The Press. — London, England, 1854-07-29 00:00:00

JULY 29, 1854. interior of that splendid mansion. One of her most interesting visits was paid to Rogers : Tuesday, May 10.—C. and I were to go to-day, with Mrs. Cropper and Lady Hatherton, to call on the poet Rogers. I was told that he was in very delicate health, but that he still received friends at his house. We found the house a perfect cabinet collection of the most rare and costly works dart—choicest marbles, vases, pictures, gems, and statuary met the eye everywhere. We spent the time in examining some of these while the servant went to announce us. The mild and venerable old man himself was the choicest pic ture of all. He has a splendid head, a benign face, and re veryde me of an engraving I once saw of Titian. He seemed glad to see us, spoke to me of the gathering at fitatford•house, and asked me what I thought of the place. When I expressed my admiration, he said, " Ah, I have often said it is a fairy palace, and that the duchess is the good fairy." Again, he said, " 1 have seen all the palaces of Europe, but there is none that I prefer to this." Quite a large circle of friends now came in and were presented. He did not rise to receive them, but sat back in his easy • chair and conversed quietly with us all, sparkling out now and then in a little ripple of playfulness. In this room were his best-beloved pictures, and it is his pleasures to show them to his friends. By a contrivance quite new to me, th• pictures are made to revolve on a pivot, so that by touching a spring they move out from the wall, and can be seen in different lights. • • • • Rogers seems to be carefully waited on by an attendant who has learned to interpret every motion and anticipate every desire. I took leave of him with a touch of sadness. Of all the brilliant circle of poets, which has so delighted us, he is the last—and he so feeble ! His memories, lam told, extend back to a personal knowledge of Dr. Johnson. How I should like to sit by him, and search into that cabinet of recollections ! He presented me his poems, beautifully illstrated by Turner, with his own autograph on the Ile-leaf. He writes still a clear, firm, beautiful hand like a lady's. The calls sbe made on Kossuth—whose poverty, supported with cheerfulness, and ennobled by his manly exertions to provide for• the wants of his family, command our respect—and on Mr. Cobden, are also amusingly described. At breakfast at Sir C. Trevelyan's she met Macaulay, and he talked to her, of course, like an essay : Macaulay made some suggestive remarks on cathedrals generally. I said that 1 thought it singular that we so seldom knew who were the architects that designed these great buildings ; that they appeared to me the most sublime efforts of human genius. He said that all the cathedrals of Europe were undoubt edly the result of one or two minds; that they rose into existence very nearly contemporaneously, and were built by travelling companies of masons, under the direction of some systematic organisation. Perhaps you knew all this before, but I did not ; and so it struck me as a glorious idea. And if it is not the true account of the origin of cathedrals, it certainly ought to be ; and, as our old grand mother used to say, " I'm going to believe it." Looking around the table, and seeing how everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, I said to Macaulay that these breakfast parties were a novelty to me ; that we never had them in America, but that I thought them the most delightful form of social life. He seized upon the iden, as he often does, and turned it playfully inside out, and shook it on all sides, just as one might play with the Metres of a chandelier—to see them glitter. He expatiated on the merits of breakfast parties as compared with all ether parties. He said dinner parties are mere formalities. You invite a man to dinner because you must invite him ; because you are acquainted with his grandfather, or it is proper you should ; but you invite a man to breakfast because you want to see him. You may be sure if you are invited to breakfast there is something agreeable about you. This idea struck me as very sensible ; and we ell, generally having the fact before our eyes that we were invited to breakfast, approved the sentiment. " Yes," said Macanlay, " depend upon it: if a man is a bore he never gets an invitation to breakfast." Some just remarks are made on the freedom of sentiment which prevails in England. A people are truly free in proportion to that degree of toleration which is allowed to ' opinion; and, tried by this test, we perhaps enjoy as much freedom as is consistent with the existence of society. After describing some friendly bantering between Mr. Dickens and high judicial personages