The Press. — London, England, 1856-03-08 00:00:00

■ MARCH 8, 1856. its i m prisoned faculties, is uttered by Boa. suet with sublime pathos. There is that mixture of pain and power in his words which seizes our minds with the master-spell of r i ll s. He had rare aptitude for language, Ind his taste was fur in advance of many of the French intellects of his age. What Lamar tine observes on the great orator's " Discourse Jn Universal History " applies, we think, to the whole spirit of Bossuet's works : No other human hand has turned with a louder report or more rapid evolution, that wheel of for. t u ne, which raises or humbles, supporta or abandons, cr owns with success or overthrows men, races, empires, sod nations. Bossuet is the great interpreter of the in significance of humanity. He appears to delight, like a child upon the edge of a well, iu precipitating religious institutions, dynasties, and all that is usually considered Sled and immutable, to the bottom of the abyss, that he may hear the noise of their full, and cause the echoes of eternity to ascend from thence to the ears of men. So far does Bossuet carry this wail over fallen man, that at times ho speaks like an Ossian of the s , .lliools. The bardic power and polemical intellect were singularly blended in him. Lamartine does not sufficiently mark the effects on Bossuet of his familiarity with the Bible. He pored over the sacred volume constantly, and few men ever had more relish fin• its inspired eloquence, transcending human ffJrts. The terse strength with which Bossuet closes a passage of mere sentiment is one of his peculiar arts. It may he seen in his lescription of the resignation of Mlle. de la Va!here when about to enter a convent:— " Her strength and tranquillity," thus he wrote to the pious Marechal de Bellefonds, " increase in proportion as the moment draws near. I cannot think of it without be hold.og the wonderful workings of grace ! I trace the finger of Heaven in the composure and humility wh i ch pervade all her thoughts, and with which I am equally de lighted and astonished. I speak, but she acts ; I have ex hortations to produce, but she has works I %Then I think of these, I feel inclined to hide myself and be silent. Miserable channel, through which heavenly waters flow, while it scarcely retains a few drops!" We will not withhold from our readers the description of Bossuet's sermon on La Val here taking the veil : This discourse of Bossuet was a scene rather than a simple oration, and so thoroughly dramatic, that Madame de Sivigne, in the light gossipping style of the time, wrote, that mere words could not sufficiently characterise it. The listeners thought more of the palpitations of the victim's heart than of the studied periods of the preacher; for no ianguage can so deeply touch the soul, or resound so loudly, as the sobs of unrestrained afflic tion. This beautiful being, still in the flower of her age, torn and consumed in the springtime of life by that fire which she had herself create 1, and which she could not extinguish in her own bosom—tarnished by enjoyment won et the sacrifice of moral principle, which degraded while it raised her—betrayed by the inconstancy of her lover, and thrown by his ingratitude into a tomb with a still fervent heart—covered b' the Queen herself, whom she had injured, with the mortuary veil which enveloped her with shame and pardon in the presence of that Court, yesterday the witnesses of her triumph, and to-day the spectators of her interment—and finally, Bossuet in the pulpit, to give the weight of oratory to all the wounds and silent sufferings of her heart. What more could Madame de Sevigne desire? Did she not feel that elo quence must be suspended and paralysed on the lips, when the faculties of feeling and expression so tho roughly absorb the hearts of an auditory? Notwithstand ing which, the eloquence of Bossuet was not even then arrested. " The silence," said be, with a visible effort, that seemed to tear the words from his soul, " which has lasted for many )ears, must be broken, anti a voice, which the pulpit no longer recognises, must be heard. What have we beheld, and what do we now behold? What a change between that which has been and that which is! I need not speak, facts declare themselves," and he pointed to the kneeling female, clothed in a shroud, like a corpse. Then, as it' interrupting his own tnnn of thought. he turned towards the Queen, and said, " Madam, look there! behold an object worthy the eyes of so pious \ al gracious a sovereign !" Then, resuming his subject, he called the attention of ria 41 ee plyliffeet ed listeners from the scene before them, and transferred it to those exalted considerations which embody the morality of human tears. " Religious senti ments," said he, " are the last to be effaced from the heart of man ; nothing is more commonly excited, and, at the same time, nothing is so seldom changed. Is this prodigy or an enigma in human nature? or is it not rather, if I may so speak, a remnant of what man once Was. a vestige of his origin, a ruined edifice, which, even in its destroyed and crumbling walls, retains some of the beauty and grandeur of its first form ? Man has been overthrown by his own depraved will, the roof has fallen Mon the walls, and the walla upon the found itions ; but then the ruins are removed, they find in the remains of the uptitrred edifice the plait of the original design. and the hand of the architect. The impress of Divinity is so strong that man