The Press. — London, England, 1854-04-29 00:00:00

APRIL 29, 1854. direct any other proceeding to be taken." These are really the words of the bill :—" And the company so served shall thereupon be liable to be dealt with by the court as a party to such suit." Surely the lawyers may adopt the lan guage of the owls in the Eastern apologue, and exclaitn, " Long live Mr. Cardwell ! while he reigns we shall never want Chancery suits!" What shareholders may exclaim, if breath is left to them for ejaculation, is another matter. The 13th clause is by no means the least objectionable of the bill—it enables any railway company, without the consent of its opponent, to refer to the Board of Trade any action or suit in which it is involved, and so substitutes that board, absolutely and without appeal, for the legal tri bunals of the country. Lastly comes the 14th clause, which, if it means any thing—and grammatically it is nonsense—enables the court to fix an unlimited daily penalty for any default by the company in obedience to the order of the court. Nor is it merely the malice of private opponents that may be gratified under this bill. One department at least of Government, the Post-office, is brought into frequent and not very friendly collision with railway jute rests. Suppose that it goes to law, and ob tains a judgment under the act of 1635, From that moment, at the instance of the Post-office, the Board of Trade under the clauses, the Court of Chancery under the bill, has absolute authority over the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway ; may regulate its traffic, may ad just its tolls ; and that, not according to any known law, but as either the one or the other thinks just and reason able. •- • • - - Thus Government ingeniously provides the machinery of which it may hereafter take advantage to obtain the uncontrolled manage ment of all railway property whatever. This is no exaggeration ; for there does not exist a company which may not, through some one of its innumerable agents, commit a single blunder punishable by law, and one such in stance is sufficient to deprive it of the future conduct of its own affairs. - - And who are the persons on whom is de volved this vast and most responsible duty ? The President of the Board of Trade, KR all the public knows, has nothing to do with it. At best a subordinate officer—not very highly paid—quite unknown to the world in general — personally irresponsible, except to the head of his department—is to be invested with auto cratic authority over such concerns as, it may be, the Great Western or the North Western. And this is reform! Mr. Coates does not deny the eccasional errors of railway companies, though he thinks them exaggerated, and certain to yield to the pressure of public opinion ; but he contends that neither the Board of Trade, nor the Court of Chancery, nor both together, are competent for the work which Mr. Cardwell desires them to undertake. He argues, more over, that the companies have suffered giicv ously in their transactions with the State : Surely a review of the treatment of railway companies by the State is a sad retrospect. Compelled to acquire their original powers at an outlay so costly as to be almost incredible, and to incur an outlay scarcely less large when• soever they apply to Parliament for fresh powers ; driven to purchase their land at a price which it would be mild to call excessive, although they were opening in their course new sources of wealth for every district which they traversed: subject to a taxation which no reasoning cen justify, and which has been acknowledged by successive Governments as a grievance from which they ought to be relieved ; harassed by perpetual threats of changes in the law with a view to coerce them ; hearing it as an admitted dogma that every improvement in their undertaking which they seek from Parliament leave to make may be a ground for abolishing their dearly-bought rights and altering all h ten their relations , never recei vin g those " equivalents ic years ago were promised to them for concessions which they then made ; now told that competition must be the condition of their subsistence, then denounced because they resort to those means which the contest they would fain have avoided renders in their eyes justifiable if not requisite ; that they should still maintain their vigour and serve the public With the success they have attained would have been hopeless in any other country than this. The pamphlet is valuable as a summary, and worth reading. Nanette and her Lorers. By Talbot Gwynne. