The Press. — London, England, 1855-01-13 00:00:00

and that the Convocation was not the creature of accidents any more than the remainder of the Legislature. Another form of discussing Church matters in which Seidea indulged was that of tracing similarities to heathen rites—a dangerous and, as the French school of sceptics proved it, a mischievous exercise. Thus he says of Christ -1112.8 Christmas succeeds the Saturnalia, the same time, the same number of holydays; then the master waited upon the servant like the lord of misrule. Our meats and our sports, much of them, have relation to ehurch works. The coffin of our Christmas pies, in shape long, is in imitation of the cratch ; our choosing kings and queens on twelfth•night hath reference to the three kings. So likewise our eating of fritters, whipping of tops, roasting of herrings, Jack of Lents, &c., they were all in imitation of church works, emblems of martyrdom. Our tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs ; though, at the same time, 'twits always the fashion for a man to have a gammon of bacon, to show himself to bo no Jew. In the same way he finds a fanciful compa rison between the Christian doctrines of the future state and that of the Turks' : The Turks tell their people of a heaven where there is sensible pleasure, but of a hell where they shall suffer they don't know what. The Christians quite invert this order; they tell us of a hell where we shall feel sensible pain, but of a heaven where we shall enjoy we can't tell what. Here, however, the supposed transposition fails, for the teaching of the Turks as to Hades is much similar to the Christian doctrine of outer darkness and despair ; nor was Seldcn justified in describing the Christian doctrine of Heaven as at all indefinite or " we can't tell what." That it is not set forth by the sole authorities of Christianity—the sacred writ ings—as material, or fitted for existences who place their chief enjoyment in sensuality, is perhaps the great distinction between all pagan notions of future bliss and the Chris tian's " sure and certain hope of a blessed " immortality." No art seems to have been so long in im proving as that of recording the sayings of learned and able men. The early specimens of such reports, of which Milward's collection of &Aden s opinions is one, are so bald and meagre that it is hard to believe in their cor rectness. They still retain enough, however, to show how valuable had been a. more ample report of what they profess to give. The chief omission is in instances and examples. In the following dissertation on Parliaments, for instance, no doubt the events of the passing time were distinctly pointed at: — All are involved in a Parliament. There was a time when all men had their voice in choosing knights. About Henry the Sixth's time they found the inconvenience ; so one Parliament made a law, that only he that had forty shillings per annum should give his voice, they under should be excluded. They made the law who had the voice of all, as well under forty shillings as above ; and thus it continues at this day. All consent civilly in a Parliament; women are involved in the men, children in those of per fect age ; those that are under forty shillings a year, in those that have forty shillings a year, those of forty shillings in the knights. • • • • • The Parliament men are as great princes as any in the world, when whatsoever they please is privilege of Parlia ment; no man must know the number of their privileges, and whatsoever they dislike is breach of privilege. The Duke of Venice is no more than Speaker of the House of Commons; but the Senate at Venice are not so much as our Parliament men, nor have they that power over the people, who yet exercise the greatest tyranny that is any. where. In plain truth, breach of privilege is only the actual taking away of a member of the house, the rest are offences against the house: fur example, to take out process against a Parliament man, or the like. The Parliament party, it' the law be for them, they call for the law ; if it be against them, they will go to a parlia mentary way ; if no law be for them, then for law again : like him that first called for sack to heat him, then small drink to cool his sack, then sack again to heat his small drink, &o. With but little alteration these remarks might still be made as to the " Venetian Con stitution " of our Government, as Mr. Howard, the attorney, and the Sheriffs of London could have testified in the affair of privilege. The theory that every class is represented in the other is excellent abstractedly, but. since the attempt to pass the feudal power to mere money, has ceased to apply to our representa tive system. It is always grateful, however, to the legal mind to find a fitness upon paper, however practice and