The Press. — London, England, 1855-04-28 00:00:00

to the attractions of the young and all conquering Englishman, and the patriotism and prejudices of our hero are indeed tremb ling in the balance, when the question is settled for him for ever in a manner as unex pected as terrible. As this is undoubtedly one of the finest passages in the whole book, we shall transcribe it with as little curtailment as possible. Amyas is going in pursuit of two of his sailors, who, tired of their labours, have wandered away into the woods with Indian wives, subjects of Ayacanora. This is how ho finds them:— On the further side of a little lawn the stream leaped through a chasm between overarching vines sprinkling eternal freshness upon all around, and then sank foaming into a clear rock basin, a bath for Diana's self. On its further side the crag rose some twenty feet in height— bank upon bank of feathered ferns and cushioned moss, over the rich green beds of which drooped a thousand or• chids, scarlet, white, and orange, and made the still pool gorgeous with the reflection of its gorgeousness. At its more quiet outfall it was half hidden in huge fantastic leaves and tall, flowering stems; but near the waterfall the grassy bank sloped down toward the stream, and there, on palm leaves strewed upon the turf beneath the shadow of the crag s , lay the two men whom Amyas sought , and whom, now he had found them, he had hardly heart to wake from their delicious dream. . . . Somewhat apart crouched their two dusky brides, crowned with fragrant flowers, but working busily, like true women, for 'he lords whom they delighted to honour Amyas stood silent for a while, partly from noble shame at seeing two Christian men thus fallen of their own selfwill—partly because, and he could not but confess that, a solemn calm brooded over that glorious place, to break through which seemed sacri lege, even while be felt it duty. At length, however, lie advances and exhorts them, both as men and Christians, to return to their duty; but receives an answer from one of them, too long, we regret, to transcribe, in the genuine lotus-eater-spirit, which for a time staggers him : Amyas stood spellbound : the effect of the narcotic (the cocoa leaf) was miraculous in his eyes—the sustained elo quence, the novel richness of diction in one seemingly drowned in sensual sloth, were in his eyes the possession of some evil spirit, and yet he could not answer the evil one. . . . His eye glanced upon Ayacanora. The two girls were whispering to her smilingly. He saw one of them glance a look towards him, and then say something which raisee a beautiful blush on the maiden's face—with a playful blow at the speaker she turned away. Amyas knew instinctively that they were giving her the same ad vice that Evans had given to him. Oh, how beautiful she was ! Might not the renegades have some reason on their side after all? . . . Was not yon dreamer right—did they not all need rest? What if they each sat down among the flowers beside an Indian bride? They might live like Christians while they lived like the birds of heaven. What a dead silence! He looked up and around—the birds had ceased to chirp, the parroquets were hiding among the leaves, the monkeys were clustered motionless upon the highest twigs—only out of the far depths of the forest the Campanero gave its solemn toll, once, twice, thrice, like a great death knell ringing down from far cathedral towers. Was it an omen? He looked up hastily at Ayacanora— she was watching him earnestly. Heavens! was she wait ing for his decision? Both dropped their eyes—the deci- sion was not to come from them. A. rustle !—a roar !—a shriek !—and Amyas lifted his eyes in time to see a huge dark bar shoot from the crag above the dreamer's head among the group of girls. A dull crash as the group flew asunder; and in the midst, upon the ground, the tawny limbs of one were writhing beneath the fangs of a black jaguar, the rarest and most terrible of the forest kings. Of one ! But of which? Was it Ayaca nora?—and, sword in hand, Amyas rushed madly forward: before he reached the spot those tortured limbs were still. It was not Ayacanora; for, with a shriek that rang through the woods, the wretched dreamer, wakened thus at last, sprang up and felt for his sword. Fool ! he had left it in his hammock. Screaming the name of his dead bride he rushed on the jaguar, as it crouched above its prey, and, seizing its head with teeth and nails, worried it in the ferocity of his madness like a mastiff dog. The brute wrenched his head from his grasp, and raised its dreadful paw—another moment and the husband's corpse would have lain by the wife's—but high in air gleamed Amyas's blade, down with all the weight of his huge body and strong arm fell that