The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

DECEMBER 23, 1854. Nittraturt. is Hammes dEtat de 1' Angleterre au XIXe Sieicle. Par Count de la Paris : Dentu. VOLTAIRE once said of something, "I don't " know it, but lam sure of it." So we say of this book, " We do not positively know " that it has been written at the instiga " tion of the Peelites, but we are sure of it." For is it credible that any foreigner under taking to write a series of sketches of the statesmen of England of the nineteenth cen tury would, if left to himself, have set down, as our author has done, only seven men as wlrthy of that noble title ; and for those seven would have taken only one Conservative (Mr. Disraeli), only two Whigs (Lords J. Russell and Palmerston), and not fewer than four Peelites (the late Sir Robert Peel, the " bon " Aberdeen," Sir J. Graham, and Mr. Glad stone)? Could any foreigner not writing under Peelite dictation have been guilty, as our author is, of the enormous absurdity of disparaging the vast ability and the brilliant career of Mr. Disraeli ? We defy anybody to answer these questions in the affirmative; and therefore we say that this book is, and must be, the result of Peelite inspiration We are sure of it ! The desire of the Peelites to win favour in France can readily be understood. Now that England is in close alliance with that country, they feel that reparation is due to the French Sovereign and the French people for the out rageous insults which they, as a party, heaped on the former for perpetrating, and on the latter for submitting to, supporting, and ap plauding, the coup d'etat of December. Now that England is engaged in carrying on a mighty war in conjunction with France, they feel that it is much to be wished that the French Emperor, Ministers, and people should entertain as favourable an opinion as possible of the men who compose the most influential part of the English Government. Hence the determination to bring out a book in which the principal Peelites should be washed from their past misdeeds towards France, and be exalted to the skies—in which the two chiefs of the party with whom, for their own selfish purposes, they have temporarily coalesced (Lord J. Russell and Lord Palmerston) should be treated with less respect than is due, in order that their men, by contrast, may shine the more—and in which the Conserva tives should be represented as having only one statesman, and he worthy of no honour at all. There was cunning in the scheme, but it has been so clumsily executed that it will completely fail ; tho engineer is " hoist with his own petard." The Peelites forgot that something more was required to rehabili tate them in the eyes of our allies, and to damage the leader of the Conservative party, than a mere instruction to a servile writer of " Praise us—abuse Disraeli" ; and they ne glected to take the precaution of ascertaining whether the gentleman they commissioned, the Count de la Grueronniere, possessed tke capa city to make the praise appear merited and the abuse spicy. Perhaps they mistook him for his brother, the Vicomte, formerly the clever editor of one of the Paris papers, and well known as the author of very excellent pen-and-ink por traits of Louis Napoleon and other eminent Frenchmen. The consequence of their over sight is that we have a volume which glaringly betrays the object for which it is written ; and, instead of a well-written, readable, in teresting book, which was to have been hoped for from an author who boasted that " from long residence in England he has " been able to obtain a profound knowledge " of English institutions and English states " men," we have a work which literary justice imperatively demands should be branded with Macaulay's paraphrase of Johnson's famous condemnation of his leg of mutton — that " it is as bad as bad can be ; ill-compiled, ill-arranged, ill-expressed, and ill-printsd." It would be doing too much honour to this discreditable Peelite production to enter into an elaborate examination of the notices of the seven statesmen who, according to our well informed author, are all England possesses— ** Earl of Derby, LordEllenborough, the Mar- THE PRESS. quis of Lansdowne, Lord Lyndhurst, and a score others, whose names will occur to everybody, not being, of course, worthy of being included in that noble category. But we may mention as a specimen of the author's sense of justice that Lord. Aberdeen is admired for everything that he has done throughout his long career — for his base subserviency to Russia, and for being at the head of a monarchy which makes war on Russia—for having, in a word, spent years in trying to keep white white, and then, under the empire of different circumstances, coolly making it black ; whilst Mr. Disraeli, ou the other hand, is insolently accused of want of political principle for having assailed the late Sir Robert Peel for betraying his party and breaking his faith. Lord Palmerston, on his part, is lauded for his political saga• city in declaring himself in favour of the Emperor Napoleon the moment his coup d'itat was accomplished ; whilst Sir James Graham is mentioned tenderly for having, with even more than his customary coarseness of lan guage, denounced his Majesty for the same thing. To show the manner in which his Peelite employers have desired the author to represent them to the good people of France, the grim old Scotch lord who presides over the Cabinet is anxious to make the French believe that he possesses A grand air, noble manners, distinction imprinted on his forehead, and aristocratic elegance united to simple habits, and easy language. He also wishes them to bear in mind (p. 58) that " the late King Louis Philippe, in re " ferriug to him whether in letters or convey " cation, never failed to say ce bon Aberdeen."' And he has caused them to be told that he possesses "profound sagacity," and is " one " of the Nestors of diplomacy." We have said that the book as a literary production is had. It is written in a loose, shuffling, Tristram-Shandy sort of style ; contains nothing whatever in the shape of new and original thought ; displays not the slightest power of appreciating a public cha racter, or of placing him, with his qualities, defects, and peculiarities, life-like before you ; it is totally devoid of political philosophy and political criticism; it is, in a word, all " bosh " and slip-slop. It even shows a scandalous ig norance of the mechanical art of bookmaking, which almost everybody who takes pen in hand now-a-days