The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-25 00:00:00

1264 to have had the least turn for abstract science of any kind. He had a great liking for burlesque literature, and the present biographer has dragged to light some parodies, written about 1796, on the Rosa-Matilda novels of the day, which are amusing enough in extract, but which must have been tedious to read through as the originals themselves. Of Beckford's moral character, the writer of this "Life" has not chosen to say any thing. Rightly or wrongly, tastes were imputed to him which would have made him consider the oration which Phtedrus read to Socrates under the plane-tree a useful piece of rhetoric ;—and the silence shown on this head both by his friends and the present biographer is ominous. We should be only too glad to think that Beck ford's memory could be relieved from such charges, but it is simply a piece of impertinence in the writer to imagine that they are to be disbe lieved because he declines to meet and refute them. Such a proceeding only stamps them deeper than before.—Beckford is said to have been profusely charitable, and to have exacted secrecy from the recipients of his bounty as the price of his assist ance. We are glad to hear all the good that can be said of him. What he might have been had he been a poor man instead of a Caliph, with a judicious instead of a too indulgent mother, it is impossible to tell, but gifts were his which might have insured him a brilliant and perhaps a use ful career. As it is, we close the biography with a feeling that no man ever had so much money and such opportunities who employed both to purposes so wasteful and so selfish. An Old Debt. By Florence Dawson. Two Vols. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. THE cynical philosopher who observed that the psychological part of love begins with the first sigh and ends with the first kiss would have read this novel with pleasure. No "two dangling cherries " sip " the nectar of the lip " until two thirds of the lovelorn tale have been completed, and even then the ceremony is surreptitiously performed in the presence of the maiden's younger brother. On two occasions, however, the lady's hand receives a chaste salute, each time from a different gentleman, and once she herself reci procates the favour. And yet both volumes are filled with love-passages, but after the manner of a game at cross-purposes. It can hardly be said that there is any plot, and still less can we allude to the incidents, unless we take into ac count the dismal hour spent in a thunderstorm upon the Lake of Geneva, or Lord Convngford's narrow escape from slipping down the bank. What, then, it will be asked, is the purport of the tale ? Briefly this, gentle but inquisitive reader,—to exhibit the feminine faculty of ana lyzing impossible characters. " Impossible," perhaps, is too strong a term. There are calves with five legs and cats with two tails: why then may there not be such a moral phoenix as Edward Young—such a griffin as Ellen Scudamore ? The question is unanswerable ; but still such cha racters are too exceptional to belong to the legi timate province of sober fiction. All female writers are more or less liable to fall into this great error. They invent a composite monster, and then attempt to dissect it as if it were a healthy and normal creation. A bachelor weary of the freedom of celibacy might turn to most profitable account the insight thus afforded into the undercurrent of maidens fancies. He has obtained the key to their heart, or at least their imagination, for he knows what constitutes their beau-ideal of a squire of dames. They care not for the giant frame, the stalwart arm, the reck less spirit, or the love of strife. Their prefix chevalier is precisely the sort of man who is re garded by his own sex with indifference, bor dering on ill-defined pity or contempt. lie is usually of a slight build, lithe, active, tender hearted, and morally courageous. Of course he utters aloud the responses in church with devout feeling and with an unctuously musical voice. He is also a double-first at Oxford, a calm, pro found thinker, and a perfect Stoic. He is like wise an indefatigable botanist, deeply sensible of the mystic virtues of Monandria, Moncecia, Monogynia, and particularly addicted to gather ing the modest flowerets which blush unseen on lofty crags or in woodlands wild. Above all, he must look with unbending gravity on the foibles of his fellow -creatures, and be always ready with a short sententious reflection calculated to check THE PRESS, DECEMBER 25, 1858. the exuberance of animal spirits. Such is a rough sketch of an irresistible lady-killer, as portrayed by lady limners. This is the sort of