facts may ignore it, in the same way as the judge of the Prerogative in the time of Lord North asserted in the House of Commons, that " he, for one, con- THE PRESS. " tended that the North American colonies " were represented in the English Parliament; " for they had been seized upon, like all new " countries, as part and parcel of the manor "of Nort'a Greenwich, in the county of " Kent I" On the subject of the Church of Rome Belden finds an opportunity of indulging in the style of sarcasm in which he was apt to treat many subjects in religion. Nothing new, however, could even then be said upon a priesthood with which the wits had occupied themselves from Chaucer onwards, and which, depending fur its advancement upon that part of the population which had no wit, found their shafts, with the vulgar at least, to fall comparatively harmless. On the legislation of Elizabeth on the subject of Popery he says : The reason of the statute against priests was this : in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth there was a statute made, that he that drew men from their civil obedience was a traitor It happened that this was done in privacies and confessions, when there could be no proof ; therefore they made another act, that for a priest to be in England was treason, because they presumed that was his business to fetch men off from their obedience. When Queen Elizabeth died, and King James cams in, an Irish priest does thus express it : " Elisabetha in Orcum detrusa, successit Jacobus, alter haertticus." You will ask why they did use such language in their Church. Answ. Why does the nurse tell the child of raw bead and bloody bones, to keep it in awe ? The Queen Mother and Count Rosset are to the priests and Jesuits like the honey-pot to the flies. The priests of Rome aim but at two things, to get power from the king and money from the subject. When the priests come into a family they do as a man that would set fire ou a house; he does not put fire to the brick wall, but thrusts it into the thatch. They work upon the women, and let the men alone. In the form of maxims, apotheques, or short definitions, the truths spoken by the learned men of the Elizabethan and two subsequent ages have been found as applicable often as the never-failing principles enunciated in the inimitable verse of Shakspeare. The reason, probably, is, that illustration and verbiage was not the style of the time, and that truth is applicable in all ages alike. These few lines on war are a curious coincidence:— We govern this war as an unskilful man does a casting net: if he has not the right trick to cast the net off his shoulder the leads will pull him into the river. I am afraid we shall pall ourselves into destruction. This edition of Selden's " Table-Talk " is brought out handsomely and in a clear type, and the editor has taken considerable care with the text, and added illustrative extracts occasionally from other writers who have treated similar subjects. Those on polemical subjects are, perhaps, too numerous. Ethel; or, the Double Error. By Marian James. London : Groombridge. THE typography and getting up of this volume is very creditable to the Edinburgh press. It is a reprint from a northern periodical of considerable merit, from the pages of which we are disposed to think the tale had little claim to be transfe►red. We have in it the conventional "uncle" of the novel and the stage, and the equally conventional two cousins candidates for his wealth—the mauvais sujet becoming, as usual, the lucky possessor, and carrying off from the other both his lady-love and his ex pected money. The unsuccessful cousin betakes himself to the arduous pursuit of art, and the other to dissipation. The first goes blind, and the second is killed in a duel, when, if we understand the de nouement, his widow marries the artist. We should guess the authoress to be inexperienced in writing, and if so she has a great deal to unlearn of the opinions of a large school which seems to believe that whatever is extravagant must be interesting. Her style composition, also, requires much pruning. A "string of of smooth, saccharine sentences " is a remarkable expression to show that the speaker was plausible and specious, and " music to the eye " is the newest description of beauty and grace. Aryan; or, the Trials. By C. M. Charles. London : Routledge. THIS story, which appears in the publisher's series of two-volume original novels, professes to be a tale of Brittany at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is, as might be expected, a stirring narrative of medieval war and adventure, somewhat affected i❑ its style and division, but keeping up considerable interest throughout. The author, we are bound to say, has relieved his readers from the indic tion of attempts at quaint phraseology so