The Press. — London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 21, 1858. wbi c h they had brought with them , wrapt in a plaid The rain bad ceased. The broad breast of T weed " grit " with those floods, and overflowing the pebbles for a few yards before they reached the real margin of the stream, flowed rapidly and strongly, with a dark, swift current, marked w ith foam, which it required no small effort to strike s teadily across. T he dark trees, glistening with big drops ,f niiii—the unseen depths on either side, only percep. tible to their senses oy the cold full breath of wind which blew over them--the sound of water running tierce in an expanded tide ; and as they set out upon the river, the sur• rounding gleam of water shining under their torches, and the strong swell of downward motion, against which they bad to struggle, composed altogether a scene which no one there soon forgot. The boat bad to return a second time, to convey all its passengers; and then once more, with the solemn tramp of a procession, the little party went on in the darkness to the grave. Atal then the night calmed, and a wild, frightened moon looked out of the clouds into solemn Dryburgh, in the midst of her old monkish orchards. Through the great g as grown roofless nave, the white light fell in a sudden calm, pallid and silent as death itself, Set looking on like an amazed spectator of the scene. The open grave stood ready as it had been prepared this morning—a dark, yawning breach in the wet grass, its edge all defined and glistening in the moonlight. It was in one Ad the small side chapels, overgrown with grass and ivy, which are just distinguishable from the main mass of the) ruin ; here the torches blazed and the dark figures grouped' t o gether, and in a solemn and mysterious silence these , solitary remains of the old house of Uod looked on at thef funeral. The storm was over; the thunder-clouds rolled away to the north; the face of the heavens cleared ; the moon grew brighter. High against the sky stood out the Catherine window in its frame of ivy, the solitary shafts and walls from which the trees waved—and in a solemn gloom, broken by flashes of light which magnified the shadow, lay those morsels of the ancient building which still retained a cover. The wind rustled through the trees, shaking down great drops of moisture, which fell with a startling coldness upon the faces of the mourners, some of whom began to feel the thrill of superstitious awe. It was the only sound, save that of the subdued footsteps round the grave. and the last heavy, dreadful bustle of human exertion, letting down the silent inhabitant into his last resting-place, which sounded over the burial of Norlew. And now, at last, it was all over; the terrible excitement, the dismal, long, self-restraint, the unnatural force of human resentment and defiance which had mingled with the grief of these three lads. At last he was in his grave, solemnly and safely ; at last he was secure where no man could insult what remained of him, or profane his dwelling place. As the moon shone on the levelled soil, Cosmo cried aloud in a boyish egony of nature, and fell upon the wet glass, beside the grave. The cry rang through all the solemn echoes of the place. Some startled birds flew out of the ivied crevices, and made wild, bewildered circles of fright among the walls. A pang of sudden terror fell upon tte rustic attendants ; the torch-bearera let their lights fall, 11111 i the chief among them hurriedly entreated Huntley to linger no longer. "A's done l " said Willie Noble, lifting his bonnet reve lently from his head. " Farewell to a good master that I humbly hope's in heaven Lang afore now. We can do him oar further good, and the lads are timid of the place. Meister Huntley, may I give them the word to turn lame ?" The most brilliant scene in the book is at the end of the last volume, when the melodrama is cleared up. We should like to extract it, but space is wanted, and the effect of it could hardly be appreciated without a clear tinderstanding of the chain of incidents immediately preceding it. We have little doubt but that great numbers will read this novel with pleasure. Its critical defects we have been obliged to indicate, but there are capital passages in it, and some genuine expressions of sympathy with suffering that will not fail to influence many readers. The authoress nintes pathos and picturesque talent for descrip tion. Let her avoid melodramatic plots, and her constituency will for many years look for increased pleasure from the pen that wrote "Margaret Maitland." Sunday Evenings with Sophia. By Leonora G Bell. London : Griffith and Farran. The Principles of Steam. By the author of " Might not Right." With Illustrations by J. Gilbert. London : Griffith and Farran. .Paul Blake ; or, the Story of a Boy's Perils in the Islands of Corsica and Monte Christ°. By Alfred F.lwes. London : Griffith and Farren. ---- • —•••----- - ----- Light for th e P a th o f Lif e . — Designed by Samuel Stanesby. London : Griffith and Ferran. IT is impossible to conceive four more charming books for Christmas presents than the publications of Messrs. Grant and Farran, whose titles head this notice, which we regret that want of space compels us to make so short and so meagre. The first three ar e more expressly for children, but the " Light for the Path of Life,' consisting of quotations from the Holy Scrip arts, illuminated with infinite taste and brilliancy of colour, is fitting for all ages from etx to threescore years and ten. