The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-23 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 1858. Upon which proceedings Mr. Carlyle comments in the following highly heterodox manner : These things were heavy t 3 bear. Truly, yes: where is the liberty of private capital, or liberty of almost any kiwi, on those terms ? Liberty to annihilate rubbish and chaos under known conditions you may have; hut not the least liberty to keep them about you, thong!' never so fond of doing it ! What shall we say ? Niirsier and the Soap b Ater do both live in houses more human than they once had. Berlin itself and sonata other things did not spring from Free Trade. Berlin City would, to this day, have been a place of Scrubs ("the Berlin," a mere appellative noun to that effect) had Free Trade always been the rale there. I am sorry his Majesty trans greases the limits ; and we, any friends, if we can make our Chaos into Cosmos by tiring Parliamentary eloquence into it and bombarding it with Blue-books, we will much triumph over his Majesty, one day This is somewhat reckless writing. " Niissler does live in a more human house than before," forsooth! But is it nothing that Niissler, who was before a free man, is forced to involve himself in debt for a royal whim? Is a man with. a house always higher in the moral scale than a man without one ? We have accused Mr. Carlyle of not observing proportion in his book, of giving Friedrich Wilhelm more space than was due to hint in a biography of his son. In the second volume it is evident that not Friedrich but Friedrich Wilhelm is the hero. At the same time it is true that this father had much more influence on his son's character and career than is exerted upon most sons by their fathers. Friedrich 11, has been called by Lord Macaulay the greatest king who has in modern times inherited a throne. No one, we think, can dispilte his right to this distinction ; but to what did he owe it ? To the rigid dis cipline to which he alone of all modern kings was subjected. A hereditary king is the more likely to be worthy of his seat, the less he has enjoyed in youth the privileges of his birth. Few private persons have their own way so seldom, enjoy life so little, or suffer so many and so inevitable mor tifications in their youth, as this heir to a great monarchy. He was often starving in the midst of regal abundance; he was disgraced and beaten in public. He lay in prison like a common felon, saw the accomplice of' his breach of military discipline conducted to execution, and for some time had reason to expect the same fate. He who in mature manhood was to prove himself a match for all the potentates of the Continent combined had not this invincible character in childhood and youth. His first plans were thwarted, his earliest attempts at resistance utterly defeated by a thick-headed despot, whom others could cajole and outwit, but not the future statesman. His waywardness brought him into continual disgrace, and yot it was not like the way wardness of genius. He constantly deserved punishment and did not often excite admiration, as naughty boys do, by his daring spirit. That practical administrative talent for which in manhood he was so eminently distinguished was the kind of talent which his father knew how to appreciate. Yet it was not till near his death, not till the Prince was grown up and married, that Friedrich Wilhelm began to perceive the strength of his son's character. He had thought hint as a boy, at the same time, effeminate and vicious, most likely, on the whole, to come to the gallows. We give the thther's description of the son as we find it with Mr. Carlyle's comments interspersed Thy obstinate perverse disposition (Kopf, head) which does not love thy Father,—for when one does everything ( everything commanded) and really loves ono's Father, one does what the Father requires, not while he is there to see it, but when his back is turned too—( His Majesty's style is very abstruse, ill-spelt, intricate, and in this instance trips itself and falls on its face here, a mere intricate nominative without a verb I)—For the rest, thou knowat very well that I can endure no effeminate fellow (efeminirten Karl), who has no human inclination in him, who puts himself to shame, cannot ride or shoot; and withal is dirty in his person ; frizzles his hair like a fool and does not cut it off. And all this I have a thousand times reprimanded; but all in vain, and no improvement in nothing (Heine Besserong in nits ist). Fur the rest haughty, proud as a churl; speaks to n3body but smne few, and is not popular and affable; and cats grimaces with his face, as if he were a fool ; and does my will in nothing unless held to it by force ; nothing out of love ; and has pleasure in nothing but following his own whims (own Kopf)—no use to him in anything else. This is the answer. FRIEDRICH WILHELM. The hero of the Seven Years' War effeminate! This, indeed, is the