cannot lose it entirely, while at the same tine it is so feeble that he cannot follow it : it appears to . . MA its imp s uet iv m ixture seizes g e nius. end hit the Fre tine obt on Unii whole S No ot report c tune, wh crowns v and natio signitican child upo institOtto fixed and may hear eternity t, So far c: man, tli the 5 , ...11 intellec Lamt effects Bible. constan for its it enits. The closes his per descrip Va!UM " Iler pious Me the mom( hold.ng finger of pervade a lighted at hortatiotu thes, I Miserabli while it a We v descrip here tal This simple ot de SiviE wrote, th it. The the victi preacher or resonc tion. TI torn and which sh extinguis won et I while it lover, an still fervt she had i her with yester3a3 spectator pulpit, t and silei adame quence when th roughly a ing whirl arrested. " The seemed I lasted fa which dr What he What a which is and he p like a coi thought. look ther graci Then, his lee p 1 and tram ern hod v ments,." heart of St the sal a prodig rather, it Was. a vex in its des beauty a overthrow upon the when the the uptitr the hand S trong thi time it is THE PRESS. be permitted to remain, only to convince him of his fall, and to render him sensible of the punishment! " What more majestic or more pathetic philosophy could be deduced from such a scene, thus commented upon by a lofty ecclesiastic ; and what emotion could surpass his ad. dress to the guilty penitent, already half-buried before his eyes :—" And you, victim of remorse, descend—go to the altar; finish your sacrifice. The lire is lighted, the incense is ready, the sword is drawn! the sword is the vow which you are about to pronounce—the vow which separates your soul from this world, and unites it indissolubly and exclu sively to God! " What superhuman efforts were expected of Bossuet if words such as these did not roach the measure of public ex pectation ! We have cited enough to show the dramatic character of this brilliant essay, which is one of the finest pieces of writing that ever came front Lamartine's pen. It vies in literary grace with the best of Mr. Macaulay's, and it is marked with more justice. The errors com mitted by the Patriarch of the Galilean Church " are gravely touched upon and ex posed by Lamartine, who in many passages shows himself a thinker as weil us a writer. The paper on " Milton" is not worthy of the subject or the author. It is most remarkable for the enthusiasm of the essayist for Shak speare. "Paradise Lost," according to Lamar tine, is " void of philosophy and full of tedious ness." He observes : It is, in fact, the dream o! a Riritan who has fallen asleep over the first pages of his Bible. The versification alone redeems the inanity of the fable. it recalls, even to the rhythm, Homer, Virgil, and Racine. But Milton, notwithstanding his posthumous renown as the first epic writer of England, remains even in that position at an immeasurable distance from Shak speare, who reminds us of iio one, but who translates nature instead of following sacred legends. Yet Shak speare was born, lived, and died, before Milton appeared, and his ungrateful country hesitated to acknowledge in him a supreme and universal poet. Milton, though very inferior to Shakspeare, was destined for a long series of years to take precedence of him in the ranks of glory? Why was this? The answer must be found in the subject of his work. England had become theological and biblical, and the man who had versified Jehovah and holy writ, was rewarded as a sacred poet. And elsewhere he says : There was more of infatuation and of patriotism than of truth in the opinion which exalts Milton over all the poets of Great Britain, that land of true poetry. The English were proud of an indigenous epic, which was then con sidered the noblest effort of human genius ; the Freneh, at a later period, fell into the same allusion as regarded the " Henriatle : " the " Henriade " is dead, but the "Paradise Lost " lives, and deserves immortality for certain passages. But as ages roll on, Milton will de dine and Shakspeare advance, because the former imitated, while the latter created. A single scene of Romeo and Juliet reveals more soul, and draws more tears, than the whole of " Paradise Loit." We need not expose the mingled truth and exaggeration of these passages, The pieces on " William Tell " and " Antar" (or "Pasto ral Civilisation," A.D. 000) are written in the author's earlier style, and aro not the best in the work. The descriptive, and not the creative (except in a merely artistic sense), is the element in which Lamartine's genius shines. His famous account of the execution of Marie Antoinette, and his narrative of Napoleon's return from Elba, are amongst the finest pieces of writing that we have ever read in any tongue, and the name of the author who could so write is one of the few destined to survive the fleeting reputations of the time. We recommend this volume for the variety and interest of its contents to our readers, and the eloquence of its style. As long as Lamar tine can write as he has done upon Bossuet, we trust he will continue to exercise his brilliant faculties. He saved France from great calamities, and in three mouths of his life, in 1848, more glory and passion were con centrated than are diffused in the protracted career of other statesmen of his age. The Prison of Welterreden ; and a Glance at the East Indian Archipelago. By Walter M. Gibson. London : Sampson Low and Co. THIS is a work not written without consider able power, and in parts