possesses. Thus great part of the notice of Lord Aberdeen is taken up with statistical and other details of Greece and Russia, and with a history of the diplo matic negotiations about Turkey ; and in the notice on Mr. Disraeli (whom, by the way, the author strips of his title, " Right Honourable,") he commits the egregious folly (when his pur pose of detraction is considered) of giving long extracts from that gentleman's most brilliant speeches—thereby making his own feeble, though malignant, twaddle suffer fearfully from the contrast with the statesman's splendid elo quence. Nor is this all :—almost every page is stained with blunders which it is surprising that any gentleman pretending to be a lit terateur, and to " have resided many years in " England," should have committed. Thus, he ascribes to Tacitus the oft-quoted line, " Penitus tote divisos orbe Brite.nnos," though every schoolboy knows it is in Virgil's first " Eclogue " ; he says Mr. Disraeli is " the author of W. Grey" ; he repeatedly spells Bentinek, Bentink ; he talks over and over again of " Sir Graham," and mentions " Sir Newdegater and " Sir Herbert" (apropos, why did he not give a sketch of " Sir " Herbert," ? for surely that zealous Peelite is as well entitled to have his personal graces described to the French as the theologi..B.l financier Gladstone); he says that the schism in the Scotch Church was caused " by a conflict " between Presbyterianism and the dominant " Church of England "; he discovers a Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer ; he has found out that Bedford is in Nottinghamshire ; that a certain " B. Brougham" has played a great part in political affairs ; that " his lordship " Palmerston" is so learned as to be entitled to the designation of a " scholastic Solon "; that it was Canning who invented the phrase, " civil and religious liberty"; tha: it was the Scythians, not the Parthians as commonly supposed, who were accustomed to discharge their arrows flying; and that a certain ZoLlue named Sydney Smith once had the audacity to say that Lord John Russell's confidenne in his own abilities was so great that he would undertake either to command the Channel fleet, or " to shake the corner atone of the " Temple !" In dismissing this foolish book we are glad to be able to state, on the authority of Paris letters, that it has met with a complete and ludicrous fiasco in that capital, and that it has rather increased than diminished the antipathy and distrust which have always been there felt for the Peelites in political circles, on ac count of their undisguised leaning towards Russia, their lukewarmness to France, and, above all, their notorious personal hostility to the Emperor Napoleon. Here in England, we doubt not, the book will cover the Peelites with shame, by showing the meanness of the arts to which they condescend to have re course to faire (mincer tears affaires. The Rose and the Ring ; or, the History of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulb°. By M. A. Tit• marsh. London : Smith and Elder. THE criticisms hitherto expressed upon this little work of Mr. Thackeray remind us forcibly of the attempts made by Swift'a scientific gentleman to extract " sunbeams from a cucumber." That harmless vegetable, though affording a transient gratification to the palate, yet obstinately refused, in spite of all the efforts of the unhappy speculator, to yield him the smallest particle of illumination. We are not disposed to quarrel with the author of " Vanity Fair " for employing his time and talents in the composition of a fairy tale for the amusement of children, but wo must smile at the determination displayed by his critics to discover in the work itself deep principles of human nature, hidden satire upon folly, or shrewd hints upon conduct, simply because the tale is told by the satirist of the day. Dulce eat desipere—"'Tis sweet to play the fool," says Horace, and this is the maxim upon which Mr. Thackeray appears to have written. Considered in its true light, as a fairy tale composed for a family circle, in the broad spirit of pantomime, with grotesque masks and serio-comic " terseness," we admit that the book has a merit of its own ; indeed it is almost impossible that a writer of Mr. Thackeray's peculiar talents should fail in such a trifle ; but we must demur to its con taining any more profundity than the average of Christmas pantomimes, and those who pro fess to discover anything deeper, resemble the host of critics who extracted elaborate sys tems of metaphysics from passages in Goethe's " Faust," which he himself confessed to have been written without meaning, for the sole purpose of mystifying his commentators. Even the woodcuts which accompany the tale--caricatures which are only remarkable, like all Mr. Thackeray's drawings, fur a perfect indifference to perspective or proportion, and with no more individuality than the characters of a twelfth cake—are yet found to contain not only good drawing, but fancy, character, and exuberant humour One of the best passages is that in which the porter to the palace of Patlagonia, Mr. Gruffanuff, is transformed into a knocker by the Fairy Blackstick for refusing her ad mittance to the christening of the Princess Angelica : When the Princess Angelica was born, her parents not only did not ask the Fairy Blackstick to the christening party, but gave orders to their porter absolutely to refuse her if she called. This porter's name was Gruffanuff, and he had been selected for the post by their Royal Highnesses because he was a very tall, fierce man, who could say " Not at home" to a tradesman or an unwelcome visitor with a rudeness which frightened most such persons away. He was the husband of that countess whose picture we have just seen, and as lung as they were together they quarrelled from morning till night. Now this fellow tried his rude• ness once too often, as you shall hear. For the Fairy Blackstick coming to call upon the prince and princess, who were actually sitting at the open drawing-room vrincow, Gruffanuff not only denied them, but made the most odious vulgar sign as he was going to slain the door in the fairy's face ! " Git away, hold Blackstick 7' said he. " I tell you, master and missis ain't at home to you :" and he was, as we have said, going to slam the door. But the fairy. with her wand, prevented the door being shut; and Gruffanuff came out again in a fury, swearing in the most abominable way, and asking the fairy "whether she thought he was a going to stay at that there doer ha tey I -