The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-10 00:00:00

advocating the union. The following passage will show that the hotel-keepers of Bucharest understand running up a bill as well as Mr. Cox Hughes : The best and dearest hotel in Europe would have sup plied its best dinners at an infinitely lower rate than that set down for the repast of the Commission during the first throe weeks of its stay in Bucharest. In twenty-six days, the table of a single commissioner cost upwards of 3001. Of wax lights, 200 P. per night were charged for. There was an item of 117,00) francs for small expenses, such as lights, cabs, lamps, kitchen utensils, &c. At the time of the installation of (Thies as caimacan, in 1850, the Turkish envoy, Kiamil Bey, sent to invest him with the dignity, passed a week at Bucharest, and of course was kept at free quarters, as a guest. The honest people charged with purveying for him, found means to make him consume strawberries to the value of 7,000 Wellachian piastres (nearly 1031.)! But Saafet-Effendi, the Turkish commis sioner in 18-57, had no reason to be jealous of the delicacies supplied to his countryman. In the accounts of the coin tnissicii figures an item of 1,200 francs for " perfumes for the use of Saafet-Effendi." The Turk must have needed a great deal of sweetening. "My First and Last Novel " is rather a weak story, in the style of Household Words. " The Great Imposture" is a facetious political article, though not quite so good as we have seen in Blackwood. " Mr. Dusky's Opinion on Art " is a capital paper, full of good healthy " chaff" of Mr. Ruskin's peculiarities : No. 18.—" A Man Washing his Hands" (J. Prig). A step in the right direction. The painting of the nail brush, showing where friction has worn sway and chan nelled the bristles in the middle, is especially good. But how comes it that, the nail-brush having been evidently male use of, the water in the basin is still pellucid, with no soap apparent, either superficially or in solution? This oversight I should not have expected in so clever an artist. Even granting clearness to the water, the pattern of the bottom of the basin visible through it is of a different cha racter from the exterior of the vessel, which is not the case in any specimen of that particular delf which has come under my notice. No. 2d.—This is directly imitative both of Titian and George Cruikshank, with Smith's handling, and a good deal of Brown's manner. No. 29.—As I told this artist last year, he is deficient in fulness of form and looseness of texture. He should, therefore, for some years, paint nothing but mops of various colours (without the handles), which would give him wool liness and rotundity. On the other hand, the painter of No. 32 has too much of these qualities, with too little firm. nem in his darks ; and I should recommend him, as a counteracting influence, to study only blocks of coal—not the common coal ( which is too dull), but the kennel or candle coal—a perseverance in which practice he will find attended by the happiest results. No. 850.—This artist had better go without delay to Venice. Ile will find in one of the vaults of one of the churches there ( I forget which) a picture without a name, bat which I know to be an indubitable Paul Veronese. The whole composition is fine ; but I would particularly note the third hair from the top in the right whisker of the cat in the corner, the painting of which is very precious. This he should study in a reverential spirit, and I will answer for the result. Fraser this month opens with a new story entitled Hanworth." It is, perhaps, scarce t .y fair to exprass any opinion of its merits until a larger portion of it is before us. The first four chapters, however, read hard. The article on churchyards is interesting and elegant. The following remarks will, we should think, be pretty generally sympathized with : Speaking for myself, I must say that I think it would cause a strange feeling in moat people to pact at the chapel door with the corpse of one who had been very dear, and, after a few minutes of horrible suspense, during which they should know that it was burning in a fierce furnace, to see the vessel of white ashes brought back, and be told that there was all that was mortal of the departed friend. No doubt it may he weakness and prejudice, but I think that few could divest themselves of the feeling of sacrilegious violence. Better far to lay the brother or sister, tenderly as though still they felt, in the last resting-place, so soft and trim. It soothes us, if it does no good to them, and the sad change which we know is soon to follow is wrought only by the gentle hand of Nature. And only think of a man pointing to half-a.dozen vases on his mantelpiece, and as many more on his cheffonier, and saying " There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest!" It must, however, be added that till lately our intra mural burial•grounds presented featureu almost as alien to this affectionate and poetic sentiment as the vase of ashes. But the village churchyard—where the " long and pleasant grass " grows fresh over the uneven hillocks, driving far away all thoughts of cor ruption, and affording an annual promise that the form long hidden beneath it shall one day, too, return —will never, we trust, disappear from our English hamlets. From an article entitled " Delhi as It Is " we select the following : How was Delhi treated by the English? There are some who declaim, and say that it was treated with shameful leniency ; that the accursed place should have been levelled with the ground; that a pillar with an inscription, rising out of a desolate plain, should have proclaimed that here Delhi was, but because it rebelled and murdered English men and women, here Delhi is no more. But this party, noisy as it was at first, has well-tigh had its day. It is felt that scenic ettects of this kind, though possible nn the stage and easy iu a novel, are difficult when they ititolvo t he extirpation of one of the largest cities in the world. In THE