thing they mistake for individuality and strength of character, and which they revere until they elope with a bold dragoon. And what is the pendant to this interesting creature ? A young damsel, still in her teens, tall, graceful, self willed, motherless, well up in the Greek grammar, troubled about the origin of evil, partial to Plato, and an adept at algebraic equations. After this style are drawn the portraits of the two promi nent personages in the novel before us ; and we heartily desire, for the sake of their fellow mortals, that, when two such individuals come together, they may pair off for the remaining term of their mutual existence. But it is absurd to ask for our sympathy for these abortions of the brain. The lady we should shun were she as beautiful as Venus, the foam-born ; while as for the gentle man, we should certainly decline his acquaintance, even though he added flute-playing to his other accomplishments, and could embroider a footstool as well as dissect a campanula. The true ana lytical power is one in which women are sinu larly deficient, though they perversely imagine that in that lies their forte, and thus they are led into the writing of novels bare of incident, strained in dialogue, and unnatural in the cha racters. Were it not for these three fatal faults, "An Old Debt" would receive at our hand the meed of approbation. As it is, we regret to say that we grudge the time wasted on its perusal. A Few out of Thousands : their Sayings and Doings. By Augusta Johnstone. London Groombridge and Sons. THE title of this stout and presentable volume is singularly appropriate. It contains simply a series of slight water-colour sketches—the mere transcripts of every-day life in a metropolitan suburb. The sub ject, we fear, has long since been worked threadbare, so that every one of these little stories seems dis agreeably familiar. A mere photograph of ordinary middle-class life can never, under any circumstances, be invested with much interest. Who can pssibly sympathize with the loves of a butcher-boy—a great, coarse, red-faced young fellow, who rides the remains of a wall-eyed pony as if he were winning the Derby ? Even Flora, the milliner, scarcely rivets the attention for ten minutes, especially when it is. seen from the beginning that she means to return that tiny gold watch, and marry Pierce Ploughman after all. The others are still more commonplace and conventional; and nothing but a stern, uncom promising determination to do our duty saved us from the sweetest slumbers as we plodded through the four hundred pages devoted to the pointless lives of sixteen groups of vulgar individuals. Still, we doubt net that the book may be acceptable as a Christmas present, on the same principle as " a gift horse," and we can conscientiously warrant it to be free from vice. Indeed, there is a sincere and honest tone about these otherwise trivial stories that at le, st commands our respect, though it does not remove our regret for the feminine, and therefore ungrammatical, construction of very many of the sentences. A Goon WlFE.—Katy made an excellent wife ; she took home her husband's old mother, and nursed her with a dutifulness and energy worthy of all praise, and made her own keen outward faculties and deft handiness a compensation for the defects in worldly estate. Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash quicker than any reflections on her hus band's want of luck in the material line. " She didn't know whose business it was if she was satisfied. She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men that would put a screw between body and soul for money. George had that in him that nobody under stood. She would rather be his wife on bread and water than to take Captain Blatherem's house, car• riages, and horses, and all—and she might have had 'em fast enough, dear knows. She was sick of making money when she saw what sort of men could make it,"—and so on. All which talk did her infi nite credit, because at bottom she did care, and was naturally as proud and ambitious a little minx as ever breathed, and was thoroughly grieved at heart at George's want of worldly success ; but, like a nice little Robin Redbreast, she covered up the grave of her worldliness with the leave.{ of true love, and sung a " Who cares for that?" above it.—/Prontlfrs.Stowe's new Tale," The Minister's Wooing." (Sampson Low, Son, and Co.) _ _ COUNT MONTALEMBERT'S much spoken-of pamphlet has lately been sold at Paris with the title printed reversed, " Edni'L Rus Tabed Nu," par Ed Trebme latnom. Masses of the pamphlet, we hear, were disposed of before the pollee got aware of the trick. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. ROOKS. Kslly's Post Office London Directory.