The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-20 00:00:00

AUGUST 20, 1853. animals for nothing but a mere eerejo of an old song. If it was his case he would do as an officer in his regiment had done at Valencia. " This officer had a splendid horse, and when his regi ment was suddenly ordered away to Tarifa, rarqiu ! nobody would make him a bid for the horse, though he was worth at least three hundred dollars, rarqjo! thinking, n o doubt, that by hanging back they would get him for aiwost Hut when he was going to embark he had the horse led down to the shore, and some thought he would take the horse aboard with him ; but that was impossible, for it was a foot regiment, and he had no peituitudon. So when he had to go aboard himself, in the presence of those scoundrelly dealers who Na tome to beat hint down to the lowest he would tike, he said, ' Cargiu ! you shall Vtot *heat die, earojo ! You would not give me a lair Wii.4e, And, corgi° ! you shall have him for nothing—but, at the same time, I will make it a fair price. for he shall not be worth a earqjo: Whereupon he unclasped his navaja and cut the horse's throat, and gashed the hide all over, so that the skin should be worth nothing either, carafe! and I Raw it done, eureijo! and, ear4o ! I mould advise you to do the same !---earqp ! ! ! Soon alter returning to our hotel the customer ap peared. He is the 5411)418W aidor of the tiovernment lotterrofilce here, and has a bad, halite, hang-dog east of icenuttenance. he beat us down front thirty dollars, at which we had 'vesulgtily,iitood for some time, to twenty-five ; and finally *o dosed the bargain at twenty-three about five guineas. The ponies originally cost us alum'. So that we have practically paid about five guineas and a half each for a thousand miles of locomotion—which is not very dear. This melancholy occasion has inspired a sonnet, and such as it is it shall point the end of my letter ; for I must go to bed, as I shall have to be up at six to get the portmanteaux out of the gedera's office, which we could not do before, because we had no money to pay for the carriage. Indeed, in our present dearth of money ' the clean golden coin in which our purchaser disbursed gave Its almost as pleasant a sensation as if we had made a good BONNET. The Cid is sold—the Moor it mine no more. For dollar* twenty-three, the highest bid, This night we parted with tho Moor and Cid, To Ynnes lottery adwanistraibr. A thousand miles these steeds their riders bore, By Ronda, Gib, Granada, and Madrid, Segovia fair, and foul Valladolid, Burgos, Vitoria, to Biscaya's shore. Frisky and fat, rotuttl bellied as a tun, And full of spirits, by the gate of meat,* Each capered forth from Seville. Almost beat, One broken•kneed—with a stiff fetlock one, On their last legs performing their last feat, They crossed the Pyrineses and reached Yrun. • Puerta de la carne. As we indicated above, nothing can be more genial, picturesque, and acceptable than Mr. Cayley's part in this performance. Such, in deed, was to be expected from the author of " Sir Reginald de Mohun." but his publisher is fairly open to the censures which we perceive have been directed against him elsewhere. The adaptation to two volumes of the arrange ments for one, even of the titlepage for instance —the absence of index or table of contents — of a list of errata, an omission of importance where typographical errors swarm—the refer ence to illustrations which are not to be found —reflect such discredit on the publisher that we must hold them up to notice. We regret, to conclude, that our just praise of Mr. Cayley must be coupled with a comment so dispa raging to Mr. Bentley. The History of ,qcotland, from 1689 to 1748. By John Hill Burton. London : Longman and Co. THE story of Sentland from the Revolution of 1885, to the final destruction of the Jacobites, is more full of romantic interest than any other portion of our British annals since the close of the seventeenth century. Amongst the various ]►arts of the subject presenting themes fin• a historian's skill are the struggles of the expiring Stuart dynasty, Dundee's cam paign, the rebellions of 1715 and '45, with their various episodes, the wanderings of the " Chevalier," and the deaths on the scaffold at Tower-hill of the last patrician " traitoro "in our history, who expiated their ambition or enthusiasm on the block. The battle of Killi erankia and the death of Clarerhouse, the march to Derby, and the final rout at Culloden, furnish ample matter for a writer with vivid power. On the other hand, the civil history of the period is one on which a really philo sophic historian—a Hume or a Guizot—might