The Press. — London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

THE PRESS. mother or sister to give me comfort in my last moments, is sad enough. Yet I hope the effect of these reflections is wholesome, and will make me consider seriously whether I am fit to die. From Newcastle, in 1849, he wrote to his mother in the following sorrowful spirit : My dearest mother,—l have just received your truly fond and affectionate letter. I assure you it made me shed tears. I feel that my conduct has been undutiful in not having written to you oftener. But do not imagine for a moment that my neglect in so doing ever arose from forgetfulness. Far worse were I than a brute, could I ever cease to remember the fondest and most devoted of mothers. My dislike to writing in general shall not prevent me from writing to you or Mary by every mail for the future, with out fail, so I trust you will not have cause again to upbraid me for having allowed such long intervals of time to elapse between each of my letters to you. That part of your letter, in which you mention your tainting on the terrace, made my blood curdle in my veins, and alarmed me dreadfully. That night I knelt by my bedside, and prayed most fervently that the Lord Almighty would spare your life for the sake of your orphan children. A son's affection for his mother can only really be known when he feels that her life is in danger. I know not what I should do, or what would become of me, were you, my precious darling mother, to be taken from me. I should go on through life with a void, that I know could never be filled up. My chief pleasure during the past year has been in looking forward to our meeting once again in dear old England; and oh, what delight this anticipation afforded me! But, mother, you must and will get well again. I shall yet, at some not far distant day, have the joy of seeing you, and kissing your fundly-remembered face. You shall be caused no more pain or anxiety by me. Oh, that my past actions could be obliterated from my recol lection, and that my conscience could acquit me of ever having done anything to cause you grief and uneasiness. We think it most likely that, as often happens in such cases, he may have upbraided himself too deeply. He appears to have at first ex perienced much disapproval from his brother officers : On the morning which succeeded that memorable night, he bought a large bible, and placed it open on the table in his sitting•room, determining that "an open bible," for the future, should "be his colours." "It was to speak for me," he said, " before I was strong enough to speak for myself." His friends came as usual to his rooms, and did nut altogether fancy the new colours. One remarked that he had " turned Methodist," and, with a shrug, retreated. Another ventured on the bolder measure of warning him not to become a hypocrite : " Bad as you were, I never thought you would come to this, old fellow." So, for the most part, for a time, his quarters were deserted by his late companions. During six or seven months he had to encounter no slight opposition at mess, " and had hard work," as he said, "to stand his ground." But the promise did not fail, " The righteous shall hold on his way, and he that bath clean hands shall wax stronger and stronger." That he did not, under the influence of his religious fervour, neglect his military duties, is strikingly proved by the following fact : The adjutancy of his regiment was offered to him by his colonel in the spring of that year (18,52 ), with these flatterilg words :—" Vicars, you are the man I can best trust with responsibility." This appointment appears to have given universal satisfaction amongst officers and men, although one of the officers remarked jestingly, "He won't do for it—he is too conscientious." But he seems to have become more austere than can ever be agreeable in social life : This conscientiousness was not only evinced in his military but also in his private life. Every amusement which he found to he injurious in its effect on his spiritual condition was cheerfully relinquished. In a letter to his eldest sister, he inquires her opinion of balls and other public entertainments, and adds :—" I have of late refused every invitation to such amusements, on finding they made me less earnest and thoughtful, and indisposed me for reading and prayer." He became a teacher in Sunday schools, and attended bible classes. His religious diary, which occupies several pages, will excite various feelings according as different readers are disposed. We indicate its nature with critical precision in saying that the late Syd ney Smith in his earlier days would have satirised it as a manifestation of mere Method ism. But Sydney Smith began, as he grew old, to feel that English society is right in ruling that grave subjects must not be ap proached with ribaldry, and that even exag gerated feelings on the most solemn of all subjects ought not to be scourged with cruel criticism. Vehement enthusiasm will never be cured by Voltairian heartlessness. The description in