The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-25 00:00:00

730 more dextrous than the rest, hooked my mother Absalom like, the pony coolly continuing from under her; and it was only by hearing the most frightful screams we were aware of her suspended state, and, after groping about to find and bring her to terra•ftrma, discovered the bonnet had obligingly played the part of hair, and remained aloft. 1 must say ten hours were quite enough of this, the time appearing doubled. • • • The moon did now and then faintly gleam through the trees with a ghastly effect, hardly better than nothing, and it was but lagging work altogether, when we were startled by our jovial guide saying, " You had better make haste, for this wood swarms with bears and wolves ;" and though they were not likely to make an attack, the an• nouncement gave one a very creepy feeling, and to each large stump a horrid Bruin look, whilst the jovial fellow kept bouncing suddenly out in front of the hortieti and startling them with growls ! We were heartily glad to see something like four walls within which we could retreat again. After some knocking at the door, a fine old man came out, and then hurried up his wife, who, j ust as our worthy companion had said, provided us directly with one of the nicest rooms and downiest of beds ; and 1 think we never put our heads under the clothes with such a feeling of relief, able at last to chuckle over the bears and wolves. After some months' " fun " of this sort, ex ploring every explorablo part of Norway, the two unprotecteds return to Copenhagen, and enter once more upon town life with a zest they had never before experienced, and of course they give us a bit of Court scandal about the Countess Danner : To visit any of the palaces in the neighbourhood, except as specimens of dull, ill•kept places, is waste of time. The King resides very quietly in that of Fredrichshorg with the Countess Danner, his morganatic wife, merely coming t•) town for business, as his own princely relations and various kingly neighbours object to the society of the lady on account of her antecedents. She was a fascinating milliner, who " took in " other people besides the ladies, and her gauzy establishment catching fire one evening, its aerial nature caused it to blaze up so very brilliantly that it attracted the King in person, who for the first time saw the fair mistress prematurely among the flames ; he could do no less than offer her another residence, and she chose that it should he in the palace, being then a clever woman of about forty. She has great influence over the old easy going King, and has put a stop to all Court balls, as she wishes none to take place without her presence, and on that condition there would be a slight difficulty with the corps diplomatique to begin with. Driving into Hamburg, the unprotecteds came to the conclusion that " all fun was " over for this year, and now nothing remained " but to go home to England : which we did " vi& Berlin, having a pleasant little adventure " with the Queen of Prussia in the gardens of " Potsdam, when sketching the mill of Sans " Souci. Her Majesty, finding us to be English, " was most pleasing, and questioned us with " interest upon the novelty of two Unpro• " tecteds ' exploring Norway. Stopping for a " moment at Brussels, to purchase attire of " the last fashion, as good there as in Paris, " and more attainable, we arrived in England " in time to wear it in honour of merry Christ " nuts." It will be seen from these extracts that the two unprotecteds enjoyed a very pleasant tour. They roughed it like women when they have made up their minds; and though we may be inclined to think that the younger of the two has brought home too much of the primitive simplicity of Norway when we find her writing of " jolly farmers," of " rifling, a 14 Zounve, in red inexpressibles," telling us first where and when she bought the stuff, and why . she selected red, " because it looked pretty " among the trees," yet we shall not quarrel with her; she has given us a lively, entertain ing book of Scandinavian sketeles which we will venture to recommend to all autumn Norway travellers. L THE QUARTERLIES. WITH a less admixture than usual of light matter, a defect that may perhaps impair its general interest, the current number of the Quarterly containing some masterly essays on the prominent questions of the day. The only article which can claim the title of amusing is that upon electioneering, which is a very clever composition of anecdote, vivacity and common' sense. Perhaps the best bit in it is the analysis of Hogarth's picture, which is written in something of an experto credite vein, though punch has been changed for " sherry and soda," and horse-ponds for " classic brine " The article on the Divorce Bill is excellent. The argument, without being too long, is exhaustive and luminous, and deals with every point which has as yet been mooted. The divorce itself, the remarriage, the question of THE PRE S S, JULY 25, 1857. desertion, and the violation of the conscience of the Church, are all treated most ably, and, as WA think, conclusively. One " point " is made so admirably that we must quote the passage. Of those who rely so exclusively on the words of St. Matthew, the writer says : Our second remark is, that the misinterpretation of Scripture now before us betrays itself at every step by new inconsistencies. For if it were tenable, the conae• qnence would be that a woman justly divorced for adultery might remarry, but that a woman improperly divorced, without fault on her own part, could not. All the re• marriages, therefore, of women who have been divorced for adulteries have been innocent; but the remarriages of those who had been innocent have been adulteries! Another paper, which displays great power and great elegance combined, is that entitled " Homeric Characters in and out of Homer." The aim of the writer is to show how com pletely the idea of these has been corrupted by succeeding poets, instancing especially Achilles, Ulysses, and Helen. On the whole, no doubt, the reviewer is correct in his asser tions. But, as feu• as Helen is concerned, wo must remember that Euripides was a pro fessed misogynist, and that Virgil was com pelled to place sentiments agreeable to the occasion in the mouth of a Trojan hero. In the very passage which the writer quotes from the second dEneid, we find Venus at once interfering to rebuke the fury which seized iEncas at the sight of Helen, whom he could not but regard at that moment of despair and rage as the cause of his country's calamities : Non :ibi Tyndaridte facies invisa Lactente Culpatuave Paris. llivdm inclementia llivum Has evertit opes, Tt strikes us, however, that the author of this paper has scarcely allowed sufficient weight to the generally low opinion of the female sex which prevailed even in the heroic ages, and which has been blearly pointed out by Mr. Goldwin Smith in his essay on the subject. He has there, if we remember right, selected