The Press. — London, England, 1856-08-30 00:00:00

AUGUST 30, 1856. would be necessary, on that scale of computa tion, to bring up our knowledge of socia history since the days of Queen Elizabeth. The truth on this question appears to be. that as historians were formerly too cold and general, so now there is a tendency lest they should become oppressively trivial. A vast part of " social" history must necessarily be ephemeral, and wholly unworthy of the remem brance of posterity. How Charles I. and Cromwell played their parts must always be of vast interest to English posterity ; but the shape of their hats and tooth-brushes, or the exact way in which the Cavaliers drank their wine, or the Puritans ate their suppers, is of comparatively little interest. The Evan gelists have into a few pages crawded an enormous amount of incidents, facts, cha racters, and sublime passages of eloquence. The entire absence of trivialities, the austere contempt for irrelevant points, and the direct. ness of their narratives, ought to receive more attention from the proficients in diffuseness in our own days. The Greek historians would have admired the inspired brevity of the Evangelists. Mr. Roberts overrates the value of the facts of which his work is composed,and he does not clearly apprehend the controversy to which he alludes in tie following dedication to Mr. Macaulay. His work is intended, Mr. Roberts says, to prove suggestive in many ways in determining whether there are or not many inestimable advantages enjoyed by Cie moderns over their ancestors. There can be no question at all as to whether there are many inestimable advantages en joyed by the moderns. The discussion is as to whether there is more real happiness, or whether the happiness has increased in pro portion to the intellectual enlargement? If happiness be not a thing of class, if peasants can have as many delights as peers, if village sempstresses can enjoy this earth with as pure gratifications as the titled dames for whom they toil, why should not rude and simple ages have their fair share of enjoyment? Such questions are vague, shadowy, and metaphysicsl. To moot such subjects, and leave them undecided, was the besetting fault of the Scotch school of philosophy. Mr. Macaulay in his brilliant writinaa has too often fallen into the same error. Mr. Roberts is an enthusiastic devotee at the Macaulay shrine, but in the second page of his preface be involuntarily gives a rough knock at his idol : No one can meet the present or counsel for the future without turning an attentive retrospect into the former condition and events of his country. The novelist and other writers have created an ideal past, a fanciful conven ticoality which totally misleads. The object of these pages is to convey a faithful portraiture of bygone years, the condition of our countrymen, their manners, and state of pro .9 ess. And who is to weigh the farts? It is obvious that " causality," the power of tracing things to their origin, is absolutely required. But the costume writer, or compiler of awl, has rarely that power. Mr. Roberts wildly plunges into the question in this fashion : What prodigies has not the genius of some men com• passed 'within a few years ! They excite, and de.- - -ervedly so, our admiration, that man, the highest of created beings, has attained to such a pitch of excellence. How many, however, view the results of this progress with widely different feelings. They clearly in their expressions imply that man is ton far in advance of what he should kn )1r and practise, and that he i 4 guilty of presumption, and that the Deity views with rival feeling the onward cotirse of in yention and science. So was Jupiter reported by the her to have been exposed to the aggression of the giants, when Pelion heaped upon Ossa anticipated the prodigies of modern philosophers. " When Pelion heaped upon Ossa anticiposted " the Irodiyies of modern philosophers"! Our breath is taken away ! Let us proceed to exemplify some of the defects of this author's mode of composition. Mr. Roberts writes:— Thncydides describes the ancient state of the coasts of Greece in language that would be suitable to a picture in olden time of the coasts of England. The old towns of both countries, owing to the long continuance of piracy, were built further off from the sea, or inland. The later towns were built on the seashores and on isthmuses, sue• rounded by walls for protection. And was not this the case in England? The firstchnrch, the parent church of many towiss, is tr.wn the sea. Towns that quite eclipse the original ♦illage exiat, b.it are mach more reoent Thus. fir example, see Wake. the parent of Weystooth; Sutton Poynta, of Ideleomite ; Littleham. of Exmouth; Broadwater, of Wording; Tor, of Torquay; THE PRESS. Brizbam, of Brizham•gnay, for shortness Brizham. See Bridport, Abbotabury with its monastery, and Charmonth, placed hack