The Press. — London, England, 1854-01-14 00:00:00

EMI‘MIPiIm ------- salaries, souu accumulate large fortunes; ' functionaries are often not proof against f a handsome woman, or a magnificent for their wives or daughters. The Elu -1 a moment of irritation at some great he had discovered in the naval stores, •w where to hide them, they would the line; if they could draw my teeth me, they would extract them during the The accession of Nicholas; the strange ne gotiations that passed between him and Con stantine, in which each brother sought to decline the burden of empire ; the secret i n t r i gu es by which Alexander's life was shortened, and which broke out when the throne became vacant ; the final revolt, its suppression, and the heroic death of the in surgents, arc an often-told tale : yet uo narrator has told them better than our author ; and he seems to do equal justice to both parties. Of the Autocrat himself, whose ambition now threatens European peace, the following por trait will by most persons be thought too flattering. In the opening sentences he is contrasted with the Czar Peter, undoubtedly the only Russian Sovereign who can bear com parison with him in point of energy and talent : Nicholas, on the other hand, is essentially Russian in all his ideas. He is heart and soul patriotic, not merely in wish, but in spirit and thought. He wishes to improve and elevate his country, and he has done much to effect that noble object ; but he desires to do so by developing, not changing, the national spirit, by making it become a first Russia, not a second France or England. He has adopted the maxim of Montesquieu, that no nation ever attained to real greatness but by institutions in conformity with its spirit. • • • The improvements he has effected in the government of his dominions have been vast, the triumphs with which his external policy have been attended unbounded they have all been achieved, not in imitation of, but in opposition to, the ideas of Western Europe. They be speak, not less than his internal government, the national character of his policy. But if success is the test of worldly wisdom, he has not been far wrong in his system ; for he has passed the Balkan, heretofore impervious to his predecessors; he has conquered Poland, converted the Euxiue into a Russian lake, planted the cross on the bastions of Erivan, and opened through subdued Hungary a path to Constantinople. Nature has given him all the qualities fitted for such an elevated destiny. A lofty stature and princely air give additional influence to a majestic countenance, in which the prevailing character is resolution, yet not un mixed with sweetness. Like Wellington, Caesar, and many other of the greatest men recorded in history, his expression has become more intellectual as he advanced in years, and became exercised in the duties of sovereignty, instead of the stern routine of military discipline. Ex emplary in all the relations of private life, a faithful hus band, an affectionate father, he has exhibited in a brilliant court, and when surrounded by every temptation which life can offer, the simplicity and affections of patriarchal life. Yet he is not a perfect character. His virtues often border upon vices. His excellences are akin to defects. Deeply impressed with the responsibility of his situation, his firmness has sometimes become sternness, his sense of justice degenerated into severity. He knows how to distinguish the innocent from the guilty, and has often evinced a noble and magnanimous spirit in separating the one from the other, and showing oblivion of injury, even kindness to the relatives of those who had conspired against his throne and life. But towards the guilty themselves he has not been equally compassionate. He has not always let the passions of the :mutest pass away with its termination. He is an Alexander the Great in resolution, but not iti magnanimity. He wants the last grace in time heroic character—he does not know how to forgive. The Russian revenues are small in propor tion to population and area, not exceeding twenty millions sterling ; but the debt is likewise trifling, salaries are low, and the necessaries of life cheap. Before quitting this subject we quote, though protesting against, the opinion of Sir Archibald on the future of the Muscovite empire : She is probably not intended to shine in the career of civilisation. Her sons will not, at least for long, rival the arts of Italy or the chivalry of France, the intellect of England or the imagination of Germany. There will be no Shakspeares or Miltons, no Itacines or Compiles, no Taasos or Raphaels, no Schillers or Goethes, amidst the countless millions of her boundless territory; but there may be—there will be—an Alexander, an Attila, a Timonr. Literature, science, the arts, are the efflorescence of civilisation ; but, in the moral not less than the physical world, efflorescence is succeeded by decline, the riches of the harvest border on the decoy of autumn. There is a winter in nations as well as in seasons; the vulture and the eagle are required to cleanse the moral not less than the physical world. If the glories of civilisation are denied to Russia, she is saved from its corruption ; if she does not exhibit the beauties of summer, she i , stained by its consequent decay. Hardened by snifei inured to privation, compelled to struggle eternally unit the seventies of climate, the difficulties of space, the 40 Met moderate salari and even elevated fun the seductions of a Cashmere shawl for peror Alexander, in dilapidation which I said, " If they kne , steal my ships of th without wakening in night." _ __ • THE PRESS. energy of the human character is preserved entire amidst her ice and snows. From thence, as from the glaciers of the Alps: the destroying but purifying streams descend upon the plenty of the vales beneath. Russia will evi dently conquer Turkey, and plant her eagles on the dome of St. Sophia ; she will do what the Crusaders failed in doing—she will rescue the Holy Shrines from the hands of the Infidels. But that, though an important part, is not the whole of her destiny. Still, when the Cross is seen triumphant over the wide expanse of the lower empire, will her millions remain in their snowy deserts, invigorated by necessity, hardened by suffering, panting for conquest. She is never destined to be civilised, save for the purposes of war ; lint she is destined to do what intellect and peace can never do. Scythia will for ever remain what it luta been from the earliest times—Tut: STOREHOUSE OF NATIONS, THE SCOUSIOE OF VICIOUS CIVILISATION. Next iu interest to the chapters from which we have quoted are those which deal with French politics during the first fervour of the Restoration. Never was monarch or statesman called to play a more difficult game than Louis XVIII. and his advisers. They typified in the eyes of the French nation everything that was obsolete, absurd, humiliating to national pride, offensive to a people which piqued itself at once on enlightenment and love of equality. They represented a Church in which nn man believed, an aristocracy which no man re spected, theories of government which had passed away with the Revolution of 'B9—a dynasty forced on the people by foreign arms; a peace founded on necessary but disgraceful concession. They were associated in the pub lic mind, not with the triumph of Austerlitz, but with the disaster of Waterloo. Resting in great measure on priestly support, they were thought to look with hostility on science, and with suspicion on literature. Finally, the material condition of France was deplorable. War had exhausted her finances, wasted her youth, depressed her agriculture, and caused the quartering upon hor soil of more than a million of armed men; while the money to be paid as indemnity to the conquerors amounted to sixty millions. So situated, failure would have been no reproach to a much abler ruler than Louis XVIII. This King, at the time of his accession far gone in years, long an exile, trained in reactionary and anti-national senti ments, not wanting in a certain kind of clever ness, which was chiefly displayed in trifles, but destitute alike of a strong will, of physical energy, and of sympathy with the high-wrought enthusiasm of the French character, was per haps the most unfit man in all his dominions to govern. Nor did it diminish his difficulties that, from almost the hour of his accession, the necessity was perceived of conciliating Liberalism at the expense of the more ardent Royalists. Of all systems of policy, that of compromise is the most unpopular,and demands the greatest tactical skill; for, on the part of a statesman whose natural tendencies are held to be despotic, concessions to the popular cause assume the character, not of benevolence, but of fear. " Measures, not men," may be both a popular cry, and, under some circum stances, a sound principle ; but it needs little observation to show that, with the mass of mankind, measures are generally judged of according to the supposed leanings of their authors. In truth, during the whole period from 1815 to 1830 the most consummate skill in government could not have rendered the Bourbons popular. They were hated as the successors of Napoleon—as the subverters of the Empire, not as the authors of restrictive laws. It was of no avail that the commerce of France revived, and that her sons were freed from the terrible oppression of the con scription, while the late Emperor lived a prisoner at St. Helena, and Paris yet retained the marks of a hostile occupation. Historians have not allowed sufficiently for this pre judice, and have thus been led to represent the Bourbon