The Press. — London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

I• 1240 THE PRESS, DECEMBER 18, 1858. sive recipients. Truly the progress of civilization is a very up and down affair ! Who could imagine these women-driving Teutons to be lineally descended from those Barbarians of whom Tacitus reports: " Puellis inesse quin " etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec " aut consilia earuin aspernantur, ant responsa " negligunt " ? - - - - AVhere the social position of the sex is low, the standard of sexual morality will be so also. Of this Miss Johnson supplies abundant and perfectly reliable evidence : The following we had from a German lady, who was very tenacious of the honour of her country. A young girl presented herself as wishing a place as domestic in the family. The husband said, " Ask her how many children she has ; and if she says one, it may be prudent, but better two or even three : if she says none, send her away by all means, for it she comes we shall be obliged to dismiss her in six months." girl, our travelling companion, toll us that in one town where she was in the spring, after her return from America, there was a confirmation [first communion ?) in her church, and 300 girls were to be confirmed, who were from fourteen to sixteen years of age, and when the examination [confession ?) came only sixteen could be admitted to the church by this holy rite ; all the others were, at this early age, fallen women. We could scarcely believe our ears, and should not have credited the statement if we had received it from one who belonged to a different commu• nion, but our informer was a member of the same church and a most earnest defender of her faith. Although the statistics of the above may be presumed inaccurate, the general truth of the fact can scarcely be doubted. Sexual morality, ceteria paribus, bears everywhere a direct ratio to the amount of indulgence extended, by public opinion, towards its infringement. Where to be the mother of illegitimate children constitutes an additional recommendation in a servant ; where ladies, as Miss Johnson assures us, prefer choosing their nurses among mothers of this class ; and where the ringless hand smooths down the child's fair curls without plunging for concealment amid their clusters,—we may safely assume that the proportion of the erring to the pure, if not exactly 941 per cent., as in the instance cited, will be at least a good round figure. It is a curious illustration of this principle that precisely in some of the least moral districts the most stringent corrective measures are adopted. In the very village where the competitive ex amination above alluded to gave such an astounding result, Miss Johnson hears the name of an erring damsel proclaimed through the streets by the bellman, and learns that such is the practice, throughout the entire province, " when " a young girl has gone astray from rectitude, "and has concealed her sin instead of confessing "it to the priest as required." Elsewhere she finds that the custom of placing the unconsecrated mother upon the doorstep of the church, " with a paper pinned to her back," has only been a few years obsolete ; while in other parts an obligatory coiffure, the absence of the bridal wreath, &c., serve a similar purpose. "It was never evident," observes Miss Johnson, "that such punishments " deterred from sin." As a general rule it may safely be assumed that all " preventive checks " upon marriage— except those self-imposed—are direct incentives to immorality. The practical value of that "public education," for which Germany takes such credit, may be pretty well estimated from the above facts. On this subject Miss Johnson very justly remarks : The people here are taught indeed to read and write— but they are scarcely more educated and not a whit more intelligent for this They are both ignorant and stupid. The Government does not allow them to think or act, and the children of England or America who do not know how to read or write are more intelligent and have more mental activity. We have seen learned professors who were as stupid as cartuten, and never had one original thought, and were no better judges of practical things in the world than children, and no more useful. The above specimens—selected from some of the most interesting though by no means the most entertaining portions of this book—will suffice to corroborate our opening remark, that Miss Anna Johnson is no ordinary tourist. The ground she has gone over is almost untrodden ; and the rectitude of her aim, the liberal and kindly spirit of her observations, together with the copiousness, variety, and general accuracy of her facts, may well merit indulgence towards flagrant though merely technical shortcomings in style, lucidity, and arrangement. That Miss Johnson is an American our readers are already aware. Her nationality, indeed, imparts its peculiar tone and colouring to the whole work. But if frequent patriotic glorification betrays the persistent soreness of that " raw," established by Mrs. Trollope and continually "touched up" by Mrs. Trollope's successors, we must do Miss Johnson the justice to state that, in all her censures upon continental abuses and imper fections, England is invariably excepted. England and America, in her eyes, evidently owe each other the mutual respect and indulgence which kin may claim from kin. We only wish that the same just and kindly feeling were a little more universal on both sides of that broad ocean which science has already narrowed to the dimensions of a stream. nacle, but failed in transforming his Xantippe into a meek Christian spouse,—and around these four principal characters a number of subordinate figures, the Xantippe aforesaid among the rest, skilfully arranged,—furnish the materials for a highly-interesting dramatic tale in three acts. To the vivid portraiture of the manner of life and the modes of thought which characterized the London world a hundred years since, presented by this three-panel picture, is ap pended, in a subsequent portion of the vo lume, by way of supplement, " a picture of England a century ago " (worked up from that faithful mirror of the times, the chronicle of Sylvanus Urban), which contains a variety of curious matter, additionally flavoured in the recital by an occasional glance at the contrast between things as they were then and as they are now. In accounting for this deplorable state of things our author has certainly hit upon one of the efficient causes—in the direct impediments thrown by Government in the way of marriage. In Bavaria, Neu' Pictures and Old Panels. By Dr. Doran. London : Bentley. FROM among the scraps of historical lore which, in the course of his explorations in the less frequented nooks of the old mansion of Dame Clio, he has " promiscuously " picked up, Dr. Doran has selected a tolerable variety of subjects, and strung them together in the present volume for the entertainment of his readers. Beyond the fiction of " a company of artists, some half-dozen " from various