The Press. — London, England, 1856-06-21 00:00:00

JUNE 21, 1856. able appearance, the orderly conduct, and becoming de meanour of these people, with the drunkenness which 'lists on the Sabbath in the large towns of England and Scotland, where such extraordivary efforts are made to prevent any departure on that day from rules which piper - the most rigid restrictions on every species of amuse ment. We do not pretend that the lower class of Danes are generally sober, while numbers of English and Scotch in the same station of life are drunken, merely because the former have amusements on the Sunday, and the latter have none ; for the difference of character probably de pends upon a variety of causes. Neither should we re. commend a Sunday ride on the " merry-go.round," or down the " Russian mountain," as a specific for inebriety, nor put forward such a description of amusements as suitable for the Sunday recreation of the lower orders in London ; and for this reason, that although such pastimes are innocent enough in themselves, yet they lead to no higher re3ults. • • • • • • • Is there no medium point between utter degradation and exalted piety, to which the vicious may be led by means that, without being in themselves religious, still do not violate the principle of religion ? Is there no channel whereby those who are not thoroughly debased may be induced to quit, on the day of greatest danger, that society which exercises such pernicious influence over them ? Can no rational public attractions be allowed on the Sun day—although their tendency be to draw out the finer qualities of the mind, and, through them, to act upon the moral feelings—because they fall short of the highest standard fixed by a religious test? Is it morally and re ligiously more correct on the part of a nation to permit —nay, by their enactments, directly to promote,—this Sabbath immorality, than to throw open such institutions and establishments as would attract the masses, and, while interesting them, convey a certain amount of in struction ? These are grave—they axe even solemn— questions ! Mr. Scott's short sketch of the rise and pro gress of the Sound dues, which now forin twenty per cent. of the annual income of the country, will repay perusal. We subjoin a brief extract:— The origin of the Sound dues goes back to those days when it was the custom in many countries of Europe to levy a tax on all vessels or property passing by certain channels or roads ; which toll was supposed to guarantee the payer from farther pillage while traversing the domi nions or districts under the control of the receiver. This tax was call id in the north of England " black mail," and was originally instituted there by the moss troopers. The system was, in fact, but a compromise between the mariner or traveller an 1 the pirate or robber, the latter permitting the former to pass without farther molestation on paying a certain amount, in money, goods, corn, or cattle. The custom in Denmark doubtless originated with the sea rovers, who so long held possession of the neighbouring channels ; but when law and order gained an ascendancy, and the Government became more regular, the kings claimed, as a legal right, the collection of a toll that had taken its rise from so unworthy a source. At first, the lax consisted of a simple sum for each vessel, including the cargo, but the trade being then small, the animal amount received was quite insignificant. No sooner, however, did the traffic increase, through the exer tions of Christian 11. and his immediate successors, who extendel the commerce of the kingdom, than complaints were made, and senors contentions arose between Den mirkeand other countries concerning this obnoxious toll. These disputes early commenced with Holland, which canted on a considerable trade in the Baltic. In order to establish the commercial relations of these two countries on a fixed basis, and to settle the vexed question of the Sound dues, Christian 111. and Charles V. of Spain, to whom the Low Courtries then belonged, had an interview i 11544 at Spejer, where they signed the earliest treaty, now in existence, on the subject. Charles therein re• cognised the right of Denmark to levy the Sound dues, and agreed that Dutch vessels should pay the same toll as they had previously done, although the tax had been exorbitantly raised by Christian only a short time before. But the Dutch merchants did not complain less because their royal master bad legalised this arbitrary tribute. Notwithstanding the galling nature of this exaction, Denmark has hitherto made good her claims against all questioners, and they were formally guaranteed to her by the Con gress of Vienna. A new ohjector, however, has lately started up in the shape of America; but Mr. Scott is entirely against the abolition of the dues without compensation to Den mark : The United States not only demur to this tax per se, bat they complain that by an unjust scale of charges a decided advantage is given to England over them; that while an ad valorem duty of about three per cent. is put upon their chief staple, raw cotton, in its transit through the Sound, white cotton twist—of which Great Britain is said to ship from thirty