The Press. — London, England, 1856-02-23 00:00:00

186 writing. He brings into prominent relief points of mere secondary importance, and slurs over others of high consequence. He arranges his materials badly. He is not sufficiently communicative of " facts and figures " as to the internal state of the armies, their numeri cal strength at particular intervals, their loss by cholerat and sickness, and so on. He enters at too great length into mere incidenal matters connected with the expedition, and does not do so at the right moment. He is constantly abouring to be picturesque and dramatic, and does not always succeed; and when he does succeed, he overdoes the thing. He puts some of his gravest facts which naturally be long to the text into foot-notes, and thrusts into the text what would have been properly placed in notes At times he is terribly magniloquent; for example, he thus begins his narrative : The die is cast; the last belief in peace has vanished; the diplomatic relations of France and England with Russia have ceased ; declarations of war are exchanged ; prepara tions are being made to combat. From all parts troops are marching t3wards the ports at which they are to em bark. The breath of battles has passed over the French nation and awakened its ardent and bellicose nature, for this war is a national war, which moves the noblest in stincts in the heart of every man and ►n the heart of the natiou! In all parts of France religion calls down from heaven protection on the soldier. Already our vessels cover the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. The national flag flaunts from the top of the masts; the cannon has thundered before Odessa, etc., etc. On other occasions he indulges in such bom bast as this : The Sultan smiled for perhaps the first time in his life, for there was France,—warlike France, protecting France ! On others, again, he constructs his sentences in such a slovenly way as to make them un grammatical and unintelligible. We observe, t" that, not content with dividing his history into books and chapters, he is guilty of the sad affectation of numbering his paragraphs in Roman characters, as if they were of sufficient importance to merit that honour. In so doing, it is true, he imitates Tacitus ; but if be had been wise he would have abstained from a typographical peculiarity which recals to mind the Latin writer; for the difference is wide indeed between Tacitus and Bazancourt. The Moncton. By Mrs. Moodie. Two Vols. London: Bentley. THIS novel is inferior to the former productions of the same authoress. It is a tale of the present day, but we should hope modern society could hardly permit such characters and incidents as Mrs. Moodie has depicted in these volumes. There is hardly a crime in the annals of the Newgate Calendar which is not to be met with here torgery, seduction, suicide, murder, and parricide are all narrated, to say nothing of the minor offences of destroying church registers, and exchanging children at nurse. We hope for the future Mrs. Moodie will employ her in ventive faculties on more pleasing subjects. She has written so many really good works, that we are sorry to see her take up with this Dumas style of composition. The British Empire; Historical, Biographical, and Geographical. One Vol. London: Grant and Griffith. Is a volume of near a thousand pages, we have com• bined a copious chronology of British history, a bio graphical dictionary of our most eminent men, and a gazetteer including the names of our Indian and colonial possessions. Each department has been compiled by writers of repute, and in the biographical division the initials of the writer supply fair pre sumption that great care has been taken to insure correctness. The introductory sketch of British history is written by Professor Creasy, and the chro nology is composed by Mr. Neil, Rector of Motfat Academy. The whole compilation is judicious ; it may be made extremely serviceable as a scho3l-book ; and the publishers, we are persuaded, will not lose by their liberality in engaging for each division of the book the services of writers fully competent to the satisfactory fulfilment of the work assigned them. Men of the Time. One Vol. London : Bogue. A Both" of this kind, unless carefully and conscien tiously done, is worse than useless—it is a source of error. The editor seems to have taken the ridiculous biographical sketches written by the late Mr. Phillips for the Crystal Palace as his model. He makes hardly any pretence to care, and none to impartiality. His book is full both of blunders and prejudice. It is in no respect correct, and it has some appearance of being corrupt. Such a work, the reader will readily THE PRESS. understand, may be made a medium for the grossest kind of putTeiy. The most space given in the volume is to the name of Charles Kean, and in this article the literal blunders are