The Press. — London, England, 1857-04-11 00:00:00

366 mighty's works, an.l the humiliating feeling of their own littleness. _ _ The freshness of the attnosphera, an 1 the splendour of the scenery, are admitted by all, and extolled by numberless Europeans who have ascended the lisdagauttwa Pass. The Pearl Fishery, the talipat tree, and many other subjects, are touched upon in this volume. But we surmise that general readers will be satisfied with the description of many of the topics in this work, given in Bishop Heber's Journal. We shall turn to " the pre. sent" aspects of Ceylon, as given by Sir George Barrow. The enormous resources of this valuable island %will be seen at a glance in the following statement:— The revenue of Ceylon for the yenr 1415 arnount , ,d to 476;2731., the expenditure to 10:),609/., giving an excess of revenue over expenditure of 70,6641. ; and to this sum may be added 30,001/ (making together 10;1,0001.) from the savings of preceding years, after paying off treasury notes to the extent of 87,:f001. and all other liabilities of the local Government. The value of imports into the island for lS3t, according to their declareti value, amounted to 2,597,325/ —hut cf this sum 1,371,975/. was specie and bullion from India, of which 642,897/. was reexported. A I tree amount of coin is exported every year for the purchase of rice, and by the operation of the exchanges the rupees are brought Wok at a profit. The value of exports of Ceylon produce amounted to 1,236,93H1., to whioh may be added 325,512/. for imports re-exported, and 6.12,807/. for specie re•exported, making together 2,245,2841. The number of vessels inwards at the several ports of the island in 1831 was 2,879, and their tonn.ige 325,616; the number outwards was 2,1116, tonnage 329,310. The number of square rigged vessels belonging to the colony is 53, touuage 3,219; number of dhoniea 432, tmitage 19,359. The export of cinnamon amounted to 784,284 lbs., of the value of 41,1831. Although Ceylon produces the best cinnamon, yet, as low prices are the order of the day, the " trite bark " has to encounter a formidable competition, since the exemp- tion of cinnamon from duty, with the inferior kinds in the island and with the increasing quantity of cassia grown at Java. There are ninety-eight cinnamon estates in the The number of square-rigged vessels as given in the above return seems very small, but the compactly precious character of their freights must be considered. The money value of the cinnamon seems understated. The coffee estates, as is well known in " the City," atl'ord tempting fields to speculators. A few years since there was a mercantile mania about Ceylon coffee. Capitalists from England and India eagerly invested their funds in its cultivation. Since 1834 about 100,000 acres had by European capitalists, been brought under cultivation, and land had been bought from Government for that pur pose to the extent of 400,000 acres. There are now 317 coffee estates in the central province. Vigorous efforts have been made to diffuse Christianity in Ceylon. Sir Emerson Tennent has stated that the great body of natives in Ceylon have exhibited no antagonism to revealed and pure religion, such as prevails amongst Hindoos,and Mahommedans. Apathy, according to that eminent person, is the chief obstacle which the missionaries have to en counter, and Lord Torrington seems to be of the same opinion. The Church of England is active in forwarding, education there, and the Presbyterian Church has lately established a number of female schools. The Wesleyans, also, have several missions in the Singhalese and Tamul districts. Sir George Barrow writes:— The Baptist missionaries have likewise several station% in the Singhalese districts; but the Church of Rome, here as elsewhere, sweeps into its folds all it can get. In IS-Pt there were stated to he 115,000 Raman Catholics, including a large number of natives merely nominal Christians, or " baptised heathens." They have a bishop, a vicar apostolic and his coadjutor, twenty•eight "apostolic" missionaries, and :321 churches. lint they have few school., poorly supported, their main object being to create mem- bers of their Church. Lord Torrington has stated that multitudes call them• selves Chrtatians, and attend to all the outward observances of the Church, but in secret they are still more closely attached to the doctrines of the Buddhists and the Hindoo mythology, and on every emergency, especially at the approach of death, it is but too frequently their custom to turn doubtingly from the sacraments of their nominal Church, and to repose their last confidence in the cere• monies of devil•worehippers and the priests of Brahma and Budtiha. There must be a vast number of the " 11.1,000 Roman Catholics " merely titular converts. The Church of Rome has always loudly vaunted of its success iu converting the heathen ; and that its boasts are not true, we think can be conclusively shown in the history SATURDAY, Tory Opposition instinctively sympathises with despots. Now, independent of the fact that the writer is here committing precisely the same fault which he elsewhere atttibutes to the Opposition-- i.e., the unworthy imputation of motives—it is noto rious that none have ever been such foes of genuine despotism as the historical supporters of the Eng lish