common in the modern-antique school of novels. The majority of those writers carefully collect the 0 inarrys " SATURDAY, and " by'r ladies" which even the author of " Ivanhoe" himself required all his genjoe to make pass agreeably with the reader, and which James had in all conscience exhausted. The ex ceedingly modem style of conversation does, how ever, sometimes become rather too colloquial. Such phrases as—"' And how did you escape i—Come tell me all about it,' said the Duchess," sound a little beneath the dignity even of the novel narra tive, nor is there anything gained by the use of " Lord" Charles of Blois and " Sir " Herve de Leon in the exact style of to-day. The succession of inci dent in the story is so rapid as to preclude the possi bility of giving extracts that would do jusuce t o the author, and we must, therefore, refer such readers as take pleasure in pleasant medueval fiction to tani work itself. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. BOOKS. Hints en Shooting end Flaking. C. Idle. Longman s Ballade from lierodutus. J. E. Bode. Ditto Pleasures of Literature. Rev. R. A. Wilmott. Routledge The Stepson. F. N. Dyer. Bentley Heir of Sellwoud. Mrs. Gore. Routledge. Grimm's Hooke Stories. Ditto. Literary Papers. E. Forbes. Reeve. Randolph. Saunders and Otley . Official Directory for Ireland. Thom. T'he Art of Travel. F. Galion. Murray. The Bugle cf the Black Sea. Hardwieke, PAKPHLICTB. Lay of Ike Crimea. J. P. Pigott. Ravington6. Prince Menschikoff e Carpet. bay. Thomas and Cu. of Christian Churches. Bentley. Theological l'ehdescies of the Aye. 11ev. J. Tulluch, DD. Paton and Ritchie. Hull and Virtue. Ward and Lock. The Batik qf Ihkeneame. Lobbler Salad. Address. Robert Owen. US C. JULLIEN'S CONCERTS, COVENT GARDEN OPERA.- RousE.—On Tuesday evening we had the Mendels• sohn festival, and, as upon the previous occasion in Drury Lane, the house was crowded at an early hour. The performances commenced with the sym phony in A major, which was very brilliantly executed throughout ; the allegro vivace in the first movement was played with animation, and the andante iu the second movement was rendered with the most exquisite feeling. The salterello in the finale was certainly very correctly and brilliantly executed. Mme. Pleyel than performed the whole of the piano- forte concerto iu Ci minor. It is scarcely possible to speak too highly of this gifted lady's performance, the brilliancy of her rapid execution or the subdued feeling and genuine expression which she throws into the slow movement, both almost beyond praise, but not beyond the most furious and enthu siastic applause, shouts of " Brava! brava!" hats and sticks thrown up and waved, evinced the furore which her performance had created; and at this unanimous expression of the public feeling the lady generously returned and repeated the whole of the last and most brilliant movement. The next piece was a charming overture to the opera of Heimkehr, which is a light and melodious composition, and, though not much known in this country, was warmly applauded. " The Last Violet" was then sang by Miss Dolby, and the first and Mendelssohn part of the concert concluded with the violin concerto and the " Wedding March " overture from the Midsummer Night's Dream. Herr Ernst performed the violin concerto in E, and though playing somewhat out of tune in the first increment, yet in the andante and rondo of the second and third movements rarely have we heard so passionately tender and ex quisitely melodious a performance. It was the very poetry of play. Perhaps the concerto was too long for a general audience, but the performance was listened to with profound attention and was most warmly applauded. The "Wedding March" over ture is too well known to need remark. We have seldom heard a finer performance on Mendelssohn nights than that on Tuesday, and, although the house is rather unadapted to pianoforte solos, we have every reason to praise M. Jullieu for his judicious selection of music and for the admix able efficiency of the orchestral accompaniments. On Wednesday evening M. Ketteneus, concertrineistei to H.R.H. the Prince Regent of Baden, made his first appearance, and a fantasia upon the violin which he played was very warmly applauded. Mme. Pleyel, accompanied by the orchestra, also gave on that evening a most brilliant and masterly performance of the "Concert Stuck" of Weber. The selection also included the first movement of Spohr's "Power of Sound," a very fine and expressive piece of music, performed with great ability and effect. Kcenig's benefit took place yesterday evening, on which occa sion he performed Beethoven's " Adelaide" and a selection from Rossini's Stabat Mater. M. Jullieu Is certainly changing the nature of these monster con certs, and much improving them by his esceileat