The Press. — London, England, 1856-05-31 00:00:00

MAY 31, 1856. The nature of the services done by the ladies is well put in the passage we annex : I believe we were of use. N:it in the way many people had a vague idea of at first, i.e. a h it we were to be con stantly going about with a pocket full of lint and plaister, sad a case of surgical instruments, perpetually dressing w punds (and be fo re that I had a faint vision of this myself I went to Smyrna), but in seeing the kind doctor's orders carried out with discretion, in the spirit as we ll as the letter, that nothing was done out of time, over done, or neglected, in keeping systematic regularity, an d above all in exercising a marvellous moral influence over the soldiers. That nurses, people from their own .lass, should be sent out to attend to them seemed natural enough ; but that " ladies, real ladies," as they used to say, should " really " come to see that they were taken good care of, filled them with surprise: and (for we are all more or less influenced by these things) the more external indi cations of our position were kept up, the more influence we had with them. Many touching instances are given of the poor patients' gratitude. One, while dying, could not bear t o l e t go the hand of a lady he had elapsed. " I believe," said a sick boy who had watched the nurses feeding other patients, "if I had something " ►rom the hand of a woman, J would get well." One of the soldiers, Cotterill, was in a fearfully emaciated state. To the nurse who first attended him he said, " I believe you're not a human being, but an angel." The authoress tended him for a time : One day something had detained me later than usual ; he beckoned me to him the moment he saw me, and when I went up he burst into tears and said, " I thought you were never coming more." When she was placed in another [division of the hospital— He heard it in some way, and cried and sobbed as if his heart would break. Nothing would ratify him, "he was going to lose his mother and the lady," and he refused to be comforted; in two hours afterwards the fountain of his tears was dried for ever. The most distressing duties of the hospital were dis charged with great cheerfulness. Indeed the ladies were never so well satisfied as when they had their bands lull, as may be judged by many passages like the following : Our sixty-one patients were now increased by the arrival, without the slightest intimation, of a transport containing a hundred and sixty-one sick, on the '•29th of October ; they were landed at two o'clock in the afternoon. Great was every one's eagerness and alacrity at the news; we all hastened down to the hospital in hopes of having our hands fill Again we read, " We were all quite pleased at having "plenty to do." Such expressions read oddly, though the warm humanity which dictated them is not t be misunderstood. When the hospital was in admirable working condition, it Was ordered to be abandoned, that it might be converted into barracks for the Swiss Legion, to the great dissatisfaction of patients, orderlies, nurses, medical officers, and all others concerned. No one can read this simple narrative without recognising the value of the ladies' services, especially in promoting order, in cheering the spirits of the patients, in soothing the bed of suffering and death, and in diffusing through the wards of the hos pital a spiritual and chastening influence. The women who voluntarily undertook this charitaole mission must have been of a nature best fitted to inspire respect and confidence. The influence of character is soon felt, snd hence perhaps one main cause of their success. Nomos : an Attempt to Demonstrate a Central Phy sical Law in Nature. London : Longmans. THIS essay is of extremely speculative character. From the known affinities of imponderable agencies of the universe—as heat, light, electricity, and mag netism—the author is led to believe that there is a law behind these agencies of which they are but partial manifestations. To this central law may be due, he thinks, those irregularities in the action of natural forces of which no satisfactory explanation has yet been given. The essayist's latitudinarian reach of thought is supported by much scientific instanca and eccentric reasoning. As speculation often precedes discovery, his guessing may be worth examination by the pioneers of philosophy. At one time it was thought a bold speculation of physicists that our solar system and stellar universe were moving round an 'indistinguishable and unknown centre. The author's speculation is of a like kind. The primary laws of one age are the secondary laws of another; and perhaps, as this essayist supposes, we may be on the edge of discoveries undreamt of by sewton, and be able to resolve his law of gravity into a law of more universal application. Songs of the Brave. London: Sampson Low. Ntwz poetic pieces, printed on tinted paper, and il lustrated by wood engravings from drawings by Birket