The Press. — London, England, 1853-07-16 00:00:00

258 than by the calm reflections of the well-regu lated mind of an Alice Clinton. Exciting and interesting situations of a passion-tossed heroine are more consonant to their taste than the ordinary trials and vicissitudes that befal Lilian. But the worldly Mrs. Clinton is well reflected in the character of her daughter, the much admired and flattered Lilian, while the similes of di&rence are well marked, and become more evident when the chastisements that overtake the spoiled child of society bring them into strong relief. There is something to us irresistibly touching in the pure and unselfish mind of Alice : the man seems to us rather deserving of pity who cannot find deep 'plea sure in contemplating her character, soft and feminine, while it never loses an exalted per severance in its estimate and its practice of virtue and self-denial. Wilfred is an unaffected portraiture of an exemplary and conscientious clergyman, meek, self-controlling, and zealous in what ho considers the duties of his calling. The subordinate characters aro well described and consistently maintained, though it must be acknowledged that there are evident marks of want of practice in the writer ; but this is more than redeemed by many passages of great beauty, nay, of a very high order of merit. We must add that the pure and elevated Chris tianity, combined with a refined love for all that is good and beautiful, are quite sufficient to place this book very high in the estimation of the cultivated reader. As a specimen of its gentle and graceful workmanship we extract the following : Alice repined at the fate which had made her fatherless, and struggled hard not to resign herself, but to conceal her slifferings. Her soul was darkened for a time, and her faith grew weak. Let no one judge her harshly, or say that her sin was heavy. She had grown up in happiness, in the conae' %- Hens of a father's protecting love and sympathy. She haul looked up to Heaven in joy and thankfulness, and felt, as in a dream, that she had a Father there whom she loved and trusted. lint now the whole current of her lifit was changed—its one great blessing was removed. The sun had fallen front her firmament—her joy was at an end, and her thankfulness failed with it. Her dreamy faith could not support her now—her beautiful imaginings had va. Waked before the reality of her grief. Earth seemed a body, barren waste ; Heaven an unreal, Omni-land, bright goritaps, but distant, iutatrgible, and comfortless. lier *kit was crushed, and made no effort to arise. A frost had fallen on the spring-time of her heart, and its buds had risked. She could not feel that it had but retarded whose native soil wes that stricken heart. 'OM itsitmared silently anti bitterly at first, if not without Mos, at lost without consolation. Ilut,even to her, time knight a diminution of suffering : and when the trees were green, and the air fragrant with the breath of early summer—when the sunset light fell with golden radiance on the smooth turf aunt smoother stream, and the rejoicing dowers came thronging up front the dark earth—then, in the midst of Alice's deep grief, a softening inthienee was acknowledged, and the spirit of the season infused itself into her heart. She was not happy—not even peaceful : there were days when she almost munutired at the beauty and gladness of surrounding things, so unsuited to the darkness within her; but these days were few, and us the ear advanced she felt more aid mon• calmed by the sweet influences of nature. She was formed to feel those in- Mummers, to listen reverently to the teachings of outward things—to look on the hook of Nature as tiod's unwritten word ; and if to her its characters were dim, and she could not re ad their meaning, it was from their own excessive radiance &Ming her untaught vision. Summer came, and all was bright and beautiful without, and, to a casual observer, twareely less so within t el. sent There was no ehange, satyr that one was eh sent ; and the sable garb of those who reinained behind was all that revealed that that one would never return. Ws vacant chair was not to be seen—his picture was re moved front the wall—his boat no longer lay inoored be sitit• the chesmit-tree—even his dog was gone—it had be come the companion of Wilfred : all these mute memorials had ditiappeared— o ' They were too painful," Mrs. Clinton said—and not one was spared. Why cannot we cherish the memory of the loved and lost, when time has healed the sting of parting, without injury to oar happiness" Why must we east away every thing that recals the departed one, or else gvieve when the sight