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

1161 The writ F re nch cor so strongly they const eummunict enemy in hospitality French off the countr no one, w without a military tt acknoided than has remarks, our prevai French st old French to Africa as practicable plains, and hidden in tt trees, and sunshine, as The Frei together, th Every race creed is a ama:gamati nor does tln nation. T 1 o: thing; ai spent in Alp ilation of T non of conq We nil Walinslcy of Algerit columns salubrious opportuni ments. excellent gentleman the absent Carthage on a site I Ilenri Court fished the Bib of Frar Freer. Blacker WE know ginative present d of Rome and beau from rca kingdoms Papacy in presented condition Kingdom followed of the of religi Romish her faith the meth within t 1 them fro] which sh and main of the hit divides r forcibly i the Valoi opening of whom committt himself 1 his coun twenty, j ting with rune de diseardee t reat men tical f oe. again i n favourite and an massacre. ong THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 27, 1858. .iter has conceived the highest opinion of conduct in Algeria. Nothing struck him ,ngly as the skill and rapidity with which constructed roads and kept their line of ications open with an only half-subdued their rear. Of the politeness and ity which he experienced from the officers, as well as of their popularity in ;try, he speaks in the highest terms. And we arc sure, can lay down his volume a feeling of increased respect for the / talents of our ally, and a less sparing cled. , ;ment of his fitness for colonization hitherto been accorded. The following for instance, are not exactly at one with ailing English ideas : steamers run along the coasts, and lumbering diligences, which look as if they had been sent a cure for consumption, tumble along every road. Pretty little French villages dot the . solitary cottages peep out here and there, half their clumps of orange, lemon, fig, or almond seem to glance merrily and cheerfully in the , as they speak of the French colonist's home. 'rench and the natives get on remarkably well the latter seeming to have a perfect confidence Icit reliance on the laws and justice of the former. is sure of protection, and though the bigotry of . definite and insuperable barrier to complete ;gamation, yet they rub on happily and contentedly, 'les the native seem like a member of a conquered The French certainly have the knack of this kind and I was much struck, during my first days lgeria, by seeing the contrast between our occu . Turkey during the war, and the present occupa• conquered Algeria by the French. may say, in conclusion, that Colonel ;ley fully confirms the character given 'na by the guide-book noticed in these a few weeks since. It possesses a Is climate, plenty of good society, and irtunities of both town and country amuse- The Governor, Marshal ltandon, is an specimen of the French soldier and ttleman. And indeed it is difficult to detect absence of any desirable feature in that new which is now being so rapidly developed not less favoured than the old one. IL, King of France and Poland ; his and Times. From Numerous Unpub- Sources, including MS. Documents in ibliotheque Imp4riale, and the Archives France and Italy, &c. By Martha Walker Three Vols. London : llurst and :ett. iw of no better antidote against the ima a religious sentimentalism which, in the day, delights in holding up the Church as the embodiment of all that is true, beautiful, and holy, than a picture, taken . real life, of the character stamped upon kingdoms and nations by the influence of the -- in its palmiest days. Such a picture is that ited to us in these volumes, exhibiting the ition and history of " the Most Christian loft" during the eventful period which the promulgation of the doctrines Reformation. 'lVhat were the notions religion and morality with which the t Church had imbued the hearts of ithful sons and daughters—what were tethods which she employed to keep them the pale of orthodoxy, and to preserve An the taint of heresy—what the weapons . she taught them to wield for the defiance maintenance of " the true faith "—no portion history of that epoch of transition which medieval from modern Europe, more illustrates than the reign of the last of as over the kingdom of France. At the ; of his career we find the ill-fated Prince, tin it is hard to say whether the crimes tted against him or those committed by have left the limier blots on the page of country's history,—at that time a youth of - just emerging into life,—engaged in plot th his own mother, the too famous Cathe . Medici, an act of assassination against a led servant and favourite, whom unjust !tit had converted into a personal and poll '. Within two years atter we behold him, concert with the Queen Mother, whose to son he was, a principal instigator an active accomplice of the wholesale qbsacre of St. Bartholomew, which—whether premeditated, or, as our author, on grounds that appear to us insufficient, thinks more probable, suddenly resolved upon—was avowedly undertaken as a signal act of service to " Holy Mother Church," and was publicly ap plauded, hailed with exultation, as a glorious triumph by the Head of that Church. That mas sacre—the number of whose victims has never been ascertained, but which, upon the lowest computation, slaughtered them by thousands in the capital alone, and by tens of thousands over the face ofthe whole country—while it embittered the closing years of Charles IX., became, during the next and following reigns, the fruitful prece dent for a succession of deeds f violence and blood • shed, perpetrated with unparalleled perfidy and atrocity in the desecrated name of religion. From this revolting &but to the closing scene, when he himself fell, immolated by the deadly steel which the Church of Rome had whetted for the sacrifice, and placed in the hands of one of her fanatical devotees, the history of Henry 111. consists of an uninterrupted series of intrigues, broils, outrages, and murders, of which the King and other members of the Royal family, men and women of noblest lineage, Bishops and Princes of the Church, became in turns the perpetrators and the victims; while the tone of public morals had sunk to a degree of depravity not surpassed in heathen Rome in the days of Juvenal, and what was called religion resolved itself into a system of superstitious observances and practices as de grading as the vices, and as repulsive as the crimes, for which the Roman Church, in the ex ercise of her pretended universal guardianship of souls, enjoined and accepted them by way of ex piation and compensation. How a Church holding the souls! of her members, by means of the con fessional, in a state of permanent surveillance and of abject thraldom, not only tolerated, but, by the example of her ecclesiastics, both high and low, encouraged, every excess of lust and cruelty ; connived at the habitual and undisguised viola tion of the most sacred ties and obligations