The Press. — London, England, 1856-10-04 00:00:00

954 ditions—could any good come out of it? Incredible as it may seem, there is evidence that in this state of things the Scotch did contrive, in some way or other, to lead not only an endurable, but a very substantial and jolly existence ; and that not only a great deal of good, but much of what ScJtland must now regard as its best and most charac teristic produce, had its genesis in these times, though the exodus is nearer our own. The various liberties of the human subject may be classified and arranged according to their degree of importance, and a great many of them may exist where the liberty of voting for members of Par liament and of openly talking politics is absent. So it was in Scotland, at least during the reign of Dundee and Toryism. The million and a half of human beings who then composed Scotland and were scattered over its sur face, in their various parishes, agricultural or pastoral, and in their towns and villages, went through their daily life with a great deal of energy and enjoyment, notwith standing that Dundas, and the lairds and the bailies as his agents, elected the members of Parliament and transacted all the political business of the country ; nay, out of the airds and the bailies themselves, and all the business of elec tioneering, they extracted a good deal of fun. What mat tered it that now and then some long-tongued fellow who had started a newspaper was stowed away in jail, or that at Edinburgh lawyer like Muir was transported for being incontinent in his politics? Could not people let well alone, obey the authorities, earn their oatmeal, and drink their whisky in peace? Few of Scott's novels come down so far as this period of Scottish life, and it has hardly yet been described in our literature of fiction ; but there are many yet alive who remember it, and delight in recalling its savageries and its humours. 0, the old Scottish times of the lairds, the moderate ministers, the provosts, and the baities ! The lairds speaking broad Scotch, farming their own lands, carousing together, marrying their daughters, and writing to London for appointments for their sons; the moderate ministers making interest for their sons, preaching Blair and " cauld morality " on Sundays, and jogging to christenings or presbytery dinners through the week ; the provosts and bailies in their shops in the fore noon, or meeting in the morning to their deid-chack " after a man was hanged ! Every considerable town then had its hangman, who was generally a well-to-do person who sold fish. And then all through society, the flirtations, the friendships, and the long winter evenings at the fireside, with the cracks between the gudeman and his neighbours, and the alternative of a hand at cards or a well-thumbed book for the young folks. What stalwart old fellows, both of the donee and of the humorous type, oracular and re spected in their day. and whose physiognomies and maxims are still preserved in local memory, lived and died in those days and made them serve their turn ! Nay, of the list of Scotchmen recently dead, or still alive, who have been eminent in the intellectual world, what a number belong by their birth to the reign of Dundas, and were nurtured amid its torpid influences! Burns closed his life in the moist of it ; Stewart and Watt lived through it ; Scott, and Jeffrey, and Chalmers, and Wilson, and Hamilton, and Carlyle are all more or less specimens of what it could send forth. rizere fortes ante Agamemnona : there was pith in Scotland before parliamentary reform. Our only objection to the paper on novels is, that too much importance is given to one or two, so totally absurd as to require no exposure at all, and which are, in fact, dignified by the censure. " George Forster " is a good biographical sketch, and the review of Emerson an impartial Lxposition of the opinions expressed in his recent volume. The summary of contemporary literature forms, as usual, a most attractive feature in this Review. The New Quarterly continues to give its readers acute criticism on the literature of the quarter, wisely avoiding the elaborate essays which make up the bulk of the other Quarterlies. The books brought under notice are fairly treated, the criticism being at the same time pungent and discriminating. The only fault we notice in the present number is that the reviews are all on subjects which float on the surface of literature. As a Quarterly has time for reasearch and consideration, it should depart from the highways of publishing, and discover in obscure places the germs of thought and newly developed impulses destined one day to mightily move the world of intellect. Of the reviews, we have been most pleased with that on Mr. Reade's " Never too Late to Mend." We doubted in these columns the prudence of an author describing, even in fiction, distant scenes of which he bad had no experience. The reviewer remarks justly : The Australian scenes which follow suggest t o us the ques tion how far a novelist should introduce descriptions of a country he has never visited. The value of fiction is in pro- portion to its approximation to truth ; and we apprehend the worth of a novel is seriously impaired by the introduc t'on of descriptive passages utterly at variance with truth. What should we say of an artist who, never out of London yet panted and exhibited " views in Switzerland ?" No one whit less ridiculous is Mr. Heade's attempt to describe a country he has never seen, and the characteristics of which le knows nothing about. All bis information on Australia, obtained at second-hand from indifferent autho rities, is coloured for stage effect. He starts first with a silly blunder, making his ship experience