profoundly ponder. The accession of the house of' Hanover; the union with Scotland, and its results upon English empire ; the peculiar religionism of " the Kirk," the relation of the Scotch aristocracy to the population at THE PRESS. large, would give ample topics for profound discussion. Even the prominent leaders in the civil progress of the time afford many inte resting recollections—such as " Fletcher of Stamm," Lord Belhaven. Candaini, and others too numerous to mention. It was a period in Scotland of rapid transitions and strong con trasts. On the side of authority, and against it, there were culpable excesses. A blacker deed than the massacre of Glencoe never stained the hands of power in these islands ; and a more strange project than Paterson's Darien scheme bailout amused the hopes of credulity, even in the bubble periods of later times. In addition to the resources of the genuine history of the events, the whole subjeet has obtained a world-wide interest from its being identified with the splendid literary tritunphs of Scott, and the popularising of Scottish traditions throughout Christendom. On this suggestive theme, sparkling with brilliant incidents and varied with curious contrasts, 111.. Burton has produced two volumes of the dullest description. Contemplating it in what he supposes to be the "philosophical" method, he gives us dissertation in place of narrative, discusses where he should describe, and, instead of revealing Scotland and the Scotch, delights in manifesting himself in every chapter as a disciple of Bentham and Utility, and an idolator of Adam Smith. if Mr. Wilson, the Secretary for the Treasury, had as much power of tautology as the writer, he might, after being turned loose for a twelve month into the Advocates' Library at Edin burgh, produce as utterly uninteresting a his tory as this ponderous production. The author has not that knowledge of human nu• ture, or sympathy with its mingled good and evil, required by one who aspires to tell the story of a gallant nation during fifty years of heroic struggles. A formalist and a system-monger of the utilitarian species, with _pretensions to graduate only amongst the Westminster re viewers of the older school, he must, us a mat ter of course, utterly fail in a theme demanding the union of versatile intellect with generous emotion, and an historical aptitude for con centrating matter in a page, and painting a character in a sentence. With his second-hand philosophy and tame style he cannot attain to originality as a thinker or brilliancy as a writer. We do not blame him for his non-exhibition of qualities denied to him by nature, but we do censure him for nut having studied the art of historical composition before inflicting upon us these tiresome volumes. A perusal of Lucian's tract on writing history, or even the Abbe do Mably's essay, would have greatly benefited this two volume commentator, for Mr. Burton cannot be called by the title of an historian. We will give our readers some proofs of the truth of our remarks. These volumes contain upwards of eleven hundred ►ages of the size of Mr. Macaulay's History. To a skilful writer, within such space there was ample room fin• treating of the most interesting portions of the annals of the time. Here is the way in which Mr. Burton commemorates Mora Mac donald : ]iut he was fortunate, about the !nit of June, in acci dentally meeting with the young Highland lady Fkm Macdonald, whose name beeame justly eelebnited for a aeries of humane SVlNiell• ha which she combined the har dness' of a stnmg and brave man with the tenderness of a gentle and cultivated woman. The project in the accomplishment of which site so ma terially aided was to convey the wanderer to Aye, where from the loyalty of the two main chiefs there was a less formidable Heareh than in the archipelago of the Long Island, infested by military parties. Attended by his fair guide, he was received by a fusilade in attempting to land at Waternish. That is all the Scotch historian has to tell of Flora Macdonald ; while in the next chapter forgotten authors and artists of mere local no toriety, without any classic►tl pretensions, arc critically discussed. The fidelity of the High lenders to the fugitive chevalier, when a vast price was set upon his head, and when he could have so easily been betntyed, is thus de tailed by this " philosophical " historian : The narrative of his adventures published far and wide the characteristic fidelity of the humble people among; whom he sojourned. It is true that the reward ofered for him—thirty thousand ls►unds—was too large 14 their ima gination practically to grasp as an available