The Press. — London, England, 1855-08-25 00:00:00

AUG. 25, 1855. standing near the sledge—M. Bellot on the top of the hummock. They seemed to be on a very solid piece of ice. At that time the wind was blowing very strongly from the south-east, and it was snowing." That moving mass of ice, thus driven northward by a furious gale, carried away the unfortunate Belot and two sailors with him, William Johnson and David Hook. After vainly endeavouring to shelter themselves under the tent with which their sledge was loaded, the three men began to cut a house for themselves in the ice with their knives. We can easily picture the scene. The hum mock, driven by a furious gale on the sea, loaded with heavy masses of ice—the snow falling heavily—and the little party not know ing whither they might be carried, or how soon a collision might shatter the hummock, on which their hope of safety depended, to atoms. It was destined that only one of their number should perish, and he by an unlooked for accident Johnson's deposition is precise. "M. Bellot," he says, " sat for half an hour in conversation with us, talking on the danger of our position. I told him I was not afraid, and that the American expedition were drawn up and down this channel by the ice. He replied, ' I know they were ; and when the Lord protects ns, not a hair of our head shall be touched.' I then asked M. Bellot what time it was. He said, About a quarter pest eight a.m.' (Thursday, the 18th), and then lashed up his hooks, and said he would go and see how the ice was driving. He had only been gone about four minutes when I went round the same hummock under which we were sheltered, to look for him, but could not see him, and on returning to our shelter saw his stick on the opposite side of a crack, about five fathoms wide, and the ice all breaking up. I then called out' Mr. Bellot f' but no answer rat this time blowing very heavy). After this I again searched round, but could see nothing of him. I believe that when he got from the shelter the wind blew him into the crack, and his southwester being tied down he could not rise." It was a sad death 'for one so young and enthusiastic. The other men succeeded in safely reaching the shore. Lieutenant Bellot had all the best qualities of his countrymen. He was chivalrous, gay, affectionate, generous, and enterprising. His character may be read in his journals, and in the letters and memoranda appended to these volumes. He was gifted with such happy exuberance of spirit that no hardship or toil could check it. " What is the body but the " slave of the mind," he exclaims, in one place; and he tried the extent of the body's endurance sorely by the privations he volun tarily forced it to endure. His thoughts con stantly flew to his family and home, and we recognise in his affectionate expressions one Of the most guileless natures that ever breathed. He appears, from the knowledge he gained of England, to have acquired a genuine respect for our character, and makes some acute remarks on the vast and beneficial inluence exercised by commerce in the modern world. The volumes, notwithstand ing so much has been written on Polar dis covery, have many points of novelty, and are extremely engaging for their originality of style, and for the spirit thrown over the whole narrative by the gay disposition of the open hearted sailor. They form an appropriate tribute to his memory, and will lastingly con nect his name with the eventful, and unhap pily gloomy, record of Polar adventure. NEW NOVELS. IT chances at times that a reviewer has to glance at works of the most opposite charac ter. His table is a world in miniature, where soldiers and divines, and lawyers and phy sicians, and poets and romancists, and money brokers and savans, and engineers and travellers, jostle each other in admired con fusion. The editor tries, of course, to classify these various species of literary life, to give the right book to the right reviewer, but con fusion will sometimes ensue. Contributors have a curious habit of turning over a whole tableful' of works, and of selecting some which are not much in accordance with their usual pursuits. But there is great charm in novelty. It is this charm, in fact, which makes the work of reviewing so attractive as it is. A literary man likes to know something of all that passes in the realm of mind. Thought of eve►;y kind is precious to him ; and let him take up what book be may, it is next to certain that he will find something to in terest him in it. The question has been much discussed whether systematic or miscellaneous reeding THE PRESS. is most profitable. Reading or study must, of course, be systematic when some profession or distinct object is in view ; but when books are taken up for amusement or scant know ledge, and the end desired, whetuer con sciously or unconsciously, is to open mind and heart—to give the intellect broader views and the affections wider sympathies—then mis cellaneous reading is to be preferred, and the balance of authority will be found to incline in its favour. Locke laughed at people who devcted all their leisure to some one petty pursuit; and the late Dr. Arnold said that if one conviction was fixed more deeply in his mind than another, it was that in favour of widely-varied reading. Our reading, like our social intercourse, should be varied, if we would not fall under the dominion of a few fixed ideas, and become in our intellectual tastes narrow and intolerant. For ourselves, we confess to a most catholic taste in literature ; and hence, when selecting a number of novels the other day for an article, we packed up with them a book which seemed by the dust on its covers to have been over looked for some weeks or months, the " Daily Life "of the Rev. Dr. Cumming. We had not read far in it before we came upon a passage having immediate reference to our subject. Here is what the indefatigable and prolific divine says upon novel-reading. After enume rating various hindrances to the Study of pro phecy, he proceeds Next is the dissipation engendered by the practice of reading novels and romances. Of all mischievous habits this is the worst. [Alas! how much have we to answer for ! 