most trusty steel, and the head of the jaguar dropped grinning on its victim's corpse : And all stood still who uw him fall While men might count a score. " Oh, Lord Jeans !" said Amyas to himself, " thou bast answered the devil for me; and this is the selfish rest for which i would have bartered the rest which comes by working where Thou hast put me." They bore away the lithe corpse into the forest, and buried it under soft moss and virgin mould, and so the fair clay was transfigured into fairer flowers, and the poor, gentle, untaught spirit re turned to God who gave it. - - -- _ We are sure our readers will pardon the length of this extract, and we can assure them that in Mr. Kingsley's third volume they will find many other passages of almost equal power. The other heroine of the story is Rose Sal terne, a Devonshire girl, beloved by the whole family of the Leigh, and half a score Devon- THE PRESS. shire gentlemen besides. She disappoints them all, however, and elopes with a Spanish cavalier, Don Guzman de Soto ; and it is this catastrophe that gives rise to Amyas's second voyage. She is not recovered, however, but is ultimately burnt by the Inquisition, along with Amyas's brother, who had been taken prisoner by the Spaniards ; and the discovery of their fate so incenses Amyas that he so lemnly devotes his life to the slaughter of the Spanish race The end of the book is in this wi se:—Amyas is struck blind while pursuing the ship commanded byDonGuz man in the Spanish Armada (that gentleman being drowned, with all his crew, at the same moment), which wisely accepting as a rebuke for his unre lenting vengeance, Amyas settles down quietly in Devonshire, and espouses Ayacanora, who had followed him to England, and been trans formed by Mrs. Leigh into a tractable and de corous English maiden. Her birth and pa rentage, which were not exactly what Amyas had imagined, we shall leave the readers of the novel to find out for themselves. In all this, as the reader will see, there is very little of what strictly deserves the name of plot, nor is the absence of sustained in terest which thence ensues compensated by the rapidity with which the incidents succeed one another. We must say, on the whole, that we think the tale might be compressed into two volumes with very great advantage—leav ing us all that vigorous description which forms its principal charm, but omitting a great bulk of pages filled with a very peculiar phraseo logy, and nothing more. We could have de. sired also to see a little more of the other Eli zabethan worthies, whose names occur in every chapter, but of whom, with the exception of Raleigh, scarcely anything is narrated till to wards quite the end of the book, where we have them all " done " at once, sitting in a tavern, and talking like any other naval officers of the coming armada. - Of the moral purpose of " Westward Ho !" it is difficult to say anything definite. It par takes of the vagueness which characterises the writings of this school ; and, indeed, the glimpses of a theory which we catch at times through the mist of words are not such as to make us long for its development. As Amyas is the hero, perhaps we may take a passage in which he is contrasted with his Jesuit cousin, Eustace, as affording a tolerably fair specimen of Mr. Kingsley's view of life and work : I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts of men— the one trying to be good with all his might and main, ac cording to certain approved methods and rules which he has got by heart; the other not even knowing whether he is good or not, but just doing the right thing without thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because the Spirit of God is with him. Now we object as much as Mr. Kingsley can do to that needless worry of self examination which perhaps no sensible people really ap prove, but then we cannot allow that the indi vidual consciousness of the " Spirit of God " is to be the only rule of action. Protestants, indeed, hold that the Spirit of God is with every man who tries to be good " with all his " might and main," but the deliberate substi tution of feeling for law which Mr. Kingsley seems to recommend has been the radical error of fanaticism in all ages of the Church, and can be maintained as little by Scripture as by reason. Throughout the book, indeed, we detect the same vein of feeling—a foolish sneer at rules as such—language excusable in one ignorant alike of logic and the world, but not excusable in a writer who has had Mr. Kingsley's opportunities of learning the truth of both. The strong sympathies with animal strength and courage which distinguish our author no doubt contribute to his contempt for the So cratic theory of virtue, yet surely in the pre sent day these qualities require