The Press. — London, England, 1853-07-23 00:00:00

280 flitrature. Mount Lebanon ; a Ten Years' Residence from 1M42 to Issl. By Colonel Churchill. Lon don: Saunders and Otley. " Few spots in the East can vie in interest with Mount Lebanon. The sacred volume is replete with allusions to it. Sages, warriors, prophets, and kings have made it the ril-jeer of their st mins and the ground of their exploits. - - haradaelius. COLONEL. Cnencim.f. might have added that it is the region of romance and poetry—that the very name is associated with the heroic deeds of Our ancestors, with the ardent zeal of the Cru saders and the early triumph of Christianity. It has been illustrated by painters and poets, and has become to us a land bearing " a spell beyond its name in story." It is a melancholy fact that these brilliant associations and poetic visions are too often destroyed by a nearer acquaintance with the o bjects which excite them. In our travels the ordinary details of the journey destroy much of the romantic—fatigue, hunger, and thirst exhaust the powers of the mind as well us of the body. Often, in sight of the long desired goal, the romantic traveller is astonished at the indifference with which he approaches it, and is ashamed of confessing even to himself that the consideration which most occupies his mind is the purely material one, "Where am I to be lodged—what shall I get for din ner?" Volumes of travels even in the most inte resting countries are frequently little less dis appointing. The information they contain, even when most, valuable anti curious, is often tedious and ill-arranged ; and the reader finds himself distmeted with digressions, the con nection of which he cannot discover, and with details which only perplex anti puzzle the nar rative Colonel Churchill would, perhaps, have done wisely to retrench, contract, and expunge, till ho had reduced his three bulky volumes to at least half their size. His method of writing would be better if it were more con cise : his facts require arrangement, and his descriptions are not always vivid or pic turesque. At this moment, however, when the Eastern question has excited an unwonted curiosity, and when our public relations with Turkey seem likely to undergo material alteration, the public will turn with awakened interest to the land in which the Mahometan faith was taught in its infancy, and to which, after a lapse of four hundred years, it seems likely to be banished in its decrepitude. We wish we could look towards the solution of this eomplieated question with a little more of heart or hope. NW wish we could bestow on either of the antagonist parties a larger portion of our sympathies ; but we wish in vain. If Islamism is to be rooted out of Europe, will its place be supplied by any form of pure and evangelical Christianity ? We dare not hope it. The Greek Church, whether we consider that portion of it which obeys its independent patriarchs, or that which looks to St. Petersburg as the source of its inspiration, presents an aspect equally un promising. Both, alas ! have so far wandered from the gospel which our Saviour delivered, in that very land now converted into the battle-field of angry sects, that we can hardly trace their descent from the Divine Founder at all. The Greek Church, though it has its bigots and its Martyrs, addresses itself' wholly to the senses and the passions. It is so de graded by superstition, anti so encumbered by ceremony, that the worshipper can hardly discern the deity he adores, or explain the doctrine he believes. It keeps the priesthood in a degrading servitude to the State, and the people in the spiritual bondage of the priests. It separates morality from religion, affords no consolation in sorrow , holds out no incitement to virtue. no discouragement to vice. The spirit of intolerance which it exhibited in the days tat' its supremacy under the Greek empire yet burns with all its former fierceness, and we fear its tinal triumph would be the signal for a renewal of those religious persecutions of which the Russian etepire has already been the theatre. Such, we fear, is no exaggerated description of the Aldo of that " large portion THE PRESS. of the Christians of the East" for whose pro tection the Emperor Nicolas is so zealous, and for whom he claims a supremacy with such unmeasured vehemence. If the Greek Church commands little of our sympathy, its great Roman Catholic rival in the East has no larger claim on our favour. In both we find religion employed as the mask for wordly ambition, by wily professors intriguing in its name for supremacy, and ambitious mo narchs pursuing their own aggrandisement under pretence of zeal for its promotion. The agents of France and the Roman Catholic mis sionaries have been not less active, if less sue eessful, than those of Russia; nor can we con ceive any quarrel in which England has so little concern as whether the key of the Temple of Bethlehem is consigned to priests of the Greek or Latin persuasions, and whether the worshippers on Mount Calvary be suffered to fight out their annual battle, or the strife be stopped by the cavas of the Pacha or by the police agents of FrillleC and Russia. The quarrel, as far as we understand it, stands pre cisely thus. The Emperor of Russia asserts that his coreligionists attach great importance to periodical pilgrimages into Syria, and to cer tain religious observances, in the exercise of which they have been interrupted ; on the other hand, it is not denied that the French Ambassador has interfered at Constantinople in a manner that infringed on the rights of the Greek worshippers ; nor can it be pretended that the interference proceeded from the mis take of an over-zealous diplomatist, since Louis Napoleon, on seizing on the sovereign power iu France, gave a hint of his purpose when he assumed, amongst other titles, that of " Protector of the Holy City." This was in itself an innovation which might justly give umbrage to any other power whose interest or dignity is infringed by the monopoly which this title implies. Austria may side with her co religionists in France, or gratitude and poli tical sympathy may lead her to support the pretensions of Russia; but, unless the ques tion haul assumed a difierent aspect, we could conceive no reason why England should take the van in this religious warfare—a war fare which, whether it has the support of Islamism in Europe fin• its object, or is a cru sade in defence of the Roman Catholic mono poly in Jerusalem, is, at all events, foreign to our religious sympathies and interests. Colonel Churchill devotes a very interesting chapter in his first volume