The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-04 00:00:00

1048 littraturt. Gleanings from Piocadilly to Pera. By John Oldmixon, Esq., Commander R.N, London: Longmans. WHILE the author was in search of an allitera tive title we marvel that " Groans of a Grum bler " did not suggest itself to him, as it is evident, from his preface, that he is conscious of the true character of his book : Apologies for one's notions or one's nonsense are simply absurd • but I would fain say a few words, not in extenuation of the errors and ignorances which will be found plentifully sprinkled in the following pages, but for the querulous, cynical tone which unamiably pervades the whole ! in which I view things through the cold, clouded atmosphere of—an unusually severe winter ; piqued by the peculiarly un-English comforts and contrivances of the Continent. It will, however, be a variety, from its strong contrast to the invariable " couleur de rose ' sunny pictures we have of France, Italy, and the East. Now that I have returned home I laugh quite as heartily as younger men at all the small miseries and mishaps we must get through, without wincing, in our wanderings about the world. They are exactly the ups and downs, and joltings out of our drawing-room and club easy chairs, we set out to—enjoy! The variety for which he takes credit is not of the most pleasing kind- He rallies English and foreigners from first to last, and rather sees bad than good in everything. The viva city of his style resembles that of Sir Francis Head, but there is more acidity and less substance in it. On the justice of his snarl at that " conceited set, the writers of novels on " our manners, who are eternally talking of " snobs,' themselves the very greatest,' we say nothing; but he undoubtedly shows pluck in attacking the contributors to the most satirical of our contemporaries, as they are so well able to return his fire with interest. Ill natured as it may be, there is, however, some truth in the remark, " I fear we are all a nation " of snobs, so prone are we to worship any " sort of title which carries with it a fine house " in town and country, fine carriages, and fine " dinners." Some amusing instances are given of " snobbism" among travellers, and we are apprehensive that the following sketch must be included in the number. The " bit "is pictured to the life. The scene is a railway carriage, on the line from Paris to Dijon : We were all English except one young Frenchman, who kept his eyes pretty constantly fixed on an " honourable" young lady, who gave herself small exclusive airs towards us English as nobodies. This excessively provoked a fat Devonshire lady, not particularly in the high world, who was very curious to know who this little contemptuous rl could be, with her valet, her maid, and fond papa ! Lord —, going on a visit to his friend Lord Brougham, at Cannes. There was another little episode which set me think ing on the not very good natured peculiarity of our manners. The noble lord sat next Sir , M.P. for one of those ei-devant parliamentary friends no doubt our Ministers find it very essential to be civil to. They chatted away together on the moat friendly footing, without the M.P.'s taking the slightest notice of the young lady, who sat silent immediately opposite and touching him. He was not introduced; and so he left them. When gone, she asked her father, in that sort of tone only understood among ourselves," ho is that man? " All this is nothing, yet something ; it lets one see that supercilious affectation which goes on increasing up to the throne; taken up and dropt in the most capricious way, according to the mo mentary figure and power of individuals. In his Turkish tour he met travellers of another class, who exhibited in full bloom the feminine freedom of English life : On our way to Smyrna we had two ladies of fortune (sisters) passengers. I was delighted to see such fine samples of our island beauties. They were very handsome —one of them lovely : they had been five years on their travels all over the Continent, and much here in the East, among the Greeks and Turks, with their lady's-maid and a clever courier, who managed everything for them. Such cosmopolitan maiden philosophers are not at all un common. They ate met everywhere, now-a-days, all over the world—lndia, China, Australia, California! no voyage too hazardous, no land too strange or distant. We men are scarcely ahead of them in our ravings. I was very sorry when they left us ; conversation at the table lost its zest. I could not help musing on this peculiar roaming feature, in search of novelty, in our women, quite independent of any man, and only seen as yet in the daughters of Great Britain. They were next for Athens, and meantime went to the wretched French hotel—where I called, and found they had ridden out on donkeys, in the melting sun, dust, and teasing flies—what a contrast to their own hall, woods, lawns, comforts