The Press. — London, England, 1857-03-07 00:00:00

232 of the generous draught, are wholly independent of the sweetening ingredient ; and it was impossible to conceive how such wine could admit of improvement. " And yet," exclaimed my " veritable Amphitryon," " there is not a drop of brandy in it. You have tasted, what you ought invariably to taste, the pure wine." Thus ended my inquiry into the sparkling fluid. A leading " Liberal" once (rashly) boasted that "he was convinced that an organisation " might be formed which would gain us the " Ballot in a couple of years." With a French alliance, it is singular that there has been no vigorous attempt to introduce a new tat•iff on French wines. The great-grandsires of the present generation used to drink cheap (and good) French claret; and it is odd that the unitarian agitators have given no ',attention to the superior tonic qualities of the French vintage. There are many who are anti. Gallican in politics, but pro•Gallicau in their vinous tastes. The author has a quick eyo for the agricul tural state of France, but he does not seem well versed in the history of England and France. Adverting to the aspects produced by the division of land in France, under the law of division, ho says : On this north side, however, of Dijon, the grape is alto• gether secondary in consideration compared with the corn crops. The latter abound in magnificent breadths. I saw five hundred acres' extent of white wheat; thick in plant, long in straw, heavy in ear: the property, probably, of eight or ten different owners; but no partition was visible. The spectacle of so large a provision of bread is very genial, and, it may be said, impressive; but the face of the country, in all other respects, is cheerless enough in the absence of even the smallest hovel or lodge for the hab►tation of labourers. For seven miles' length, perhaps, not a roof is in sight, and not more than two barns. The fact is, two•thirds of the standing corn would be cut down by the proprietors themselves ; men enjoying a patrimony of seventeen or nineteen hundred francs a year in real estate, and who farm their oan land with the aid of their sons, and two or three hired labourers, all of whom, the employers and the employed, live in the adjacent town or ♦illage ; or, it may be, on the premises of some capacious old mansion, chateau, or manor•house, on the skirts of the farm lands, where the men are lodged and boarded, and the horses and waggons are also stationed. This is in accor dance with the system to which the laws of inheritance bind the estate owners of France : a system which has multiplied petty proprietorship ad irifinilum, and im poverished for ever the landed gentry of the kingdom. A similar tenure prevailed two hundred years ago in our own coun try. 4 ' Gavelkind " obtains to this day in parts of Kent, and other places. But the general spirit of English society is a desire for indi viduals to emerge into a higher sphere, and a compulsory social equality would be extremely unpopular. We pass over various descriptions of French scenery, and prefer to extract some of the author's miscellaneous passages. Let us hear him upon French mutton—apropos of the plains of Sologne Here, however, are reared the vast flocks of sheep, called Moutons Solognois, which the epicures of France consider the choicest and must delicate mutton in the whole of their country. Those that came under notice in the journey to Orleans were not bigger than six•months• old lambs; and I was informed they seldom exceed these proportions. When a Frenchman talks of mutton, he must be understood to mean, invariably, a mutton cutlet. On any other portion of the animal but this extract from its rib his notions are wild and delusive in the extreme. The hotcl•keepers have, of late years, added the leg (gigot) to their " cartes "; and it is put on table with a certain degree of pretension and display (as an achievement of most meritorious success Latter the sweets ! but it is always a melancholy failure ; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the cook that interposes such fibre and flavour between appetite and digestion. On the art of travelling in France, and espe cially in Dauphine, the Appendix contains some good advice. He gives some hints for tourists : Though every British traveller must be presumed to carry a" Murray" with him (and we cannot sufficiently thank the said " Murray "for his inc)roparable manual), I earnestly advise the purchasing of the boost publications purporting to supply the foreign visitor with all the in struction and information essential to a due knowledge of the provinces or towns in which he may be travelling or sojourning. These pocket volumes are now got up with wonderful accuracy and talent : the maps and illustrations are excellent ; and the details more minute, as a matter of course, than would be compatible with the scale of the English rode mecum. Most of these admirable little books are sold as parts of the Bibliotheque des Chemins de Fer (Railway Library), under