The Press. — London, England, 1853-10-29 00:00:00

618 give thusselves other fathers and forefathers than those him wheat they have their origin ; while the multiplicity el the dam ilistaumhsilsd noble, enabling them generally tomum themselves, this spirit of rade is kept up with • hale inferior to that of India. The low caste (ult ) ere very frequently admirers or worshipiwrs Of the bielt aisle (nobles) ; many wish also to belong to thus—issue, irritated by the insuperable barrier opposed to their unbitten, bate and ridicule the whole aristocracy ; while ethers, more reasonable, are satisfied with their Minn Mate, and regard the nobles as a data apart, who have peculiar ideu, habits, and whims of their own, to which they have an hereditary right not worth disputing. A " noble in tiermany, no matter how impoverished he may be, or how low his station in life, never loses the thought, " I am a nobleman ; " and this idea enables him to look down on the richest and most prosperous burgher with a sort of proud contentedness that would be perfectly incomprehensible to au Englishman. Readers of novels would have little to regret if no more fictions should come from the pen of the authoress of " Cyrilla." Reentil de Documents, (te., utiles h Consulter dons la Crise Actuelie. Paris : Pagnerre. WE have only a single number of this work before us, which does not enable us to estimate its value, but only to remark its scope. If it be what it pro fesses, a collection of historical documents upon the Russian question, most of which have been hitherto secret, it must be the most important work upon the present crisis, to practical politicians, which has yet been published. But we must see it in externs() to judge whether it sustains its pretensions. The Czar and the Sultan. London : Vizetelly. THIN is a compilation of historical events and of anecdotes, most of which we have met with in magazines and newspapers, relating to the Eastern question and the actors in it. History of the Guillotine. night lion. John • - *ilium Cmker. London : Murray. THIR is an article revised and reprinted from the Quarterly Rerieto of December, IM-14. Mr. Croker's place in the world of letters has long been fixed— above it he will never rise, below it ho cannot fall. His faults and his merits—his laborious research into trifles—the strange importance be attaches to them —his exultation when he fancies he has detected an error generally in points utterly frivolous his absolute incapacity to measure the relative magnitude of events—his paragraphs copiously besprinkled with capital letters, italics, notes of admiration, and other aids and accessories of the " forcible- feeble " school ; with all these the public have been too long familiar for the estimation in which he is held to be affected either by our censure or our praise. The French Re volution is Mr. Croker's strong point—his hobby— his cheval do bataille. He has worked it. hard all his life, and few would regret if ho had ridden it to death long ago. This essay purports to be a history of the guil lotine, but the greater portion of it is devoted to an attempt to prove that all previous authors who have written on the French Revolution anal its incidents are wrong, and Mr. Cmker undertakes to► set them right. Thus, after mentioning M. Tillers, Laeretelle, Miguel, and Sir Archibald Alison, he says, " In short, " those who are hereafter to learn the French Rem " Whet from what are called histories will see it " very much curtailed of many of its more terrible yet " most interesting features, and especially of the 6 ' most pmminent of them all, the aat•tt.t.ortlE." Mr. l7roker then sets to work to illustrate its performances from every point of view. " It appears that, when the revolution had swept " away every other trace of fendality, M. Samson . . . " was exercising an hereditary office as executioner," and accordingly his genealogy is set forth with are much solemn parade as if it had been that of the Marquis of Steyue. In the "Report on the Mode of Decollation," re commending the adoption of the guillotine, it is maid, "'rids is the mode adopted in England." Mr. Croker says he does not know whence \l. I Antis, the author of the report, " could have taken up this "notion,' remarking that " the English mode of "decapitation bad always been lay the block and the 66 axe, with one ancient local exception—that of what 6 6 was called the Halifax gibbet, which was indeed a " perfect guillotine." Probably the foundation for M. Louis' statement was this Halifax gibbet, or the maiden which Morton introduced into Scotland. Mr. eroker's essay is illustrated by woodcuts of old and curious representations of guillotines ; and. indeed, those parts of his work which are devoted to the history of the guillotine are as interesting as the su bj ec t will permit. SO popular did Lit Sainte guillotine become in Paris that it war "the model of •' ornaments for women and of toys for children ; " and the toymen