no stimulant. It is the intellectual rather than the physical characteristics of the Elizabethan era which we have now cause to envy ; the patient inves tigation of principles ; the unhesitating accep tance of necessary deductions ; the un shrinking pursuit of a theory to its legitimate results. These aro the great qualities which the teachers of to-day should inculcate on the rising generation; and though the personal prowess of Englishmen be well worthy of our warmest sympathy and pride, yet we must SATURDAY, warn our readers against that unnatural admi ration of coarse and cruel vigour which could excuse the massacre of prisoners of war, and applaud that wicked and dastardly murder for which the cheek of every gentleman in Eliza. beth's dominions must have burned hot with shame. -44 1 M Autobiography of James Silk 1314011*km". London : Longmans. Ma. BUCKINGHAM has a fair claim to the atten tion of the reading world. He began life early, he has seen much of men and cities, he has been adventurous, never settling long to one pursuit, and he has met with various fortune. If his autobiography does not be come popular, it will certainly not be for want of what is termed objective interest. He has plenty to write about, and in his copious diaries he has an inexhaustible store of materials to draw from. But a man may be as busy as a steam-engine, and have no more power of engaging our sympathy. He may be always babbling or bustling, may possess great cleverness, and make a figure in the world, yet have very little to relate concerning him self worth the telling. Those autobiographies are the most valuable which show us the inner man ; but there are some men very useful and estimable in their way, and, perhaps, among the beat of life's workers, who are all outside. One man may issue an immortal work from a dungeon, and another be exceedingly dull who has visited every noted spot on the earth. The public were tolerably well acquainted with the name of B. R. Haydon—his labours and distresses—long before his death, yet who suspected the real character of the drama played in his heart and home till the curtain a as raised by the publication of his memoirs ? It is only fair to state at once that Mr. Buckingham has no curtain to draw up. He is the same man in his autobiography as in his lectures and speeches. He discourses on the same themes, puts together much the same kind of " useful knowledge," and pours forth the like commonplace sentiment. In one respect, he appears here at a disadvantage. As a lecturer he was pleasing and graceful. We remember hearing him some thirty years ago, and being charmed with his manner and delivery, though it was evident enough that he only scratched the surface of his subject. The matter, however, which, assisted by fluency and aptness of illustration, will pass current from a platform, may make but a poor figure in a book; and hence it is that Mr. Buckingham's publications have fallen far behind his lectures in popularity. Many readers, he says, will regret the rapidity with which, in this autobiography, he passes over his travels in Egypt and Palestine. He assumes too much. Kinglake, Warburton Layard, and others have gone over the same ground since, and those who remember then narratives would not prize highly the re• miniscences of Mr. Buckingham. We have alluded to his commonplace senti ment; let us say a few words in justification of the phrase. His is one of those minds which can retain whatever ideas are hammered into them, but which are almost or altogether incapable of original reflection. Thus, he took up with those unreflecting peace doctrines which are natural to the mind of a generation which had suffered severely from long and destructive warfare, and which for a time were paraded in the van of liberalism. He quotes (i. 368 61.) from Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Franklin, to show the senseless ness and inhumanity of war, and reflects on the madness of the present time, when — Millions demand more reinforcements to continue work till Russia shall be humbled to the dust, and ambition of conquest destroyed—this being the dem and of France who robbed Turkey of her African dominions by force of arms, and of England who overthrew the Mohammedan empire of India. Yet in other parts we find Mr. Buckingham active in defending his ship from the attack of Greek pirates, mowing them down by the fire of his guns, while he clamours against our Government for not earlier resisting the buca neering pretensions of the Dey of Algiers : That such a state of things should be tamely submitted to by the weaker Governments of Spain, Sardinia, Italy, and Sicily, might not excite much surprise; but that so powerful a maritime nation as Great Britain should allow such a `_