at a Mansion house dinner. she remarks : In this respect, I must say, I think the English are quite remarkable. Everything here meets the very freest handling; nothing is too sacred to be publicly shown up; but those who are exhibited appear to have too much good sense to recognise the force of the picture by getting angry. Mr. Dickens has gone on namercifnlly exposing all sorts of weak places in the English fabric, public and private, yet nobody cries out upon him as the slanderer of his country. He serves up Lord I)edlocks to his heart's content . yet none of the nobility make wry faces about it ; nobody is in a hurry to proclaim that he has recognised the picture by getting into a passion at it. The contrast be tween the people of England and America, in this respect, is rather unfavourable to us, because they are by profession conservative, and we by profession radical. Mrs. Stowe was favourably impressed with the appearance of health and youthfulness Presented even by those persons in our society THE PRESS. who in their several ways work hardest. As regards the ladies, she supposes that freedom from domestic annoyances may have some share in producing their blooming as pect ; but we are inclined to attribute it to that healthful activity which, either from habit, constitution, or principle, seems indispensable to English life. The husband of this gifted lady —in his last words by way of preface—states, almost despairingly : The reckless faithlessness and impudent falsehood of oar national pro-slavery legislation the present season has scarcely a parallel in history, black as history is with all kinds of perfidy. The American Emancipists have a hercu lean task set before them. In no country has slavery ever existed under so hateful an as pect, or attended with such brutalising influ ences. How long it may last, or what effects it may produce, are beyond present ken; but it is certain that it can be abolished only by the action of public opinion, and that such writings as Mrs. Stowe has produced are likely to have a powerful effect on the Ameri can mind. We trust her career as an author has only commenced ; and the best wish we can form for her is that, in her own home, she will forget as speedily as may be her " Raffaelles, Correggios, and stuff," and devote her genius to those illustrations of the life and character of the slave popula tion of the States which it is so admirably cal culated to accomplish, and which will en title her name to lasting and grateful remembrance. Logic; or, the Science of Inference. By Joseph Devey. London : Bohn. Orr great drawback to the popularity of logic is to be found in the fact that its practical usefulness may be said to terminate just at that point where its highest interest begins. The syllogism is o not less necessary to the reasoner than the rule of three to the account ant; yet both are learned with little pleasure, and he who is satisfied with learning no more is not likely to trouble himself about conflict ing theories. The broader speculations of metaphysics are what form the main attrac tion to the philosophic student ; yet it is by eliminating these that Mr. Devey proposes to construct a system of logic which shall be acceptable to all. It is his design, he says, to harmonise the purely logical doctrines of hostile authorities, and so to rescue the be ginner from that confusion and uncertainty which has hitherto, in his opinion, been the scandal of the science. Whether rival logicians, who, if less famous, are still nearly as good haters as their cousins of theology, will yield to our author's intercession, or whether logic itself can be successfully studied after this fashion, are questions on which we entertain considerable doubts. That the dif ferent views of philosophers are not, as far as pure logic is concerned, contradictory is very likely true. The fact is, that about the bare logical formulae little difference of opinion is possible ; yet the moment we get beyond these we find ourselves close on the regions of metaphysics. The laws of the syllogism must be pretty well the same to every one ; but as soon as we inquire the application of it we are face to face with the a priori controversy. All may admit that definition must be by genus and differentia; yet if we pause—as who will not ?