Cowper of the superiority in spiritual grandeur in the English work-girl, happy with her Bible, over the brilliant French author, mocking at the sacred volume, is preg nant with suggestive thoughts. Hedley Vicars, we should add, was a humani tarian as well as a pietist. He used to teach in Lord Shaftesbury's ragged schools ; he visited repentant thieves, sad with Cita , mis- SATIJRDAY, sionaries he dived into the depths of London wretchedness. The records of his life show that such acts were not done for display. Persons absorbed with lofty contemplations oftm contract rigidity of character. We have great faith in the untutored preceptions of the young, and we are glad to know that Hedley Vicars was a favorite of children. A peep at the affection felt for him in the household of his sister, Lady Rayleigh, authenticates the amiability of his high-souled nature. The anonymous biographer writes : In the month of October of the same year, my father, my sister, and T were renewing a friendship of former days by a visit to Terling•place. A letter was received on the morning of the 11th by Lady Rayleigh, promi s i ng a visit from her brother, which caused such a tumult of joyous excitement at the breakfast•table, and so much shouting and clapping of hands amongst the children, as soon as the news was made known to them, that, in my ignorance, I supposed the young soldier had only just arrived from Nova Scotia. There are deeply touching passages in many of his religious letters which testify to the power of his convictions, but we have not space for further extracts. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.—AnuL 10. BOOKS. Italian Lights and Papal Principles. Sampson Low 417. Co. Arctic Enterp►ise. A Poem in Seven Parts. Hope and In. A Woman's Call to Women. Ditto The Mystery ; or, Evil and Good. Longmans Eastern Hospitals and English Nurse*. Hurst and Blackett Memoirs of the Court, Aristocracy, and Diplomacy of Austria. Longman' The Ring and the red. J. A. St. John. Chapman S Hall Melincourt ; or, Sir Oran Haut•Ton. Ditto The Flower Garden. Rontledge Al Home and Abroad; or, Things and Thoughts in America and Europe. Sampson Low and Co. The Lady and the Hound. Hope and Co. Remarks on the Education of Girls. J. Chapman A Plea for Educational Reform. Ridgway The Hospital System of London. Davy and Son The Adulteration of Food and Drinks. Lougmana Inaugural Lecture. Skithugton Jul tint's on Calmer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Long=iis PERIODICALS. Post qffiee London Parliamentary Directory for 1R56. Kelly and Co. The United Church Journal. Seeley and Jackson Maephail's Edinburgh Eecksiastieal Journal. Simpkin and Marshall The Spiritual herald. Nos. 1,2, 3of Vol I. Bailliere The Irish Quarterly Review. Simpkin and Marshall O.rfurd Essays. J. W. Parker and Sou Sint A rts. SUFFOLK-STREET. WHAT is to be said of the thirty-third exhibition of the Society of British Artists by the unhappy critic: , We might sum up results statistically, and inform the public that " the number of pictures in the present exhibition is 842, they fill five rooms, of which the largest, or Great Room, contains 250, the South-east Room 121, the South-west Room 125, the North-east Room 135, and so on ; the number of visitors this year has been so many, giving an average of 6.8 per diem, of whom 5.2 have brought umbrellas, and 3.1 have purchased catalogues, out of the last number 1.5 have complained of the high price of the books, S:c. &c." There is literally nothing so good or so bad as to call for special notice at our hands, and the phiase which most accurately describes the net impression of the whole on the mind of a visitor is that so well known in the sick-room, " the mixture as before." Everything is, as Mr. Wright says, "as it used to was." That there is nothing new under the sun has, we believe, been asserted before, but we may per haps be allowed to revive the text once more for the purpose of assuring our readers that they will find an excellent practical illustration of it in the thirty third exhibition of the Society of British Artists in Suffolk-street. Of that which is hardly worth notice little need be said by the critic. Our remarks, therefore, will be exceedingly brief and will be confined to a few of the most striking pictures in the exhibition. Mr. Hurlstune's never-ceasing Italian beggars, with or without maccaroni, smile sentimen tally or grin unmeaningly as before; and Mr. Tyne's Italian Turnerisms (including two scenes from the eruption of Vesuvius in 1855) tease the eye by the unsubstantial vagueness of their form and the usual disagreeable chalkiness of their tint. Mr. Woolmer's "Christ in the Wilderness" (No. 109) is noticeable from the curious inapplicability of its title, which should be " The Wilderness, with Christ in it," cr. perhaps, " A Landscape—l don't know where"; for the indefinite generality of the scenery suggests no particular climate or region, and the single figure which sits iu the shadow of one of the purple rocks lathe foreground is a mere acaccessory,onl7 