funiished living sparrows to be 66 ,decapitated by the instruments." Mr. Croker, in trying to fix the day on which the ;whim THE PRESS. was first used—a point which he evidently thinks it is of the last historical importance to establish— after giving an extract from a newspaper, says, " The " date of articles in a paper published the 27th " would be the 20th, and of course the 'yesterday ' "of this extract would be the 25th." This is quite a specimen of Mr. Croker's criticism and logic. The pr►bability is that a person writing fin• a newspaper would, if his contribution were undated, write with re ference to the day ►►t' publication, and therefore that the 26th, and not the 25th, would be the yesterday of a paper which appeared on the 27th. The point is of no importance, but we notice it because it is on inferences drawn from such data and with logic like this that Mr. Corker deals out liberal accusations against all his predecessors mid contemporaries of blundering. He says there has been some doubt as to the " exact spot where the scaffold for the execu " tion" of Louis XVI. stood. •' Hiattorians never " descend to such minutia., and painters and en " gravers are sometimes lax in their perspective, but " we think we may say, chiefly on the authority of a " fine print . . . that the scatti►id was a few yards " west of" where the Luxor Obelisk now is; "so " that the King, when he mounted the scaffold, " looked" in a particular direction, unless, indeed, he used the is►wer which he had received from nature during the short time it was yet to remain to him and turned his head another way. This is quite one of Mr. Croker's historical discoveries. Everybody— historians, painters, and engravers—all are wrong, till he, blessed with an infallible print, steps in and sets all to rights again. He is establishing the startling and highly instructive fact that Louis XVI. was executed within a very few feet of the spot where, in the centre of a very large area, history and tradition had ►laced the tragedy. Such is his irre pressible mama for minutia! and so circumstantially does he slay the slain. Mr. Croker m►slestly says, " We have read, cer " tainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written " against Marie Antoinette; "and we have, in short, " examined her life with . . . the accuracy of con " temmp►rariee, the diligence of inquirers, and the 66 impartiality of historians all combined." We are sure he has read—not only hundreds, but all—and, if we possessed the privilege of an Irishman, we would say, more than all that has ever been written shout every incident connected, however remotely, with the first French Revolution. The difference between Mr. Croker and the eminent historians he so freely attacks is, that they exercise a wise discrimination and a judicious selection, whilst lie attaches to the merest trilling episode in the Revolution the same importance as others assign to the whole of that ter rible convulsion, with its appalling catastrophe. Letter to his Graee the Duke of Newcastle on belu►lf of the Melanesian Mission of the Bishop (pf Ne►r Zealand. By Lewis N. Hogg. London : lieorge Bell. . CONTAINS some interesting statements with respect to the missionary operations of the Bishop of New Zealand : '' In his island visits his lordship's cruse is first to make the natives understand that he does not come as a trader; then to try and give them some idea of his real object in coming amongst them; and, after friendly and eontidential intercourse is fairly established, to induce them to trust hint with some of their youths, whom he carries to St, John's College, Auckland, where they are instructed in Christian truths, taught English. and trained in industrial pursuits and useful arts of life dining the eight warmer mouths of the year. On the animal' of winter, which in New Zealand is too SeVere for th e ir tr o pical comititnt* the bishop takes them bark to their own homes. lly this means a knowlislge of what they have leant is spread amongst their friends, and kindly intercourse between the white missionaries and native mares is greatly extended. On several islands the bishop has fo ttttt 1 native missionary teachers, chiefly Samoans, from the Navigators These men are the fruit of the remarkable labours of John Williams at Rarotonga. and his sneeessorss of the London Missionary Society, through whose happy influence a great number of natives, atter embracing Christianity, went forth, and in their turn spread to neighbouring islands a knowledge of the truths t h ey hail received. So great has been the zeal of these urea, and their willingness to lay down their lives for Christ's sake—frequently at long ilisiimees from their own homes—that Archileaeon Abra ham, the bishop's chaplain at. St. John's, in one of his letters says, "l'he bishop knows of forty within the last eight years who have either been •ilervil of fallen Olin's to the fever of Ouse islands ; every fresh set of boys that emnes here has a