a gale of wind off " the banks of Newfoundland;" so that, for the moment, we were led to believe that George was emigrating to Ca nada, till, at the end of a page or two, we find him safely moored in Port Jackson, where, h e t e ll s us , th e l an d glistened like " a thousand emeralds." The good Sydney folks would be glad to see an approach to anything of an emerted colour at the period given for George's arrival in the burning heat of their December. Mr. Meade has quite forgotten the sandhills which surround Sydney. THE PRESS. A number of instances are given of the ludicrous blunders which Mr. Reade has committed through his ambition to describe Australian life—localities two hundred miles apart are brougbt close together ; inland countries are made to approximate to the sea coast, and the aborigines are dealt with in a manner which must move the wonder of all Australian set tlers. The reviewer justly concludes : The whole book, or at least that portion of it relating to New South Wales, is full of similar errors. We would un dertake to point out fifty statements in as many pages all errors, which any man used to the Australian life, or with any knowledge of the country, would unhesitatingly set down as grossly incorrect. Mr. Reade has adopted all the old women's stories afloat. Where he could have obtained his information it is impossible to say. We have the old familiar " yarns " about wooden pears, and cherries growing with their stones outside, and birds which don't sing, and flowers which don't smell, and rivers which run inland, and trees which shed their bark and not their leaves, and such a mixture of little truth and a vast amount of falsehood, that we are surprised Mr. Reade should have adopted it without making himself better acquainted with his subject. As for the descriptions of the gold diggings, they are as full of error as of exaggeration. The article on Lord Dalhousie is a most vigorous onslaught on the noble marquis's administration of Indian affairs. According to the writer, who is evidently master of his subject, a period of three years will dispel all those visions of Indian pro sperity and safety in which the admirers of Lord Dalhousie's administration now indulge. The National Review, with deeper thought and more varied learning, fails to present us with so attractive a table of contents. It contains only two articles which, in our opinion, are really interesting. That on " Percy Bysshe Shelley," and that entitled " Personal Influences on our Present Theology— Newman, Coleridge, Carlyle." The first is a masterly piece of criticism. Shelley is a poet with whom, perhaps, we are more delighted and more dissatis fled than any other. He leads us to expect more than we ever find in him. We are struck with adrni • ration at his genius, but, as soon as we endeavour to embrace him, he eludes our grasp. "Par levitate " ventis, rolucrique simillima somno." The causes of this peculiarity are ably set forth in the article in question. The theological essay evinces broad views, and is a comprehensive survey of the subject under discussion. It is, however, in our opinion too purely disquisitive. The author does not even hint at any theory of his own. These cold anatomical articles on theology are not pleasing. The London Quarterly Review for October is by no means a bad number. " Rationalism in the Church of England " is a careful and serious article, if nothing more. " Cuba, its State and Prospects," is a compact and readable account of that island, and the review of " Gainsborough's Life," light and spirited. Professor Aytoun's " Bothwell " is rather hardly treated. We think the time will come when the merit of this monotonous and melancholy song will be better appreciated. The most amusing article in the Irish Quarterly is one on Paul Heffernan, a drunken Hibernian litterateur of the Johnsonian era. Most of the other papers, such as " The Post-office," " Convicts," " Steam," are complete and useful. The only article of interest in the Eclectic Review is an " Dred." The writer takes a favorable, but in no respect original view of Mrs. Stowe's novel. The other articles are religious and scientific. Blackwood and Fraser both depend less than usual upon the fiction department. The former contains an instalment of " The Athelings," in which the introduction of the two girls to fashionable life is well done, though rather hurried over. We foresee some difficulty in the conduct of this story, which will tax the authoress's powers to the utmost. Sir Langham Portland is stiff and clumsy. " Mr. Buttle's Review " is a capital article, in which the minor poetry of the present day is characterised with much truth and humour. The following re• marks coincide curiously with some observations of our own upon contemporary poetry : _ - There has nothing so much surprised me, in my large experience among the small fry of the present day, as the diffusion of poetic feeling, with the total absence of poetic power. You read a volume of faultless versification with• out a thought in it from beginning to end. You feel perfectly assured that the author has taste, feeling, senti- ment, ten fingers, and an admirable ear; and yet that he is no more of a poet than a cheesemouger. What are you to say to such a person? The man has poetry in him; he has filled his mind with the purple tints of clouds, the scent of dying roses, the glimmer of distant stare. With all these constituents of poetry, are you to be a hard- hearted, truth•spealting old inquisitor, and tell the poor fellow he is not a poet, any more than a painter's palette is a picture, or a bunch of grapes a bottle of champagne, or a square yard of wind in a Highland bagpipe the " March of the Cameron Men ?" " Family