to the exposure of the means by which, for years past, the French on their side have endeavoured to effect their objects The French Government and the Pope, he tells us, are liberal contributors to the seminaries in which the Maronite youth is edueated ; and, after noticing various of these establishments, in all of which the education is gratuitous, he proceeds to a more particular description of that pursued at the Convent of Aintoora, where the scholars are selected from among the most promising pupils of the inferior schools, to which also the Maronite emirs and sheiks send their sons : That this school (says Colonel Churchill) is one of the means employed to keep up the prestige of the French Hanle in this country cannot be doubted. What must be the moral atmosphere of a schoolroom where the most pro minent picture is one of the appetmutee of the Virgin Mary, with the following inscription exphmatory of its import ; and not only this, but. medals of the picture are given to the boys to hang about their necks? The Virgin is repre sented as appearing to a nun, in a convent at Patio. The nun is kneeling in a chapel; the Virgin is seen over the altar, with arms extending downwards, and rays of light emanating front the ringers of her open hands. Under neath is seen written in French:- - Towards the end of the year is3o, the young sister of charity, M—. being at prayers, saw the Virgin of im maeulate Conception. as she is represented in the medal, surneuttled with glory, and having a globe under her feet" (ou this globe, by the way, is written the wont " France," in conspicuous letters). - Vivid rays of light darted in great profusion from her hands, but concentrated on one particular spot. Suddenly a voice exclaimed—" These rays are the symbol of grace which Mary obtains fin• mankind, and the point of the globe where they fall in more abun dance than on any other is France !"rhe following words were seen at the same time written in letters of g old—' 0 Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thy intercession "the vision all at. once changed ; anti, by a rapid transition, appeared the letter' M,' surmounted by a cross, and having underneath the two sacred hearts of Mary and Jesus. while the same voice was heard to say Strike a medal in commemoration of this vision ; who shall wear it, and repeat this prayer, shall enjoy the special protection of the Mother of " SATURDAY, The population of the mountain, we collect, is well disposed, laborious, and patient; but that the missionaries should fail in the.r en deavours to purify the " Christio-Pagan:sm," as the author terms it, of the mountain into a more enlightened piety, the reader will not be surprised, or that it has not produced a ye? high tone of morality throughout this romant.c district. The Maronite peasantry is kept i 2 complete subjection by the clergy, and this submission is inculcated almost as an article of religious faith. Our author tells us In the Maronite Catechism the following queries and answers occur: Q. If you were to see an angel and a priest walking together, which should you adore the most? A. The priest. Q. And how would you show your adoration for the priest ? A. By falling down and kissing the ground on which he is walking. Q. Why is a priest to be adored more than the angel? A. Because he is vastly superior to the angel. Q. Why so? A. Because the angel is a minister and servant of God, whereas the priest can command God to descend frost heaven as in the mass.—Vol. iii. p. 89. This extract sufficiently speaks for the nature of the contest of which the rival Churches are made the stalking-horse. If England had not political interests at stake she might very properly remain an indifferent spectator of the struggle. With respect, however, to the other questions involved, some valuable illus trative materials will be found scattered through Colonel Churchill's volumes. The Life of Benja►nin Robert Haydon. Edited by Tom Taylor, Esq. Loudon : Longman and Co. THE great Michael Angelo, who really founded a new style of art, at which Haydon aimed, was accustomed to say that every artist could at least paint his own portrait well; he did not say write his autobiography, from feeling that the pen is less easily managed in such hands than the pencil. This modern attempt comes before the public under peculiar advantages : the original sketch passed from the easel of the artist to the studio of an editor at once kind, intelligent, and experienced. Mr. Taylor has gently cleaned the canvas, effaced many a hard outline, softened many a dark shadow, and, skilfully enlisting the sympathies ef his readers for the personal sorrows and struggles of his hero, has varnished the low and repul sive tones of an historical picture, in which there was more calculated to give pain than pleasure. Mr. Haydon, an incarnation of pre sumptuous egotism, and the god of his own idolatry, had left behind such a representation of his own " heroic lineaments" as he wished posterity to believe to have been the reality, and perhaps believed himself. Failing alto gether to see his own proportions as others saw them, he conceived himself the cynosure, the observed of all observers ; and fancied this overcrowded. overbusied world's chief duty was to foster his private projects which ran counter to public wants and wishes ; and when by repeated borrowings and bickerings he had wearied every body, instead of feeling that he had made a mistake, he turned against man kind, and considered himself a spectacle for gods, and a good man struggling against the storms of fate. In was in this vein that he sat down to record his own view of his unre quited merits and ultdeserved wrongs, in twenty-seven folios of MS. memoirs, for he wrote on a scale as large as he painted on. As the gift of being long, and entertaining too, is given to few, Mr. Taylor has judiciously simmered down these masses into three tomelets of pleasant and profitable reading. He has exhibited Mr. Hayden with his perver• sions, exaggerations, and unworthy actions, set off by his yearning for the advance of high art, his indomitable will, and his gladiatorial pugnacity, it must he admitted ; and when he fell at last, like Lucifer. it was after a manful stand-up fight against a mountain accumula tion of mental and physical distresses. Nor since the confessions of Rousseau has the mor bid anatomy of humanity been more revealed : this demonstration is free at least from the prurience of the filthy Swiss egotist, and in some sort realises Mr. Haydon's hope that to future artists his successes might act as a stimulus, and hie mistakes as beacons. These