StOeV to tell of murdered Samoans. who came to preach to then, of -Jesus up above. and Satan down below."' With these native teachers the bishop is able heartily to eo-operate. as will be seen iu the extracts appended to this letter from a journal of Rev. W. N thin, kindly furnished to me by his father, Rev. Daniel Nihill. rector of Fitz, Salop. Mr. William Nihill aeetan• paaiell the bishop on his cruise last year, and was stationed im the island of Mare three months, while the bishop t 1111 l at forty or fißy other islands, co 'g up Within ten e b of the line. Mr. remarkable facility in mastering the Polynesian dialects enables him to r e nder invalnable help to the bishop in this branch of his lord ship's wide-spreading mission-1ab0u..." The purport of the letter i* etu appeal for sympathy stud we:Wiens:v. SATURDAY, Slarery in the Island of Cuba. By Don Mariano Torrente. London : Ballii re. Do MARIAN() ToRRENTE was employed in the COlll - department of the Anglo-I'ortuguese. Spanish army in Spain, and received from Sir Hobert Kennedy and Mr. Dobree certificates of good conduct, "which he preserves as a title of nobility." His pamphlet, in Spanish and English, with addent.a, consists of 107 pages, and there is also an aprndix of 31 closely-printed pages, being a reprint of a former pamphlet by the same author on the same subject. That subject is a defence of the slave trade, and of the conduct of the Spanish authorities of Cuba in reference to it. He considers it humane to buy negroes in Africa and to export them, because it saves them from being killed at home ; and the spirit of the work may be judged of from the excuse he gives for the connivance of the authorities of Cuba in the main tenance of the slave trade there :—" It would be " madness to take away these squadrons and troops " from their principal mission, which is to defend " the island from exterior enemies and maintain " order in the country ;—and for what purpose ? To " Ina an end to an illegal traffic, which, so far from " injuring, benefits us in a high degree." LawNarks of History : Middle Ages. By the Author of " Kings of England," &e. London: J. and C. Mosley. THIS is an unpretending but serviceable compilation. The landmarks are observed with judgment and indicated with distinctness. It has the rare merit, for an abridgment, of being agreeable reading, while the narrative is, at the same time, clear and precise. We have not. had leisure to examine and test it care fully, but it appears to be especially adapted for the young. Memoirs of Conrieted Prisoners, accompani►d by Re►narks on the Causes and Prerention of Crime. By the Bev. H. S. Joseph, Chaplain of Chester Castle. London . Wertheim and Co. THIS work consists of memoirs of prisoners who have been under the spiritual care of Mr. Joseph in Chester Castle, related in their own words, with a short preface and conclusion by himself. In these memoirs there is nothing very remark able. They recount the usual scoundrelism of cri minals when free, and express the usual intense penitence and fervid piety that distinguish them when in prison. There is something peculiarly offensive in the familiarity and the arrogant confi dence with which they speak of the holiest names and the highest interests. That the Devil rewards his servants by a drive in a cabriolet on Sundays was new to us. W. IL, the first prisoner, says, "The Sabbath was spent in irreligious converse be tween my mother and Mrs. H., or in driving about the country in a cabriolet the greater part of the day, whicl► kind of pleasure the Devil giveth those who serve him." A Pocket Digest of the Stamp Duties. London: Vacher and Sons. Tuts little digest can easily be carried in a pocket • book, and seems, as the preface states, to be •'rutli cieutly comprehensive for all common purposes of reference." Tables of the value of annuities are appended, and a list of stamp nets passed since 1514 so far as they relate to the subject-matter of the digest.. We notice "passport" amongst the docu ments requiring a stamp. NEW MUSIC. The tiplenhanz Waltzes. 1y 6. B. E. Hodges, }.;(1. London: D'Almaine. A cot.r.r(TioN of live waltzes, with a good intmduc• Lion. As they are all written in easy keys, and are simple and flowing, we have no doubt they will become favourites. The second and furth remind us of the inllien school, but the fifth is the best of the collection. I Lore at Break of Day to Roam. The won's by Mr,. Hodges. Music by G. 11. 1.1 H o d ges , E sq . London: D'Ahnuine. A SWEET song in 3 fiats, within the compass of the generality of voices. The melody is pretty, and the accompaniment harmonises well with the voice with. out Wing too loud. The Runnymede March. By 0. B. E. Hodges, Esq. London : I►':llmaine. A PRETTY and spirited march in A sharp (simple common time 1. The chromatic passages introduced are effective, and, at the same time that it is a pleasing composition, it may be useful to students ► as requiring careful study and practice.