storied, looking out from an environment of stately trees to the southward over the meadows of the Charles. Behind it rises Mount Auburn. Mr. Longfellow lives half a mile away. Here have been written the poems, the essays and tbe critical papers which have made him famous.