from the sea. Our old cinque.port and sea side towns were willed, and they needed that protection. The assimilation between Greek and Eng lish towns is too hasty. Mr. Roberts ought to reflect that other causes besides dread of pirates or invasion made churches built "from the sea "—by which he means (we suppose) at a distance from the shore. Churches were used as seamarks and landmarks. In his " Tourist's Companion" Mr. Charles Knight writes of " Trinity Church," in the Isle of Thenet, " towards the creation of which the " Trinity Company largely contributed, it " being intended to serve the purpose of a " seamark." And we could cite several in stances of a similar kind, in our own know ledge, bath of old and new churches, built on elevations to help mariners. Mr. Roberts, after writing of the laceruakers, says : Her present gracious Majesty's bridal dress was of Honiton sprigs, connected together by a variety of open works, &c., and a ll worked on the pillow. . . . Her Majesty's order found only a few hands employed lbout the country, none in Lyme or in D•wset, bat in Devon over a tract that might be inclosed by a line from Seaton to Exmouth, up the river Exe to Exeter, back the London road to Honiton, thence to Seaton. The trade revived, and affords a good livelihood to many thousand hands, the ma jority of the female labouring population. Silmonth, Beer, Branscmite,'Colyton, and Honiton, are the residences of many workers and dealers, some of whom travel through England; but of late, at one time, the de mend has far exceeded the supply. Some years ago poverty and lace•making were associated. Such is not now the case. The West of England has lost the woollen trade. Is it that tir genius for manufacturing is wanting? Mrs. Tread win's skilled remarks would make as believe this is the ease, Here we have an author of " social history " accusing the West of England of wanting " genius for manufacturing." The true state of the case is, that the " social " development of the North of England and elsewhere has tempted capitalists, to whom the localities are more " socially " favoured. Machinery can be made and repaired more easily, and a greater rapidity of skilled labour at low rates obtained in certain districts. How this state of things was brought about, Baines's " His tory of Lancashire" would help to explain. But it certainly was not because the West of England wanted " genius for manufacturing." On running footmen, Mr. Roberts writes : The very bad roads. and zonsequent comparative slowness in performing a journey, allowed the use of running foot- men, a class of retainers, however admired by the great, doomed to extinction when the state of the roads was inn proved. Some of the performances of these men were very great. They carried a tall c.tne or pole with a silver ball at the top, in which was white wine and ergs. The Duke of Marlborough drove his phaeton and four to Wind soy only just besting one of three men, who died soon after. These runners wore so trousers, but only a short silk petticoat with a broad fringe, remind one of the Ile merodromi, or day-runners of the Greeks, one of whom was sent to Sparta from Athens to announce the landing of the Persians. In some parts these running footmen sup ported their master's coach when likely to overturn. With out them a jonrrey could not bare been undertaken. Running footmen are among the several particulars that served as a mark to distinguish the very rich from those simply rich. The best description we have ever seen of the running footmen is in that highly curious work. " The Recollections of John Olieeffe," the dramatist. A reader of the ab. ye passage would be apt to col.found running foot men with servants for retinue, who Recoil' panied carriages like javelinmen after the carriages of judges of assize. We believe that " running footmen " were not much used in the " southern counties of England." They were frequently used as postmen "unattached "; and in Scotland and Ireland were much em ployed RS messengers, where mountains and bad roads prevented fast, travelling except at risk to valuable horses. The pole to which Mr. Roberts refers was used as an assistance in leaping streams or clearing hedges at a bound. They were also employed by the " simply rich." But though Mr. Roberts does not scienti fically arrange or accurately weigh the induc tive value of his facts, we may pronounce his work to be interesting, and valuable in some respects. It is a book like an olla podrida, such as may be selected from " Sylvanus Urban," yet much of the matter is extremely fresh. It might be truly called "Odds and Ends about the Way s and Means of our Forefathers." Civic feasts, cider, prawns and 833 punch, preparations to oppose the Spanish Armada, Poole and the pirates, pilgrimages to Spain, gaol government in past times (on which his facts' are of little value), charges of building, gipsies, funerals, pitching