and friends! And yet they meant to remain abroad for another year—another year ! And thus they waste their sweetness on Turks or the Acropolis. But THE PRESS. what a pity years and years ago they were not made useful and happy wives at home. In spite of his tart sayings, John Oldmixon is at bottom, we are disposed to think, a very good-hearted fellow, and not free in his own person from the simplicity which he affects to laugh at in others. Misanthrophy is different from cynicism. A nature too fine for the rough usage and ordinary wear and tear of life may attempt to revenge itself for its rubs and scars by assuming a tone of heartlessness ; but gleams of feeling will now and then show the delicate texture of the humanity which lurks behind the prickly exterior. At a con cert in Paris of the Philanthropic Society of Musicians he exclaims : O how is the soul moved, rapt, at these grand, sweet, solemn strains, within these noble domes, these hal lowed precincts, and amidst this pious, attentive crowd ! For me it was too much : tears betray a still•recurring DUE, %LLD. - " Whisper the O'erfraught heart and bid it break." Would that I could forget—Forget! such heartaches cannot be forgotten. The worst of living long,—beyond, far beyond the ills flesh is heir to,—is losing those we love—nay, even our tolerable friends and acquaintance. Often of late years those beautiful lines haunt me— " Time, which steals something from us every day, At last it steals us from ourselves away." _ At Nice he laments the sadness of his soli tary state, and in his admiration of Lamartine sinks the snarler in the sentimentalist : How read unmoved his unaffected sorrows in the Holy Land, where he lays in her grave his daughter, snatched from him in her eleventh year ! This touches the chord in my owo tender regrets Oh, this sinking of the heart, this bitterness of life—to lose all that makes life sweet! From this and many other passages like it we gather that the author has been soured by ' misfortune : it is probable, too, that he has been disappointed in his worldly hopes, and that in enforced leisure moody thoughts have filled his mind to the exclusion of more wholesome influences. Talk as we may of the vanity of the world's prizes, and of the futility of earthly distinctions, rarely can any man miss them, though the miss be his own fault or choice, without lasting discontent at a subsequent period of life. No one can object to au author's nature colouring his writings, but it is a mistake of Commander Oldmixon to suppose that the reading public will care for reiterated grumbling which has no practical aim except to give expression to a sentiment of uneasiness or discontent. One might bear to be told once that " we English are the most " hollow, shallow, interested, selfish, affected, " foolish race of people just now on this world," but of what avail is it to din the assertion into our ears over and over again ? It is some relief to find in the midst of his abuse of our laws, institutions, manners, and all consti tuting a people, that he does justice to Eng• lish country and climate. At Cannes—now enriched by the residence of many wealthy English families—he writes : From the ruin of an old castle on a rock over this mole one sees the whole town and country. Lord Brougham's villa, and the rest of the English houses westward, close in the suburbs—their grounds, of no great extent, walled in—a sort of large gardens, shaded by their fine olive-trees ; 1 see some few orange-trees, but no palms, nor any lawns. In fact, the summers of this clime burn everything up— lawns, like our green Axminster carpets, roses, geraniums, pinks, such as ours, in such beauty and infinite variety, impossible—still, of course, they have roses t mostly Chinese), but nowhere does one see that constant and ex quisite care or neatness in anything—only seen in dear old England. 0, land of my fathers, how art thou abused! —not by me, who love thee but too well :—thy sylvan shadee, thy glens, thy fields, thy woods, thy thickets, lawns, and streams ; thy myths through the mists of fable ; thy sylvan shades, peopled by shadows of our godlike bard—fairies in the train of thy loved Titania l There is good sense in the author's reflec tions on the contrast between our military laws and those on the Continent ; and, among other reforms in the War-office, it is worth considering whether the system of allowing the regimental band to be formed and paid for by the officers might not be altered with ad vantage. The passage we quote relates to Marseilles, and many of our readers can, from having heard the masterly playing of " Les Guides" this week, bear witness to its jus tice : It was Sunday: the band (of one of the regiments) con sisted of about sixty, and played very fairly : I could not but think of the difference between us and the French in this. Here is a strictly enconomical French regiment, has its music in this full, handsome