The Press. — London, England, 1855-08-25 00:00:00

AUG. 25, 1855. The closing chapters of the book have never been surpassed for delicate pathos. None but a woman could have written this beautiful story, and the name of Ashford Owen, like that of Currer Bell, has probably been adopted to suggest male authority with out positively asserting it. Whether it pro ceeds from a new pen is more than we can say. The design is highly poetic, and the execution masterly, but we do not recognise the style of any established author. It is a tale at once so moving and winning, so natural and romantic, so certain to raise all the finer and better sympathies of the reader's nature, that it would suffice of itself to put to shame Dr. Cumming's harsh censure of fiction. The book is not of a kind, perhaps, to acquire rapid popularity, but the deep, pure sentiment, admirable style, and composition, will win for it, we imagine, a lasting place in English fix tion, as one of the truest and most touching pictures even drawn of woman's love. Marthesi* is a very real story, somewhat in Mr. Dickens's vein. But that Dr. Cum ming hates all fiction alike, it would delight him to hear that all the misfortunes of the heroine are owing to her perusal of a romance from a circulating library. She is the daugh ter of a village vicar, and, desiring to be a heroine, falls in love with a man who cruelly ill-uses her, and reduces her to a state of the greatest misery and distress. The tale is coarse in texture, but extremely like fact, and related with considerable talent. Thorney Hall t has (been overlooked by us so long that it is only necessary now to say that we concur in the praise which has been given to it by other critics. It illustrates the success of high-spirited resolve. The lost inheritance of an old family is won back by the honourable striving of one of its junior members ; and the tale is mainly occupied with a narrative of his efforts, in the course of which his character is developed. Glaucu s ; or, the Wonders of the Shore. By the Rev. C. Kingsley. London : Bell and Daldy. SYDNEY SMITH tells us somewhere in his memoirs how one of his illiterate parishioners of Foston once called upon him, and in the course of conversation admitted that he had been much engaged in reading a new book. His excellent rector, anxious to discover the tenor of his studies, and perhaps curious in that distant part of the world to find out the new book, kindly inquired its name. "Oh," said the Squire, 4 ' It's a capital book I assure you. I have been "vastly entertained with it, and should certainly re " commend you to get it. It's called the Arabian " Nights Entertainments' !" Such precisely is the position in which Mr. Kings ley stands with regard to natural history. He has taken up the subject himself of late, and desires with all the ardour and assiduity of his nature to impress everybody else with a love for that study with which most people' save himself had some acquaintance previously. In this little book, " Glaucus," he has appropriated the wonders of the seashore to himself, and follows his subject out with the persistence of a sportsman insisting upon taking you across the ploughed furrows and over fields of turnips after his " stray bird," till you are so worn out and fatigued that you would infinitely prefer to his turnips and choice pheasant the humbler but more certain and amusing work of rabbits and terriers. We question very much if scientific pursuits can be forwarded by works like " Glaucus " It is an agreeable, entertain ing, little book, but it contains mere drawing-room knowledge, admirable, no doubt, for young ladies fresh from potiehomanie, but comparatively useless for any real purpose of information. Moreover,in all this class of books there is an air of pretension about the tone which leads you at once to believe that they are, as Goethe says, written less with the desire to instruct us than to inform us that the writer himself knows something. Yet in Mr. Kingsley's books some ex cellencies are commonly to be found, and we note here an earnest, truthful passage on the vacuity of seaside occupations in general, and the benefits of a more reasonable employment of the time : You are going down, perhaps, by railway, to pass your usual six weeks at some watering-place along the coast, and as you roll along think more than once, and that not over cheerfully, of what you shall do when you get there. You are half•tired, halfashanied, of making one more in the `• ignoble army of idlers," who saunter about the cliffs. and sands, and quays ; to whom every wharf is but a " wharf of Lethe," by which they rot " dull as the oozy weed." You foreknow your doom by sad experience. A • Martha. A Sketch from Life. I vol. London : Hope and Co. + Manley Halt A Story of an Old Family. By Holme Lee. London : Smith and Fidel. THE PRESS. great deal of dressing, a lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade and down another, in terminable reading of