The Press. — London, England, 1857-11-07 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOPEMBItR 7, 1857. Mr. Cockspur blushed slightly. That ♦ery day he had had a finger in a transaction whipli he would have been sor►y to see exposed to the light of public opinion. But Mr. Maultory was not going to let the subject drop so easily. " "The wit of the Americans is the finest in the world ; they have imaginations boundless as their forests, deep as their stupendous rivers." Mr. Maultory dealt in the sublime, and before he be came a general dealer had held forth with much effect at Ebenezer. Sir Hugh could hold no longer. " Yon have been more fortunate in the specimens of the natives that have reached you than I have "—and, muttering something more forcible than polite, the baronet rose from his seat and left the dining-room. suitor whose love she had ever returned. The experienced novel-reader will hardly require to be told that the paper given to the colonel was a forgery, that Miss Vivian did not look at it, thinking it of course was the really cool and platonic note which she had written in her schoolgirl days to Seyton, and that she natu rally considered the colonel cruel and unrea sonable in punishing her so severely for what her conmience could not reproach her with as a n offence against propriety or a slight to the one man who alone had truly touched her heart. The lady goes to Italy with her valetudinarian father, and slowly pines away, till she meets the colonel on board a steamer, which is wrecked in the Mediterranean. Her old lover swims with her to shore, and of course at the end of the second volume an eclaireissement takes place, and everybody is happy and has a large fortune. We should be tempted to accuse the fair author of plagiarising from Miss Edgeworth's charming story of " Helen " the device of the disagreement between the lovers on account of the discovery by the gentleman of a former real or fancied favourite of the heroine, but so candid and graceful an acknowledgment is made to the reader of the source from whence the idea is taken, that all hostile criticism is disarmed. There are many pleasing passages which we could quote. We will content our selves, however, with the following short extracts, which we trust will tempt our readers to read the book in extenso. We think we can promise them fair and reasonable entertain ment in its perusal : THE RADICAL DINNER PARTY. When dinner was announced, Mr. Chariton gave his arm to Lady Montagu, and Sir Hugh took in Margaret, who was pleased to see Mr. Milner seated by Lucy, and opposite her father, by whom Mr. Cockspur had placed himself. To prevent the reader from supposing that a French cook was at the bottom, or rather at the top, of Mr. Charl ton's festivities, let him know at once that a worse dinner never came up half cold from the kitchen. Grease and rancid butter were the only discoverable flavours ; the wines had been bought at sales for their cheapness alone, and were utterly guiltless of grape; poisonous weeds gave the colour, poisonous drugs the flavour; and there was not a glass that had not a headache in it. The whole affair sadly disgusted Sir Hugh, and he sighed to think that his dear daughter had given up the simple and elegant cuisine of Beaulieu for such a disgrace ful apology for food. Mr. Cockspur did nothing to divest Sir Hugh's con sideration of the bad things at table. The letter Hhe had always despised, considering it, no doubt, a waste of time to indulge such coxeonabries ; and though he said little about politics till the ladies had withdrawn, yet his loudly expressed opinion that the American Government was the only one in the world worthy of imitation, roused the baronet from the contemplation of a lean hare only half roasted, and so dwelt on his memory, that when the gentlemen were left to themselves he tenewed the subject. " I think, sir, you made a remark at dinner on the American Government. Have Sou read the Transatlantic news lately T' " I have, sir, and found it most interesting," replied Mr. Cockspur, putting on his defiant manner. " It appears to me," continued Sir Hugh, " that no Government exists there at all. 'Fhe mob carry• it all their own way ; the laws are disregarded ; stabbing is more common than in the darkest days of Italian biavoism ; cheating is the only virtue in their eyes; and the gentle men either live in seclusion, or resort to Europe for civilisation and refinement." Mr. Cockspur grew redder and redder as Sir Hugh went on. He burnt to interrupt him, but the quiet, steady manner in which the opinion was given prevented him. No sooner had Sir Hugh left off speaking than he broke out. " Is it possible that you believe those calumnies of the most enlightened people on the face of the globe? Look at their steamers, their ships, their laws ; they go a'ead of us in everything, and I expect to live to see the British empire absorbed in the great American republic." " I take the accounts of them from their own descrip tions," said Sir Hugh ; " and though I admire their enter prise, I can foresee no great future for a people who throw over principle ; and I think you are more likely to see the entire dissolution of the American confederacy, than the result you talk of with such patriotic calmness, especially if their wicked slave trade continues." " Prejudice, all prejudice, my dear sir ! Come and live at Smoketon for a year, and we will put things before you in a new light. What answer Sir Hugh might have made to this pleasing suggestion we