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

ney pedants, to whom an " editor's room" is a sort of " holy of holies," or Cockney wits, whose ideas of provincials are conceived with much the same amount of truthfulness as the Parisian's notion of John Bull. The articles on Lord Brougham, London street-architec ture, and the Manchester Exhibition are all well done, and exhibit great familiarity with the subjects they respectively treat of. The present is an excellent number of the Westminster Review. The first article, on " An cient Political Economy," is very interesting, though we scarcely see the practical drift of it ; but the next three are all first-class articles. " English Courts of Law" is a forcible and lminorons exposition of the inconveniences attending the ordinary sitting of the ordinary courts. The passage concerning the treat ment of witnesses is especially valuable; also the following on the defence of prisoners Bat is thaE all ? Is it enough merely to allow a poverty stricken prisoner, put on his trial perhaps for his life, the privilege of employing counsel ? Poverty is, to a great extent, the cause cf crime, and prisoners generally come from the most destitute class in the community. At the cowing assizes at Liverpool, perhaps one hundred and fifty prisoners will be collected from all parts of South Lancashire ; of the one hundred and fifty, not fifty will be defended by counsel. Amongst the others will be found sick men, without strength or nerves—ignorant men, without words—low men, who know not what confidence is—young children, pethaps young girls, whose thoughts and voices will be drowned in their tears—weak women, palpitating with fear—and all varieties of poor, weak, ignorant, and tremb'ing creatures. No doubt the majority are guilty ; but that is not yet known, the law believes them, for the present, to be otherwise. Yet all these will be expected to expose perjury, partiality, or exaggeration in the witnesses; to combat unfairness in the prosecuting counsel, impatience in the judge; and then to address a large assembly of their betters. They will not only have to do this, but to do it after the weakening effects of cap tivity, cowering under the shame of accusation, and shrink ing from the reproachful glances of friends and relations —perhaps their own children. But they must do it, though they be deaf, or dumb, or stammer, and that in the struggles of all their agonies. Can this be called justice, or mercy to the accused? Of what service is the Prisoner's Counsel Bill to them ? Will equal ignorance be brought against them on the part of the Crown? Nothing of the kind ; the Crown employs a man of ex perience to prepare the case against the indicted, and another one, of a different, but not inferior ability, to conduct it against him in court. Nor is this all; the more complicated the case, and therefore the more difficult the defence, the more legal ability will be brought to bear upon it by the Crown. Even in the smallest cases, where the prisoner is undefended, the scene is always a painful one. _ . It is a trying and confusing moment for the prisoner when, the counsel for the prosecution having opened the case and examined the first witness, the judge asks the prisoner "if be has any questions to put to this witness." If the prisoner is able to say anything, he generally com mences a statement of his case, and is immediately stopped by the court, who iays—" Prisoner, your time to speak will come presently, now you are only permitted to ask the witness questions." The prisoner, who probably has not understood the bearing of the evidence adduced against him, then sullenly says he has nothing to ask. With every fresh witness the same scene is repeated; and, at last, when the case for the Crown is closed, and the prisoner is asked if he has anything to say to the jury, lie often says he has not,—he has said all he meant to say in the course of the case, or he is wearied out or thoroughly confounded by being often stopped by the court, and finally makes no defence at all. This is a common scene : the man is probably convicted, and leaves the dock em• Littered by a feeling that he has not had a fair trial. Nor does the injury to the prisoner rest only with his own incapacity ; while every praise is due to the fairness and consideration of prosecuting counsel, there cannot be a doubt that the case is not so strictly conducted in mule fended cases as in defended cases. All objections to unfair questions, at least to an unfair mode of putting questions, must come from the accused or his counsel. If ho has no counsel, lie knows not how to object, and does not indeed know that an improper course is being used against him. Leading questions are then freely put, hearsay evidence is quietly let in, and the glib policeman is allowed to tell his well•digested story unexamined. The case is galloped through much to the satisfaction of judge and jury, who like to see business dispatched rapidly. This is not only unjust, but an abandonment of the very prin ciples on which justice is administered in England. A man has committed a manslaughter, and is indicted for murder. He appears at the bar, and