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. BOOKS. The headlong Career and Woeful Ending of Pr•eocion. Piggy. By the late Thomas Hood.—Grifilth and Ferran. A Ludy's Captivity among Chinese Pircars.—Ruud e d ge . De La Rue's Red Letter Diary and Improved Memorandum Book, 1859.—De La Rae and Co. Pleasure. A Poem. By Nicholas Mieliell.—Tepg and Co Memoirs De Impiratrice Catherine 11. Par A. Herren.— _ Triibner. The Young Middy. By F. C. Armstrong.—Marlborough and Co. Three Christmas Plays for Children. By Theresa Pulszks.— Griffith lied Ferran. The History of llerodolus. By George Rawlinson, M.A. Vol. M.—John Murray. Collection of Public Statutes. Edited by James Bigg.— Simpkin and Marshall. Vxtsital gtbitt. Kunst•werk der Zukunft. Von Richard Wagner. London : Schalt and Co. THE name of Richard Wagner, the German poet, philosopher, and musician, has now become so widely celebrated as to render it desirable ►hat his merits should be more deeply investigated than they have yet been by the critics of this country. So profound a thinker, one so variously and highly gifted, imagi• native, and, we are inclined to believe, thoroughly conscientious—who exercises so potent an influence upon public taste in the land of the Haydns, Mozarts, Beethovens, and Goethes, is at least entitled to respectful attention, even from those who entirely dissent from his doctrines ; and is most assuredly not to be put down with a joke, or annihilated with a sneer. As the fantastic projector of what has here been facetiously termed "Music of the Future," Herr Wagner is chiefly known to the British public. His theories, very imperfectly understood, have given rise to many jocular sallies from the light brigade of critical witlings, whilst all the heavy artillery of un productive orthodoxy, charged to the muzzle with precedents, authorities, and formularies, has been levelled at the bold, errati' German, as it ever has been and always will be against all who dare to think for themselves and are burdened by fate with that dangerous gift, an original and leading mind. It is worthy of remark, however, that Herr Wagner never made use of the much xidiculed expression "Music of the Future " at all, and, what is more, never wrote anything or projected anything specially and exclu• sively relative to one particular art. On the contrary, the whole object of his ambition, the one purpose of his artistic existence, is the reunion of all the arts, severed since the time of the Greeks, in the Lyric Drama; and the work in which his philosophical doctrines are set forth and his poetical dreams ex plained is entitled "Kunst-werk der Zukunft," "The Future Work of Art," not "Musik der Zukunft," "Music of the Future." It is, perhaps, a pity thus to spoil the subject of a pleasant joke, but even mirth must yield to justice. With Herr Wagner's practical " innovations" as a creative artist we have not now to deal, our present bus;ness being only with the philosophical work before us ; and if our author be really so potent an evil spirit as indignant orthodoxy would have us think him, and it. be true that "after the praise of "refining the taste of a nation the highest eulogy " which can be bestowed on any author is to say that "he corrupted it," Herr Wagner must still be a highly important personage, and as Shakespeare (who was not all orthodox) somewhere observes, "Madness in great ones should not unwatched go." The leading theories of Herr Wagner seem to be that art is not a product of art but of nature, and springs necessarily from civilization as man does from nature. When (says he) creation was suffi ciently developed to produce man, he appeared at once, by the law of necessity ; when civilization was enough advanced to require the fine arts, they like wise sprang to life, in obedience to the same omni potent, inevitable decree. All art springs naturally from " the people" (taking tbat word iu its most comprehensive sense)—rises upwards from them— is engendered by their wants and requirements—is the expression of thoughts and emotions common to the whole human race—universal in its import, one and eternal in its truth—and cannot be forced upon them "from above "—that is, cannot be made to descend upon them from any egotistical aristocracy of intelligence. True art is not an abstract idea or science, apparent only to the hazy eyes of metaphy sical dreamers, or intelligible only to a "knowing few " ; neither is it a thing arbitrarily created by the capricious will, an egotistical car tel est noire plats& of the mind ; but an " immediate, sensuous, real " representation of human life "—the faithful embo diment and reproduction of living images, as seen in Nature's mirror, the reflecting mind. "The people" (says Herr Wagner) called it into existence, " the people " are its only worthy mate rials, to " the people " it is addressed, and 4 . ‘ the 1163 people" must finally judge of its merits. In short, according to our author, " the