The Press. — London, England, 1854-10-21 00:00:00

100'2 M. Bunsen's honourable toils must be re spected by every Egyptologer, even when his opinions cannot be accepted. They are not so readable as the brilliant exercitations of the Vicomte Bongo (in the " Annales de Philoso phic Chretienne," not sufficiently known in this country, and deserving a translation), but their research is deep, their animating senti ment inspired with a noble love of the lofty mission of letters, and a generous faith in the sublime and enduring interests of humanity. We cannot close these remarks without bringing under the notice of our readers the following account of the splendid monumental work of the Prussian expedition to Egypt The chevalier says We may venture to say on the whole that it is a work second to none yet published upon archceology and ethnology. We will, therefore, first offer some remarks on the lithographic tables or the monuments, and then on the text by which they are illustrated. They will consist of six parts, in imperial folio, and con tain more than 800 lithographed plates, many of them coloured, in ten volumes. The first part is geographical, topographical, and archi• tectural ; arranged from north to south, of course in strictly topographical order. Theirobject is to give a general view of the monuments, according to their geographical position. The first six plates accordingly contain maps of Egypt, Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai, referring throughout to the hieroglyphical names and drawings. This part occupies the first two volumes, and contains about 140 pages. More than half of it appeared in 1852 ; but the preparation of some of the geographical and topographical maps required more time than the subsequent parts. The publication of the six maps has been deferred on account of some points which require new astronomical determina tions. They and the text of the whole first part will follow in the course of the year. • The second, third, and fourth parts give the historical monuments in chronological order. The second contains the monuments of the old empire, in two volumes, already published, as vol. iii. (plates 1-81, with a duplicate of plate 04), and vol. iv. (plates 82-153). The third part, which contains the monuments of the new empire, in three volumes (v., vi., vii.), goes down to Ramses the Second. It will conclude with Alexander. The fourth part will re present the monuments of the Ptolemies and Roman emperors vol. viii. ). The fifth part is to contain the Ethiopian monuments (from Sabako downwards), and forms the ninth volume. The sixth part (vol. x.) will contain the inscriptions, with the exception, of course, of the hieroglyphical inscriptions, because these are given in the preceding volumes with the monuments to which they belong. The others, here published complete, are the Hieratic, Phoenician, and Sinaic, and lastly the Greek and Roman inscriptions. These ten volumes of monuments, with the text in addi tion, are published at the mere cost price, which is an un• paralleled low one. The work was undertaken by the command of the King of Prussia, and the expenses pro vided for by a grant made for that purpose. When completed this great work of the Prussian expedition will be sought for with avidity, not merely by Egyptologers, but by that class of English book-buyers who can afford to gratify a love of the sumptuous in books. Lights and Shadows of Australian Life. By Mrs. Clacy. London : Hurst and Blackett. WE must confess that we are disappointed in these volumes. After the lively and amusing " Visit to the Gold Fields " we expected some thing better from the pen of Mrs. Clacy than a poor collection of love tales, and bygone legends of bushrangers and aborigines. Aus tralia is one of the most ill -used countries (by authors) in the world. Every one who writes a hook upon this unfortunate colony thinks it necessary either to invest the country with attributes which it does not possess, or to draw pictures of a state of society which does not exist. If such authors would merely favour the world with the literal facts of their experience, their publications would be of much more value, and would enable us to get a much clearer idea of the country and its social economy than any such trifling books as these " Lights and Shadows "—books which, in combining so much fiction with so little fact, give about as correct an idea of Australian life as Pepys' " Diary" would give us of a London season in the present day. Mrs. Clacy's book consists of a series of love stories, murders and attacks by bushrangers and blacks, spearings and burnings, and all sorts of horrors that were in vogue many years ago, but which by no means belong to the existing state of order and police. No such events as the attack by bushrangers on Mr. Mortitner's station in the populous dis trict of Illawarra, near Sydney (vol. i., p. THE PRESS. 110), and that of the blacks upon Mrs. Allingford's station (vol. ii., p. 10), have occurred in New South Wales for many years; and it is no excuse to say that the stories are dated a dozen years ago, because we are nevertheless led to infer from the pre face that such occurrences are common, and that their relation is intended to give us " a " few useful hints as well as amusement." And on one important though minor point we must differ from Mrs. Clacy. Few, if any, of the squatters who own out-stations and reside on them are married men; on tha contrary, they are mostly young men, but lately arrived in the colony, and just come into the district, or pushing out beyond the boun daries with their sheep or cattle to form new stations, and make a little money before they take unto themselves a wife, so that these harrowing pictures of dying husbands, burn ing wives, and massacred children, are, in the main point, incorrect. The book, too, is carelessly written. At every description of colonial scenery " a winding stream," or " rippling creek," figures conspi cuously. Now, any one who knows Australia is aware that winding streams and rippling creeks do not so generally exist throughout the coun try; that the whole water supply of square miles of land is but too frequently confined to a single water-hole, which a ten weeks' drought will evaporate ; that many of the large rivers which appear on the maps, marked by broad lines, are mere chains of water-holes. In winter, during the heavy rains, when swelled with the drainage of the ranges, these rivers may flow continuously here and there, but in general they are dry for miles, with scarce water enough in any one part for half a score of cattle. If this is the case with some of the main drains of the country, it is not likely that we should often find " winding streams," with their concomitant " green meadows," as a corn mon feature in a country so sadly deficient of water and verdure as Australia. In another page we find the gum-trees described as rising to the majestic height of two or three hundred feet, as if a hundred feet or so was a trifle in the height of an Australian gum-tree, which, by the way, we may be allowed to observe, are lofty, compared to English trees, but seldom or ever reach beyond 