to fifty millions of pounds anau• ally to the Baltic ports—is only charged one per cent. ad valorem. We do not uphold the Sound dues, for they are objet• tionable in principle, and unsound in policy; but as the strong natims of Europe perpetuated them to suit their own purposes in 1815—when a favorable opportunity presented itself of getting rid of them altogether without inflicting one half of the injury on Denmark that was done by depriving her of Norway—they are bound by all the ties of honour and good faith to see that she is pro perly remunerated should they decide on abolishing the objectionable toll. THE PRESS. The book is to bo commended for its prac tical information and good sense. The par tieulars of the Swedish army are set f>rth at full, the total effective strength amounting to 116,000 men, but the organisation being adapted rather for defensive than offensive warfare. .E've4n Marston. By the Author of " Emilia Wyndham." Three Vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. MRS. MARSH has here given us a purely natural, domestic, and touching story. The heroine, Evelyn, marries a gifted young artist under an impression that she has a fortune of 40,0001. at her own dis posal. Acting en that notion, expenses are incurred, and the honeymoon passes sweetly away. It is dis covert d too late that the money has been spent by Ler father, and that she is penniless. The em barrassment thus occasioned affords scope for the description of those scenes of mingled tenderness and distress in which Mrs. Marsh excels, and calls forth all the higher qualities of Evelyn's nature. She is a pretty creation. In her days of prosperity, Uncertain, hard, and coy to please ; but in the time of trial " a ministering angel," patient, provident, and pious. The narrative flows pleasingly on, and the sentiment, though often a little exaggerated, is full of thought and emotion. The reader could, however, well dispense with the " Old Man," who has played so conspicuous a part in former tales by Mrs. Marsh. In our opinion, she would act wisely to drop him for the future, as cer tainly he adds nothing to the vraisemblance of the scenes in which he appears. The Stranger's handbook to Chester. By Thomas Hughes. Loudon : Whittaker and Co. Tars little book contains a good deal of information interesting to antiquarians. It is a history of the city of Cheater from the times of the Britons to the present day, enumerating all which it experienced at the hands of Danes, Saxons, and Normans, Yorkists and Lancastrians, Puritans and Royalists. We have also a complete description of the origin of, and traditions concerning, all the old remains in the city, which it is totally impossible to enumerate one by one. The woodcuts are very good. There is a sort of attempt at smartness in the style which is rather an indication of a provincial standard of facetious ness than of any want of ability. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.—Jcsi 19. BOOKS. A Treatise on Justification by Faith. Hamilton and Adams. Waters of Comfort. Macmillan and Co. rloto a Penny becomes a Thousand a Year. lioulston and Co. Erlesssere ; or, Contrail, of Charaeler.. L. S. Lavenu. Smith, Elder, and Co. De Cressy. A Tale. By the Author of " Dorothy." J. W. Parker and Son. Narrative of on Exploring Voyage. W. Balfour Baikie. J. Murray. Evelyn Marston. By the Author of Emilia Vilyndham." Three Vols. Hurst and Blackett. Reretations of Prison Life. Hurst and Blackett. The Poetical Woks of Robert Burns. Routledge. Poems and Relations. Mrs. Marshall. J. W. Parker and Son. The Channel Island, Pictorial, Legendary, and Descriptive. L. Booth Songs of Early Summer. Rev. A. Gurney. Longmans. Wild Flowers and Fruits. Poems by W. Dale. A. Heylin. On the Cure of Stammering. James Hunt, St.R.S.L. Longmans. J. Masters. A Day in Nismis, A Sketch. On Foot through Tyrol in the Summer of 18.53. Chapman and Hall. Chapman and Hall. A Vacation in Brittany. The United States, their Constitution and Power. Kent and CO. The Rise and Progress of British Opium Smuggling. Seeley and Co.—Vindication of George First Lord Dartmouth. Upham and Beet—The Irish Church E. Wilson—The Oblation of the Elements, and the Credence Table. Seeley—A Letter to Mr. Sergeant Shee on the Trial of Williams Palmer. J. R. Smith—Considerations on he late Naral War. J. Ridgway—New Facts and Figures. E. Wilson—Society for the Encouragement of Art, E. Wilson—Bank of England ilarometer, IsoB. Letts--Cessa• ti on of Intercourse with the British Minister. Letts—Answer to Macaulay's Criticism in the Edinburgh Review. J. Mur ray—Free Discussion rernis Intolerance. Longmans—Scot tish Episcopal Romanian. Nisbrtt and Co. MR. WYLD, so famous for his topographical skill in the days of Sebastopol seiges, Kertch and Kin burn expeditions, and Baltic fleet bombardments, with praiseworthy zeal, has turned his attention to the other quarter of the world, and brought out an excellent, correct, and useful map of Central America, with the territorial lines clearly marked, the old and present boundaries of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, and the British pcp,ses sions in Honduras and on the Mosquito coast. The map lays the whole Central American question before you at a glance, and does credit to the zeal and public spirit of the publisher. 