the title of " Guides Itineraires," at Ilachette's Library, No. 14, Rue Pierre Sarrasin, in Paris; the price varying between two and three banes each, and containing from one to two or three hundred pages, illustrated ac cording to the sine of the volume, by tlfty or eighty wood sB4 444 map of oinpur acCurno7 1 4 1 4 finish, THE PRESS. They are, also, procurable at Galignani's in the Rue Vivienne, and in most of the book•shops and stalls of the Pslsis Royal and Rue St. Honors. Against foreign " spies " of a peculiar kind the author offers a suggestion. Our ow•n expe rience of travelling in France did not give us reason for complaining of the extraordinary sort of surveillance which ➢ir. Musgrave men• tions here : There is one point to which I feel bound to direct the attention and wariness of any of my readerscontemplating for the first time a continental excursion. Whether in France, Switzerland, Italy or lie many, Spain or Portugal, in fact, throughout Europe, whenever the traveller finds himself quartered for the day or night in a bed-chamber having a door of communication with an adjoining apart ment, let hint make a point of rendering it impossible fur any one in that room to obtain range of insight into the one he is to occupy. In nine cases out of ten, if he closely inspect the upper and lower panels of such a door, he will detect little holes, at various heights, bored by a knife, nail, or anything else that will serve the purpose, through the thin edges of the panels where they enter the style or framework. The foreigners term them petits jiidas " : a term sufficiently appropriate to lurking•places through which privacy is thus treacherously and disre putably invaded. The most effectual mode of defeating such infamous assaults is to carry among one's toilette articles a small pocket hammer and a few very sharp iron tacks, by which an over-coat, wrapper, or dressing-gown may, in a moment, be suspended or stretched across the breadth of the door, and taken down and replaced at will. Sometimes all that it may be requisite to do is merely to remove a light cabinet, or escritoire, or chest of drawers, from its place to the door thus requiring a screen. The morbid passion for thus boring doors and partitions is in conceivably general; and I remember a Polish Count informing :ne once, at Berne, of the number he had made in one week ! I could not help wishing his ears had been nailed to the doorposts as a ii, is to his dirty work. There are many other passages in these volumes which read with quaint but fresh effect. The author is an enthusiast about cathedrals, and we appreciate his admiration of "Chartres," which is, indeed, worth visiting, and is not sufficiently known by English tourists. The iconoclasts of the Revolution were not able to destroy the great Churches in the provinces. The cognoscenti in French cathedrals say, in order to explain their beau ideal, " Take the portal of Rheims, the nave " of Amiens, the choir of Beauvois, and the " spire of Strasburg." But to describe these buildings would require the pen of Ruskin or Victor Hugo; and Mr. Musgrave has not talent for architectural word painting. He takes nearly eighty pages to describe La Grande Chartreuse, and writes with sound sense and strong argument against monastic institutions. We cordially agree with his opinions on those points. He, perhaps, does not quite understand that many eccentric and half-witted people are to be found swarming in the continental monasteries. Some politi cal economists say that vast standing armies are another sort of " Poor Laws," draining off into the service of the State vagrant able bodied labour; and monasteries in some re spects arc not unlike Bedlam hospitals. But, though we have a strong distaste to those institutions, we must say that their popularity in foreign countries must rest on profound psychological causes. Dislike of active life, morbid temperaments, excess of imagination, physical indolence, and other causes, must doubtless contribute to the preservation of monasteries like La Grande Chartreuse. Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders; with Illustrations of their Manners and Customs. By Edward Short land, M.A. Second Edition. London : Longmans. ABOUT eighteen years since, " New Zealand" was an object of much interest to the pro moters of emigration. Since then, the dis cove►y of the gold regions in California and Australia, as well as the increased develop ments in Texas and elsewhere, have tended to diminish the attractiveness of New Zealand. Yet the islands in themselves possess great value and resources. They are naturally pro ductive, and are favourable to animal life. The climate is temperate, and water is in abundance ; and we have little doubt but that at the end of this century New Zealand will display not only a highly prosperous, but a remarkably civilised community. To the philosophical history of the abori• pines in New Zealand. Mr. Shortland has contributed ninny interesting details. His work is of ethnological value, and