it is found that he has no counsel; the judge puts on a look of pity, and glances round the bar. The seniors, who are busy, begin to move off, leaving, perhaps, some old man at the law, but one who has failed from the most patent inefficiency, in the court. No junior is permitted to undertake the case without his consent, which it would be thought im• pertinent to ask for. The judge knows this, and at length reluctantly asks this notoriously inefficient old man to undertake the defence of a serious charge of blood at a moment's notice, without any previous knowledge of the facts—without any opportunity of ascertaining from the prisoner his story, or any time for preliminary consulta- tion. This is nearly the only instance in England in which counsel is assigned to the prisoner, except at the Old Bailey, where the sheriffs provide counsel out of their own pockets. T HE PRESS, JULY 25, 1857. " Suicide in Life and Literature" is one of the best papers in all the nuarterly periodicals. It contains a brief but able disquisition on the causes of suicide in real life, and a comparison of the manner in which it is usually introduced in literature. The conclusion arrived at is that suicide, when not the result of insanity, is usually found to proceed from either a weak mind or a diseased body impairing the mental vigour—and that the discrepancy between life and literature consists in the fact that in the latter it is usually represented as an effect of sudden passion, whereas in reality it is found to spring more often from less imposing causes. The following statistics will perhaps interest our readers, and we wish we had space to quote a great deal more of this remarkable paper : Thus, in the year 1851, there 'were 3,598 suicides re• corded in France, to each of which the presumed motive was affixed. Out of these no lees than 800 are set down to mental alienation ; and to that number we should add 70 cases of monomania, 39 of cerebral fever, and 54 of idocy—all ranking under the general head of uncontrol• lsbleness,—which will make a total of 963, or more than a fourth of the whole cases. If we now examine the remaining cases, we find " domestic quarrels " next in amount, being no less than 385 ; while grief for the loss of children amounts to only 48, grief at their ingratitude or bad conduct, to 10 ; sudden anger, only 1. Next in importance to domestic quarrels is the desire to escape from physical suffering: these amount to 313. Debt and embarrassment rank next-203. Want, and the fear of want, 179. Disgust at life—which may properly be called low spirits—stands high,-16t1; shame and remorse, very low, only 7. Thwarted love shows anly 91, and jealousy, 23. Losses at play, 0 ; loss of employment, 25. In contemporary English literature, however, suicide has certainly been employed more in accordance with the above figures. The expo sure of a long scheme of villany, the sudden loss of fortune, or forfeiture of the world's good opinion, are now assigned in novels as the motives of self-destruction oftener than the sentimental or heroic sufferings to which the reviewer alludes. In " French Politics, Past and Present," a difficult subject is handled in a philosophic spirit, and the writer's observations on the French army are well worth consideration. The essay upon Shakespeare's sonnets strikes us as strained and puerile. Witness the one following in stance out of dozens : Hear how Shakespeare laments the bitter put: — Alas ! 'Os true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new. Most true is it, that I have looked on truth Askance and strangely. Verily Meres could not have read these when he spoke of Shakespeare's "sugared sonnets to his friends:" for assuredly we know no such bitter records of a great soul struggling amidst trials and sorrows. They contain a greater tragedy, if properly considered, than any he ever wrote—the tragedy of real life—tbe tragedy of the greatest mind the world ever beheld, overwhelmed with a sense of its own sin and guilt. This is it that shows his real greatness. The great soul alone is conscious of its nwn defects, and that in proportion to its own greatness. Your little mind is self-pleased, self-satisfied, ever fancying itself in the right, sleeping too sound to be ever disturbed by dreams or tears. This kind of criticism can ho written by the yard. The passage quoted from the sonnets is by no means strong enough to carry all the spuriously sublime rant which is here based upon it. The American article and the Neapolitan article are each excellent in their way—full of thought and practical sagacity, though the latter is certainly in parts pitched in too high a strain. The London Quarterly contains a strong list of subjects. Among the best, we should mention the decimal coinage, Canadian agriculture, and the paper upon Curran as particularly interesting and well written. The essay upon Cicero and his contemporaries does full justice to the great Roman states man, and is composed in a pleasing and un pretending style. The literary notices at the end of the volume are too exclusively confined to religious works to interest the general public, though doubtless acceptable to a large class of subscribers. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED-JULY 23. BOOKS. Lucian Playjair. Thomas Mackern. Three Vols. Smith and Elder Wayside Fancies. Frances Freeling Broderip. E. Moron Six Months in Sebastopol. From the Journal of the late Major George Ranken. C. Wcsterton Lectures and Miscellanies. 11. W. Freeland. Longtuans Grams aire Franeaiee. Longmans 731 Letters from the Slave States. J. Parker Christianity the Logic of Creation. W. White The Peers and the People and the Coming Reform. Effingham Wilson Inquiry into the Opinions of the Commercial Classes. Weale T. Hodgson 7'he White Mack. Mrs. Thomson. PERIODICAL. The Monthly Review. Hall and Virtue. Choose your Own Path; o►, the Predestinarian. Part• ridge—Lord Palmerston and the Isthmus of Sues Canal. Richardson Brothers. Pusir. ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA. DONIZETTI'S Lucia di Lammermoor is essentially a " tenor " opera. The reason is not merely because Edgar Ravenswood has the last word, or, in other language, the " aria finale," and it is not also the fault of the composer—for, on the debtor and creditor account of the music assigned to the principal parts the balance will be found in favour of the heroine — but with the public in general the figure of Edgar haunts the memory more vividly .than Lucia. Perhaps no higher compliment has ever been paid to the genius of the novelist than in the fact that the mangling of the romance by the Italian librettist has failed to render Scott's exquisite creations nonenti ties—laboured as the effort has been to reduce the story to maudlin sentimentality. Donizetti's genius has fortunately soared above the absurdities and trivialities of his poet associate. The stage suicide is redeemed by the " Fra Poco." As these strains are heard, one sees the fatal ride to the Kelpies Flow, one imagines Colonel Ashton straining his eyes towards the horseman, who suddenly melts into "thin air," as the quicksands absorb the figure of the doomed Edgar. There are omissions in the libretto which are most unpardonable. Leaving out Lady Ashton—that terrible woman, who never evinced "the slightest symptom either of repentance or remorse "—was a great mistake. The picture at the end of the second act, when Edgar returns, seems incomplete without the mother's exhibition of the marriage contract, and without her hand tearing off the piece of gold concealed in Lucy's bosom. In the opera, the brother, Ashton, is made to do duty both for himself and Lady Ashton; but what a character might have been created for a lyric Risturi like Viardot ! But one artist has ever succeeded in making the brother's presence at the signature of the writings equal to the telling situation in the novel, and that was Ronconi. Tamburini and Coletti sang the music of Ashton splendidly, and Belletti executes it artistically; but to realise Scott's conceptions of the maternal authority over a weak and vacillating mind, changed to fraternal influence—a very different thing indeed—was reserved only to the genius of a Ronconi. Duprez was the original Edgardo—it was composed expressly for him ; and in lofty emotion it has never been approached. In thrilling vocalisa tion Rubini has never been equalled. Amateurs will not easily forget the ludicrous display at Her Majesty's Theatre, in 1946, of the eucore for Fraschini, who was called in Italy "II tenore della maledizione," profanely translated by a musical wag at the time into " the blasted tenor." The burlesque of clacquism was never more strongly illustrated. Moriani's fame as Edgardo rested on his dying scene. M. Roger, Sims Reeves, and Salvi, all won deserved distinction in the tenor part. When Mario essayed it to the Lucia of Catherine Hayes, he achieved one of his greatest triumphs. Gardoni was one of the gentlest of Edgardos, certainly superior to Giuglini's drawling version. Neri-Baraldi's impersonation lacks stage presence and intellectuality. It is nicely sung, however, and will raise the reputation of this young and promising singer. The new Ashton, on Tuesday, was Graziani, and superbly did he vocalise—the music being admirably adapted to his magnificent organ. The fine duo of the challenge, restored at the Royal Italian Opera by Salvi and Ronconi, was dramatically rendered by Graziani and Baraldi. The gentle and inoffensive Lucia, without energy, without ambition, as her mother describes her, has found a most interesting representative in Mlle. Victoire Balfe, who is the nearest approach to the gifted Mme. Persiani. The grace and simplicity of the acting of this last-mentioned artiste, and her mar vellous volubility of throat, and perfect method, remain unrivalled. She was the Lucia. Mme. Castellan's amiability was apparent in the part. What a terrible termagant Jenny Lind made of Lucia is within everybody's recollection, great as were portions of her singing. The Hibernian prima donna, Miss Catherine Hayes, moved her auditory as Lucia. Piceolomini's dramatic exag geration and fussiness and vocal incompetency have been recently palpable. Victoire Balfe has greatly added to the laurels she gained as Amina. Let it be at once conceded, that if her performance 4 ..ailil