the silliest of novels, over which you fall asleep on a bench in the sun, and probably have your umbrella stolen; a purposeless fine•weather sail in a yacht, accompanied by ineffectual attempts to catch a mackerel, and the consumption of many cigars ; while your boys deafen your ears, and endanger your personal safety, by blazing away at innocent gulls and willocks, who go off to die slowly, a sport which you feel in you heart to be wanton, and cowardly, and cruel, and yet carnot find in your heart to stop, because " the lads have nothingelse to do, and at all events it keeps them out of the billiard room;" and after all, and worst of all, at night a soulless rechaei of third•rate London frivolity ; this is the life•in death in which thousands spend the golden weeks of summer, and in which you confess with a sigh that you are going to spend them. Now I will not be so rude as to apply to you the old hymn•disti:h about one who Finds some mischief still For idle hands to do: but does it not seem to you that there must surely be many a thing worth looking at earnestly, and thinking over earnestly, in a world like this, about the making of the least part whereof God has employed ages and ages, further back than wisdom can guess or imagination pic ture, and upholds that least part every moment by laws and forces so complex and so wonderful thatscience, when it tries to fathom them, can only learn how little it can learn ? And does it not seem to you that six weeks' rest, free from the cares of town business, and the whirlwind of town pleasure, couli not be better spent than in ex amining those wonders a little, instead of wandering up and down like the many, still wrapt up each in their little world of vanity and self-interest, unconscious of what and where they really are, as they gaze lazily around at earth and sea and sky, and have No speculation in those eyes Which they do glare withal? Why not, then, try to discover a few of the Wonders of the Shore ? For wonders there are there around you at every step, stranger than ever opium-eater dreamed, and yet to be seen at no greater expense than a very little time and trouble. But these admirable reflections are spoilt, a few pages further on, by a definition of the qualities which a naturalist ought to combine, quite beyond the physical qualities of the man of 1855. He is to be strong in body, able to haul a dredge, climb a rock, turn a boulder, walk all day fasting, know bow to swim, pull and sail a boat, and ride the first unbroken colt at hand ; a good shot, a better fisher man, and able to fight for his life. Moreover, he is to be gentle and courteous ; self-devoted, brave, and enterprising ; patient and undaunted, reverent and virtuous, &c. &c. We have not space to conclude the qualities which are requisite to form a naturalist for a six weeks' sojourn at the seaside. True it is, however, that the town young men of the present day are too effeminate, and it is the object of the author in " Glaucus " to give the rising generation an interest in out-of-door pursuits : " Taking a walk " as one would take a pill or a draught—seems likely soon to become the only form of outdoor existence possible for us of the British Isles. But a walk without an object, unless in the most lovely and novel of scenery, is a poor exercise, and as a recreation utterly nil. We never knew two young lads go out for a " constitutional " who did not, if they were commonplace youths, gossip the whole way about things better left un spoken ; or, if they were clever ones, fall on arguing and brainabeating on politics or metaphysics from the moment they left the door, and return with their wits even more heated and tired than they were when they set out. We cannot help fancying that Milton made a mistake in a certain celebrated passage, and that it was not " sitting on a hill apart," but tramping four miles out and four milea in along a turnpike-road, that his hapless spirits dis coursed Of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, And found no end, In wandering mazes lost. Seriously, if we wish rural walks to do our children any good, we must give them a love for rural sights, an object in every walk ; we must teach them—and we can teach them—to find wonder in every insect, sublimity in every • bedge•row, the records of past worlds in every pebble, and boundless fertility upon the barren shore; and so, by teaching them to make full use of that limited sphere in which they now are, make them faithful in a few things, that t hey may be fit hereafter to be rulers over much. There is a fresh, healthy, and manly tone in Mr. Kingsley's writings which few can fail to admire ; and though there is not much real instruction to be gained from this little book, yet the spirit in which it is written may lead the reader to reflection and profit. Heroes of the Crimea. By George Ryan. London : Field and Co. A SERIES of biographical sketches of the most dis tinguished officers of the army in the Crimea. Mr. Ryan