monarchy. This writer also seems to rely on the argument which Lord Palmerston's sup porters have discovered for him at the eleventh hour—i.e., that, be his disposition what it may, he kept the peace for forty years. True, — though even that pence was interrupted by per petual broils and misunderstandings. But the fact is, that in proportion to the aversion with which civilised nations learn to regard war is the amount of bullying they will submit to rather than have recourse to it. The recent policy of America to wards this country was neither peaceable nor cour teous, but it did not produce war. It generated, however, a vast amount of ill•feeling and irritation ; and should any future difficulty arise, America will have no reason to congratulate herself on the tone she adopted. Exactly identical has been the result of Lord Palmerston's policy : peace has been main tained, certainly, but at the cost of an accumlated and accumulating odium which will render the con test whenever it does break out tenfold more bitter and more desperate. The National reviewer, while favourable on the whole to the Government, is com pelled to say of the China proceedings:— The British name has been disgraced, not by violence only, but by untruth. The honour of our flag bas been stained, not by the Chinese commissioner, but by the English envoy. Almost, if not quite, for the first time since the during forgery of (live, has a representative of the British Crown stooped to what looks almost like false hood. To our minds this is the saddest part of the whole sad transaction. In all our dealings with Orientals, we have been accustomed to pride ourselves upon our spotless and scrupulous honour. Their habitual faithlessness and chicanery is undeniable; and we have always been acens• tented to reproach them with it, and to contrast it with our undeviating integrity. We have now enabled them to cast back the taunt. So hasty were both the consul and Sir John Itowring, that they acted before they had fully ascertained the facts of the case : they made represents. tions and demands on an erroneous assumption ; and then, being ashamed to withdraw the one or confess the other, they were not ashamed to uphold their mistake by assertions which they had ascertained to be untrue. The " Memoirs of St. Simon" are cleverly reviewed. The following observations deserve deep attention; they point to the same truth which has been so ably illustrated by NI. de Tocqueville This is the union on which St. Simon fixes our atten. tion—the union of dependence on a few intimates, end reserve and distrust towards the bulk of the nobility. The fact that Louis XIV. suffered himself to be guided by a succession of cliques. and that he stool aloof from the great nobles, who might have offered him independent ail and advice, is indisputable. To us who look back, it seems one of the stages in the transition that changed the o.wern meat of France from that of an aristocracy to that of a bureaucracy. To St. Simon it appeared to spring directly from certain points in the character and history of Louis. He views the fortunes of his country from the point which his position had enabled him to occupy—that of watching the trust and distrust felt by the ignorant but shrewd man, who said that the State was himself. The most popular article in the present number will undoubtedly be that upon " London Clubs." The writer confines himself to such as existed under the old regime, when clubs were places of political and convivial meetings, rather than the substitute for tixed residences which they have now become. From the days of Charles 11. to his descendant Charles Fox we have a collection of capital sketches and anecdotes which combine into one of the most charming papers we have met with this quarter. The other articles are all of serious and solid merit, and well calculated to preserve the high character which the review at once established for its 31f. The London Quarterly Review contains some able writing, though rather• sectarian. The notice of Mr. Kingsley scarcely does him justice. " The Emperors of Austria" is an excellent paper, clear in arrange ment, fluent in style, anci pregnant with matter. Those who would gain a bird's-eye view ot• Austrian history since the Reformation cannot do better than peruse it. "Insanity, Disease, and Religion " is rather a disappointing essay; nor are we quite sure that we perceive the author's drift. The essay on Da Quincey seems well done. The sooner the Church of England Quarterly Review assumes the title of the Evangelical Quar• terly Review the better for truth and candour. The contents of this number are so entirely confined to one sort of subject that we cannot discriminate between them. All the articles seem good of their kind; and we doubt not the Review will form an able and faithful expositor of its peculiar tenets. The Bom'Jay Quarterly Review has singled out Professor Aytoun for a violent onslaught. What it is in the writings of this talented gentleman that has excited the East Indian bile we know not; but the writer runs headlong at him like a mad bull, billow ing and blundering through all the graces of hii THE PRESS. of South America, whore the Spanish and Portuguese Governments had absolute power, and where the most perfect zeal animated the rulers of the Brazils, and Chili, and