fund But fidelity t► their undertakings as followers is essentially a htue, almost a religion, among the humble Highlanders. Lour. 379 The suggestion that the reward was too large for their imagination " practically to grasp" has a touch of unconscious drollery. Those faithful mountaineers were quite shrewd enough to know that they would have been re munerated munificently if they had delivered up the fugitive Prime. Though no Jacobites in our sympathies, we agree with Sir Walter Scott in believing " that while the blue of the Scottish mountains tower to the 817 1 :10 long will the time of these generous High landers be honoured amongst men." It con trasts very strongly with the conduct of that, Scottish Parliament that took money for deli vering up Charles 1., and even with the states men of the Revolution Parliament, if we eau accept the following description of them front 11Ir. Burton : Professing tontwanily to he governed by the loftiest and purest of all motives, religious fervour, they all knew each other to be conventional hypocrites; and as each believed that his companion was, in reality, led on by SUllle other impulse than that religious one winch he professed, so each attributed whatever baseness his malignity or Ida own self. - "uotess might suggest to the motives of his neigh We have no sympathy with historians who, like Thiers and other writers, blindly pander to national prejudices ; but we have as little liking for those cold and dreary pedants who, in place of reproducing for us the forms of past life, give us dissertations MI of merely retrospective wisdom, without any respect for national glories. To expect that a writer of Mr. Burton's school could do justice to the annals of Scottish history would be like look ing for sound views on religion from a disciple of 1)r. Strauss. But he has other defects than those of defieieney in moral sympathy and depth of thought. There is not that display of historical research in his work which the subject demanded. Page after page is printed with out a footnote ; and he is evidently not deeply read in rho Scottish literature of the time. We never met with a writer so blind to the per ception of originality. We expected that Fletcher of Saltoun would have given him a topic on which he might have shown either felicity of style or special knowledge. He presents us with a catalogue of Fletcher's qua lities ,jumbled together ineoherently, and de votes some pages to the analysis of one of him most remarkable works. From this critique upon " The Right Regulation of Governments" he leaves out that pregnant aphorism which has obtained such notoriety—" If a man were permitted to make all the ballads he need not cure who should make the laws of a nation " a sentiment which derives great force from its peculiar applicability to Scotland. But this " philosophical " writer passes over the sen tence, and dismisses a most remarkable politi cal work to which he had devoted five pages with the following flippant remark are some of the characteristics of this amusing paper. It lets one into the ideas und thoughts of s remark • able testier of it temarksble party. For suy actual illative• tion on principles goveniment it might be as 'Shay searched as Cicero de Itepubliei. If' the tract were only " an amusing paper," why should this " philosophical" historian give five pages to its examination, when he gives Flora Macdonald's exploits only as many lines, and dismisses the romantic fidelity of the Highlanders in a rough, short sentence, and that a disparaging one ? It is in reflec tions that we should expect a "philosophical" historian to excel ; and could anything be weaker or more trivial than the following cant ing platitude on the fall of the Pretender in '45 ? He did not go unpunished ; and thmugh toilsome, de jected wanderings, and privations to the utmost endurance of the human frame, he had opportunities for reflecting whether he had, in unselfish sincerity, followed the divine law by which he professed to be gulls!, melon scattering around him to much calamity in efforts to grasp a MVP, had been truly iwting as representative on eiuth of a beneficent Deity. But, though we could have desired more of sympathy with Scotch glories and virtues thau we find in this ponderous dissertation, we could desire the absence from the work of Scottieisms in grammar. Writing of Carstaini, the author says : Ile hail scarcely the rhetinical and literary talents of his mail, hut he was entirely/ere it, that prelate's foppish love of consequence, and dangerous IncuLtinetico of tongue. Such a sentence recoils us to the marginalia of Swift, preserved in the Oxford edition of