Foster, E. Duncan, and other artists, make up a pretty "in honorem " book. Three of the poems are by Campbell, and one each by Burns, Collins, Byron, Wolfe, and Tennyson. The " Joy Bell," by Mr. Mackay, seems to have crept in by THE PRESS. mistake. Whatever may be its merits, it has certainly no claim to take rank with the other compositions. We even question the title of " The Charge of the Light Brigade" to a place with the " Mariners of England " and " How Sleep the Brave." The war has produced finer lyrics than those selected for insertion here. Social Delusions concerning Wealth and Want. By R. Jennings, M.A. London: Longmans. THE theory propounded in this little book is, that all expenditure is waste which is unnecessary, and that such waste must result in individual suffering. Mr. Jennings writes:— We can perceive that all who are maintained, under whatever pretext, without helping to produce the necessa ries of life, must be fed, and housed, and apparelled, by the labours of others who produce these commodities, and that the larger the number of the former, the harder must be the work and the more wretched the remuneration of the latter. The consideration may be worth private thought, but when insisted on as a right principle of legislation, it. becomes stark socialism. The theory has been stated and refuted a thousand times, both in prose and verse. In our day the instinct of men is a pre servative against waste in any general form being carried to excess, but some waste there always must be, and Providence has provided a sufficient margin to prevent that waste being injurious. Mi. Jennings cannot understand the consequences which would result from carrying his theory into practice. It is not to a spurious political economy that we should look for the means of counteracting the evils atten• dant on a high state of civilisation, but to the culti vation of that vital principle of Christianity which promotes moral conscientiousness, checks hurtful luxury, and prevents modern societies from falling under the dominion of the vices and corruptions which crushed nations of the ancient world. Mr. Jennings sees but a little way before him ; fairly carried out, his principles would clothe him in serge, feed him on oatmeal, and lodge him in a barn. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.-MAy 29. BOOKS. The Lamp of Life . Simpkin and Marshall. Gerard. G►ace and Poems. G. Bosworth and Harrison. The Paricide. A Posthumous Rhapsody and Domestic Drama. Saunders and Otley. _ . Glimpses ;f Life and Manners in Persia. Lady Sheil. Murray. PAMPHLETS. Sonnets (chief/ Astronomical) and other Poems. C. Dol man—Ups and Downs of a Public School. \V. and F. G. Cash— The National Gallery. J. E. Taylor—On the Pro gress of Religious Liberty. George R. Wright—The Muni cipal Directory for 1856. Kelly and Co. THE CANADIAN PUBLIC reap all the advantage to be derived from American cheap literature, as the works printed from English copyrights can be im ported into the colony by payment of a small duty. The Canadian publishers, I fancy, would prefer that the British law of copyright should extend to Ca nada, or rather that British copyright works printed in the States should be excluded from entering Canada, but that they should be allowed to print them, paying a royalty to the author. As the case stands at present, although there is a very large reading public in Canada, every day increasing with the extension of education, as well as by the increase of population, the British author enjoys from it not the slightest profit.—Kingston's Western Wanderings. DESOLATION OF PALESTINE.—DI Palestine you are nearly as much in the wilderness as when in Arabia, for as to inhabitants they are precisely the things which do not exist for all you can tell, except in the towns and villages you pass through. You ride on day after day, and you rise over each hill, and you sink into each valley, and except an occasional soli tary traveller with his servant and his muleteer, or a Turkisk official with his party, rarely does a mi.ving object appear upon the landscape. No cattle are on the land, and no passengers are on tho highways. How lonely it is; and this loneliness strikes you more than that of the Desert, for it seems unnatural be cause here there should be life and there is none. Sometimes you may make out at a distance on the hillside a single figure—a man upon a donkey. It is the only moving thing your eye can detect all round. And so you go on through this desolate land. From Jerusalem to Beyrout you scarcely light upon one single scene of rural industry—not one single scene of life that can he compared with those on the Arab pastures from the top of Jebel El Sufar to the wells of El Mileh. There in places the country was full of people and children, and flocks and herds—a rejoicing picture of pastoral existence in all its abounding wealth ; while here, in the country of tillage, and towns, and villages, the whole land seemed to lie under a spell.