the very fact of Helen's reacceptance by Menelaus on her old faoting, without a thought of her lost purity, as one of his strongest examples. Again, the execration of Ulysses in the third lEneid sounds per , feetly natural from the lips of the speaker ; and we must not forget that in the second we find a full tribute paid by Priam to the generous character of Achilles. The pages devoted to the elucidation of Hector's charac ter are, perhaps, the most interesting in the whole article. The meaning of our word " hectoring" is thus ingeniously explained : So conspicuous is this quality, says Mure, that the name of the Trojan chief is to this day synonymous in our own tongue with "bluster " or "swagger." Ilut it is remarkable that the very same thing has happened in the case of the word rodomontade, which is derived from Rodomonte, the most powerful, next to Ruggiero, of all ' the heroes of the Furioso. This circumstance seems to make probable what, without it, world be only possible, namely, that we misconstrue the phrases; and that according to the true meaning, a rodomontader is a man passing himself off fora Rodomonte ; and one who hectors is a man falsely pretending to be a Hector. The remaining articles are of average merit. That on De Tocqueville would ha'e merited warmer praise if it were not so late in the field. We are glad, however, that it has ap peared, because it enables us to say a few words on a point which we have always ex pected to see taken up by some one of the numerous critics of " L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution." We allude to the question of M. de Tocqueville's originality. In the Quarterly, us in all other reviews, he is treated as the Columbus of pre-revolutionary France; and the writer, in referring to the chapter on centralisation as it existed previous to 1789, says that M. de Tocqueville may be held to have made a great political discovery. Now, the fact is that M. de Tocqueville has been anticipated in all the most important views which his work contains, in an article entitled " Political and Social Condition of France," signed " a," which appeared about twenty years ago in an early number of the London and Westminster Review, and which may be found in v"l. iii. and xxv., p. 137, of the conjoined series. The facts, that the French peasantry had in 1789 become landed pro prietors—that administrative centralisation was an invention of the ancient regime—that it interfered with every part of social life and supplanted all collateral methods of govern went—that Paris had absorbed France—that all individuals were more equal and all classes more separate—that the nobility had gradually become eliminated from political power while they retained every odious political privilege, that they had lost the attachment of their peasantry without having gained influence to compensate for it in any other quarter—that the Church was a political as well us a reli gious society—that the French had the taste for liberty without knowing how to establish popular institutions—may all be found stated or proved in the article we have mentioned, not, indeed, with the same fulness of detail or the extreme elegance of style which distin guish the work of the French author, but with equal precision, clearness, and method, and with entire mastery of the subject. In making these observations, we do not for a moment intend to charge M. de Tocqueville with plagiarism ; we have no doubt that he has arrived by independent research at the same conclusions as the Westminster reviewer. We only wish to give every man his due, and to claim for our countryman—if he is such— the notice to which he seems justly entitled. The article on Ireland is very well, but contains a eulogy on " OH Whigs," which we were rather surprised to see. They hate, we are told, " Toryism, cliques, and jobbery." They hate Toryism, doubtless ; but it is news to us that a Russell hates cliques or a Fox Maule jobbery. The ecclesiastical article is, we think, strangely disingenuous. The other two, on " China " and " The Manchester Exhi tion," will repay perusal by all who are inte rested in either good tea or high art. The July number of the National is not quite so good as usual. There is no tirst•rate literary article like those upon Shelley and Cowper; and the political article betrays too clearly the hand of an outsider to interest the practical British public, who don't care for theorising, but look to a political review for indications of coming events. We must say, however, that the paper ou Mr. Lever's novels evinces great sprightliness and humour, and is written in a telling style. It', perhaps, a little too hard on some of Mr. Lever's pecu liarities, the banter is always goodnatured, and tempered by so much genuine eulogy as to disarm even authorial irritation. The paper on the new Parliament is entitled to no such compensatory praise. The writes assumed impartiality seems merely the result of having nothing to say, and his attempts at argument are, in one or two instances, distinguished by a blindness to cause and effect which up• proaches imbecility. For instance, in speak ing of the adjustment of the franchise he says : If Mr. Disraeli's system were adopted, the counties might gain upon the provincial towns; but the metropo litan boroughs would be entitled to seventy or eighty members instead of eighteen. Thu levelling class of Liberals would not object to a change so destructive of all local influences; but fi.teen members, representing the Tower Hamlets alone, would be en alarming constitu tional innovation. It is the business of Conservatives to show that good administration and progressive improve ments are compatible with the existing distribution of power. Any attempt to readjust the system in favour of their own power, is an inconsistency and a blunder. But the simplest exertion of the reasoning powers would be sufficient to show that all the " fifteen members for the 'rower Hamlets " would not be Liberals—probably not more than a bare majority, which would not over come the advantage gained elsewhere ; and we may be sure that, in proportion as the Liberalism of Liberals becomes more pro nounced, the Conservatism of Conservatives will become more pronounced too. His mis representations are numerous In the first place, all that Mr. Disraeli ever said was that if the constituencies were touched justice must be done, but that he preferred not to interfere. And again, the assertion that " the " declarations of Conservative candidates, that " a fair trial should be given to Lord Palmers " ton, indicate a general distrust in the per " manence of their own party," is a most un candid perversion of the rule by which the Opposition has now for sonic time been guided —namely, to throw no vexatious obstacles in the way of her Majesty's Government. The radical djea of most political disser tations at the present day is that they are written by men wholly or to a great extent unacquainted with English country life—Cock. !,