The Press. — London, England, 1854-07-01 00:00:00

618 better than his poetry. The preface is writ ten in fine manly style. If many men of his calibre, with his sound heart, imaginative mind, and healthy views, are among the diggers—as it is likely enough there are—we need have no fear for the ultimate prosperity of Australian society. 6. The " Poem " in this case is to the me mory of the Duke of Wellington; and the " Pamphlet " is a bundle of notes tacked to it, indignantly commenting on the conduct of the Government. It is certainly remarkable, as the writer urges, that no sooner was our great hero laid in the grave than elements of ambi tion on one side, and of meanness or worse on the other, should have gathered to produce the storm now raging on the banks of the Danube. Tho verse exhibits hearty feeling an 4 robust intellect, as in the few lines follow ing:— Lo! safely anchor'd by their rival's side, Fleets big with fate and arm'd for vengeance ride; But vain the warlike pomp, the hero crew, The gallant many serve the craven few; Condemn'd to wait till dotards courage find To give the word that saves the human kind. From the native force and passionate flow of many passages like the above it seems not im probable that the author may become a better Churchill of his day. 7. If the author of this volume is a young man we shall expect to meet him in the fields of literature again. The present volume, besides a play and translations, contains four other poems. They exhibit much varied power over the difficulties of rhyme and metre, and are on every subject grave, gay, lively, and severe. The Russians of the South. By Shirley Brooks. Traveller's Library, No. 33. London : Long mans. GOOD judgment was shown in selecting the pi esent volume for the popular " Traveller's Library." Its title is no misnomer, as its in teresting contents present a most lively and various picture of Southern Russia. In their original publication we read these letters with great pleasure, and, apart from their season able value, they deserve reperusal from their graceful style. We like the smoothness and unstrained composition of Mr. Shirley Brooks. When occasion requires he can be picturesque, but there is a balance in his mind, and he is not always hunting for the merely graphic, like some writers who think of nothing but effect. Mr. Brooks addresses the intellect as well as the eye ; and his account of Russian agriculture is one of the best that we have seen. He has successfully hit the medium between the sketcher and the factological traveller. Thus, after describing the bazaar at Odessa, he passes with easy transition to the condition of the [people, realising at once their external aspects and internal being : The persons who preside over them have no affinity with their wealthy hoards. The peasant here is a wretched look.ng being—.lirty, ill-clad, and hungry-looking. His sluggy beard, huge boots outside his trousers, dingy blue freak, and rough cap, speak of hardships of all kinds. But give him a short black pipe, and spirits enough to madden sal then to stupefy him, and he will not complain of his lestiny. The female of the same class is even more easily contented. The tub residences to which I referred are among the features of the monster market here, and they are inhabited by women. Elevation, ground-plan, and other architectural contrivances, are all comprehended in a single effort. A large black cask, somewhat resembling a sugar hogshead, is laid on its side, and the house is built. A quantity of hay is laid inside, and the house is furnished. The lady gets in upon the hay, and the house is inhabited. Before the entrance of the mansion she strews the onions, tomatas, or whatever else she may vend, and during the hours of business she sits in the tub, smokes her pipe, chaffers with her customers, and says her prayers. After business is over she ascertains in which quarter the wind sits turns the closed end of her tub towards that quarter, and creeps to rest in peace and tranquillity. But some of these women are ambitious, and take to building. They do not, indeed, demand marble staircases and mahogany doom; but they take two tubs, which are laid face to face, at a distance of three or four feet—and over the interstice, tubs and all, is placed a watertight canvas. The fair occupant (two or three whom 1 saw, though not literally fair, were extremely pretty) has then two rooms, besides a hull ; but this luxury is not adopted by the older class, who think that we ought to adhere to the customs of our ancestors. And so throughout this well-timed and most readable volume. Another of its merits is, that its writer does not obtrude himself or his personal discomforts ; and we could desire THE PRESS. that all our public letter-writers would take a hint in this point