has, in particular cases, gone so far beyond the limits of a compiler that it is difficult to characterise his book shortly. His prejudices seem very strong with regard to certain names. His abuse of Lord Raglan is not only premature bnt manifestly unfair. No just judgment can he passed upon his qualities as a commander until bis private despatches be made public : we do not know the difficulties he had to 815 contend with, and until those are explained it is im possible to estimate him justly. The dispute be tween Lords Lucan and Cardigan is again opened up, and a very singular charge brought against the latter. We do not suppose that the noble earl will think it worth while to vindicate his character from the attack. The Palace of Westminster, and other Historical Sketches. By W. D. Arnold. London : J. W. Parker and Son. PORTIONS of these lectures have already appeared in the Household. Words, and the remainder, delivered last winter at Kendal, met with such success as to induce the author to collect and publish them. They are pleasant conversational essays. The subjects treated are Westminster, India, Indian Caste, and the discovery of America. In all his Indian sketches Mr. Arnold speaks with all the authority which a long residence in the country would give. He considers that " caste " no longer exists in India as a religious institution, and that to treat it as such is manifestly wrong. It has become simply a social or class distinction similar in every way to those class distinctions drawn in the code of every European society, and moreover practised to a far more severe extent among us than among the Hindoos. To eradicate such a system and to form, as Mr. Arnold desires, a " true brotherhood," is a consummation which time in the history of human progress can alone work out. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. BOOKS. Gertrude ; or, Family Pride. Mrs. Trollope. Hurst and Tllackett. Customs' Tariffs of all Nations. C. N. Newdegate, M.P. Murray. The Principles of Pyschology. Herbert Spencer. Longmans. Embassies and Foreign Courts. " Roving Englishman." Routledge. Longmans. Lyra Germanica. Tales of France: Romantic, Historical, and Domestic. Lambert and Co.. Romantic Tales ("Great Men. Ditto . Tales of Humour. Ditto Tales of Paris, Ancient and Modern. Di tt o The 4bomination of Desolation Come ; or, Revelation Re- vealed. Nisbet and Co. Report of the Commiuiorurs for the Investigation of Alleged Cases of Torture in the Madras Presidency. Madras: H. Smith. Catherine, the Egyptian Slave. Rev. W. J. Beaumont, M.A. Cambridge : Macmillan. Memoirs of James Gordon Bennett and flu Times. Sampson Low and Son. Reply of a Belgian General gfficer. T. G. Jones. W. Jeffs. Sufferings of Royalty ; or, Human Greatness a Fallacy. W. Pinch. Effingham Wilson. Benthamiana ; or, didministratire Reform. Ditto. Report of a Albite Meeting on Establishing Rural Librarins in Ilertfordshire. J. and W. Boone. 3111 . 4,it. THE MUSItAL FESTIVALS. BIRMINGHAM.—This great triennial meeting will commence next Tuesday. The programme is one of such magnitude, and the novelties are of so much interest and importance, that the review of the week's proceedings in the next number of THE PRESS would extend beyond the bounds given in these columns to matters musical, if a few preliminary facts were not now submitted. The Birmingham Musical Festival was established in 1769, but it was owing to the great exertions of the late Mr. Joseph Moore that the committee of the General Hospital, the existence of which depends on the general success of these gatheilngs, were enabled to induce the ratepayers to consent to the erection of the Town hall, the magnificent edifice, with its colossal organ, in which the performances take place. There is a standing committee always at work in the organisa tion of these festivals, and Mr. Oliver Mason is the able and active successor of Moore, in attending to the complicated details. The festival committee succeeded in prevailing on the Town Council to im prove the interior of the hall. The decorations have just been finished, and a new system of lighting and ventilation has been carried out. In harmony with the Grecian exterior, the Italio-Greek style has been adopted in the interior. The musical arrangements have been, RS usual, a source of great anxiety and difficulty. The committee hoped to have secured Mme. Otto Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind ), and a curious corres pondence has taken place, exemplifying the well-known "she would and she would not " disposition of the Swedish nightingale, but at the close, the determina tion of the fickle prima donna was declared in a letter to Mr. Mason, affirming that she wanted " rest during the whole summer for the body as well as for the soul," sic inari. Argal, she could not sing at the Birmingham Festival in 1855. Another disappoint ment was in Mme. Clara Novello. The diplomatic papers connected with the operatic negotiation have •