do not presume to conjecture ; his heigh tened colour foreboded one of a warm description, but he was saved the trouble by the young clergyman. " As •isnal, Mr. Cockspur, you are talking for the sake of rousing opposition. You know well how heartily you dis approve of the eternal money seeking, over-reaching spirit of the Americans, and you forget the hard words you lavished on them when you found the payment of your bonds repudiated. As a British merchant, these things outrage your feelings of honour." A GOOD MANS DEATH. A wood fire burnt low in the wide fireplace, and candles stood in the tall silver candlesticks, butin that large room they seemed to burn dimly, and cast but a feeble light on the dark curtains that hung in the windows and round the bed where the dying man lay. He opened his eyes as Clarice came into the room, and even smiled faintly as she seated herself by the bedsidt, and took the poor worn hand that lay on the counterpane. Mrs. Thompson, the housekeeper, stood near, and wiped, from time to time, the dews from his brow. His breathing was deep and distressing. The sobs of old Dodsworth, as he knelt by the bedside, were painful to hear; but no sounds appeared now to disturb the dying man, though the blast shrieked louder and wilder. It seemed as if the spirits of the storm had been unloosed that night. Even the heavy curtains in the windows were moved by the wind, and the roaring sound in the chimney increased in violence. " What an awful night, ma'am," said Thompson, in a low tone to Clarice; " I never remember such a storm'." Clarice sat quietly holding her old friend's hand, every now and then she repeated some text of Scripture which she thought would comfort him, and he showed that he was sensible by the slight pressure of his fingers upon hers. Nine o'clock struck, and old I)odsworth rowed himself from his grief to pile fresh logs on the smouldering fire. Mr. Latymer's breathing became deeper—more spasmodic; then it seemed to cease altogether ; then there came a struggle; he dropped Clarice 's hand, and caught at the bedclothes; lie made a violent effort, again he opened his eyes, and fixing them on Clarice, he made a movement with his arms. " Kiss me, Clarice," he murmured, but so faintly that her ear alone caught the sound of his words. She stooped, and gently kissed the cold forehead of the dying man. A faint, sweet smile again passed over his face ; a low sigh, and then his head fell back on the pillow. Mr. Latymer was dead. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. TILE New Quarterly contains nine reviews of well selected works, and three political articles. Among the most noticeable reviews are " Mr. Carruther's Life of Pope," " Tom Brown's School Days," " Vic toria and the Australian Gold Mines," and the "Bio. graphies of Distinguished Scientific Men." In the first-mentioned, we have some sensible observations on the lives of literary men in general, and an im partial estimate of Pope in particular. The reviewer of "Tom Brown," evidently a public-school man himself, informs us that he has never seen the pecu liar sensations produced by tossing in a blanket so well described before. He is warmly in favour of the theory propounded by the present author, him self a fine specimen of what such training will effect, and concludes with the following excellent re marks :-- There is not much chance, we are afraid, of this book being read by the parents of boys who do not go either to public schools, or to any large private school ; or we might hope that the knowledge of the discipline which gentle men's sons go through, aryl the rough experience they have to put up with, wonld make them ashamed of the effeminate manner in which their children are brought up. Whether this is the case in provincial towns we do not know : it certainly is in London. A boy is perhaps the most sacred being in this metropolis ; and the whole majesty of the law, in addition to the fury of his maternal parent—no ordinary power—is raised to avenge him if be meets with one of the many cuffs to which his usual ways of amusing himself always richly entitle him. We fancy that the redoubtable Doctor Arnold himself would have shrunk from being obliged (to use his own expression) "to discuss the thickness of priepostor's sticks" with an Old Bailey barrister, and a jury of philoprogenitive London tradesmen. Such people, we imagine, would raise hands and eyes in horror, to read of the " dreadful suffer ings " which fellows like Tom Brown pass through before they emerge from the fag condition of life; but they would be informed of the fact that such things exist of which they are at present not aware, and they might perhaps be enabled to observe that boys who have been so treated do not usually make worse men, citizens, or soldiers than the coddled denizens of the home circle, whose idea of independence is the power to insult with impunity, and of manliness, precocious dissipation. , The political papers in this Review are up to its usual standard. That on "Parliament and Party " is an attempt to show that the latter is a necessary adjunct to representative government, and that the . necessity for it increases with the increase of Minis ' it terial patronage and the growth of a centralising spirit, which are both characteristics of the present 1091 day. The article upon France is written with un common vigour, but. in far too adulatory a tone to wardsthe present Emperor and far too bitter a one towards his opponents. Dam jacet in rip& caleemus Casaris nostem