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. THE class of fiction to which this book be longs is extending. It is found that there is a sale for prettily-written stories in o dnee volume, apart fro m the circulating -library - mand, and thus far publishers have been suc cessful in catering for the public nd tasteol. Such are tales as this , and as " Cherry a Viet," not of a very high caste, but they are simplel , en t er t a ining, constructe d according to rules of art, and their historical colouring is THE PRESS. sufficiently true to present a reflection of the times in which the action passes. " Nanette and her Lovers" must have been suggested to Mr. Gwynne, we suspect, by the pretty ballad of "Jeannette and Jeannot." The sentiment is the same, and in the inci- dents the misgivings of poor Jeannette, " I fear that you'll forget all the promises you've made," are touchingly realised. Jeannette through out the volume is the loving, trusting, true hearted little peasant girl, and Jeannot the bold, confident soldier, rising to high rank under Napoleon's command, forgetting poor Jean nette, and taking a tine lady fin• hts bride. The narrative in all its details is as simple as the leading idea, but this simplicity carries with it a conviction of truth, and is accompanied by so much genuine feeling as never to seem The revolutionary storm which swept over France, and the foreign wars which succeeded to it, are carefully indicated by their effects on rural fife. A sketch of the drilling of na tional guards in Normandy affords occasion for presenting a figure in the foreground of a female drummer : Each regiment arrived with its drummer; that of Saen, the strongest of the whole, having two drummers and a sapeur! The latter was the village blacksmith, who filled the post in virtue of his leather apron ; which carried it over the woodcutter's axe, because the apron was far too large for the woodcutter, who, being a good natured fellow, figured in the ranks, and gave up his axe to the strong-armed blacksmith. One of the drummers of Seen was a most remarkable person ; and teacher of drum-beating to those of all the neighbouring corps. This extraordinary drummer was neither more nor less than—an old woman ! Yes! an old woman : and there she stood in her fete dress, snowy-white cap, and smart black sabots; her drum by her side, and her black drum-sticks held in true scien tific style. l.a mere Mieot was • drummer's daughter, born in the regiment to which her father was attached ; in which she afterwards married the smartest drummer, and brought forth four boys, who in due time actually became drummers in their mamma's native corps. A drum had been la mere Mica's first plaything ; she hail been dandled, carried about, spoiled, and petted by drummers; drum-boys had been her playmates; beating the drum had been her show-off accomplishment, and her first effort at learning : in short, la mere Micut and a drum seemed destined for each other. When she became drummer in the national guard she was a merry old widow ; dwelling with an old bachelqr brother at Seen. She was really merry ; as merry as a cricket, which little brown thing she somewhat resembled, being small, thin, light, active, and bunt:tat. La mere Micot was near seventy; hale and strong : a kind of ambulating mummy. Her tanned face was covered with wrinkles and puckers, after the fashion of a walnut; her mouth fell in for lack of teeth ; but her fine black eyes burnt like coals, with all the fire of seventeen. Her snow-white hair was turned off her forehead and sur mounted by her Norman cap, which she had decorated with a tricoloured riband and cockade. Her little smait, thin, blue-stockinged legs were firmly planted on her sabots; her short scarlet petticoat was striped with broad black stripes. It must not be supposed that la mere Micot was a masculine woman ; not at all: she had the Frenchwoman's gift of being able to do man's work in a feminine manner, without disgusting the bystanders by affecting masculine attitudes and tones. La mere Micot beat her drum and taught the same, to the best of her ability, as a matter of course ; without setting up for a man, or neglecting her knitting and spinning when she was "off duty." As Jeannot, notwithstanding his courage, is a vain silly fellow, the writer prettily moralises on the pains which such persons take to get up a sham : Nanette had learned from her lover of his illness, and of his present employment; all his accounts of himself being greatly exaggerated with a view to produce an effect. To produce an effect! Oh ! weakness of a tawdry mind ! What steps will not such a mind take, to compass such an end? To produce an effect ! What steps will not a vain man take ? what sacrifices will he not snake ? what sins will he not commit, to try and astonish his fellow-worms? Oh ! man of vanity, despised by the wise ; hated by the weak. in whom thou succeedest in raising envy; wherefore dust thou so disquiet thyself—wherefore dost thou so lose thyself, blind as thou art, for so poor, so dubious a gratifi cation as the admiration of mankind? a slave to others ; seeking that which may be withheld after all thy restless endeavours ? Nanette, simple and full of love, read, trembled, pitied, and adored, with all thetender passion of her gentle heart. The contrast between their two natures is effectively drawn on occasion of the young officer paying his first visit to his native place after his success: — The lieutenant fully enjoyed the pleasure of a good supper, after having jolted along the whole day on the top of a diligence in a cloud of dust. 401 The wino was good, cool, and refreshing; the food well-dressed ; tharpentier drowsy, yet not too drowsy ; the tire brisk ; and the autumn wind pleasantly moaning without. As lie ate he thought of Nanette, coming to the resolution that he cared very little about her; that bhe was much altered; that years and labours would not improve her; and that she was in a grade of life tar beneath him. " If it was not for my father. 