The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-30 00:00:00

fittraturt. The Quarterly Review. London : Murray. (Second Notice.) THIS number of the Quarterly Review is so un usually suggestive, both in the subjects of which it treats and in the mode in which it handles them, that it has drawn us into longer and more numerous disquisitions than we should usually anticipate being called upon to devote to serial literature. Of the many able Essays with which Mr. Murray has supplied his readers in the autumn quarter, not the least remarkable and inte resting, especially at the present juncture, is that upon the life and career of that great Genius in war, the late Sir Charles Napier. It is not often that the public have had placed in their bands such ample means of mastering the character of a very sin gular man as they have had in the case of Sir Charles Napier. Not even in the instance of Benvenuto Cellini, nor of Pepys, nor of Babb Dodington, have we had handed down to us such an honest, complete, and detailed record of the feelings, impulses, and flying thoughts which eventuate in opinion and lead to action, as in those four volumes of the diary of Sir Charles Napier, the title of which heads the sixth article of the October number of the Quarterly. We know now what injustice Sir Charles Napier did himself, and what injustice he induced too many of his countrymen to do him too, by the manner in which he wore his heart upon his sleeve, by the unreserve with which he allowed every im pulse to explode, giving to his life and to his opi nions an appearance of violent vacillation of which they were not really guilty. We know that with the most ardent temperament and the most fiery conduct in war, he possessed the most tender and the most gentle heart, the most genuine and un strained quality of mercy, and the highest kind of personal disinterestedness. We know that the man who was repeatedly accused of greediness for money landed in India in his fifty-ninth year, after a long career of hardship and suffering, with two pounds in his pocket and a family to provide for, of whom he ever thought far more than of himself. There is nothing, perhaps, more inte resting in the life, both of this remarkable man and in that of Lord Collingwood—another noble Englishman who denied himself and his most earnest personal aspirations for England's sake— than their strong family affection and unceasing yearnings, amidst all their greatness and Glory, for the gentle joys of domestic intercourse. They were both great instances of that abnegation of self which De Vigny has so admirably painted in his " Servitude et Grandeur Militaire." We have not, however, space in our narrow limits to do justice to the peculiarities of the Conqueror and Administrator of Scinde, and we find the reviewer in the Quarterly so entirely in accord with ourselves, that we prefer giving his admi rable summary of Sir Charles Napier's character to going more fully into a dissection of it our selves : Great in strategy, chivalrous in courage, careful of the soldier's life, and prodigal of his own, inflexible in physical endurance, untiring in industry, sagacious in government, beneficent in his aim, stern in his integrity, and strong in his affections, he presents a combination of which there are few such examples in the history of the world. The observation of Lord Halifax that a man has rarely a good quality but he possesses too much of it, may now and then have been true of him, and, as he says of himself, he may have been at times "too arbitrary and violent." With a soul of fire, his warmth may occasionally have carried him too far; with an iron will, he may not always have been as supple as policy required; but without that fiery soul and iron will he would not have been the conqueror and civilizer of Scinde ; be would not have defeated the wild Beloech in war or tamed him in peace. His very failings were of the heroic kind ; the failings of a mind impatient of injustice, fancied or real—of opposition to designs for the benefit of mankind—of individual selfishness preferring personal interest to the public weal. To the dead fame is not even that empty sound which it is proverbially called. But though it can never more affect the departed, it is of the utmost importance to the living that deeds like those of Sir Charles Napier should be kept blazoned before the world, that future soldiers who have not been gifted with his genius may yet learn from his example to what propor tions a hero can attain, and that no difficulty is too arduous, 120 danger too appalling, no toil too excessive, no sacrifices to o costly, wher e h uman i ty i s to b e benefited and the nation b e served. We w ill only add to this brilliant description the single remark that Sir Charles's inconsistency was more app arent t h an real, and that his reputation for it Was create d /l et mgch by ft real