1 Many minds cannot do it. If I may refer to per sonal experience, I may add, I tried long ago to read a novel, but could not finish it [Oh fortunate Dr. Cum• ming ! and the more fortunate as " sua si bona noiint " does not apply to thee.], for the simple reason that in the most unexceptionable of all, I mean Scott's, I felt at every sense haunted with a sense of unreality : " This is not real ; it is not truth." Romance is very different from poetry. I can read true poetry, because it glories in bring ing up bidden thoughts, in laying bare delicate links and affinities that lie in the silent depths of nature waiting for the master mind to bring what are to us airy nothings into a body and a shape. But the mere novel, which is a tale worked up into the appearance of a reality, and full of vapid and spurious excitement, is not natural or whole some food. The habit of novel-reading is most injurious to real religion. It is exactly to the mind what drinking alcohol aU day isto the body. And the consequence of a long indulgence in novel or romance reading is that mental or moral delirium tremens which, in its despair and its agony, flees either to the atheism of Voltaire, or sends for the advice of Cardinal Wiseman. Unquestion ably, of all habits that of novel and romance reading tends most to shake the mind, to dispossess it of its equilibrium, and to make it ready for the reception of the next new crotchet, or the wildest pantheism and infidelity. This is terribly severe, and we feel it the more, as not only have we read novels greedily, but must confess to the sin of having added to the stock of them, never thinking of the pernicious work we were aiding. Why, ac cording to this worthy Presbyterian lecturer, every novelist is enlisted under the banners of Satan, and actively engaged in his service. Why is there no teetotal literary league, with a Presbyterian divine to bless medals of absti nence from romance ? Why is there no Maine novel law, and a staff of literary excisemen to root out all ingredients of fiction from the publishing trade ? And why is not that great manufacture of the " soul-killing" commodity, the house of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett, put down by act of Parliament or levelled to the ground by a brigade of Dr. Cummings most ardent admirers? One of his critical canons is surely open to question—" Romance is very different from " poetry." It has always appeared to us that a very narrow line divides them. Dr. Cum• ming, if we recollect rightly, professes great admiration of Shakspsare. Yet, are not his plays essentially romances in a dramatic shape ? What is the verbal difference be tween Scott's poems and his novels, or be tween the poetic tales of Cmbbe and the prose tales of Miss Edgeworth? Yet great moralists have thought that the tales of Crabbe are as eloquent in instruction as any discourse ever delivered from the pulpit of a Scotch church. A great moralist wrote " Rasselas"; but is that tale, with the " Vicar of Wakefield." and a thousand other of the happiest flights of genius, to lie under the ban of generating " moral delirium ttemens"? If romance is to be banished front our litera ture, then the greater part of our poetry, from 813 the tales of Chaucer to the tales of Tennyson, will have to share its exclusion. The reverend doctor assumes that what its not real is also not true. What a confusion of mind is here ! There is a great distinction between truth and fact; and so much even his scriptural studies might have taught him. If he can bear nothing but what is real, pray what does ho think of the Rook of Job and of the Parables of our Lord? Does ho imagine that the history of the Prodigal Son was fact ; that there was a real Dives and a real Lazuli's; that the master existed • who intrusted his ser vants with the charge of various talents ; that the hiring of labourers in the marketplace at different hours of the day actually took place, with the results stated? Think for a moment, Dr. Cumming, what you would certainly have styled any starched few who objected to those most lovely and exquisite tales of a Divine imagination, that they were not real, and then confess that Pharisaical pride and pretension may exist in a Scotch church in crowded London iu this present year 1855 as well as in the temples of Jerusalem in the year 1. Even you, Dr. Cumming, have dabbled in fiction in your time, and in a somewhat ob jectionable manner too. Do you not recoil( et writing some dialogues, four or five years back, in which you brought forward Cardinal Wise man in propria persona as being opposed to yourself in argument? You invariably got the better of the Cardinal in controversy, and made him look very small ; but surely no one could read those dialogues of yours without being "haunted by a sense of their unreality," and without confessing that romance entered largely into their composition. Romance is not natural, says Dr. Cumming. How shall we determine what is natural except by reference to the universal instincts of humanity ? Did there ever exist a race who had not some feeling for romance? It exists in the rude Indian wigwam as well as in the palaces of the West It is the oldest of all old things and the most universal of all sentiments. The story-teller is sure of an audience all over the world. Even the Laplanders have their tales with which to beguile their night of months, and the slavery of the negro is soothed by the rc mance of his song. It is by romance that the hearts and con sciences of men are often appealed to moat forcibly. What is a large portion of profane, history but romance? Does Dr. Cumming suppose that Nathan spoke reality to David when he told of the poor man's pet lamb ; or, when the terrible revelation burst on the King of Israel, " Thou art the man," did he turn on the Prophet and say—This is not fact? Dr. Cumming should be a little more care ful in his denunciations of so large a literary class as the romancists. Think what a weight his censures must carry. We see advertised a sixteenth thousand of " Apocalyptic Sketches," and at the end of this very volume, Daily Lffe,* we find enumerated no less than thirty-two distinct publications by the reverend doctor. Some of them are put forth as sanctioned by, or as proceeding from, Divine authority One is announced as a " Message from God," another as " The Finger of God." Can wo think such titles reverent? May there not be a species of religious fantasy more likely to shake the mind, to dispossess it of its equili brium, to engendermoral and mental delirium tremens, than the sometimes silly but usually harmless fictions of romance? The critics have not had much to say to Dr. Cumming as yet, but should they pounce upon his thirty two 'publications, not all their tenth and sixteenth thousands would save them from scathing scrutiny. In spite of Dr. Cumming's foolish dictum the taste for romance is so natural, that it will be gratified, and the only ques tion is what kind of romance shall pre vail. Let Dr. Cumming ask his boys what books they buy at railway stalls, and we are much mistaken if the answer does not show him that the love of fiction is much too natural and deep-seated for his eloquent die suasives to uproot. There is a kind of fiction which we are quite ready to join with Dr. Cumming in denouncing, and that is cant. He rebels against abstinence in the matter of • Daily Life. By Rev. J. Cumming, I.D. London: Virtue, and Co.