instructive fact in the his tory of Friedrich's boyhood, that he promised excellence which he never attained, and did not promise the excellence to which he did after wards arrive. There was sonic promise in hie :-- 1043 boyhood, and still more performance in his man hood, but the one did not answer to the other. Those «ho knew him in his fither's lifetime would have expected him to turn out au enlight ened and tranquil Augustus, a patron of letters, magnificent and peaceful. These were his youth ful aspirations, but he never realized them. He did not succeed in making his Court like that of Louis Quatorze. Ho succeeded only in offending the men of genius who resorted to him. On the other hand, it might have been predicted that war would be his aversion. As Byron regarded Horace, as Bolingbroke regarded the sermons of Manton, so might Friedrich have been expected to regard the art of war. Ile had been pestered with it in his youth till the subject might well have become nauseous to him. He had not shown remarkable aptitude for it ; he had shown extreme distaste for it. It was to him like the "odious flute," to escape from which Benvenuto Cellini more than once ran away from home. Yet it was in this very art that Friedrich attained to a mastery which the strict peda gogue, his father, never dreamed of, and which all Europe, in after days, admired with trembling. The " Inst►tutio Frederici" becomes chiefly in teresting to us when we regard him as the most conspicuous instance of the success of the princi ple of constraint in education—" Meiners virgae " jam grandis Achilles." To pronounce a critical opinion on this work would be premature in its present unfinished state. But it can scarcely come into competition with " The History of the French Revolution." The character and times of Cromwell are more interesting than those of Frederick the Great, especially to Englishmen, but perhaps they do not offer more scope to Mr. Carlyle's peculiar genius. Of the style we need say nothing more ; our readers can judge of it from the specimens we have given. It is the style of a humorist to whom no rules can be prescribed. To criticize it would be entirely useless. In deliberate defi ance of all established usages, however, we think this may bear the palm among Mr. Carlyle's works, as it may perhaps, too, in the force of its peculiar diction and in its picturesqueness of representation. Our readers will find another remarkable illustration of Carlyleism, which we have not space to quote, at page 106 of the first vol., in the portraiture of Seckendorf, " the in scrutable-looking and most unbeautiful old In triguer, whose soul for a half-century has been standing like a hackney-coach, with head, tongue, heart, conscience at the hest of a dis cerning public and its shilling." In conclusion, we have only to thank him for his researches, and for giving the world a great deal to think about and a great deal of good advice. Philadelphia; or, the Claims of Humanity. By Thomas Foster Barham, 11.13. Cantab. London : Chapman and Hall. Tins volume is addressed to " those who believe " in the supremacy of religious and moral prin " ciple as the rule of human conduct and the " guide to human happiness." In other words, it is addressed to every man possessed of common sense and ordinary powers of reasoning. Un happily, however, these are the very men who will scout and laugh to scorn the author's vi sionary schemes for promoting the happiness of mankind. Starting with principles excellent as abstract propositions, Mr. 13arham has speedily diverged into all manner of untenable theories and unsound deductions. His facts arc so dis torted, or so highly coloured, that it is sometimes difficult to recognize them in the masquerading costume that serves them for disguise. We ac quit him, indeed, of any wilful intention to per vert the truth, for he is evidently an enthusiast who believes in the reality of his own dreams and fancies. He is one of those who derive their ideas of political economy from The Deserted Village," and, while they sigh over the partial evils inevitably attendant on human progress, regret the coarse material pleasures endurable alone in a rude state of society. Mr. Barham, indeed, would gladly take us back to a very pri mitive age, and seems to look upon nudity as the strictest bond of brotherly love. Noth 11; annoys him so much as "the barbaric tGiCiVLS. ChYtt 2:;, " breeches and trousers of all sorts, " which he pronounces to be " irredeemably unmanly, cum " bersome, and disfiguring, let budge-doctors " and prudes of either sex say what they will" study to Mr. Carlyle, who delights to contem plate a sovereign man, for in Friedrich Wilhelm he may indeed find the transparent honesty, the practical vigour, the contempt of forms, the taciturnity, bluntness, and fiery moral anger which far to constitute his ideal. This accordingly is the characteristic comment with which the biographer dismisses him : No Baresark of them, nor Odin'e self, I think, was a bit al truer human stuff ;-1 confess his value to me in these sal times is rare and great. Considering the usual His trionic, Papin's•Digester, Truculent-Charlatan, and other S pecies of Kings alone attainable for the sunk flunkey poplations of an Era given up to Mammon and the worship of its own belly, what would not such a population give for a Friedrich Wilhelm, to guide it on the road back iron Orcas a little ? " Would give," I have written ; but, alas! it ought to have been " shauld give." What they would give is too mournfully plain to me, in spite or ballot boxes: a steady and tremendous truth front the, days of Barsbbas downwards and upwatds. It is also characteristic of Mr. Carlyle that in his rapturous contemplation of this King's genuine manhood he should scarcely pause to pity the unfortunate victims who were monuments of his eccentric energy. The unlucky tall men who were kidnapped by his agents in foreign countries and sent to gratify his love of drilling, one of them being packed up in a box in which he died from want of air,—these provoke Mr. Carlyle rather to amusement than to pity or indignation. We are requested to allow the poor King his hobby. It is only "the dumb poet polishing his stanza." What about the poor kidnapped men ? So too the poor man's impracticable temper, his vehement refusals to hear reason upon any subject which excited him or to render any reason except in the shape of a cup or a dishcover, and these directed to the skull rather than to the brain, the perpetual bran dishing of that rattan and application of it to casual passengers in the street, with small regard to rank or even to sex, these, again, are to Mr. Carlyle scarcely even blemishes ; he consi ders them rather as pleasing traits, the generous ebullitions of an inherent royalty of nature. And he is right so far as this, that there was in Fried rich Wilhelm nothing of the tyrannic nature ; that his heart was set upon the good of the country committed to him, not upon getting good for himself out of it. Governing was the task given him' to do; he tried to do it well, and over did it. He governed too much—a fault which in England would be grave indeed, but in Prussia was a venial excess. What would have been Friedrich Wilhelm's fate if he had been placed upon the throne of these islands is a curious sub ject of speculation. He would, we suppose, have died in a lunatic asylum. To be compelled to let people alone and spend their time and money as absurdly as they might please would have destroyed the balance of that impatient, inde fatigable mind. Let our readers imagine a pa ternal Government dealing with their property in the manner described in the following pas sage:— Ntissler, for example, whom we once saw at Hanover, managing a certain contested election for Friedrich Wil helm; adroit Nitasler, though be has yet got no fixed ap• pointment, nor pay except b y t h e j o b , i s urge d to build ; second year hence, 1733, occurs the case of Niisaler, and is copiously dwelt upon by Biisching, his biograplit r; "Build yourself a house is the Friedzielis Strasoe !" .urges Derschaa.—"But I have no pay, n o ca pit i l," pl ea d s Nitssler. -7" Tush, your father-in law, abstruse Hauzler von Lud• in Halle University, monster of law learning there, Isnot he a m onster of hoarded moneys withal? He will lend von fir his own and his daughter's sake. Or shall his Majesty c ompe l hi m ?" urges Derachan. And slowly, continually turns the screw up:in Niissler, till he too raises for himself a firm good house in the Friedrichs Stadt,— ietedrichs Strasse or Street, as they now call it, which the Tourist of these days knows. Substantial clear ashlar st!eet.miles or half- m il es l ong ; stra i ght as a l i ne : rpdrich Wilhelm found it scrag and quagmire; and left tt what the Tourist sees, by these hard methods. Thus Herr Privy.Councalor Klinggriif too, Ntissler's next neig'a• boor; he did not want to build ; far from it ; but was oblig e d on worse terms than Ntissler. You have such work, founding your house ;—for the Niisaler-Klinggraf spot was a fishpoul, and carps were dug up in founding ; -- such piles, bound platform of solid beams ; thalers Sous before the first stone is laid • and in fact, the house must be buil t h onestly, or it will ' he worse for the house and you. "Cost me 1,200 thalers (1,$001.) in all and is nrth when the 2,ooo!"Hassler, ioh is over. Still worse with Privy Councillor tiloggrOf: its house, the next to Ntisslei's, is worth r "re nothing to him when built ; a sospboiler off‘sro tutu thslers (1201 . ) for it; and Niissler, to avoid softie,- 11 ohim 9, purcha hisslow it himself screw•machi of Klinggy is very formidable;! for that sum. D with .er and Bunching knows it for a fact, " that respectable Berlin l' e .,.?ciOtt used to ru n out of the way of Burgermeister Kech ' W I bon, when either of them turned up in the streets." I