represents too truly the spirit of this writer, which we trust will never become popular in England. His attempt to cry down the obvious similitude be tween Imperial France and Imperial Rome is a signal failure, and when he attempts to grapple with the writer in Fraser's Magazine, he is impar congresses Achilli most conspicuously. Tne Indian article seems to bear evidence of being written by a gen tleman well acquainted with the subject. He enter tains very decided views, which he expresses in very decided language. But what we desiderate in all writers on India just now, whether Ministerial or otherwise, is solidity. They skim the surface of the subject, butA they do not go resolutely to the bottom. They give us too little evidence; and we must really, therefore, suspend our judgment until such time as we have more facts to guide us and less passion to perplex us. The following remarks, however, seem very just, and with the reservation above indicated we present them to our readers:— It is obvious that no greater folly could have been ex hibited by any Government than was shown by our own, in deciding to subjugate Oude, by an army composed chiefly of natives of the province—men who were all deeply at tached to its institutions, and who had, at the same time, invariably exhibited the greatest dislike to our own. It was as absurd as would be the determination of France to annex Switzerland, if the great bulk of the French army were Swiss, serving temporarily in its ranks. But such is the subservient flattery constantly administered by the natives to our high civil functionaries, that it is not im possible that they may have really been led to believe that the annexation would be popular in Oude ; just as their overweening vanity induces them to conceive their own labours to be a blessing, instead of, as they are, a curse to the people of Hind. It is astonishing the amount of nonsense that a native, when it suits his purpose, will make an Indian civilian swallow, who happens to be of the type too common among the body—at once pretentious and a fool. Even the Times did not hesitate to repeat lately, because they happened to tally with its opinions, the views of a Kulin Brahmin as to the competence of Lord Ellenborough to understand the crisis that has taken place. We only wish, for the sake of our fellow-country men in India, that what they are day and night praying for might happen, and that this experienced and able noble man were atlonce despatched to restore order to Hindoc sten. His arrival might not be very acceptable to the Kulin Brahmins, and other natives of that stamp who are now laughing at us in their sleeves, hut he would soon bring them and their civilian patrons to their senses—and show the world that it had prematurely decided the British lion to be an ass. About Poona and the Southern Mahratta country the people are nearly all against us too ; for there our title inquiry commissions, and consequent confisNitions, have been most rife. Indeed, as one can tell from the compara tive foulness of localities where an approaching epidemic is likely most to ra g e , so one had only to trace the course of annexation and title-inquiry commissions, to see at once where the most violent hatred towards us was certain to be exhibited from first to last. Such is the eagerness which Lord Dalhousie tells us the natives always express to come under our paternal sway—such the fondness they testify for our vaunted beneficent and enlightened rule. Sir John Malcolm, who had more knowledge of the natives in his little finger than Lord Dalhousie has in his whole body, used to say that British India and the native States were both governed equally through natives; the chief difference being, that in native States the best natives were generally clothed with power, and in British India the worst. And Sir John was right ; how indeed should it he otherwise ? Would the great. statesmen of England take office as tide-waiters and gaugers, if it were the fate of England to be conqueted by a horde of Russians, who kept all the higher appointments for themselves ? No, the native gentlemen of India are to be found in office only in native States—it is the mere dregs of the official classes that fill our own cutcherries. The Bengal Amish and the Bombay Carcoons are notorious everywhere for their scoundrelism and corruption. What the Madras men filling correspond• ing offices are, the Madras Torture Commission fully revealed. Blackwood is deficient this month in literature ; in fact, beyond the two tales we have none. India and Central America monopolise three papers, Military Education one, and domestic affairs in general, with a dash of Indian, another. Of " What will he Do with It" we need say no more than that it continues thoroughly worthy of tha literary talent, kindly nature, and eloquent humour which has won for Sir Bulwer Lytton's later fictions a popularity not less, if less noisy, than that of his younger contemporaries. Men about town will prefer " Vanity Fair " to " My Novel," but poll all England, and the choice would probably be reversed. " Military Education " is a careful and weighty article, in which the writer does not shun the responsibility of publishing a definite scheme. Hi' plan has evidently not been formed without much patient thought, and evinces fami liarity with the topic. We are glad, also, to perceive that he bears in mind the same precautions to the necessity of which we have so repeatedly—we had almost said exclusively—called attention our. selves