The Press. — London, England, 1857-04-25 00:00:00

412 We have already trespassed on our limits in order to convoy to our readers some adequate notion of this scholarly and learned treatise, by one su eminent in the absorbing politics of the day as Mr. Gladstone. We have, we trust, indicated its principal features ; and we may conclude by saying that no student of Homer ought to consider himself properly equipped without this essay by his side. Mr. Duffs description of Sicily, though short, is varied and entertaining It is ranged under the heads of the physical geography of the island, its geology, vegetation, ruins, scenery, and views—each subject in turn yielding its quota to the general history. As an instance of Mr. Duff's very agreeable style we subjoin the following : The view over the Straits of Messina from the Peloric range is different from all of these. Around us grow the arbutus and the tree-heath, and the wild bees of Sicily burn amongst the thyme. Away to the left lie the Lipari islands. sleeping in the sun. In front the Calabrian hills rise to the height of several thousand feet, bolder and more precipitous than the coast of Sicily. Beneath us the Braccio of Messina guards the harbour of that beautiful and hapless city. Beyond it Charybdis. undistinguished from where we stand, twists its now all but harmless eddies, while between it and the other coast is the broad ocean-river which has seen so much. Through it the Greek colonists sailed to Curnse. Alcibiades stood across it in his galley to piead the cause of Athens in the Agora of Messana. On its shore, just below us, the Romans landed, nominally to aid the Mamertines, really to antici pate a Carthaginian invasion of Italy. By it Verres stored his plunder ; up it St. Paul sailed to Puteoli, in the Castor and Pollux. Alaric attempted to cross it, but was foiled by a storm, in this the last enterprise which he undertook before the waters of the Busentinus closed over his schemes of conquest. Count Roger, under the guidance of a more fortunate star, came over it to win a kingdom. Coeur de Lion, landing on its shores, eclipsed by his magniticence his liege lord and ally. In the city below us he hoisted his flag, and there, too, he submitted to penance for his presumption. There he listened to the apocalyptic dreams of the Abbot Joachim, and thence he sailed fur the " ports of sunny Cyprus " and the Holy Land. Here Charles of Anjou received the ambassadors of Peter of Arragon, biting his sceptre with impotent rage. Hance, too, in later days, Don John sailed to conquer at Lepanto, and Nelson to conquer at the Nile. In his paper on " Schemes of Christian Comprehension " Mr. Wilson very briefly reviews the various efforts that have at diffe rent times been made both by Englishmen and foreigners to devise some fundamental creed on which all parties could agree ; and, from the failure of these attempts to unite the English, Galilean, and other continental branches of the Church among themselves as well as with the various bodies of dissenters, t Ikea occasion to show the necessity of bring ing religious truth under the head of what logicians call "probable matter," if Christen dom is ever again to be at unity. "It has been," he says, "a misleading notion that an " intellectual certitude, or some spiritual gift " equivalent to an intellectual and demonstra " Live certitude, must lie at the basis of the " fundamental doctrines of Christianity." This essay is full of the most admirable and cogent reasoning; but we fear it will be addressed to an audience which has closed its ears. Two passages strike us as so pecu liarly well adapted to expose the prevalent error of what are called " serious people" that we must quote them, even at the risk of ex tending our review beyond the limits we had intended. It is the common sense and clenching conclusiveness of these passages that constitute their value, not anything metaphysically deep or argumentatively new : Controversy itself, which has so largely prevailed in the Cuistian world, is a proof to us, is an acknowledgment on t ie part of Christendom, if any be really needed, that the d .gmatie Christian statements are deeply involved in pro. b ible matter. Controversy acknowledges, that there is s mething to be said, with apparent reason and some show o probability, on two or more sides of a question. Though t amount and b.ilance of probabilities is differently esti• m dea by the different parties to a controversy, each con fe eies, by the act of taking up his pen, that there is some p °liability for the opinion which lie sets himself to • mbat. If it had no show of reason whatever, he would not argue against it; we confine a madman, we denounce criminal, we pity a fool, but we do not argue with them, sor try to convince them. Thus with respect to a doctrine 41-. baled by