incon- THE PRESS, OCTOBER 30, 1858 sistency of action as by his showing his thoughts, and exhibiting to every eye the process by which he arrived at a conclusion—a process misappre hended by those to whom it was exposed. Sir Charles Napier spoke impulsively and wrote im pulsively, unfortunately for his personal peace and personal advancement, but, fortunately for his country, he seldom acted without profound and careful though rapid thought. It is but natural that the reviewer should have directed his attention, especially at the pre sent moment, to that greater theatre of India upon which Sir Charles Napier developed in more extensive action the lessons and thoughts which he had stored up, during a long and event ful career, in a mind of unusual perceptive power and of remarkable keenness of observation ; but the reader will find much, we might almost say as much, that is worthy of attention in those portions of the life which relate to Sir Charles's government of the Northern District of England at the time of the Chartist agitation, and to his administration in Cephalonia. His conduct of his position in those places, no less than in India, affords most important lessons, which the states man and the soldier alike may find their advan tage in studying. They will observe that great and instinctive as was his genius, Sir Charles Napier never presumed upon it, and never neg lected the slightest opportunity of cultivating and training it by constant study and never , ending acquisitions of fresh knowledge He read , military history indefatigably, and never passed over battle-ground without arraying in his mind armies upon it, and seeking a perfect compre hension of the elements which it contained of victory or defeat. He had, in short, as Have lock appears to have done after him, so com pletely mastered in theory the science of war, and so constantly in imagination applied it, that when the moment of action came he never hesitated for an instant, but, confident in his knowledge and resources, manoeuvred with that extraordinary rapidity which seemed to astonish his enemy into defeat. Out of abundance of knowledge pro ceeded what seemed to be intuition. We trust, too, that the Government at home, in applying themselves to the task of reorganizing the Civil and Military Administration of India, will not lose sight of the suggestions which are placed within their reach by the Soldier who fought the battles of Meeanee and Dubba, de stroyed Emaum Ghur and Trukkee, and con ducted the famous campaign against the robber tribes of the Hills, and by the Conqueror who so ruled Scinde that the Beloch Sirdars, on his retirement from the Government, presented him with the most glorious testimonial that a warrior and a conqueror can receive, the SWORD OF PEACE. That Sir Charles Napier should have received during his life a smaller meed of reward than Lords Hardinge, Kean, and Gough, men immeasurably his inferiors, must ever be a matter of regret to his country—a regret tempered only by the reflection that it was less owing to want of gratitude on the part of his compatriots than to the difficulties in which he involved official men by his personal impracticability and explosive ness of feeling. We pass now from the history of the great Soldier to the volume recently published by Cardinal Wise man, 'entitled " Recollections of the Last Four Popes, and of Rome in their Times." This volume has furnished, we can hardly say the material', but at any rate the occasion, for an article of great interest on the history of the Papacy during the Pontificates of Pius VII. and Leo XII., and, although necessarily in a condensed form, con veys more real information than the Cardinal's bulky volume on the former portion of that re markable period comprised between the re " storation of the Papacy from its lowest point " of depression" and " its present state of full " blown pride and almost mediaeval pretension." Agreeing with the reviewer as to the small value, in an historical point of view, of Dr. Wiseman's " Recollections," we prefer following the narra tive of the Quarterly in the few observations we can, within our limits, afford to bestow on a topic the importance of which has scarcely as yet received from political writers the attention it deserves. Passing by the personal incidents of the earlier life of Bernal:tit Luigi Chiaratnonti, from his en trance into a Benedicaie monastery at the age of eighteen to the assembling of the dispersed carthuals in Venice after the death in captivity 1059 of Pope Pius VI., we come at once to the pro ceedings of the conclave whose protracted in trigues and negotiations resulted in the election of the Cardinal Bishop of Imola to the "See of St. Peter" The conclave sat for 104 days. Cardinal Breech i nephew of the late Pope, had 22 votes at his disposal Antonelli headed an opposite faction (the word in this sense is strictly