so conspicuous as to suggest that the editor blindly followed details furnished him of which he knew nothing. Thus it is said that the actor was born in ISII, and that he made his first appearance in October, 1837, when he had not at tained the age of seventeen. Facts, which are matters of the greatest notoriety, are misstated in a ludicrous manner. In the memoir of Lord : Palmers ton, for example, we read _ . _ Between 1841 and 1846 Lord Palmerston was in Oppo. sition. In December, 1545, some advances were made to him, but the decided hostility of Lord Grey rendered any final arrangement impossible. He was no admirer of the nepotism of Lord Grey, and his lordship knew it; hence the door of office, of which the stately earl was then the keeper, was closed against him. On the resignation of Sir Hobert Peel, the noble earl returned once more to offile. By the allusions to the " stately earl," and to his lordship's " nepotism," the late Earl Grey must be meant. But he died in July, 1845 ; and it is of course absurd to speak of the late or present earl as being keeper of the door of office at a time when the Duke of Wellington and Sir H. Peel were in power, and the project of a Wnig Ministry was but in agitation. It would he time lost to examine the book closely. It is a catchpenny publication, wholly untrustworthy and very impertinent. tint Arts. THE BRITISH INSTITUTION. THE BRITISH INSTITUTION opened to the public on Monday week. By all but universal consent it seems to have been decided that the present is the very worst exhibition of this year. For our own part, we have no fault whatever to find with the verdict; for, with hardly a single exception, every work in the three rooms appears to us to be tame and conventional, never rising above, and but seldom falling below, a tiresome mediocrity. At the head of the five hundred and odd pictures which, most of them, contribute their quota of badness to the fatigue of the unhappy visitor, stands Sir G. Hayter's "Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer" (80). The very genius of commonplace must have inspired such a conception of such a scene. All is carefully conventional; decorous respectability and rigid same ness prevail throughout; not an actor in the cere mony but looks as if be were sitting for his portrait; many as if they were, on the whole, rather bored than otherwise by the tedium of the operation. The martyrs are raising their eyes to heaven like the two principals in a stage execution ; but with no more expression than if they were tumblers going to com mence a public display, and a little anxious about the prospect of fine weather overhead. The crowd respectably indulges in preconcerted sorrow, evi dently several days old, as per agteement—a woman in the front rank having fainted away into the most thoroughly commonable pose we ever remember to have seen in our experience of syncope and its imita tions; while the gaudily-robed officials, who pre side over the murder, have settled themselves down into that attitude which everybody must remember prevails so universally in a country church just before the commencement of the sermon. The picture, in spite of the technical excellencies of its execution, is a complete failure in all the higher re quisites of historical painting. Mr. J. C. Morris's " Drive " (149) demands notice from its size and position. It is merely a dog driving a flock of sheep, who scatter before him in all the wildly absurd attitudes which sheep affect under the influence of alarm. The sheep are evidently meant for sheep. but they are, in colour and texture of wool at least, rather " advanced " sheep—sheep a little before the present ovine age—" the sheep of the futi.v!," in fact. The attitudes, however, both of sheep and dog are singularly true to life. " Revenons a nos moutons," and very good mutton it is in Mr. Ansdell's "Severe Weather" (16). Two rams, snowed up and looking must unsentimentally stupid, are discovered by a shepherd, who, probably from the combined effects of sbeerish society and cold weather, looks jast as stupid as his charges. Mr. Ansdell's wool is as real as Mr. Morris's is false; but when we have admired the accuracy of the imita tion of life in this picture, there is no more to say, for or against. It is capital mutton, good snow, and—code tout. In the Middle Room, Messrs. Joy and Webb have conspired to produce an illustration of Falconer's shipwreck in The Raft" (260. We have " supp'd full " of such " horrors;" we know of old the gaunt, emaciated wretch stretching forwards and straining every nerve and muscle to attract the notice of the distant sail—the passive African—the dying invalid— and all tle " properties " of the frighttul scene—the blood-red sunset, and the dark-green expanse of "pitiless ocean," deaf to the agonies of the livid and death-like sufferers. It is an old subject, but there is a certain