the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the Zwinglians, as to the force of the words of institution of the Eucharist; there is something to be said, and, to judge from controversial tomes, a great deal to be said, for each of their three interpretations ; whether hoe rBt = hoc fit, or, hoc est s= hie est, or, est -= significat : and a discussion, begun upon the mere words, ramifies also into almost in. terminable philological, historical, ratristical, and even subtle metaphysical disquisitions. THE PRESS. Again : But it may be said, that this subject should not be die cussed without taking into account certain faculties with which the true believer is endowed—that the genuine sense of Scripture, the realfruit to be gathered from it,can only be reaped by a gift from that same Divine Spirit which dictated it; only to the illuminated do its words reveal themselves. And so that, though, humanly speaking, the biblical records are an historical collection, the evidences from them are not to be sifted and weighed according to the laws of mere human testimony—that there is a faculty of faith, a spiritual r)crroxiai, which leaps to its due conclusion; or to the less gifted, there is yet granted a faith, tentative and hypothetical, which throws itself into the experiment of belief, and becomes satisfied. if these are heaven•sent faculties, immediately, sporadically bestowed on chosen individuals, they who do not partake in them are not responsible for their blindness; they do their best while they still endeavour to grope their way according to those other instincts which they possess, and which they, in their ignorance, even think that they have from haaven—good gifts to be used for truth and goodness—not from beneath. Moreover, these supposed higher gifts do not always testify alike ; spiritual insight and faith, in different com munions, perceive and are assured of contradictory pro positions. Either those faculties are delusive, or the things wherein their testimonies differ are not essential. And not only members of Romanist and Protestant com munions have appealed to such like inward witness, as evidence of the truth of their respective doctrines, not only Christians, but Mahommedans and Hindus. Here Mr. Wilson hits off the true edfficulty with which all lovers of truth have to contend, and the fundamental weakness on which fanaticism operates. But to hope for its dis persion is to expect an intellectual Utopia, or a world like that sighed for by Euripides, without women. Religious error we must consider is almost the only one which neither experience nor science can disprove. For he who pretends to the exclusive possession of spiritual truth is like a man intrenched in the clouds : his strength is in his weakness—he cannot be driven out, because he cannot be touched. A fortress such as this, at once unsubstantial and impregnable, is far too wel come a refuge for pride and credulity to permit of our hoping that it will ever fall into decay. The analogy between ancient Greece and medival Italy is a paper that we like less than any of the preceding. Not that it is not abundant in knowledge, as well as thoughtful and earnest ; but there is a tone about it of what, for want of a better word, we must call " bumptiousness." It is like a bunch of holly— picturesque, but prickly. " Ptiestly despots," " barbaric infidels," and " upstatt brigands " " stifle freedom in the bud," " inflict every atrocity which earth and hell can devise," and " gorge on the entrails" of nations. Mr Free man seems as if be were trying to imitate the trenchant invective of the great Whig essayist, and only succeeds in picking up his style of florid exaggeration. One or twice, also, ho unhappily aims at the humorous. But when we mention that one of the blunders over which he makes merry is that M. Lamartine makes Alcibiades take refuge at the Court of Prussia—as obvious a misprint as could well be—our readers will be able to judge as well of his humour as of his judgment. The style in which he tries to play round this supposed mistake is pitiably clumsy. Mr. Freeman is a man of ability and learning, and has contri buted a valuable paper. Ho would do better at once to recognise the truth that his forte lies in narrative and description, but not in either wit or declamation. (To be continued.) Letters of lioraoe Walpole. Now First Chro nologically Arranged. Edited by Peter Cunningham, F.S.A. Vol. 11. London : Bentley. WE reviewed at considerable length the anno tated portions of the first volume of this highly important edition of Walpole's corre sponuence. Mr. Cunningham's notes in this second volume are more careful and less pre tentious, and the text is not overloaded with so many superfluous illustrations. We are as yet disappointed in the original letters pro mised in the introductory preface, hut we sup pose that the succeeding volume; will