The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-02 00:00:00

AUGUST 2, 1856. During the reigns which followed that of Louis XIV. , the Administration clay by day instilled into the people in a manner still more practical and comprehensible the :ton tempt in which private property was to be held. When during the latter half of the eighteenth century the taste f o r public works, especially for roads, began to prevail, the iovernment did not scruple to seize all the land needed for its undertakings, and to pull down the houses which stood in the way. Let the Robert Lowes of our day have their swing in the Legislature, and who can tell how soon they would inoculate the nation with revolutionary ideas? The property of indi viduals would not long survive the property of c.wporations, as the same arguments would stand for the seizure of the former as the I.tter. - - - There are many passages in this profound and eloquent volume which show that M. de Tocqueville is extremely dissatisfied with the existing French system, and that he has not the slightest confidence in its stability. But what next? Who can tell, when the solution of the question must depend on the will of the vivid, ardent, susceptible people, described by I. de Tocqueville in brilliant colours to wards the close of his noble work?— Was there ever any nation on the face of the earth so full of contrasts and so extreme in all its actions ; more swayed by sensations, less by principles ; led therefore always to do either worse or better than was expected of it, sometimes below the common level of humanity, some times greatly above it ;—a people so unalterable in its leading instincts, that its likeness may still he recognised in descriptions written two or three thousand years ago, but at the same time so mutable in its daily thoughts and in its tastes as to become a spectacle and an amazement to itself, and to be as much surprised as the rest of the world at the sight of what it has done :—a people beyond all others the child of home and the slave of habit, when left to itself, but when once torn against its will from the native hearth and from its daily pursuits, ready to go to the end of the word and to dare all things; indocile by temperament, yet accepting the arbitrary and even the vio lent rule of a sovereign more readily than the free and regular government of the chief citizen; to-day the de clared enemy of all obedience, to-morrow serving with a sort of passion which the nations best adapted for servi tude cannot attain : guided by a thread as long as no one resists, ungovernable when the example of resistance has once been given : always deceiving its masters, who fear it either too little or too much : never so free that it is hope h-ss to enslave it, or so enslaved that it may not break the joke again ; apt for all things, but excelling only in war ; adoring chance, force, success, splendour and noise, more than true glory; more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of good sense, ready to conceive immense designs rather than to consummate great undertakings; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of the nations of Europe and that best fitted to become by turns an object of admiration, of hatred, of pity, of terror, but never of indifference ! Such a nation could alone give birth to a revolution so sudden, so radical, so impetuous in its course, and yet so full of reactions, of contradictory incidents and of contrary examples. Without the reasons I have related the French wonld never have made the revolution ; hut it must he confessed that all these reasons united would not have sufficed to account for such a revolution anywhere else but in France. The Dramatic Works of James Sheridan Knowles. Two Vols. London : Routledge. THIRTY-SIX years ago, ere our last great school of tragic actors was wholly extinct, and when the mass of playgoers were still those whose taste had been formed in the days of Siddons and Kemble, and their gifted predecessors — when among our theatrical critics were still numbered some of the leading men of letters of the day, Hunt, Hazlitt, and Lamb—the town was suddenly excited by a report that the Elizabethan drama was revived in the new tragedy of Virginias. What it was that created this general enthusiasm both among the public and the critics it is not easy, at this distance of time, when the play can no longer be effec tively put upon the stage, satisfactorily to determine. But there are certain broad characteristics in all Mr. Knowles's dramas which will serve to explain to some extent why the best of them still retain possession of the stage, though scarcely ever mentioned outside the walls of a theatre. The author was himself an actor, and seized with pro fessional skill upon all those points of a story which he krew would tell upon the boards. Thus the action in his plays never flags—in cident succeeds incident with a rapidity which is always agreeable to an audience, though abrupt and unreal to the reader. The plot is never left to develop itself, as in dramatists of a higher order, through incidents of greater and lesser interest, and recurring periods of apparent stagnation. There is, we might say, THE PRESS. the same difference between his plays and those of Shakespeare, as between the natural windings of a brook and the direct progress of a canal which goes straight to its appointed •n d. Mr. Knowles's plots are usually good, though, like his characters, more meagre than they ap pear on the stage. If we examine his three best dramas we shall find that they rest on a very slender foundation. Virginias is simply a dramatised translation of two or three chap ters in Livy. The salient points—i. e., the betrothal of Icilius and Virginia; the sud den lust of Appius ; and the tragical end of the heroine—are all brought out into bold relief But the effect is in reality rather pano ramic than dramatic. The same is true, in a modified degree, of the Hunchback. There is no attempt to soften down the violent transi tion from Julia, the country innocent, to Julia. the town coquette ; from Clifford the wealthy knight, to Clifford the poor secretary. Every• thing is sacrificed to rapidity of action. The plot, as far as the situation of Master Walter is concerned, is dramatically good ; but it is not enough to hang a five-act play upon. The plot of The if is in its essential point a mere repetition of Much Ado About Nothing ; nor can we see anything in it to justify the eulogium of the Edinburgh Review, quoted in the advertisement to the present volumes If from the story we turn to the characters, we find them the merest sketches, presenting an effective