of each treasured relic ltrings back the thought of him whom we shall shortly fidlow ? Surely because our spirit's sight is more dint, our spirit's love more cold than even this tenement of clay need make them—because we do not give more than mere intellectual assent to those are tides of our ( treed which tell 1114 Of the communion of saints, the restuvection of the body, and the life ever lasting. Perms. III• Alexander Smith. London Rogue. THE wide-spread race of the Smiths have hitherto signally failed in tho cultivation Of the divine art of Poesy, though they, could besot amongst their tribe of the heroism of THE PRESS. Acre, the wit of Peter Plymley, and the Odle. sophy of " The Wealth of Nations." As if to show that their invocations of the muse were fruitless, it has been only with "Rdeeted Ad dresses" that their patronymic has been joined. They put in an almost urgent claim for the right to count the stirring ballads of the Honour able George Percy Smythe its trophies of their talents, but the Court of Heraldry rejected their suit, and ruled that there was as much difference between Mr. Anybody Smith and a Percy Smythe as between a horse-chesnut and a Chesnut horse. All difficulties the Smiths could undertake, but to scale the time-how aired mount frequented by those prodigies of the fair sex—those nine old maids whom nice young men by the Isis and the Cam are per petually wooing. An " Albert" appeared at last, but he could only ascend Mont Blame, and his " Wassail Bowl" had not even one drop of Hippocrene. At length an " Alexander" has come, who will be called " great" at least amongst the Smiths. His achievement, how ever, in " the ascent of Mount Parnassus" loses its brilliancy in its being simultaneously per formed by the particularly comical Mr. buck stone. We shall not follow out the suggested comparison, though, when a man assures us with such intensity as our young poet that ho has taken us up to the highest peak of Par nassus, we feel a strong disposition to offer our aid in taking him down! Our readers must not Maine us on this occasion for being too figurative, as we have been just in com pany and caught the disorder, which the fresh air of criticism will we hope remove. We have no desire to be harsh in criti cising Mr. Smith's pretensions to inspirittion. We cordially agree with Professor Aytoun "that young poets should be treated kindly." 4: We conceive that we say a great deal for Mr Alexander Smith when we acknowledge that he is a poet. His beauties must be obvious to any one with an ear for cadence, or a taste for a lavishly imagerial style; and his faults must be scarcely less patent to those who revolt from puerile excess of ornament and extravagance of conception. His master merit is the singular melody of his sweetly-tuned verse, and his greatest misfortune that his muse has been " finished" at a cockney boarding-school. A single line of his own describes his style : " Up bubbling 'mid a world of greenery," which might be put on his titlepage. Of greenery,"indeed, there are enough of ver dant passages in the volume to cause as much rapture to Mr. Leigh Hunt us all the stalls in Covent-garden. Surely that prince of the cockneys might have poured forth the follow ing ecstasy : Why, even 1, Sitting in this bare chamber with my thoughts, Am richer than ye all. despite your bales, Your streets or WRIVIIIIIIPA'3, your mighty mills, Each booming like a wool(' faint heard in spare. Your ships; unwilling fires, that day and night Writhe in your serviee seven years, then die Witl 1 one taste of pram. Ito ye believe A simple primrose on a grassy bank Eorthpeeping to the sun, a wild bird's nest, The great orb dying in a ring of clouds, like hoary Jacob 'ming his waiting SOUS: The rising moon, and the young stars of I kxl, An• things to love? With theme my soul is brimmed; With a diviner and serener joy Than all thy heaven of moneybags can bring Thy dry heart, Worldling But there are vastly better things in the volume, though its beauties and its faults are nearly equally divided. As a specimen of the author's mode of utterance, we will take it part of the rhapsody which he puts into the mouth of a young poet : As a wild maiden, with loveslrinking eyes. Sees ill sweet dreams a beaming Youth of Glory, And wakes to weep, and ever atter sighs For that bright vision till her hair is hoary ; Ey'll so, alas ! is my life's-passion story. For Poesy my heart and pulses beat, For Poesy my blood nuis red mid fleet. As Moses serpent the Egyptians' swallowed. One passion eats Ih*. rest. lily stud is follow'd By strong ambition to outt.oll a lay, Whose melody will haunt the world for aye. Charming