contain some better specimens of the correspondence with Mr. Chute, of " The Vine." There are only four new letters in the present volume, which run from No. 205 to No. 450. We are still convinced that the size of the volumes is too large. The lines are extremely wide, and the weight of the book in the hand is excessive. SATURDAY, So light a writer as Walpole ought not to be encased in such heavy setting. We often see miniatures placed in ponderous frames ; but they are hung against the wall, and we have not the trouble of handling them. We adhere to our former opinion that twelve octavo volumes would have been more convenient to the reader than eight of these massive tomes. Where the notes are so numerous, it may be supposed that the editor will be often exposed to criticism. Many notes will be found need less, while in sonic places we should like more detail. For example, where the famous Gun nings are mentioned for the first time in this volume, we are disappointed by the following note:— The Beauties Maria and Elizabeth, of whom we shall read so much. They were the daughters ofJohn Gunning, Esq., of Castle Coote, in Ireland, by Bridget, daughter of Theobald Bourke, sixth Viscount Mayo. The elder was now ( 1751 ) in her eighteenth year, the younger in her seventeenth year. Maria married, b March, 175'2, the sixth Earl of Coventry, and died, 1 October, 1760, many years before her husband; Elizabeth married first, 14 February, 1752, the sixth Duke of Hamilton; and secondly, 3 March, 1759, Colonel John Campbell, afterwards filth Duke of Argyll, for whom she had refused the Duke of Bridgewater, the father of British Inland Navigation. The Duchess of Hamilton and Argyll ( the adventurer Eliza. both Gunning, who died 20 March, 1700) was the mother of two Dukes of Hamilton and two Dukes of Argyll.-- CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Cunningham might have given a neater pricis on the Gunnings, and we should like to have the question answered, " Who was John " Gunning, of Castle Coote ?" There ought to be more details about those famous beauties which would interest general readers, and Mr. Cunningham should have told us the best place for seeing their portraits. The composition of the whole note is inelegant. It is followed by another : It is remarkable that this great lady [the Duchess of Hamilton], and her sister Lady Coventry, had been originally so poor, that they had thought of being actresses; and when they were first presented to the Earl of Harring- ton, the Lord Lieutenant at the Castle of Dublin, Mrs. Woffington the actress lent clothes to them—Mt/polo Memoires of George in., vol. iii. p. 190.—CUNNINGHANI. The statement of Walpole must be cautiously accepted. It is possible that Mrs. Woffington lent them jewellery or ostrich feathers when they were presented to the Lord Lieutenant, and it is not uncommon for young ladies going to Court to add to their own charms by bor rowed finery from a fair friend. We do not know of any evidence to show that Mrs. Wof fington was so intimate with the Gunnings at Dublin, and we think it not likely that the nieces of Lord Mayo (a wealthy peer) could have been so poor as the note by Walpole seg• gests. Mr. Cunningham might have, certainly, made more effort to throw light on the ori ginal history of these two renowned sisters. There is still some hasty writing in these notes. In the employment of " now " and " then " our too fluent annotator is careless. In the first of the foregoing notes we have " now (1751)." Further on (at p. '279) we read of " Chesterfield-house . . . . now (1752) just " completed." At p. 465, where Walpole alludes to a certain picture, we have the note, " now (1857) the property of the Duke of " Sutherland." This double use of the word " now" occurs in other places, and is incorrect. In an annotator who has not much to com pose, critics consider neatness as an especial virtue. Some of the annotations read quaintly. Of the betting-book at White's Club we have the note : This remarkable book ( I have seen it) is still preserved at White's.—CUNNINOHANI. The " I have seen it " reads with comical effect, as if the book was more " remarkable " because the annotator had seen it. In our opinion, it would have been more "remarkable " if it had escaped the notice of such a book• glutton as Mr. Cunningham. Sometimes Mr Cunningham is too flip pant in deciding on the merits of a secondary character. Ho writes of " Samuel Foote, " the player and playwright." Foote was more than " a playwright." Ho had wit enough to set up half a dozen of our modern "dramatists," and his Mayor of (htr'•att lives still. When Lord Chatham's sister is alluded to, Mr. Cunningham writes Anne Pitt, sister of the great Lord Chatham. She was a very clever woman, eccentric, said smart things, swore a good deal, was privypurae to the Princess Dowager of Ibi..