exterior but hollow within. The character of St. Pierre in The Wife is, perhaps, the least defective of any. The contest be tween his good and evil disposition—the one natural, the other brought about by want and temptation—is not badly sustained; but then the picture is quite unfinishPd. There are none of those subtle touches through which a character is in a moment revealed to us by the masters of the dramatic art The author wrote for the stage, and the stage only; and if his personages pass muster before the audi ence all is well. In The Hunchbaek this fault is still more conspicuous. Master Walter pro mises well in the opening scene. His quick ness to take offence at Gaylove's remarks is skilfully and naturally introduced ; but after this the character falls away. He neither says nor does anything further peculiar to a person of his temperament, or in any way differing from the regulation old gentleman of the pre sent day. In Modus, Helen, and Sir Thomas Clifford, excellent materials seem lost. The latter is a man of straw, though meant, we think, for something more substantial ; and the two former the most finished acting can hardly redeem from silliness In Virginias there is not a single character which is any thing more than a copy ; and the madness of Virginius at the end is surely forced and im probable. The language of these plays belongs to what may perhaps be termed conventional poetry. It is not individual, it is not local, it is not chronological, it is not natural. We can refer it to no particular state of society, and to no particular period of time. It is as unlike the language of real life as the actor in his tragic costume is unlike his real self. By excluding that minuteness necessary to reality, Mr. Knowles helped to give popularity to a school which has been much indebted to him, though it has never acknowledged its obligations. There is great similarity between Mr. Knowles and many of our contemporary poets ; they resemble each other in an instinctive shrink ing from the grasp of those realities which are the touchstones of masculine genius ; but the much more sensitive and delicate poetical faculty of other writers has caused the resemblance to be partially overlooked. Mr. Knowles's versification is exceedingly slovenly. He frequently terminates his lines by a mere connective particle. Witness three consecutive lines from Virginias . I shall use this Livius Drusus, To combat Gracchns, with the very means That make him to be fear'd. Have patience, and You'll see my policy. They're coming to The Forum—Drusus last This shows me my Exordium. Were it worth while we could produce scores of such instances. These two volumes contain in all sixteen 737 plays, none of which we believe were failures on the stage. They contain many elegant passages scattered through them at intervals. They arc all calculated to draw as long as the scenery and action retain their novelty, but not likely ever to become favorites with the student of dramatic literature. They to e distinguished by great cleverness, but fail to convey to our minds the presence of dramatic genius. We are indebted to the enterprise cf Mr. Itoutledge for issuing the works of Mr. Knowles in so convenient a form, but we can not think the author will ever hold that rank among English writers which the publisher seems inclined to predict for him. Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up tho Rivers Kwora and Binue (commonly knows as the Niger and Tsiichla) in 1854. By William Balfour Baikie, M.D. R.N. Lon- don : Murray. Narrative of the Niyer, Tshadda, and Binui Exploration. By T. J. Hutchinson. Lon don : Longmans. THE expedition of which these two volumes supply us with a record was a modest one. It consisted of the Pleiad, a screw-steamer, of 260 tons, carrying in all a crew of sixty-seven persons, of whom only twelve were Europeans. By contract with Mr. Macgregor Laird, the Government stipulated that the total expense should be limited to 5,0001. The results of the expedition are tolerably well known. It did not accomplish all that was anticipated from it. The instructions of the Government were that the Pleiad should ascend the Chadda to the point where that river was crossed at the junction of the Binue and Faro, by Dr. Barth, in June, 1851 ; that every effort should be made to obtain informa tion concerning Drs. Barth and Vogel; and that it was desirable that Wukari and Yola, two important capitals at a short distance from the shores of the Chadda, should be visited. Neither of these objects was ful filled. But the expedition was nevertheless remarkable for two circumstances. In the first place, it ascended the Chadda for between two and three hundred miles higher than any previous expedition ; and, secondly, it returned to Fernando Po on the 4th November, 1854, after four months' absence, with exactly the same crew that it had when it sailed. No serious sickness occurred during the whole time. Some of the Krumen were slightly attacked, but their disorder gave way to medical treatment. Mr. Hutchinson was surgeon to the expedition. From his expe rience of African disease he was peculiarly fitted for the discharge of his duties, and he has given in his unpretending narrative rules for the preservation of health which every ship visiting the African coast would do well to attend to. Mr. Hutchinson is sanguine that with proper precautions " Africa will be " come as salubrious a residence for European " constitutions as any intertropical country." Were it only for his medical remarks his narrative would be valuable. The daily ad• ministration of quinine wine seems to have been most beneficial We have no reason to be dissatisfied with the progress of African discovery since atten tion was first turned to it. A quarter of a century ago the course of the Niger was only known to us from the observation of Mungo Park. The Landers in 1830 descended the eastern branch of the Niger (the Kowara) and came out at the Nun mouth. Three years later, the expedition of aldfield and Allen as cended the Niger, and, pursuing the eastern branch (the Chadda), reached Dagbo. The most unfortunate expedition of 1841 only reached the confluence of the two rivers. Its fatal failure checked further enterprise till this last expedition, in 1834. But in the meantime extensive explorations were undertaken by land travel. Richardson paid for his devotion with his life. Dr. Barth, his companion, was more fortunate ; he penetrated to Lake Tshad, and on the I`4,h June, 1851, crossed the broad stream known as the Binue, or " mother cf waters," at the point where it was joined by the Faro (lat. 90 deg. 2 min. N., long. 40 deg.