History "is a very pleasant article. It is not written from the same point of view at all as the recent article on that subject in the Quarterly, but is merely a picture of the domestic lifo of two old Scotch families a hundred and a hundred and fifty SATURDAY, years ago. "African Travel," a review of Lieutenant Burton's " First Footsteps in East Africa," is a sprightly and amusing paper. The reviewer fully enters into the spirit of fun which is evidently a strong element in the lieutenant's character. The best article in Eraser is "Shakespeare and his Native County." It is long since we have read any thing in a magazine that pleased us so much. The provincial phrases, the flowers, and the birds of Warwickshire are all carefully traced through his plays, though we may remark in passing that no small number of the first are equally prevalent in the adjoining counties. For instance, the use of " master " for " Mr.," the word " wench," a " race " of ginger, " cage" for prison, and two or three others, are common in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. A curious instance of Shakespeare's close observa tion of nature is cited from Hamlet, act v. sc. 2 : The lapwing runs away with the shell on his head. it This is wonderfully true," says the writer ; "wo " have seen the newly-hatched fledglings running " about in the fellows, with the pieces of shell stick " ing to their down." There is no other article in this number of remarkable merit. Perhaps the review of " The Angel in the House " is the next best. In this article the interesting question how far married life affords fit materials for fiction is dis cussed very fully, and with considerable acuteness. Our own opinion, however, is adverse to that of the writer, who decides it in the affirmative. A novel may sometimes be protracted after the marriage of the hero and heroine without losing interest, as in " The Heart of Midlothian," and more recently iu " John Halifax ;" but then the interest does not hinge upon the incidents of wedlock. Courtship is essentially a period of difficulty and adventure, and married life is essentially not so. The Dublin University Magazine has an excellent article upon Bacon, and Archbishop Whately. The methods of Bacon and Aristotle a:•e well contrasted, though it is perhaps to be desired that rather more should have been said upon the subject of the syllogism. As it is, the writer's view is a little open to misconception. The story of "The Darragh "is concluded ; the will turning out to be a for gery, and Walter Nugent takes possession of the property. His marriage with the young lady whose acquaintance he made upon Snowdon of course follows in due time. The story has been well written from the beginning, and full of exciting incidents, but a little deficient in plot, for the will forgery is too common a device to elude any one's attention. The review of M. de Tocqueville's " France before the Revolution " is plain-spoken, and strongly Conservative. The aim of the reviewer is to deduce from the work in hand these two propo• sitions—that centralisation is the worst enemy of freedom, and aristocracy the worst enemy of central isation. The article upon " Poetry—Good, Bad, and Indifferent," adopts very much the same tone as an article on a similar subject in Blackwood to which we have already alluded ; but the praise of Mr. Archer Gurney is decidedly too strong. The New Monthly opens with a readable gossip ping article on Sir Robert Walpole. We learn, indeed, nothing new from it, but it is a judicious and entertaining summary of the various opinions which have been pronounced on his character. With the following extract from an article on Austria and Sardinia we perfectly agree : One of the most difficult questions of the present day is the final settlement of Italy, fur things cannot possibly go on much longer as at present. Austria appears determined to defend her territory di l'outrance, and we really ought not to blame her after the lives and treasures she has already expended in that ungrateful country. It is a very easy matter to accuse the Austrians of tyranny in Italy, and still easier to get the parrot-cry taken up by the Eng lish nation, but it is absurd to assume that this tyranny is the matter of choice on the part of the Government. The Italians can be governed in no other way; they must be made to fear the authority, for the slightest concesst..ns induce them to form the most exaggerated notions of their own importance, and fancy that they are in a condition to rule themselves ; while it is well known that, if left to themselves, they fall the prey of the fi rs t infrigartt who bids the highest for their favours. Intestine commotions have ever been the rule in Italy, and though these were of com paratively slight importance at an earlier period of history the peace of Europe now stands on so insecure a founds lion that every effort must be applauded which keeps them tranquil. Austria has been perfectly aware of this sinco she has occupied the Lombardo. Venetian territory, and her intervention has always been offered, and generally accepted, when fears were entertained of insurrection or revolution. We believe that Europe owes her a great debt for this conduct, and we must most heartily deprecate any measures having a tendency to raise another nation at her expense. The Austrian army at the present moment consists of 457,000 infantry, and 07,000 cavalry. Her artillery consists of more than 1,300 guns, and 70,000 men. Her engineers are 11,000, her sappers and miners 5,000. "It will be seen from these data," says the author, " that there are very few " European armies which could venture to defy the " Austrians." " Leaves from Old Trees 7is a curious