595 THE TEXT OF SHAKESPEARE. To pass from the particular play of Measure Jot Measure, vome of the changes of the corrector, which at first appeared plausible, and were received with general favour, will not stand the test of closer ex amination. The passage in Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 4, painted ordinarily, _ _ _ Some jay of Italy Whose mother was her painting, and vulgarly altered by the corrector to, Who smothers her with painting, instead of being, as appears at first sight, a most skilful emendation or " authoritative " correction, is, we are now convinced, much rather an instance of the danger of dealing with the text on that prin ciple laid down by the reviewer, that in doubtful passages the most prosaic sense that can be thought of is most likely to be the true eense. Of all writers, Shakespeare can best, from his thorough originality, be explained by himself. Parallel passages may be of little value when the instances are of the most commonplace kind; but when they are uncommon and peculiar to the writer, these parallelisms are the most certain guide we can have to the elucidation of doubtful readings. An ana logous image to the above is to be found in All's Well that Ends Well, act. i. sc. 2. The King speaks of the younger spirits of his Court, Whose judgments are Mere fathers of their garments. These passages cannot be termed strictly parallel, but there is such a general likeness in their imagery RS to render them illustrative of each other. The "jays " of Italy made themselves by their art so dif ferent from the work of Nature, that their painting was their mother, as the young men of France were so engrossed by their dress, that their judgment was father of their garments. If we are to read "smothers her with painting" in one case, we may as reasonably read " Mere feathers like their gar ments," in the other. As much might be said for one correction as the other, as it could be held that these gay cavaliers, with their fringed scarfs and plumed caps, must have had a very airy appearance. By such prosaic corrections all the fancy of Shake speare might be worn away, and yet the changes never want some such reverend brow as that of Mr. Collier and the Edinburgh reviewer to bless and ap- prove it with a text or a reason. Indeed, of all extraordinary canons of criticism we ever heard of, that, laid down by the reviewer is the most extraordinary. He says : We do not know whether, in severe logic, we ought not to venture to lay down the canon, that wherever the folio uses a forced word or phrase in lieu of a common one, there is an A priori probability of error. And again:— Prejudice apart, is not the commoner word, the mote probable one? . . What right have we to set up our attachment for particularquaint or unusual phrases, against a prima facie probability, once established, that a commoner phrase—more prosaic if you will—was really used? Rules of logic are worth very little on such points, but. we have no hesitation in saying, in opposition to the reviewer, that the very reverse of his principle would be the safer rule, when we are dealing with the writings of the highest class of imaginathe minds. And the reason is obvious. Such minds labour with thoughts too large for the scope (not "scope;' ➢lr. Collier) of ordinary language to ex press. Their conceptions (to use Grattan's image) swell beyond the measure of their lingual chains, and tbey enlarge the boundaries of their tongue in their efforts to give to their idea' A local habitation and a name. Bossuet accounted it a proof of the innate divinity of the mind that it had within it more than the medium of language would allow it to express; and, when genius is unusually expansive, vivid, and imaginative, it will and must burst far away from the commonplace and prosaic conventionalities of language. If it cannot create new words it will extend the signification of those which exist, it will give to them a metaphorical or spiritual sense, and wrestling mightily, sometimes painfully, with its mother-tongue, it will strengthen the element it contends with until it attains to some thing like equality with its own colossal proportions. Seldom does a mind enlarge the bounds of thought without enlarging the boundaries of language also. To his contemporaries many of the expressions of Shakespeare must have appeared more forced, quaint, and illegitimate than they now appear to us. Is it to be supposed that his transcribers and printers could in all cases rise to an appreciation of his sense ? And when they erred, is it not much more likely that they would do so by using those expressions which were familiar to their ear, rather than those which were unfamiliar to it. All of them hed heard of " breaks in ice," but probably few or none knew what " brakes of vice " meant. "Brother" was a common word, "rotber" very twcommon, so they chose the former. In this way may be explained a great num ber of the corrcptions of the text. In one remark by the reviewer we, to some agree. There is a pleasure, and of a very exquisite lose tn 0 'at nun- s el tent, ,tlq Waite