PRESS, JULY 10, 1858. the first outburst of retribution, almost anything in the way of material destruction at Delhi would have been pos- sible, and almost anything that was possible would have been justifiable. But every day that passed after the 20th September made it more necessary for us to deal with Delhi judicially, and therefore discriminatingly. We will state what has been done. The city was thoroughly plundered. The inhabitants had all fled during the assault. The Hindus were readmitted gradually, and still form the enormous majority of inhabitants. The house of every Mahomedan was attached; the Mahornedans are being readmitted into the city with great caution, and every man of that creed must proye his loyalty before his house is restored to him. With regard to those numerous natives who lost their property during the mutiny and the siege, it has been laid down as a rule that no man is en titled to compensation from the State unless he can prove that his loss was incurred while he himself was rendering active assistance to Government. Thus thousan Is have been ruined. Between two and three hundred men have been tried by a special commission, and hanged. The capital crimes were these : to have aided or abetted the murder or plunder of a European ; to have been a sepoy in one of the mutinous regiments that fought at Delhi. The punishment thus inflicted has been most severe. We have seen a letter from an old inhabitant of Delhi, in which the writer declared that Nadir irruption was a joke to this business. He came and went, and all was over. Now hell had been loose for eight months together. Doubtless the punishment has been enormous ; but an enormous punishment was indispensably required. It has also been just. The city of Delhi had stood by and looked on wLen the English were murdered. When the besieging force entered we heard much of those who had been our friends throughout; but where were those friends when unarmed men and helpless women were flying before their murderers ? It is an awful thing to punish a city, but such punishment was needful, and was made as discriminating as a wholesale punishment can be. Doubtless in the terrible six days of the assault several noncombatants were killed by an infuriated soldiery. But, so far as we can learn after considerable inquiry, there was far less violence of this sort than has been generally re corded in the ease of towns taken by assault, while all witnesses are unanimous in declaring that there were atm- lutely no cases of outrage committed on women. Doubtless many individuals, even after the assault, talked recklessly, and some few, we fear, acted brutally ; but from the first the action of Government was such as we have described : the guilty mutineers and murderers were hunted out and hanged without mercy ; the unfriendly race of Mahomedans was put on its delance, and banished for the time from that city which had so long been the pestilent focus of Ma• homedan intrigues ; all men, rich and poor, Hindu and Islahomedan, had awful cause given them to recollect that the very worst thing that could happen to them in this world was to be ever again even the passive witnesses of the massacre of European women and children. The lesson has been tremendous, and will be remem bered i❑ all Upper India long after this generation of Euro. peans and Asiatics has passed away. But after dispas sionate inquiry, it is our sincere belief, and we thankfully record it, that the bounds of awful justice have not been exceeded. Nor let it be forgotten that rewards have ac companied punishment. It is not a week since we saw ourselves, in that very Delhi, a Mahomedan soldier of the old mutinous Bengal army—a Hindustani—whatever our prejudices ere most excited against—presented with an estate of 3001. a year in hie native village, for himself and his heirs for ever, because in the doubtful day he had stood by the British, and succoured fugitives. Every man (and there were many, and chiefly Mahomedans )who gave useful information during the siege of Delhi, has been liberally re• warded. The local Government at Delhi and the Govern ment of the Punjab have deserved well of their country. On them, unaided by the council, unguided by the orders of the Supreme Government—which on this vital subject has maintained a mysterious silence—has devolved the responsibility of giving the tone to the English policy of retribution. At first, when the men were fierce and hot, the authorities were charged with being slack, over•mer ciful, forgetful of their countrymen's wrongs. Now that the hot fit is over—as men become indolent, secure, and critical—there is a tendency to maunder about innocent victims, and to blame the Delhi regime as having been too severe. We repeat, that it is our earnest belief that a statesmanlike course has been taken between the two ex tremes. The punishment of Delhi has not been bloody. Hit had been, we had c3mmitted a national sin ; it has been awfully severe : if it had not been, we had been guilty of a national suicide. Catarina in Venice " is the first part of a nicely written story; and " The Millstream" is a very pretty copy of verses. Of the Dublin, we have a very uneven number; some of the articles possessing unusually high merit, and others falling proportionately below the average. Among the former we may class "Olympia Morata," " The Lady Agnes," a very beautiful and spirited translation from the German, and "The Identifica tion," an Irish murder story. Among the latter, the paper on Sir E. B. Lytton and "The True Story of a Cock and a Bull." The first mentioned, though unavoidably very interesting, is florid and feeble, and after all amounts to little more than a catalogue such as Mr. George Robins might have given us. It professes to deal with his genius and his works, and yet gives nothing more than their titles, with the dates of publication. To announce as a great fact in the life of such a man that, when a member of the Cambridge Union, " lie was unanimously chosen by that society as its president," inevitably reminds us of