—Kelly and Co. Four Months in Algeria, With a Visit to Carthage. By Rey Joseph W. Blakealey.—Macmillan and Co. A Metrical Translation of the Psalms, from the original Hebrew.—Rivingtons. A Metrical Translation of the Song of Solomon.—Rivingtons. Canadian Cruse's: a Mk of the Rice Lake Plains, By Catherine Parr Traill.—Hall, Virtue, and Co. Father and Daughter. By Fredrika Bremer.—Hall, Virtue, and Cu. Yesterday; or, Mabel's Slory.—Ssninters and Otley. The English Boy in Japan. By William Dalton.—Nelson. Dust and Foam; or, Three Oceans and Two Continents, By T. Robinson IVarren.—Sampson Low, Son, and Co The History of Moses Wimble. Wtitten by Himself— . Skeet. Outlines of Scripture History. By Rev. J. E. Biddle, M.A. Longmans. History of the Reign of Philip IL, King of Spain. By W. H. Presc At. Vol. II I.—Routledge. The Boy's Book of Modern Teurel and Adventure. By Mereuith Johnes.—Kent and Co. Relics of Genius. By T. P. Grinsted.—Kent and Co. John Halifax, Gentleman. By the Author of "A Woman's Thoughts about Women."—Hurst end Blacked.. Deborah's Diary. A Sequel to " Mary Powell." —Virtue and Co. The Poets of the West.—Sampson Low, Son, and Co. Recollections of a Literary Life. By Mary Russell Mitford. New Edition.—Bentley. The Town: its Memorable Characters and Events. By Leigh Hunt.—Smith Elder, and Co. The Fairy Tales of Science. By John Cargill Brough.— Griffith and Farran. Lays of Middle Age, and Other Poems. By James Hedder- ;vicii Agnes Hopelouses School Holidays. By Mrs. Oliphant.— Macmillan. The Life of John Milton: History of his Tim,. By David Masson, M.A. Vol. 1., 1608 to 1639.—MactniRau. Provelbs, wills Pictures. By C. H. Bennet.—Chapinau and Hall. Musings on Guard. By Frank Felix.—Hhtchard. I'AMPITLETS. Indian Policy, 1858.—8e1l and Daldy. The English Education. By Rev. ti. ll►ff.—Bell and DAILIy. Advantages of Direct Steam Navigation.—Trabner. Never Alone.— Houlaton and Wright. PERIODICI,.LS. Journal of the Statistical Society.—J. W. Parker and Son. MUSIC. Beautiful Cloud. By G. H. Thomas.—Cocks. Souvenir de Nantes. Quadrille Brilliante pour Piano par Alphonee Sedere.—Cocks. Come to me, Gentle Dreams. Music by Wrightson.—Cocks. I Shine in the Light of God. Composed. b) Rev. lease Asbe, M.A.—Cocks. THE MORTARA AFFAIR iS thus again alluded to by the Jewish Chronicle :—" We translated some time ago from the German an account of a secret baptism which about a century ago took place in Moravia, and stated that the Empress Maria Theresa promulgated on the occasion a aecree for regulation m similar cases. We now publish a text of this decree. It was issued Nov. 11, 1775, and runs thus :—‘ We, Maria Theresa, do., make known to all our Christian subjects, and especially midwives, that they are strictly, and under proportionate penalties, interdicted from abducting secretly a minor Jewish child, not yet endowed with sufficient reason, and to baptize it against the will of its parents, guardians, or curators (gerhaben). From this we wish to have excepted two cases—that in which the like Jewish child should find itself in extreme danger of death, so that nothing but certain death is foreseen, or when the child should have been disowned by its parents or guardians, when paternal or guardian authority would naturally have ceased. In the first case, the child may be baptized by the Christian midwife, in accordance with the holy decision of the congrega tion of 1678 ; in the latter case, if the child be for• saken or disowned, it is to be handed over to the regular pastors to be baptized, and then to be brought up in the Christian religion. Should, however, any body, against our express prohibition, have under taken the baptism of such a minor ild, and should is be proved that the materio forma sacraments was employed in it, then such a baptism is in accordance with the teaching of all Catholic theologians to he considered as valid, and the Jewish child thus bap tized is to be forthwith separated from its Jewish parents or relatives, and be educated at the expense of those who undertook the forbidden baptism, by good and pious Christians, or in an orphan asylum or hospital, until it is able to learn a trade. The parents are obliged to secure to such children their portion (realiter ), and to give sureties. When the child has reached the years of discretion it may 11l hesitatingly he baptized at. its desire, and the parents have to provide for it. A father or mother who re ceives baptism may cause their children under seven years to be baptized. If a child be baptized because it is in extrema danger of life, it must be attested by two witnesses. Whoever acts contrary has to pay a fine of 1,000 ducats, or is to be punished with two years' imprisonment."