an sews. II II 111 I 1 I I O. 354 " me, men," and his voice in the deadly struggle was heard again as he leaped the parapet and chased the retreating enemy down the ravine. In another minute his raised sword, as if pointing on high, was seen by the light of the struggling moon, and the last words that came from the gallant fellow's lips were, "This way, 97th." He fell where the foes were thick around him, and he died not unaveuged. His death was brilliantly brave, and talked of as gallant men would desire. But this little volume commemorates chiefly the religious phases of his cha racter, and it is his piety, and not his heroism, which has carried the work into so many religious homes. Hedley Vicars was, as we have said, a pietist; the human phases of our Lord's Atonement, and the Mercy vouch safed by Grace, took powerful possession of his feelings. His religion was entirely of the heart, and, to judge by his letters, it does not seem to have been of a highly intellectual cast, for he made no pretensions to be a deep thinker What is most praiseworthy in his religious manifestations was, that he carefully avoided offending the feelings of others, and that he was free from that bitterness which, as Bishop Burnet has shrewdly observed, too often is seen in some religious people. The memoir commences : Hedley Shafto Johnstone Vicars was born in the Manri t ins, on the 7th of December, 1826. His father, an officer in the Royal Engineers, was the representative of the family of Don Vicam, a Spanish cavalier who came to England in the suite of Katharine of Arragon, and settled in Ireland early in the sixteenth century, on the marriage of his eldest grandson with the heiress of the Lalor family. The family estate was Levalley, in Queen's County. There was little to distinguish the early days of Hedley Vicars from those of other healthy, high-spirited boys. Active and fearless, he was foremost among his playfellows wherever fun or frolic was to be found. Openhearted and generous, quick to resent an injury, but ready to forgive, he was a universal favorite with them, whilst his sweetness of temper, and kind, unselfish nature, especially endeared him to his family at home. His faults were those of an energetic and wayward disposition, and those legends which are wont to be preserved in families, record occa sional instances of his odd and amusing perversity. When the children were gathered around their mother to repeat texts of Scripture in turn, Hedley. refusing to enter into the spirit of the little circle, would contribute nothing but ' Remember Lot's wife." The Protestants of Ireland, considered eth nologically, are about the most mixed race in the empire, and Vicars probably derived some of his perfervidum ingenium from his blood. He entered the army in 1813, but what the biographer calls " the awakening" did not show itself until 184$, when Vicars was at Maroon Town, in Jamaica. This is the first sign of it : I see it all now. It is I that have ceased your illness, my darling mother. Ever since the receipt of your last letter, I have been in a dreadful state of mind. I feel that I deserve God's severest punishment tor my undutiful conduct towards the fondest of mothers, but the excruci ating thought had never before occurred to me, that He might think fit to remove her from me. Oh, what agony I have endured ! what sleepless nights I have passed since the perusal of that letter ! The review of my past life, especially the retrospect of the last two years, has at last quite startled me, and at the same time disgusted me. You will now see the surest sign of repentance in my future conduct; and believe me, that never, as far as in me lies, shall another moment's anxiety be caused you by your dutiful and now repentant son. The memoir then proceeds : The remorse, which he thus affectingly expresses, was caused by his having incurred debt, to no great amount. but such as he knew would become a burden to a widowed mother. During his residence in one of the Meiliterra• nean isles, he had become acquainted with a family who had shown him great hospitality, and in maintaining social intercourse with them, and sharing their pleasures, he had involved himself beyond his means. It was the first and the last time that his unselfish nature thus transgressed. Some parts of his letters are deeply affecting, and in many a hamlet letters of a similar strain, from other brave spirits passed away, are carefully preserved by the fondness of affection. He writes : Ify darling mother,—l do love you. and that fondly, although I have often (and may God forgive me !) rebelled against your wishes. Mother, I ask your forgiveness for what has passed. Yon know not what real anguish some of your letters have caused me ; and alihough I have tried to drown the voice of conscience. after reading them, a still small voice has always been whispering in my ear, and kept me froal com• mitting many a sin. And again to his sister : I am no eoward, but the thought of death is solemn, sad Um idea of dying far away from keine, intik no font U