of society ; and so effectually extinguished in the heart of woman every natural sense of modesty, that ladies of the highest rank, conspicuous for their devotion and fanatical zeal, the chosen and acknowledged patronesses of her cause, hesitated not publicly to exhibit themselves, and that in re ligious processions, in a state of semi-nudity from which the very courtezans of our streets would shrink ;—how the same Church, after goading a Prince singled out by her discerning eye as a fit instrument for the accomplishment of her designs, distinguished by her as one of her most hopeful champions, to imbrue his hands, while heir presumptive, in the blood of his bro ther's lieges, after his accession to the throne kept him in an attitude of deadly hostility towards a large portion of his subjects, first by the direct influence of her counsels and the arts of flattery, and, when those proved insufficient, by a widespread mid night conspiracy, utterly subversive of the royal authority ;—how, when weary of fifteen years of civil war and sanguinary rule he emancipated himself, by one of those highhanded deeds of blood, into which he had been initiated under her tuition, from the grasp of that conspiracy, and attempted to govern his kingdom upon the principle of religious toleration, the same Church hurled her anathemas at his head, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and openly insti gated them to regicide ;—how, when the curses fulminated from the Vatican,and the pulpit-denun ciations of an infuriated priesthood, had produced their legitimate effect, the "infallible Head" of that Church proclaimed in a public allocution the assassination of the King to have been " a holy, glorious, and pious act," attributing it to the immediate inspiration of Almighty God, and blasphemously mingled with his thanks givings and ascriptions of glory to the Most High his " tribute of veneration " to the assassin, " the " sainted martyr, Clement,"—all this, and much more of the same character, will be found re corded, and that upon the most irrefragable tes timony—the evidence of authentic State papers and other public documents, of the private ,jour nals and the correspondence of the chief actors themselves, as well as of eye-witnesses--in Miss Freer's deeply-instructive narrative of the history of henry de Valois. We recommend the perusal of these volumes—the author of which abundantly compensates by the careful industry of her his torical research for occasional negligences of style I —to the perusal of all who desire to become ac quainted with the true genius of Popery, and to ascertain the effects produced by its influence upon public and private morals, upon the pro sperity of nations and the stability of kingdoms. ON OVER-PRODUCTION IN FICTION. The Laird of Norlaw. A Scottish Story. By the Author of "Margaret Maitland." Three Vols. London: Hurst and Blackett. Ir was once humorously, though rather too severely, written of a distinguished female novelist of our times, " This lady began by making an excellent pot of tea, which she " dispensed liberally, but her misfortune has been " that she has continued ever since pouring out, " and pouring out, though she seems quite un " conscious that while she has been infusing fresh " water, she has totally omitted to put in fresh " tea." The remark applies, we must say, to other female writers besides the eminent lady at whom it was aimed. Male novelists arc not to be freed from the imputation of writing them selves out, but of the two sexes the fair one is perhaps most obnoxious to the accusation of trespassing in literature too often, and presuming too much on the memory of former triumphs. Yet, surely, it must be obvious to any reflective mind that a female novel writer, let her advan tages of society be what they may, must be much more likely to write herself out than a man. A woman leads a more secluded and monotonous life. She cannot study character as much as a man. She is compelled to draw upon her imagination repeatedly, and to pretend to describe types of human nature that she has only fancied, though in her craft as an authoress she affects to have observed them. A woman cannot belong to a university or a learned profession. She cannot go circuit, and see the strange contrasts of life and character open to a lawyer's observation; she cannot be a member of the Temple, or of the Athenzeum, or of the Garrick Clubs. Her social resources are infinitely more restricted than those of her male companion and rival. It is true that her sphere allows her to see much of some phases of human nature. Domestic lite, births, mar riages, and deaths, are all within the sight of the thinking woman ; but her stock of observation soon is exhausted, and if she continues to write much there comes upon her that repetition of herself which amounts to a sort of nierasmas of the mind. The true novelist, like the great dramatist, should be both objective and subjective, but a woman's life naturally throws her into the former; and if we attend to the history of novel ists, we shall see that great female novelists have won their laurels chiefly upon one or two works, and that in most cases they write themselves out. Mrs. Inchbald's fame rests upon " The Simple Story" ; Miss Burney wrote at best only two successful novels (and highly creditable they were to her talents); Mrs. Radcliffe played on one string—that of producing romantic horror in scenes of extraordinary natural beauty. She exhausted herself when she had written " The Mysteries of Udolpho," and she had not inven tive variety enough to strike out a new line. Lady Morgan was highly effective as an Irish novelist of the sort hovering between caricature and reality, and she was chiefly successful in depicting the second-hand fashionable life of Dublin city. Of Miss Edgeworth, we may say that we have always regretted that she did not live more in England, and we are sorry that she did not know English character as well as she understood that of her own country. She had admirable humour, and it' she had been more domesticated in England she would have given a variety to her characters that is wanted. Some phases of English life she understood thoroughly, but it was only the average and commonplace features of our social character. We will exemplify what we mean by illustra tions. Lord Chatham and Lord Liverpool were both Englishmen in their integrity, their love of country, their contempt for money, their desire of honourable fame, and in their devotion to the public cause. But Lord Chatham was a genius, and was a romantic character; Lord Liverpool was only a man of talent, without any romance, and with no originality. Miss Edgeworth, if she were to attempt to draw a character of the Chatham type would colour it so as to make it a cosmopolite, and she would fitil in seizing some of its distinctively English features, but she would paint a Liverpool exactly. Miss Edgeworth of visited London in the season, and her notions A a