120 to 150 feet in height. To excite wonder Mrs. Clacy relates that in Australia " eagles are white," that " the trees " keep their leaves on and shed their bark," that " the owl hoots in the daytime " and " the cuckoo sings of a night," that " the north " winds are hot ' and " the south winds are " cold," that "the flowers possess no perfume," and " the cherries grow their stone outside." Now, in remarking these generalisations and errors, we do not wish to impute more blame to Mrs. Clay than to any other author who has written upon Australia. She has merely trodden in their steps and followed in their errors ; but nevertheless some of the assertions are gross errors, and all of them incorrect in a general sense. A white eagle in Australia is as great a rarity as a white eagle in England. It is only a few of the eucalyptus that shed the outer bark. The owl is as rarely heard in the daytime as the cuckoo is at night. Some of the indigenous flowers scarcely possess a perfume, but all the imported varieties flourish as perfectly as thay do in Europe. The wild cherry, a mere in digenous berry, and no larger than a pea, has a small pip growing out of the top, similar to the " navel oranges" of Brazil; but it must not be believed that every species of cherry, when planted at the antipodes, grows with the stone outside ! And, indeed, " cherry " is quite a misnomer for this indige nous plant. And, lastly, why it should be a matter of wonder that the north winds are hot and south winds cold, considering the position of the South Pole, we are quite at a loss to de termine. In excuse it may be said that all these are but trifling errors ; but they are errors, and the sum of such errors is to create in the minds of readers a very fiLlse, and in some instances unfavourable, impression of the country and its productions. That Mrs. Clacy's sketches are lively, and will prove entertaining to young readers, we do not dispute; but they are assuredly not the true lights and shadows of Australian life. We should have thought that a lady SATURDAY, of Mrs. Claoy's colonial experience would. have found some more solid and instruc tive mutter for relation in the various phases of society, in the peculiarities and wants of the country, in the question of agri cultural versus pastoral interests, and in the real state of progress evinced by the colonies,—.., points upon which there is a strong and in- creasing interest in England, though but little accurate information. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. THE present number of the Quarterly Review has not a word to say on politics—a fact of some signifi cance, as showing the disol•ganised state of the political world. We doubt the prudence of this careful neutrality on the pact of what was once a great exponent of Conservative principle. The policy and conduct of the Government under which we live must, we humbly opine, be deemed of more importance by the readers of this review than Silu rian rocks or the career of Samuel Foote. We much question whether the ably-compiled papers on litera ture and science for which the review has become famous will compensate for the absence of those vigcrous views on political topics which the Quarterly was in the habit of putting forth. Were we quite indifferent to politics, or cared for them only as a subject of abstract speculation, we should yet regret the retirement of the Quarterly from the arena in which it once contended so fearlessly and well, as we should regret the retirement from Westminster-hall ofd. Brougham or a Follett. The contents-table of this number presents eight articles. "The London Commissariat," in unravelling the complicated means by which are daily fed the two and a half millions of human beings crowded into this metropolis, explains from whence all the innumerable commodities are obtained, and the various ways by which " they are " distributed from house to house." The writer traces the various edibles to their source—" the fish " to its sea, the beast to its pasture, the wild animal " to its lair, the game to its cover, and the fruit to its " orchard"—and points out how they are severally " netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed " to their ultimate destination, the great red lane of " London." The result is, a paper written in so plea sant a style as to even make statistics attractive and parliamentary returns an amusing study. "The Present State of Architecture," in reviewing several architectural periodicals, treats its subject fully and, on the whole, fairly, although perhaps with too great a regard for architectural rules, as far as our public buildings are concerned, and too little remembrance of climatic influence. In this country of colds and east winds we cannot afford to exchange "solid walls" for " square pillars, with low, open-worked " metal gates between them," such as the writer recommends, to impart spirit and variety—applica ble, for instance, to the monotonous facade of the British Museum. But, if such alterations were made in that building, who, except on a warm summer day, could stop in that hall, which is now so crowded with attendants and visitors ? No doubt the altera tion would materially improve the entrance, and be strictly according to the rules of art, but in this country we must sacrifice some of the minor beauties of a building to absolute utility. A review of Sir Roderick Murchison's " Siluria " treats the subject in a pleasant, conversational style , a nd popularly interprets that chaos of geological technicality which is to be found in all abstruse geological works. Speaking of the cambro-silurian controversy which is at present raging between Sir Roderick and Pro fessor Sedgwick, the writer remarks that after all the facts which geologists propose as a foundation of a true classification of geological epochs are merely local, in a greater or less degree according to cir cumstances, and, therefore, in their essence limited and topographical, and, consequently, until we discover great laws regulating the succession of life appearances in time, provisional and empirical. In the succeeding articles upon Goldsmith and Foote we have the lives of these tw o o pp osite humorists graphically sketched. The character of Goldsmith has been so frequently elucidated that the theme is in some danger of being thought com monplace. But with Samuel Foote it is different: his jokes have survived, but the joker is almost for gotten ; and yet Foote was something more than a mere wit, for his present reviewer tells us he strove in his comedies and farces to instruct, as well as re prove his audience, by his keen sati re, his infinite wit, and his incomparable delineation of the charac teristic vices and follies of the day : My scenes (said he) have been collected from general nature, and are applicable to none but those who, through consc i ou sness, are co mpelled to a self-application. 10 that mark, if Comedy directs not her aim, her arrows are . shot in the air; for by what touches no man, no man will be amended. The reviewer hereupon remarks : But this plea is not admitted. Whenever he is no : mentioned it is u a satirist of peculiarities , no t as an 1 ~~