1 should never come near the place again, - he said to himself, as he loaded his plate with cream cheese and salad. At that very moment Nanette's fond heart was overflowing with love for him, as her weary head sunk on her hard pillow ; and she thought how nuw orthy she was of so kind and so noble a man as the lover of her girlish days. These extracts give a fair notion of Mr Gwynne's style. It is tinged by affectation, but some little mannerism may easily b excused in a writer of so much talent. He has been very successful in producing an affecting simple story of love and war. Autobiography of an Indian Army Surgeon London : Bentley. THIS is an autobiographical romance, in which the fortunes of au Indian medical man are described with evident knowledge, and in a fresh vigorous style. An army surgeon gene rally leads a monotonous life—early provided for, and rising by regular grades not so the hero of this volume. What with episodes of a Parisian education—quarters at an out station in the " Mofussil "—speculation and ruin in Calcutta—opium-smuggling on the Chinese coast—and a Punjab campaign—the author has managed to crowd into 300 pages an unusually large variety of characters and events. Not all of these are, in the couven tional sense of the word, " natural ;" yet na ture among certain classes of society assumes strange forms, and he must be a bold painter who should exaggerate in fiction the genuine eccentricities of European existence in the tropics. A book of this kind, professedly a chapter out of real life, seems to us au improved sub stitute for the hackneyed " novel " of the old school, inasmuch as it admits a wider range of topics and a closer approximation to the ideas and feelings of ordinary men. The danger is lest want of plan should be carried too far, and the regular narrative Five place to a mere desultory series of gossiping reminis cences. But fictions of this kind are hardly to be tried by rules of art: if they amuse, and sell, their object is accomplished. Here is a sketch of the great lights of sur gical science at the Parisian hospitals some five-and-twenty years ago : Baron Dupuytreti was a little squat man, with a massive under-jaw, a capacious skull, and eyes as piercing as diamond chips. He bore a singular resemblance to Nupo. Icon ;it was said he was a Jesuit—be that as it may, its influence did not extend to cutting off lees and arms. An old statute in connection with his office was that of a hospital roll of bread (twisted " more Parisiuno," and much like a junk chopped off the end of a hempen cable) and a bottle of wine being placed at his disposal daily. The baron, on leaving after his morning's duties, never omitted to trudge off with the roll under his arm; the bottle of wine he never took ; probably it was too enniberwmie. Baron Larrey was the light of military surgery at Val de trace. He was a little fussy man. It struck me that the style of his surgery was behind the times; he adhered too much to the horrors of the art, which some considered as one result of the Russian campaign, in the miseries of which the baron had his full share. He was invariably followed in the ward by assistants carrying charcoal, irons of all shapes and sizes, and a pair of bellows, for the perfor mance of the actual cautery, his favourite method of counter irritation. The heated iron was in constant use ; he scored limbs and back-bones most unmercifully, and turned therefrom to tell us an anecdote of the " grande armee " and the Emperor, with which extraordinary man he was a great favourite. He would bind up a fracture in dozens of folds of sent-cloth, keeping in for many weeks the products of inflammatory action, which on being opened would display a nicely-united limb among a filthy accumulation. Lisfranc presided over the surgical department at La Pine. lie wee a noble-looking person of great energy and courage, and &strong contrast in appearance to his medical colleague I)r. Louis, whose researches into the nature of pulmonary consumption were feelingly typified by the narrow flat-chested physician, whose physical conformation told too truly what had led him to the investigation. He was a long, pale, hollow-breasted man, with high shoulders. The same feeling led Laennec to that train of reasoning which gave rise to the invention and use of the stethescope, a simple wooden tube to listen through. In those days it was a grand subject for ridicule. N.% hat a deal of wit re sulted from it! It was a wise generation that laughed at poor Laennec, wha, like I)r. Louis, and before him, sunk under the disease upon which they certainly threw mere light than any men before or since. - ■