parts of the world," and a " lay friend," who, meeting from time to time, calmer savone fashion, produce from their portfolios divers sketches as starting-points for discussions which branch out into numberless recollections and associations, there is nothing to connect these " New Pictures and Old Panels " with each other. The sketches from the apocryphal port folios, and the discussions to which they give rise, are, one after another, thrown into the form of sprightly narratives, with an ever-flowing undercurrent of sly satire, of philosophy oftener playful than grave, and of pleasant fancy, sometimes approaching the loftier regions of poetry, but for the most part disporting itself close to the earth's surface. the laws concerning marriage and property are so severe that thousands cannot acquire sufficient to unable them to pay the priest and sheriff, and therefore live togeiher without any form of marriage at all. If a young girl, born in one duchy, removes to another, she cannot marry a citizen of the place to which she lies removed without paying a sum which few among the lower classes can command ; and this is why we see, in so many instances, young men married to old women who have, by a former husband, acquired the means of pur chasing the citizenship of a stc.)nd. A woman with this advantage will offer herself to a young man in the factory or shop where he has served his apprenticeship, and if he declines her proposals be will be dismissed from service. We know one instance where a young man had married, in this way, a widow with one child, in order to acquire the right of citizenship and the position of muter work. man in a large town, and after her death wished to marry again a young girl who was not a citizen of the place, though she had lived there three years. l;ut her means did not allow her to pay the sum, which is 2.5.0 dollars, and before he could marry her Le must pay this, and also deposit a certain sum for the support of the child of his former wife, and another to make sure that he had a com petency for his new housekeeping, as the State, in its parental wisdom and kindness, will not allow pop* t o marry without the certainty of a pravision for a . . . That hundreds of children are born every year, for whose maintenance no one is responsible, is known and per- Mitted ; but people cannot be allowed to wear the badge of respecteNlity without piling the State ID hutch money. Next to England, France contributes largely to the contents of the volume. The chapter entitled " Tableaux de Paris in the Last Century," after Louis Sebastian Mercier and the Baroness d'Oberkirch, opens a vista into the state of society in France during the last years of the reign of Louis XVI., when thoughtless folly was dancing on the thin crust that covered the burning volcano underneath ; and to this, as further illustrations of French life both before and after the period indicated, may be added, an account of the Rue St. Denis in the days of its glory, and, connected with it, the history of the painter-family of the Vanloos ; a portrait of the Marquise de Pompadour; and a sketch of Andre Chenier, the poet, whose works and literary fame did not emerge from the obscurity in which the calamities of the times had buried them, until nearly a quarter of a century after lie himself had fallen among a band of illustrious victims in the last terrible sacrifice offered on the altar of Jacobin " Liberty." More strictly in the nature of biogra phical sketches are, the portraits of the four daughters of Charles I.,—Mary, Princess of Orange; the heroic little Princess Elizabeth, who died, within a year and a half after her father's execution, at Carisbrooke Castle; " Happy Anne," who died in infancy ; and the celebrated Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orleans ;—the " portrait of a Lady," introduced under the name of " Marie Lucille," who, from a peasant-girl of the Upper Loire, rose by her energy of character to be the foundress, and for many years the superintendent, of a still flourish ing educational establishment in the French metropolis ; an account of the career of Adam Oehlenschliiger, the Danish dramatist and poet, who from beginnings scarcely less humble rose, by the innate power of his genius, to the proud position of Poet-King of Scandinavia, solemnly crowned with the laurel wreath by his brother poet, Bishop Tegn4r, in the Cathedral of Lund; a notice of Farinelli, the ragazzo of Naples, whose vocal powers extorted the homage of flattery from the haughty lips of Maria Theresa, and soothed, as by magic, the moody madness of Philip V. of Spain ; and reminiscences of AbOard and HOoise, whose romantic history has been revived of late in France, by a hot controversy on the merits or demerits of the former as a theolo gian, and on the question whether he is to be reckoned among the forerunners of the Refor mation. -------- Then we have a curious chapter under the title " A Group of Queen's Unqueened some of these voluntarily descended, in widow hood, from their royal rank—as Adelicia, the Fair Maid of Brabant, Queen Consort of Henry I. of England, and atter his death witit of his cupbearer, IVilliam de Albini, Lord of Buckenhani ; Isabella of AngouWme, Queen Consort of John, and mother of Henry 111. of England, who, after the decease of her royal husband, returning to her first love, wedded I lugh . de Lusignan, Count de la Marche ; Isabella of Valois, the child-bride of Richard 11. of Eng land, who, a widow in the ninth year of her age, became five years later the wife of Charles, the Poet Duke of Orleans, then but a boy of eleven ; her sister, Katharine of Valois, who, after sharing the throne of England with Henry V., bestowed her hand upon Owen Tudor, the brewer of Bean . marls ; and Katharine Parr, the last, the luckiest, and perhaps the wisest, of the Queens of Owen Tudor's terrible descendant, H enr y VIII., who alienated the liberty of her third widowhood to her former suitor, Sir Thomas Seymour? before In the anteroom of the richly-stored gallery to which the author's well-earned fame temptingly invites the lovers of lite rary and biographical curiosities, our attention is arrested by " a picture in three panels," pre senting in singularly graphic outlines a group of personages whose familiar names give more than ordinary piquancy to the cleverly imagined scenes in which they are brought upon the stage. William Dodd, a century ago the fashionable preacher, greedily run atter by admiring London audiences, the only serious part of whose career was its ignominious termination,—Mrs. Bellamy, the brilliant and lighthearted actress who divided with the popular divine the homage of the town, — Oliver Goldsmith, struggling for bread as the literary drudge of Griffiths, the publisher at the Dunciad's Head, while fretfully conscious of the powers of his mind and ambitious of fame, to which he was as yet unknown, — and John Wesley, the enthusiast, the Pro testant Loyola, who converted sinners into saints, and the New Wells Theatre into a taber-