grim power in the treatment of SATURDAY, the well•known materials which at once arrests the attention of the spectator. On the opposiit3 side of the room (360) Mr. H. Dawson has a British man-of-war floating in a sea of Devonshire cream, and illuminated by an lamp, as an illustration of that time-honoured idea "British bulwarks." In an ocean of the speciti, gravity of that employed by this artist, we fancy that a first-rate would draw visibly less waver —cream, we mean—than the principal " bulwark" in the picture. What a contrast to the fresh sea-breeziness of Mr. J. T. Wilson's "Squally Weather off Dover" (529), with its clear, crisp, spray-tipped waves and cloudy, gusty sky, with a hasty gleam of sunshine dashing out over the cliffs in the extreme distance. One feels the moist sea breeze on one's cheek after a minute's contemplation. We know too little of the birds and their homes to be able to pronounce judgment on Mr. Wolfs " Ptarmigan's Haunt" (339). It has been generally pronounced " startling in its truthfulness." To us it seems startling only. Mr. G. Cruikshank's " Fairy Ring" (458) looks at first sight exactly like a cutting out of a theatrical back-scene, the sickle-moon dipping below the bill materially aiding the association. The colour is unwholesome, thick, and muddy ; but the pro cess i cn of batlike looking monstrosities over the hillside gives a certain elfish—conventionally elfish—air to the scene, which all the crowd of minute oddities swarming round the central mushroom (on which Oberon arid Titania are holding their court), fails to produce effectively! Mr. Lance furnishes, besides a fruit piece (4'2) which calls for no especial remark, a bit of animal life, or rather death, somewhat on the Landseer model. The " Stricken Mallard " (461) is certainly striking as well as stricken ; whether or no in the sense in which the artist intended we *beg leave to doubt. The action of the dying bird may be truthful, but, except to the mallard-shooting section of the public, is likely to seem almost ridiculous from its oddity and violence, and its remoteness from their usual experience. Among the few sacred subjects treated, we may remark Mr. E. H. Harden's " Christ Walking on the Sea" (507). The artist has succeeded, if in nothing else, at least in telling what may be called a " plain black and white" story ; but there is a feebleness and even uncertainty of footing about the single figure of the Redeemer, wh'cli contrasts oddly enough with the exceedingly solid aspect of the water sh ch is supposed to support him. The " Sending Away of Hagar and Ishmael" (515), Mr. A. Rowan, and "Christ Healing tile Man sick of the Pals," Mr. T. Roden (IMS), may be just mentioned, en passant, as good instances of ambitious mediocrity ; while Mr. Halle's "Fates" (157) might just as well be called " Three Young Ladies Preparing for a Game of Cat's cradle." Many of the landscapes are of great merit. Those especially by Mr. T. Danby reach the soul of the spectator, in spite of the artist's love for rather ex ceptional effects. The sculpture calls for no particular mention. Except Mr. Munro's " Undine " (545), which is hill of gracefulness and tenderness, there is nothing which need induce us to lengthen our notice. Ulitsir. SACRED HARMONIC SOCIETY. COSTA'S " Ell." Jr is gravely given out by the doctors in music that the great defect of the new oratorio of Eli is, that the composer has followed in the beaten track, and that he has introduced no novel forms and principles. He has not striven to be a Wagner or a Berlioz, but lie has been contented to tread in the steps of Handel and Mendelss.ilin. The Italian has pro duced a work which as thoroughly understood and appreciated on a first hearing, whereas it ought to have been so obstruse and complicated as to require the study of a whole life to comprehend, and even then to be understood only by the favoured few. The Messiah must be the Alpha, and The Elijah the Omega of oratorio writing. No musician is to have the presumption to compose a sacred work, except he can exhibit a certificate that he was born in cockney land. And the Sacred Harmonic Sociecv, that admi rable combination of amateur and artistic ability arid enthusiasm for art-progress, deserves a vote of cen sure from the musical public, because it will not lend itself to jobbing idol-worship. According to one authority, there ought to be no fugues in an oratorio. Mendelssohn did not write one in The Elijah—how is it, then, that Costa has dared to do so in Eli Besides, the Italian has taken the three first letters of the German composer's last work— " Hine illy lachryinte." According to another musical pundit, an oratorio ought to be nothing else but fugues—albeit that Haydn, who did know something about music, was wont to assert, "It is the air which is the charm of music." But Costa's fugues—the composer, by the way, marks in his