even with a species of gloomy fascination, half attractive, half repulsive. The form which it takes is this : A passenger on board an American ship, which had aided in delivering him, gives an account to his companions of his wanderings in the East Indian Archipelago, and his final impri sonment by the Dutch authorities in Batavia. His account of these regions must be adwitted to be interesting, were it only owing to the soarcity of books. off} the subject ; while his 233 violent American prejudices interfere very little with the value of his work as an autho rity on the scenery, customs, and native inhabitants of these islands. Of the pure Malay race he seems to entertain a high opinion. The women, he tells us, are beauti ful, the men comely and powerful; and Chastity, retiring from the earth, has set her last footmarks in Sumatra. Malay maidens are habitually subject to the grossest outrages on the part of the Dutch officers, and usually carry small daggers concealed about their persons wherewith to protbct their honour. If this romantic story be true, what must the male population have been about to endure for so many generations the " wrong which " turns the coward's heart to flame "? Mr. Gibson seems to be animated, however, by a general hostility to all Dutch and Portu guese settlers, and evinces a laudible avidity to swallow any story to their discredit. The tale of the dagger we imagine to have been trumped up to suit his appetite : after so long familiarity, it is not likely that the Malay girls should still evince so heroic an aversion to their Western admirers—even though a Dutch man be not a model of symmetry and grace ; while, on the other haul, Malay mothers, we are told, are in the habit of selling their daughters for concubines—a fact slightly at variance with this account of their chastity in early youth. More curious, though not more wonderful, is the history which Mr Gibson gives us of a strange kind of being who inhabits the in terior of Sumatra, dwelling in caves and tree tops, and called the Kubu, or generally by the Malays themselves oraug•utan. These aie supposed to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Sumatra, as te Papuans of New Guinea, the Wow-wows or Borneo, and the Semangs of Malacca, who all seem to constitute different species of' one wide-spread race who were reduced to slavery by the early Malayan con querors of these beautiful islands. Sir Stam ford Raffles and Mr. Marsden both agree with our author that the Malays were not the original possessors of those countries ; but the Kubus are not even mentioned by the former, while by the latter they are spoken of with some degree of incredulity. (Vide Mars den's " History of Sumatra," p 41) We subjoin Mr. Gibson's own account of what he says he saw:— The mention of orang knbu recalled to mind the crea tures of the covered creek ; anti 1 spoke to the Panyorang about them. He stepped out of the room, making sign to me to follow. We approached some outer sheds, kandang, or stables for buffalo. I saw coolies at work, some dig- ging pits and trenches ; others trimming and sharpening bamboo poles, and engaged in other labour for the erection of an addition to the kandang. I heard Some one cry " Lakass," quick and harsh, as though urging a beast ; " Yuh " a grunt from a gruff voice in reply. "An orang kubu," said the l'anyorang ; and I saw a dark-brown form, tall as a middle-sized man, covered with hair, that looked soft and flowing; the arms, hands, legs, and feet seemed well formed like the Malays • the body was straight, and easily bore, on the right shou lder, the yoke of two heavy panniers, tilled with material for the building that was going on. The Panyorang gave me some of the same particulars about the orang kubu that were told to me by the Dut2h otlicer on the Soonsang, to which he added some of the fable that surrounds every Eastern, and especially Malay, account of any thing. These were tat orang, the refuse of men: they were the descendants of some slaves of Alexander, who had fled from their master. They could tell nothing of their fore fathers; they could only speak sonic short grunting words, and one syllable only of Malay words they could repeat :-- nassee, rice, being flan with them ; and you for orang. They were brutes ; they had no worship, no marriage, no law, no clothing, no idea of its use; they were the accursed of Allah, companions of djins on earth, fit only to be beasts of turden; and the Malays hunted them and caught them in pits and tree-tops, and made slaves of them, "as of right," said the Panyorang, " all beings ought to be, who are inferior to men." _ The eyes (Attila Kuhu were clearer, the nose fuller, and the lips were thinner than those of the common Malay, but the mouth was wide, lips protruding, and chin formed no part of the hairy face ; yet it was pleasantly human in its expression, more so than the dirty, mottle•skinned lascars and coolies I had seen at Minto and Palembang. Was this, then, some lower grade of human being, some connecting link, between man and beast, more human than orang•utan or chimpanze, and less so than Papuan or Hottentot? I could not say so from what I saw, not from all the strange stories I heard. But that beings of well. made human form, covered with hair, almost without speech, and living on raw food, dwell in the caves and tree tops of the forest of Sumatra, are facts that are well estab- lished. The cause of Mr. Gibson's imprisonment is somewhat difficult to understand• He Wag