it onward on its golden way. [Tears the parer and paces the runes with .tio4nlerell steps. Oh, that my heart wenk quiet as a grave Asleep in moonlight ! For, as a torrid sunset. boils with gold Up to the zenith, tierce within my soul A passion bunts front basement to the cope. • ruLtti, wde (p. us). SATURDAY, Poesy ! Poesy ! I'd give to thee, As passionately; my rich•laden years, My - bubble pleasures. and my awrial joys. As He►o gave her trembling sighs to tiud Delicious death on wet Leander's lip. • s s r 'Tis not for me, ye Heavens ; not for me 'l'o fling a Poem, like a comet, out, Faysplendouring the sleepy realms of night. cannot give men glimpses so divine, As when, upon a reeking night, the wind Draws the lode curtains of the vapoury clouds, And shows those wonderful, mysterious voids, Thmbbing with stars like pulses. The ,judicious reader will see at a glance that tins style of poetry is fairly obnoxious to the criticism which may be applied to thy followers of Keats and Tennyson. Musical in its utterance, maudlin in its sentiment, graceful in phrase but confused in its imagery, occasionally hyper-sesthetic and elaborately obscure, it delights one faculty in disgusting another. There is an old college story that, when the Tennyson brothers were in early days in voking the muse together, Mr. Charles Tenny son burst forth with the exclamation, " Alfred r I do not wish to be in your way, so I'll resign my inspiration to yore " Lifu Drama," by Alexander Smith, is so like tht production of a Tennyson in his teens as almost to suggest that the name is a pseudo nyme, and that the resigning brother has re claimed the munificent gift of his " inspira tion," and bestowed it thus unfiltered upon flit. uninquiring Letter to John Bright, Esq., M.P., relative to the . recent Debates in Parliament on the hulk Question. By 'John Clark Marshman. Lou' don : Allen and Co. 'lnc editor of the Friend of India is entitled to be heard on an Indian question ; and the more , so as he fairly represents what may be called the Liberal-Conservative party of Anglo-Asiatic • politics. A general supporter of Government.- in Calcutta, but an hottest advocate of bit-by bit reforms, he seems to fear more from tho exaggeration of ardent innovators than front the habitual apathy of the English public. Ho objects to delay on the old ground of " un setling men's minds," " weakening authority, and encouraging " excitement" among tho native population—arguments long since dis posed of, and which we are sorry to see a really well-informed writer condescending to use. He does not dispute the miserable condition of the Bengal ryots, for which, indeed, his own. authority lots been quoted, but exonerates liovernment from blame, laying all the fault. on the zemindar, or landlord, whose powers under the Cornwallis settlement are practically unlimited. But this attempt to shift the reti ponsibility will not do. Who gave the zemindar these powers ? And if abused, why are they not modified or withdrawn ? A despotic bureatt• erne' lots faults enough to answer for but among its few merits is that of being ablo effectually to cheek the tyranny of one class over another. If it fails in doing that, its sole claim to be tolerated is done away. 1)r. Marshman expatiates on the magnificence of certain public works recently undertaken, especially in the Punjab ; conveniently for getting to apply the only fair test by which the exertions of the Company in this depart ment can be judged—the proportion of their expenditure to the revenues they receive. This is, we believe, about one and a half per cent.. while not one-punter per cent. is ex pended on education. He defends the salt tax, not wholly without reason, on the ground of necessity ; and excuses the anarchical stato of Bengal (where gang robberies and faction fights are of daily occurrence) by alleging tho want. of a resident governor, distinct from the governor-general, whose functions call him elsewhere. For the judicial administration ho has not much to say—as witness the follow ing:— That the administration of civil justice in India is la mentably defective will be readily admitted by every ono who is acquainted with the state of the laws and the courts. In the older province% the system of legal pro cedure was borrowed from the English comas at a time when English law was considered the perfection of reason, iuul the Indian c oats unhappily retain too much of the system after public confidence in it has been shaken, if not destmyed, in England. The legal procedure in the older provinces is technical, tedious, and complicated. and atierds the largest scope fur the exercise of that chicanery 1 is