oauuot by SATURDAY, overlooked by the future historian of New Zealand. The first seven chapters of his volume give the results of the author's per sonal observations and inquiries touching the traditions and superstitions of the New Zealanders. The concluding portion of the work is devoted to the examination of the social condition and manners of the aboriginal people; but on this last part of the subject we have read fuller and more valuable autho rities. As we have intimated, the interest of the volume is of a philosophical character. In the preface to the first edition the writer observes:— But little is generally known of the superstitious prac. tices of the New Zealanders. The missionaries, who, from their knowledge of the language, alone had it in their power for many years to converse freely with the native race, seem to have avoided all inquiries on such subjects. They came to teach a religion, and not to learn the principles of superstitions, which, however valuable in reference to matters of ethnological interest, they regarded as having fur their author the great enemy of mankind. All missionaries have been more or less in fluenced by such views, though some of the Jesuits (with the characteristic energy and acuteness of their order) have undoubtedly been exceptions to that rule. It seldom happens that the purely philosophic nature is also a missionary one ; and it would seem that ; different kinds of moral natures aro respectively required for the discovery and the diffusion of truth. What care it behoves us to take of our conduct in dealing with savages, or partially civilised communities, is shown in the following anecdote : On the establishment of British Government in New Zealand, petty thefts were of frequent occurrence in the European settlements, but it was found difficult to apply the punishments usually inflicted by our law for such offences. Sons of powerful chiefs were every now and then the offenders, and their tribe would not submit to the indignity of their being imprisoned in a common gaol, although they were always willing to give compensa tion. Governor Fitzroy very wisely adopted the plan of making the punishment a fourfold payment of the value of the goods stolen, which, being sanctioned by prece dent drawn from the Bible, was universally accepted as satisfactory. In our intercourse with all aborigines our officials should never forget that their con duct should (not be unworthy of the princi ples which they profess, and of the religion of the country which they serve. The traditions of the New Zealanders are of three classes. The first relates to the origin of the world and man ; the next relates to demigods, or " heroes'; and the last is of a more historical character. The natives attach great sentimental value to the first class ; but they principally believe (as far as their history is concerned) in the last. We cannot say how far the author is competent to decipher tho legendary narratives of the New Zealanders. He may have more ready powers of credence than are desirable in a collector of legendary ana. For example, in speculating on how New Zealand was peopled, Mr. Shortland thus describes the " marvellous event" of a canoe making a sixty miles' coasting voyage in a high gale of wind : One afternoon in the month of June, 13t 1, while I was at Tauranga, a storm from the north-east came on suddenly, and soon increased to a violence I had seldom known equalled. About nightfall, when the gale was at its height, I was startled by hearing the shouts and exclama tions of many voices uniting with the roaring of the wind. What was my surprise to learn that a canoe had just arrived from Opotiki, a place distant about sixty miles to the eastward, and that the noise proceeded from the friends and relations of the crew, who were naturally transported with joy at their safety. The event appeared to me so marvellous, that I went early next morning to see the canoe and its crew, to be the better assured of the fact. The canoe I found hauled up on the beach as far as high-water mark, with the cargo, consisting of baskets of kumara and potato, still on board. It measured about forty feet in length, with an extreme width acd depth of about Live feet. The hull or lower part was formed from the trunks of two trees, dovetailed together after the peculiar method of the country, which consults strength more than uniformity of shape. And above this was fastened a topside or gunwale of the usual width of about ten or twelve inches. There was no pro tection against the break of the sea, except that offered by a sort of deck constructed of raupo or flag, by which the bow was covered in a temporary manner for a few feet—a safeguard generally adopted when making coasting voyages of any length. The craw, nine Sue ablebodied fellows, were seated on the ground, with a numerous crowd around them, listening to the account of the near escapee they had had on their voyage. There is, really, nothing " marvellous " In tho fact. Ur. Shcirtlauci forgets bay (awl pov.