—to investigate some of the terms which it must inevitably bring before us, such as " universals," " essence," " form," we are im mediately in the midst of the conflict between realism and nominalism—questions which, of however small utility in the hands of ordinary men, deal with a subject of unrivalled and nndecnying interest to the human species. On the whole, therefore, we are sceptical of the success of any logical work as a textbook which does not proceed throughout on a dig tinct metaphysical theory, though we cannot but thank Mr Devey for having furnished us with an admirable book of reference, wherein all logical opinions may be found and the value of their differences estimated. We cannot be expected within our limits to examine all tho details of a logical treatise. It may be sufficient to say that they are characterised in this case by great perspicacity, and evince the requisite 713 amount of reading. The author, indeed, scarcely lays claim to any originality. The consistence of the Aristotelian with the Baconic system has been already enforced by Coleridge ; and for his remarks on concep tualism Mr. Devey is indebted to M. Chre- Lien's logical method. The critique on Sir W. Hamilton's new analytic is perhaps one of the most useful and satisfactory parts of the book, and well deserving the attention of all who are interested in the science. We must notice, in conclusion, one or two errors, or perhaps inadvertencies, which we have observed on a first perusal. In his ac count of nominal definition (p. 73) the writer asserts that Aristotle and the scholastic phi losophers confounded the definitions of words and things, claiming for the latter that uncon tested character (?) which can only belong to the former. Now, whether Aristotle and his followers erred or not in their notions of defi nition, such errors certainly did not arise from any confusion of that kind, but simply front their conception of essence, which, at p 68 of this work, is rather unsatisfactorily discussed. In Trendelanburgh's " Elemental Logices Aris totelim " the reader will find a clear account of the meaning of the word °Lois, and its bearing on the theory of definition The above mistatement may be attributed, we think, to the author's attempt at brevity on a subject. which scarcely admits of it. At p. 137, however, in his account of the dilemma, there is a much more unaccountable blunder. The fatuous dilemma of Bias is thus stated (the word i'aac being of course a misprint for 7flac) If a wife is beautiful, she excites jealousy (k'fic iroaTiv) ; If she be ordinary. she disgusts Ceet;,- scriuft ; Therefore it is best not to marry. Where Mr. Devey found this version of the story we cannot imagine. The true form is as follows : If you marry a pretty wife, she is suvii (i.e., unfaithful); If an ugly one, ar2ivn (i.e., a bore) ; Therefore do not marry. If Mr. Devey is really under the impression that the word %mil means common, in the English sense of "mean," "vile," "low," it bespeaks an ignorance of Greek which would make us distrustful of the entire work. Wo are unwilling, however, to believe that such is the case, and we trust that in a subsequent edition the mystery may be cleared up. Our space does not permit us to give any account of the latter portion of the book, which relates to the " General Principles of Inference " and other interesting topics. We will only add that the work throughout is marked by great fairness, and, notwithstanding our objec • tions to the plan of it, is likely, we think, to be admitted among the standard works on the subject. Julie; or, Love and Duty. By Emilie Flygare Corlett. London : Bentley. THE tale contained in this volume is very simple, but very charming. It is the old story of true love crossed for a time, but blessed in the end. The incidents are contrived so as to set forth in attractive colours the constancy of youthful affection. The brilliant coquette of the story, Julie, is used a little too hardly we think. Amidst the infinite variety of human character the butterfly nature has its place, and though of course we are glad to see the amiable, dutiful, home•loving Marie united at last to the industrious, provident Klein, we don't see why the gay baron and his brilliant bride should not have gone on dancing to the end of the story, instead of meeting with so melancholy an end. Apart from the interest of the story, the tale is very pleasing for its pictures of manners. The excitement of a Swedish household on a wedding morning is graphically described THE LADIES TOILET-ROOM. This temple, which, in consequence of the festivity, had been arranged for the Graces, wns in reality in every-day phraseology a housekeeper's room. and in.this, its usual quality, could be looked upon as a temple of distaff" and looms. Here the busy mistress gave the submissively listening priestesses the oracular answer to their timid questions. Here she ;:ould learn, through the thin parti tion, all that went on in the kitchen, both in work and words. This last prerogative extended to the guests even on this day ; for notwithstanding the many voices all exclaiming at the same time," Help me."—" Alt! love, do fasten int/deflower for me !"—" Lend me a few hairpins."—" Pat that roan