way; and the equal and sensible orders of their Horse Guards make it a pleasure the meanest may enjoy, far above the caprice of colonels or SATURDAY, lieutenant-colonels. On their promenades, as the day and hour fixed comes—so does the band, no matter wi.at garrison, or if only one regiment present. The contrast may not be so violent with our regiments of the line ; but with our Guards, and in London, of all places in the world! who but must look back with regret and contempt at their airs, and their turn-out of some twenty or two dozen, when they do con• descend to play to our admiring crowds during the season in Kensington-gardens! Excessively mediocre as is their playing (so feeble and thin from want of requisite numbers), this same genteel, not fashionable, public of "nobodies " are often disappointed, even at the maximum of two fixed days each week—this, too, by regiments which cost us, in officers and men, about ten times as much as continental ones ; whose officers, besides, are all men of fortune (or should be, as they effect to be ), independent of their pay. It is useless guessing at where the fault lies in particular; Government should set all such things to rights. Few among us know or care anything about the matter. To be sure every thing is comparative as to good, bad, and indifferent, in this artificial world of ours, and ignorance is indeed bliss. The French, though respectable in their bands, are far inferior to the German ones in numbers and in taste, if not in science. One can never forget the rich harmony of a German regimental band of ninety or one hundred strong—those glorious swells! the crescendo, and the diminuendo. In the account of Naples, and of the oft described wonders of Pompeii, the author's talent as a describer is shown to most advan tage. There are some sensible remarks on the sudden burying of the city : The thing is settled that it was suddenly covered by ashes alone from the eruption of Vesuvius, which is here very far from it, in profile. I cannot understand it—much less "suddenly.' . . The fact is plain enough—there re: mains only the how to puzzle one. . . . Nature's modus operandi never can be known exactly. The skeletons, the keys, the bread already baked in the shops—all as if to impress the fact of the instant over- whelming—only puzzle me the more, from any possible quantity of ashes thrown such a height, and falling so fax off ! In Pera itself—the term of our author's travel—he is more happy with his pencil than his pen. His frontispiece—of an English tra veller in a wide-awake, mounted, and gaping in astonishment at the strange figures about him—shows a keen sense of pictorial humour. The few plates are well sketched and attrac tively coloured. The views of the barracks at Scutari and of the floating bridge over the Golden Horn vividly realise the scene. We have spoken of the author's simplicity, and one instance will suffice. He left his card on Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and was astonished that his call was not returned. We thought the silly notion was exploded that the main purpose of our embassy at Constantinople was to pay attention to the idle tourists who saun ter thither, though it seems still to linger in the minds of old-fashioned travellers like Com mander Oldmixon. His lordship has business of weightier import to engage him. Besides, the motive for that hospitality once deemed part of an ambassador's duty is now past: an Englishman is at home in every capital of the globe, and might as well expect social attentions from his Home Secretary in London as from his ambassador in Paris or Constanti nople. Our first impression of the book was lees favourable than a better acquaintance indueel us to entertain. There is more originality and depth in the reflections than might at first be supposed from the flippant tone assumed ; and, with all his asperity and non sense, we have, on the whole, been more amused by these " Gleanings" than by smoother and more soberly-sensible composi tions. Commander Oldmixon is a genuine character, made up of flesh and blood, not moulded from conventional cement—and that is saying something in his favour. Nouveau Tableau de la Bourse de Paris. By Ade Mericlet. Paris : Dentu. COMPARATIVELY few of the tens of thousands of Englishmen who visit Paris annually ever think of going to the Bourse during business hours. Yet from one to three daily, Sundays excepted, one of the most extraordinary spec tacles the great city presents is there to be witnessed. In a vast and majestic salle is assembled a huge crowd, consisting of people of all classes, from the banker or jobber who can command millions down to the greasy picker-up of greasy sous ; and these people are of every nation and every clime of the European quarter of the globe. In the gal leries which surround the hall are a closely packed collection of spectators—old gentle men with small incomes, and nothing to do, lib.