from Mr. Shirley Brooks. We can cordially recommend to notice, as instructive anti entertaining, this vivid descrip tion of Southern Russia. From a pile of un readable compilations on the same subject we turn to this volume with the aspiration, " 0 si sic amnia ! " Narrative of a Journey through Syria and Palestine in DM and 1852. By C. W. N. Van de Velde. London : Blackwood and Sons. TRUTH compels us to say that Lieut. Van de Velde's qualifications as a traveller are not of a high order. The object of his journey was to make an accurate survey of the less-frequented districts of Palestine; and this duty we doubt not he performed satisfac torily; but the descriptions which ho gives of natural objects are neither concise nor striking ; the ground over which ne travels is for the most part exhausted ; and two-thirds, at least, of his book are made up of religious rhapsodies and quotations from scripture, which, however indicative of the writer's piety, fail to interest readers in general. In fact, the style of this work reminds one of a missionary journal, or of letters addressed from abroad to the Record news paper—a publication which the author frequently quotes. M. Van de Velde, whether from the results of his observation or from religious sentiment, loses no opportunity of casting blame on the Turkish Go vernment. He found fertile districts abandoned by their inhabitants, and left waste and desolate, through the oppression of local tax-gatherers ; travelling dangerous, owing to the prevalence of highway rob bery ; a military conscription vigorously enforced ; and a general laxity of administration discreditable to civilised community. Almost the only modern institution of which he speaks in terms of praise is the missionary organisation—whose success up to the present time has not been great—for the conver sion of the Jews. Of the societies established for this purpose a full, and we doubt not accurate, ac count is given. M. Van de Velde sets no value on traditions, and is indignant at the impostures prac tised, both in Jerusalem and elsewhere, on credulous pilgrims. He also throws considerable doubt on the genuineness of M. da Saulcy's discoveries. His remarks on these two subjects form the best part of his volumes. Jernittgham. A Story. London : Chapman and Hall. "JERNINGHAM " is composed of the very wildest ingredients of fiction. It combines all kinds of inci dents except the probable, and all kinds of charac ters except the natural. There are English gipsies and their queen, with her "Madonna-like head and night•black eyes,"—and French conspirators, put in action by Paul Didier,—midnight meetings in leaf less forests, and reunions in royal chateaux, with " thousand lamps shedding lustre on gilded saloons." Daft Jem and Will Dirk, the cadger, mix in the maze with the Prince de Conde and Madame de Feuchercs, with her " serpent eyes." A Lord Merivale, of the blaze voluptuous type, is connected with a young adventurer who writes witty farces and brilliant novels. Love and murder, parcels of hank notes and rifle shots, giants, Cornish dwarfs, a bearded beauty of Buenos Ayres, an intoxicated Jewess, and a somnambule, all contribute in some inexplicable way to the development of a story continued for up- wards of thirty years, in which the hero (of course) at last succeeds to the estates of his ancestors, and the gipsy queen of "the highest Gitana blood that " Spain could boast" settles sedately down, after thirty years of camp and kettle life and rough usage, into the model lady patroness of a district, where " she lives only to do good ; the rich respect her, " the poor bless her; her existence is benevolence." The whole book is of a phantasmagoria character, with such merits and faults as belong to a collection of the most startling accidents cf life, often strongly portrayed, but jumbled confusedly together. It resembles somewhat those exhibitions of dissolving views in which, according to an announcement before us, a view of Bethlehem melts into a smuggler's cave by moonlight; the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem into the battle of the Nile; the tomb of Absolom into an eruption of Mount Vesuvius; the Crystal Palace into a storm at sea ; and a fine water-mill, with the machinery in action, into a splendid portrait of Queen Victoria surrounded by her Court. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. Booze. The Wile's Manual. Rev. W. Calvert. Longman and Co. Germany from 1760 to 1814. Mrs. Austin. Ditto. /ilamim, its Rise and Progress. F. A. Neale. Madden. Travels on the Shores ef the Baltic. S. S. Hill. Hall, Virtue, and Co. Hoymakers' Histories. Prather. Bell. Lettsennian Lectures on Insanity. Dr. Winslow. Churchill. Report of the Dick Bequest, 1864. Black•eood and Sons. SATURDAY, My Friends and Acquaintance. P. G. Patmore. Saunders and Ot.ley. Crew Rise. J. C. Jeatfreson. Hurst and Blackett. Annotated Editior. of English Poets. "Cowper." Vol. M. Parker and Son. been and Son. Healthy Honors. W. Bardwell. PAMPHLETS. Union of the Church and Wale Vindicated. W. Clarke. Oldham. Ditto. The Latter Days. Bus is and Europe. Count Valerian Krasunski. Chapman and Hall. A Defence of Religion. H. W. Crossley. Chapman. Memoir of the Late Lieutenant Bello& lioys. - . E N OILIIVIN G. Portrait of the Late Lieutenant Bettye. Boys. Ett puma. PRINCESS'S THEATRE. IF any playgoer of twenty years' standing were to return to England after a long absence nothing would strike him so much as the altered tone of our London theatres. Amongst other changes of im portance, he would find the legitimate drama banished from its ancient haunts to a different quarter of the town, and its place in the affections of the multitude all but supplanted by a class of plays which, in former days, were never to be seen except at the Adelpbi or some minor suburban theatre. Whether this be the result of progress we will leave Sir James Graham, or any other gentleman who has taken his stand thereon, to determine. In our own judgment, this state of things is, in a great measure, the result of Mr. Kean's successful managerial policy, which has imported a selection of exciting French melo dramas, and accustomed the refined and intelligent audiences of London to sights and sounds which in days gone by would have shocked the fas tidious senses of dramatic legitimists. Let it not be thought that we object to this practice. We can enjoy a good melodrama, and are willing to ad mit that the species of entertainment may frequently be introduced with good effect, as a relief to the higher order of plays. But Mr. Kean is carrying the matter too far. It is time for him to cry hold. The success of Pauline and The Corsican Brothers has established quite a reign of terror in Oxford street: murders, duels, ghosts, vampires, even the arch-fiend in person, have successively graced the now bloodstained boards of the Princess's, and con, verted the theatre into a charnel-house and a ve• ritable chamber of horrors. The alleged success of Faust was so discreditable to the taste of our London public, that it was a relief to us to find Mr. Kean an nouncing for his benefit last Monday a new melt>. drama, entitled The Courier of Lyons. This piece was originally produced in French at the Gaits in Paris, some four or five years ago. It made its first appearance in English at the Surrey, under Mr. Creswick's management, and is now, for the second time, adapted to our stage by Mr. Reade. The plot turns upon a question of identity. There exists a strong resemblance between a good man and a villain—so strong, indeed, that the good man is ar rested instead of the villain, and is only saved when on the verge of the scaffold by a happy com bination of circumstances. In the plot there is nothing very new. The chief interest is absorbed by Mr. Kean, who impersonates both the good man and the villain, and effects his changes from one cha racter to t he other with startling rapidity. It would be unjust not to add that, apart from successful stage trick and costume, Mr. Kean acts exceedingly well. He delivers the dialogue naturally and with good point, and we have seldom seen him to so much advantage. The great defect of the piece consists in the impossibility of satisfying the audience that the two principal characters are distinct persons, and their attention is much more occupied in watching the cleverness with which Mr. Kean disappears as one man and reappears immediately as another than in following to the devolution of the plot. The other drum : pers : were, on the whole, effi ciently represented. Mr. Fisher made an excellent dandy •highwayman and housebreaker of the time of the Directory. Mr. Addison's Choppard, a ras cally horsedealer, though too much exagge rated, was a very good bit of character; and Mr. J. Firing was duly dignified as the minister of police. Amongst the ladies Miss Heath was chiefly distin guished. Her performance of the villain's female victim was full of power and feeling. Nor must we forget Miss Kate Terry, who acted a boy, a witness of the murder, with an intelligence beyond her years, and spoke with a natural manner and correct em phasic which but few of her elders in the pro. fession seem to possess. Julie (Miss Leclercq) has nothing to do but to look pretty and interesting, and to be styled by all the characters who have oc casion to pronounce her name, from the manager downwards, as Jetc:y. The Halt of the Ballet, a divertissement, which has concluded the evening's entertainments during the present week, is a poor affair. Its only feature of interest was the first appearance in London of Miss