Peru. The artificial " unity " of the Papal Church has been of little aid to its missionary efforts, though its gaudy ceremonies have done much to rivet the attention of savages to its robed priests. England is the great colonising power, and it may be within the decrees of Providence that the circulation of the Bible amongst the heathen should be specially re served for the Anglo Saxon empire. There is an excellent map of Ceylon at the end of this volume. It is engraved by Mr. Arrowsniith on a reduced scale from a larger one drawn by him from actual survey. It is the most complete and authentic map of Ceylon which h,ts yet appeared. The volume also appears to have had the great advantage of being read in sheets by Sir Emerson Torment, as amongst the list of " errata" are sonic important corrections from his pen. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. THE National Review contains an able critique on " Aurora LAgli." It is quite free from that tone of extravagant adulation which has characterised some of Mrs. Browning's reviewers; but it does full justice to her true poetical genius and high and pure feeling. The following passage is, in our opinion, very just : When we say that Mrs. Browning has to s - ime extent mis conceived the sphere of verse in her n mei of " Aurora Leigh," and embarrassed herself with details of incident too complex fur the rhythmical vehicle of expression, we make the assertion with as much modesty as a critic is capable of, and with a due consciousness that our con clusions are liable to be upset by any poet who chooses to produce a great and harmonious poem under conditions which we have pronounced to be ill adapted to his art. There is this strung fact, however, against the attempt to clothe the modern novel in verse—that verse was not the natural and spontaneous mode of expression which that kind of literature assumed. In all its stages of develop ment, up to its present complex firm, in which it fuses into a homogeneous new mould the old distinctions of epic and dramatic, it has always been in prose that its many gifted masters have found the medium for their utterance. At this day, to attempt to translate it into verse seems to us like an attempt to imitate in sculpture the " Transfiguration " of Raphael, or the " Blind Fiddler " of Wilkie. It does not follow, because verse is the highest instrument of expression, and finds a voice more ample and perfect than any other for the passion both of the imagination and the heart, that it has any claim in itself beyond this very fret of its being such true expression, or that you gain anything by employing it for its own sake. It seems to us a decided loss of power to attempt to give a ihythmical form to the varied narration, the detailed conversation, and the minute and full-length representations of the modern conditions of social and individual life, which have already been so ably and so fully embodied in prose forms. We should go farther than to say merely that verse wants pliancy to adapt itself to those line ramifications of external observation to which we have become accustomed, or that the contrast is too immediate between the everyday forms of speech which we are in the habit of using, and the same reproduced with a rhythmic cadence ; we urge that there are many things which, from their very nature, it is a breach of those essential hirmonies to which, of all men, the poet should be most alive, to attempt to embody in the language of the imagination A greater master teaches another lesson. AVlien his matter descends, Shakespeare's forms descend with it ; and wherever the nature of his subject matter demands it, he intersperses prose scenes, or even prose-speeches, in his dramas; and more remarkable than these changes are the subtle variations in the rhythm, and in the warmth of the imaginative colouring, answeringeverywhere in the nicest correspondence to the level of the subject -matter. But Mrs. Browning maintains her high unstopping flight over all the varied surface of her story. She dresses her poetry as the ancient actors did their persons; and like them, she loses in truthfulness and nicety of expression what she gains in external display; and it repels the modern reader to find, instead of changing feature and modulated voice, the rigid tragic mask and sounding mouthpiece of the Greek theatre. We observe a tendency in some of the writers of this review to dogmatise on insufficient data. For instance, in the article on " Secondary Punish ments" all the mass of argument that has been brought to bear in favour of a return to transporta tion is coolly ignored—both that which relates to its utility and that which upholds its possibility. In the paper on our foreign policy the writer attempts to establish a distinction between interference with kings who govern by their own strength alone, and those who do so by the aid of foreign allies. In the latter case he says interference is justifiable. But surely that is only removing the difficulty a step further back. If a British Minister must interfere in such a case, let him go at once to the fountain head of the evil. Qui facit per alium pelt per se. If the King of Naples rules only by the dread of Austrian bayonets, Austria, not Naples, is the power to be appealed to, Another silly assertion is that the - iWt - i - f----- ___