people," influenced by necessity, invented society, art, the State, theology, and religious worship, but their beautiful natural impulses have been invariably betrayed, misdirected, or utterly stifled by certain egotistical " knowing ones," as wi ll presently be seen. Herr Wagner's beau-ideal of artistic perfection appears to be the ancient Greek drama. In the beginning (says he), the only natural and genuine period of art, poetry, music, serious pantomime, and dancing (that is, dancing in the Greek sense, as con veyed by the word i t .. / Maim) were united as the means calculated to &Ilford the fullest and most per fect expression to the human being in all his artistic capability; but when subsequently these were divided, a Babelish confusion ensued, and each art was carried to an unnatural degree of solitary ego tistical perfection, intelligible only to the initiated few, its special followers. The sister arts, unnatu rally severed, could no longer reciprocally explain and throw light upon each other—the thinking, singing, speaking, moving man could no longer be represented in his entirety. Following the course of events down to modern times, in which Herr Wagner considers the evils of which lie complains to have reached their culminating point, our author points out how all our artistic mistakes may be referred to the one radical error, and shows us what he considers to be the only road to redemption. Thus to the separation of the art-sisters be ascribed the existence of that preposterous thing the literary drama—the play only fit to be read, not acted ; of scientific, " absolute " music, and that disgusting meaningless exhibition ca/led ballet dancing. The great, noble heart and creative brain of " the people," whose only law is necessity, have in fact always in every age been betrayed and falsified by the " know ing ones," whose custom it invariably is to form themselves into exclusive " Guilds " for their mutual support and protection. No sooner (continues Herr Wagner) bad the people, following the spontaneous impulses of nature, learned to dunce, and to express their felings by gestures, than the "knowing ones " seized upon the invention, and converted it into a shamelessly " intelligent " grossly physical display, such as deformed, bow-legged, chin-stroking pos. turers, male or female, show us in the modern ballet. No sooner did the people make poetry out of the ful ness of their hearts, than a race of literary " knowing ones " crept into existence, and strove to convert the divine gift into something like an abstract science intelligible only to their own Guild ; and thus arose such anomalous" dramas " as Goethe's Faust, which, however, was happily driven from the stage by a poodle as a wholesome warning to all misdirected intelligence. No sooner had the "people " learned to sing, than the natural outpourings of their melodic instincts were pounced upon as a well-tasting prey by hungry contrapuntists, who, incapable of inventing any thing themselves, could only force music to sport egostistically with itself. Now raged the efforts of learned professors, who vainly endeavoured to turn music, the language of the heart, into a matter of reckoning, and to make. the world accept works of cal culation, resembling the complex account book of a shrewd Hebrew stockbroker, in lieu of the divine page inspired by nature. The people, however, could not bear this musical imposition very long, and so presently with one mighty puff of Mother Nature's breath they blew the contrapuntal card-house into the air, and the " hungry contrapuntists fled pre cipitately. 'fhe people were then allowed to sing once more in their own way, but only for a short time, however, for the "knowing ones" were soon down upon them again in a new shape. The fate of honest, soul-born, popular tune was next to fall into the hands of knowing bravura" singers, who by senseless and absurdly intelligent flourishes dis figured and falsified it just as much as the hungry contrapuntists had done by their cunning Israelitish hos,uspocus. One mechanical contrivance was merely substituted for another. The egotistical singer took the place of the " hungry contrapuntist." Popular feeling was, however, again destined to prevail, and the artistic expression of it by that wondrous triad of composer's, commencing with Haydn, and ending with Beethoven, led gradually not only to the emancipation of music from the thrall of the " Guilds," but also to the redemption of all art. In the symphonies of Haydn (says Herr Wagner) the rythmical dance-tune of the people disports itself with youthful freshness and beauty ; the ever-varying artistic treatment to which it is subjected, although doubtless resulting from pro found contrapuntal calculations, scarcely appears to be the work of such scholastic premeditation, but has much rather the character of a spontaneous illustration of the mazy windings and convolutions of the harmonized or concerted dance, so completely does the whole seem to be -ander thedominion of fancy, so warmly, freely, and freshly does the joyful spirit of lit( . - we t in life breathe through it. In the slow movements have the people's song amplified and developed accordance with its inherent principles and natura, P