technical), with the command of 13. As a majority of two-thirds is necessary to secure the election, it was manifest that neither party could carry their candi date. But both, each day at the morning and the evening scratiny, with unbending obstinacy, recorded their votes, the former for the Cardinal Bellinsomi, the latter fur Mattel. It was obvious that without sotne compromise any election was impassible. This conclave brings on the stage for the first time a personage more important than the Pope it met to elect. Hercules Consalvi, born of a gentleman's family in the ancient but obscure village of Toacanella, had entered on the ecclesiastical career, because in the Roman States it is the only road which leads to office, and had hitherto followed it with success. Dexterously seizing the occasion, he persuaded old Monsignor Negroni to make way for him as secretary of the conclave; and here his talents found their full exercise. The secretary is usually the mediator and the channel of communication between the rival parties, he holds the thread of many an intrigue, and is often the animating sp'rit of the whole assembly. It would be tedious to relate the various efforts made by the two parties to effect a compromise. Consalvi, by patiently watching his time till the patience of the combatants was exhausted, by adroit insinuations eliminating, one after another, all on whom he did not wish the choice of the electors to fall, succeeded in persuading each of the con tending factions that the only independent Cardinal not fettered or disqualified by his previous conduct fur the arduous task of vindicating the rights of the Holy See, was Chiaramonti. On the 14th of March the Cardinal Bishop of Imola was proclaimed Pope, and in compliment to his predecessor took the name of Pins VII. The service which Consalvi had rendered to the new Pope in procuring his election was acknow ledged by his elevation to the important post of Cardinal Secretary of State ; and, if we except the period of deep humiliation of the Papacy, during which Consalvi was, at the instance of the French Dictator, kept at a distance from public affairs, the Pontificate which bears the name of Pius VII. was, substantially, that of his highly-gifted Minister, to whose skilful manage ment the Papacy was indebted for its speedy recovery from the terrible abasement which it had undergone. In that abasement Cardinal Consalvi had, personally, had no share—a circum stance which was doubtless greatly in his favour when the time arrived for ignoring the transient weakness and reviving the ancient pretensions of the " Supreme See of Christendom." That he was in other respects eminently qualified for the delicate errand on which he was despatched, as the representative of the Papacy, first to the meeting of the Allied Sovereigns in London, and afterwards to the Congress of Statesmen at Vienna, is abundantly clear front the history of the trans actions by which the political constitution of Europe was:remodelled. Inferior in diplomatic adroitness to none of the plenipotentiaries who met for that purpose in the Austrian capital, he succeeded, by the insinuating amenity of his de portment, in producing upon the public opinion of Europe the impression that its past humilia tion had proved a salutary lesson to the Papacy, and had opened the way for its admission into the European family of States, without any danger of its recurring to its former arrogant pretensions, in defiance of every principle of in ternational law. It was to this charitable belief that Cardinal Consalvi himself owed the cour teous reception which he met at the hands, not only of the Regent and his Ministers, but of the people of England. It was not that England had become less Protestant, but that the Papacy, as represented by Cardinal Consalvi, was thought to have become less Popish. To attribute to this cause the change which rendered the admission of a " Prince of the Holy Roman Church " on the soil and at the Court of England possible, did not suggest itself to the mind of the bio grapher of " The Four Last Popes," who is pro perly rebuked by the reviewer for the tone in which he adverts to this momentary and appa rent "reconciliation" of England and Rome:— On this occasion Cardinal Wiseman taunts "the haughty and selfish George of England with breaking through all the bonds of prmmunire and penal statutes, and the vile etiquette. of three hundred years," by his reception of a Papal envoy. That ho could break through them with safety, and even applause, is an answer in fall to the sneers at his Protestant countrymen with which the Cardinal's book is filled. The English are the last people to be enslaved by etiquettes ; sad as the Cardinal seems to have read no History of England but lir. Lin gard's, he must permit us to offer a few words in explana tion of the statutes which he so stiguletizes. They wcre 1