Mr. Thackeray's University snob. The following fact however, if true, is curious ; but we should greatly like to know the authority on which it rests : Conspicuous among the more remarkable speeches de. livered about this time by the young President of the Union was one arising out of a discussion upon the comparative merits of English and American institutions—a logical, and yet impassioned harangue in vindication of monarchy and aristocracy. It attracted considerable notice, even beyond the precincts of the University, and obtained for the stripling orator the tempting offer (am soon as he should have attained his majority) of a seat in Parliament —an offer at once declined, however, by him from a clot. racteristic unwillingness to enter, first of all, as a were nominee within the walls of the Imperial Legislature. The cock-and .bull story is not a very wise production, nor is the title altogether new. It relates, of course, to the recent alarm about France, pooh•poohs all such apprehensions, goes in strongly for the French alliance, and derides " the balance of power." We would not indeed deny there is an element of truth running through this writer's theory ; but we cannot believe that the day is even dawning when statesmen will be able to discard the political maxims which have hitherto regulated their conduct. We have this month a capital number of Bentley. The political articles are wholesome ; the tales satis factory ; and the other papers, one on the Mediterra nean, the other on Eugene Sue, are much above the average. The latter especially seems to us the model of a brief memoir. In the New Monthly the author of " Ashley ' pursues her craft with success. " The Stranger " lets u' into the secret of the married happiness that waited on Lord Hartledon and Lady Maude, as well as an intimation of some criminal mystery over hanging the former. Of the remaining papers we do not see any that call for special notice. Tait this month is rather commonplace. " Woman and Womankind," however, is nicely writtea ; and " The Head of the Firm " is a tolerably interesting story. The Irish Metropolitan maintains itself at much about the same pitch as hitherto. But it wants variety—six out of the eleven articles in the present number being stories. The author of " Whitefriars" does not shine in " The Irish Brigadesman." The English Woman's Journal continues to be ably conducted. The present number contains an in• teresting article on Harriet Hosmer, an American young lady who is achieving great success at Rome, as a sculptor. Our two serials, The Gordian Knot, and Daven- port Dunn, improve in every number. From the former we give the following excellent passage : Philip was engaged, or Philip was out of town, or Philip somehow was out of the way when he should have been at his wife's side; and he did not much improve matters by intimating, in answer to her gentle remarks—they nem came to remonstrances—that she could always do exactly as she liked, and might therefore be god enough to allow him similar liberty. Poor cuild! she did not want to do exactly as she liked; she wanted Philip to prescribe her daily occupations, and to stand as closely by her as he could, to see that she followed out his wishes, and reward her with his affection for so doing. He had no idea of any such employment—infatt, he looked upon matrimony as an honourable sinecure, a view not permitted of gods or men. Margaret gradually grew very unhappy. Unhappy, certainly. And yet if she had complained— had brought her state before any private tribunal of people of the world ( I think she would have died first), there would have been a marvellously strong case for her husband, and a poorish one for herself. I think I hear a shrewd good•natured worldly friend summing up the evidence for her benefit. " Really, my dear Mrs. Arundel, the court can't help thinking that you have been very advised to make a stir in this matter. Do look into your history. There were you, a pretty country girl, without fortune or connection, married by one of the pleasantest and beet fellows about town, and a member of a capital family into the bargain. They treated you with all affection ; the father furnished a nice house for you, you have a good allowance, a charming baby, and really every thing that a woman can want in the world. And though a black cloud threatened you—and there really would have been an excuse for black looks—everybody has made light of it, and you are treated with the utmost consideration. And just because your handsome young husband, who has so many social qualities that people court him, likes occa sionally to stay out a little late, and to have a little pleasure in which you could not as a mother take your share, and because he does not go into lovers' transports when you meet ( you admit that he is a perfect gentleman), you come forward and say you are unhappy. Upon the court's word, Mrs. Arundel, you area little unreasonable. The court can tell you that hundreds of girls would only be too happy to be unhappy on such terms. We fear, ma'am, that your health is not very good, and i• acting on your spirits and temper, and the court strongly recommends you to try little sea air—Scarborough, now, is a very charming place, or Lowestoft ; —suppose you try six weeks of that sort of thing, and see whether it will not bring you to • better sense of your advantages. As a religious kind of woman, you must be aware that for what we have received the Lord is asked to make us truly thankful, and so forth ; and the court sincerely hopes that you habitually attend to yonr religious exercises. The court is very sorry, Mrs. Arundel, but we must really dismiss your petition, with costs." Id le. re al, fl or lie nt re n, e, LII it ie th of BR eh ;/. Ls- he lel r" Let ell er- Pre Lan nd ,ng Leh Bat 3" bly in• 71111 Pen. ,he ilip I at by WIC :tly low do her he and of ony oda d— pie ere her ar a the rdel, r ill- rour Lout test ital all you ery- ugh have ight tton. has cca• sure and you OMB rord, can r 10 your snit nr lace, sort ester man, the and