rule as more arbitrary than it really was. The Court was at no time royalist enough to please its friends ; while no possible stretch of liberality could have appeased its enemies. The severe measures at one moment adopted, the censorship, the electoral law of 1820, the law authorising arrests, were not so much causes as conse quences of disturbance. We have always be lieved that but for the murder of the Due de Berri, and the violent reaction produced by this act of atrocity committed for a political purpose, the Republican or Bonapartist party would have anticipated the three days, and put an end, at once and for over, to Bourbon SATURDAY, pretensions. But it was reserved for our own age to discover, what had hitherto been StlB - by a few persons rather than certainly known even to them, that half a century of peace, so far from effacing, had scarcely dimmed to the eyes of the French peasantry the dearly-bought glories of the Napoleonic reign. We are surprised to find in Sir Archibald Alison a zealous defender of that which to us seems not only a crime but a blunder—the crowning error of the Restoration—the French invasion of Spain in 1823. Non-intervention, as at the present moment , may be pushed too far ; but, as a general principle, it is at least better than the opposite extreme. And what was the defence put forth for the Angouleine expedition? Not any violation of treaty—not danger to France—not the necessity of main taining pledged faith with an ally—but simply the desire of political propagandisin in a neigh bouring state; an excuse which may just as well be urged on one side as the other—an excuse which might have been pleaded had the French Government of 1848 chosen to send a force to assist the projected Irish rebellion—a policy of which, if generally adopted, the re sult must be to render peace unattainable until the whole world shall be either republi can or despotically ruled. Wars of opinion, the bloodiest and the longest of all, have this additional demerit, that they originate in the false assumption that all nations can be, and should be, governed alike. Our author sees this clearly enough where the revolt of the South American colonies is concerned : he thinks our interference in that struggle a mis take, if not an injustice. But does not the French aggression on Spain rest on a footing precisely similar? France, indeed, aiming at the domination of the Continent, errs more readily ou the side of needless interference than we do ; but the tendency—a very danger ous one—is common to all popularly-consti tuted countries. America is probably destined to exemplify it to a greater extent and in a more signal manner than any European power. Ephemeris ; or, Leaves from r Journall of Marian Drayton. London : Seeley e. IMITATIONS, even in the literature of antiquity, were devoted to ridicule, and in an age like our own, when novelty is so much demanded, we wonder how any writer can be found to submit to the public such an evident copy of another's style as " Ephemeris." Its proto type is " Lady Willoughby's Diary ;" and we are again treated to the typographical arta, which in the first instance produced some effect. But secondhand artifices, like Harle quin's tricks in a revived pantomime, soon weary. As " curiosities of literature " such works as this may have some artificial interest, if when executed by persons of great literary knowledge. A poem or an essay iu the old English of a particular reign, written by a pro foundly accomplished linguist like the late Mr. Hookham Frere, would be prized by scho lars. But, where the knowledge of the changes in our mother tongue is evidently superficial, the recurrence to old spelling annoys instead of amusing. All the novelists have agreed that, when dialogues in remote antiquity are to be recorded, the " artist in words" must adhere to modern spelling, removing the con versation from mere conventional forms by a certain homely, old-fashioned quaintness, as Sir Walter Scott has done in " Ivanhoe," and Sir Edward Lytton in " The Last of the Barons." We need not go beyond the title page of this work to see how moderate is the knowledge of Elizabethan bibliographi pf sessed by this writer of " Ephemeris. the book is supposed to be published iu 1592, and we are told at the foot of the title that it is Imprinted in London for ROBERT & GEORGE Samara, dwellinge in the Fkte Steele, near Saint Dunstan's Church& This is a very bad imitation of the spelling of the age ; the word " dwellinge " would not take the final e ; and in the present participle, where we now use the letter i , o ur forefathers in that day as often employed the vowel y, as in " thinkyng," louyng" (for loving), " drown yng," &c. The word " near " s h ou ld have been spelt with a final e ; but even the word ing of the passage is scarcely right, as well- r ..•• ..•