—Louth's Wanderer in Arabia. Stusir. HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE. Is the dissipated period prior to the first fall of the Bourbons perhaps there was never more vice and corruption than that. which now exists in the Parisian capital. From the date of the republic in 1E348 to the inauguration of the actual empire, the luxury and licentiousness of the bourgeoisie have been developed even to an unprecedented extent. The stage, re flecting the manners and customs of the time, has not been behindhand in the exhibition of social imt morality, and the drama of the younger Dumsv, La Dame aux Camelia., in which the tainted attri butes of that class of women in Paris called " Lo rettes" are so daringly depicted, met with an enor mous success. To the credit of English authors let it be recorded, that no translation or adaptation of this abominable drama has been attempted. It was reserved for an Italian poet, in order to afford the appetite of Verdi some strong situations, to arrange La Dame aux Camelia. for the Italian lyric stage, the only kind of compromise essayed by the librettist being the throwing back of the foul incidents a cen tury, instead of giving Paris as it is, as regards the actual aspect of society. In the Traviata, which the English translator gives as " The Lost One," the re pulsive orgies of the Lorettes open the opera, an attempt being made to excite sympathy, after a drinking duo and chorus, for Violetta, because she suddenly picks out from her admirers, by the gift of a flower (reversing the Ottoman custom of the harem), a young provincial, Alfred Germont. In the second act, his father persuades Violetta to resign Alfred, whose sister's marriage depends on the cess; sation of the liaison, and then in the last act Violate dies upon the stage of consumption for the loss of Alfred, exhorting him thus:— If a virgin pure and true Thou, in the flow'r of youth, shonldst meet, Who to thee her heart would give, Ah ! espouse and love her well. T wish it. Give her, too, this likeness. Tell her that she who gave it thee, Midst the saints in Heaven, Prays for her and thee! Can anything more debased and shocking than this story be conceived? Verdi has noted the inci dents and sentiments of the lovers—can they be dignified with such a holy designation ?—after his usual fashion. The composer indulges in the veriest trashy tunes, miserably treated, musically speaking, during the orgies—for these abound through the three acts, either on or off the stage — in order to impart his strongest colouring to the catastrophe, which, with all due deference to the anti Verdi-ites, can be accepted as a masterpiece, equalling almost his finale in the Trovatore. The orchestral symphony preceding the rising of the cur tain foreshadows the denouement in solemn strains from the stringed instruments ; the few bars heard before the third act, and the whole of the music of the dying frail heroine, are indeed worthy of a more moral drama. The" Brindisi "of Violetta and Alfred with the genteel guests, is catching, and is a pub lisher's prize ; and the great air of the barytone father, in the second act, in the hands of an accom plished singer, would be most telling. Benevan tano's coarse and boisterous voice utterly failed to inspire interest for the father, the only one in the polluted circle who might relieve the horrible drama. Still the music, if handled with tact, and with a good band and chorus, might be rendered more effective than it has been hitherto. Signor Bonetti, the new conductor, understands his business, but if he is not supplied with good materials—Cui bone ? Piccolomini, the new prima donna, albeit the niece of a cardinal and the descendant of a pope, is not a phenomenon as an actress, and she is assuredly as yet not a singer. In her latter capacity she has everything to learn. She cannot yet sing the sim plest scale artistically. Her attack of the notes is by means of the " sliding scale," a species of slur ring, showing smallness of study and poverty of practice. The quality of the voice is a shrill s ,, prano, screamy and harsh in the upper notes, and with little " timbre " in the lower ones. Her intonation is not always accurate. In the two first acts (acid this notice is written after the second hearing) Piccolomini would be pronounced by persons then leaving the theatre a failure ; but in the death scene her dramatic powers predominate, and hopes for the future are confidently inspired. But this future will depend essentially on very hard study. Is her fate to be that of so many juvenile singers in Italy, who make their debuts, complete novices in the vocal art, in Verdi's straining operas, on the strength of young and fresh voices, which dis.. appear in three or four seasons? Is Piccolomini's fame to be merely transitory, like that of Sophie Cruvelli, who was endowed by nature with such a magnificent organ, but whose progress was checked by the ill-considered eulogies of ber critical parti. I ' 523