and paving, introduction of coal, smuggling, rage for lotteries, coat of travelling, the post office, thieftaking, decline of coast towns, something about everything, with much ado about nothing, are amongst the topics on which Mr. Roberts has jotted down his end less ants. We give the work its praise when wo write that Sir Walter Scott for his fictions, or Isaac Disraeli for his " Curiosities of Literature," would have been glad to use this volume as a ready-made commonplace book pour servit. In extracting from such a miscellaneous work one page is as good as another From the chapter on the " cost of travelling," we select the following page. which faithfully shows the mode of composition followed by the author: — The traveller on his way to Ireland before the intriduc• tion of steam took ship, and might be several days on the water, when there was no steward ready to supply all ordi nary wants. This traveller had probably arrived at the sea port after a long journey, and the precise time fur sailing depended upon wind and heather. Hence the necessity fir being supplied with $ basket of provisions for the voyage. This was a source of considerable profit to the landlords of the inns of seaports. The charges were exorbitant. The bottle of brandy—an invariable accompaniment of each basket—was charged one guinea. A diary is preserved of a journey to Dublin from Grosve nor Square, 12th June, 1787, in a coach-and.l.wr, accompa nied by a post-chaise and pair, and five outriders. The party reached Holyhead in four days at a cost of 751. 116.3 d. The state of the intercourse between this country and the sister island at this part of the account is strikingly set forth in the following entries :—Ferry at Bangor, 11. 101. ; expenses of the yacht hired to carry the party across the channel, 2 8 1. 7s. 9d.; duty on the coach, 71. 13s. 4d. ; boats on shore, 11. ls.—total, 1141. 3s. 41. _ _ _ Visitors to the metropolis had much to Pay about the lions and their keepers, the beefeaters of the Tower. This was the London sight must famed. To show a country person the lions, or to lionise, has become a common form of ex pression. At length came the four-horse mails to Bristol in 17514, and the " Quicksilver mail," to be in turn superseded by the railway locomotive. Some see no occasiDn for any railwa y s, upon which the Exeter people travel or fly to London in six hours, instead of being so many days and nights. , _ What can ever compare with thew ell-appo inted mad• coaches, the " Quicksilver mail, " &e., in outward display ? Their speed was thought to be surprising. Was there is the world a prettier sight than the summer procession of mail coaches in London—such horses, such neatness ? _ At mail-speed, if anything untoward happened. an mei dent occurred, as on the rail: but not to so many indivi• duals, though dangerous to the passengers, and generally fatal to some. A coachman, instituting a comparison between the two modes of travelling, thus summed up: " I know that if an, thing goes wrong, there you are, " making a sign of 'limiting ; " hut by the rail, if you meet with an : o •idetv , where arz you ? " There are some chapters in this volume whose matter is similar to what we Lase already in other works But it is readable. gossippy, and authentic The antiquary wa do well by placing the volume on his shelves, and the book-clubs will not make a bad choice if they select it as an ainu,,ing book. The Camp and the Cutter. By Edwin Galt. London: Hodgson. SOMEWHAT mere than a hundred pages of this little volume are occupied with a description of what the author. a " T G.," saw in the Crimea after the fall of Sebastopol. He spent his Christmas last year in the camp, and remained a fortnight in the tent of a friendly officer, during which time he closely examined the ground. From what he saw and from what he heard, he satisfied himself that the success of the French in holding the Ilalakoff, and the failure of the British to hold the Redan, were fairly attributable to the different nature of the works : The wonderful strength of the Malakoff was its weak ness'—the place had been overdone—the high mounds of earth and traverses that intersected it gave to ti,e be sieger* the fame advantages, when they had once got possession of one of these compartments, as the besieged theniseltes bad. It was like a ni.ze of embenkmenu, that could with difficulty be threaded ; but as the French in their assault bad surprised the Russians in their lurking places, and put a guard over each doorway, they sera wound their way along without much obstruction. They did not lose a man in taking the place ; it was iv its aft, r defence that the slaughter was caused. How d'fferent yr) s the Redau! Shaped like the letter V, and in the rear eatirely open, it was impossible for our brav e fellows to maintain their position, against a converging fire, with the small number they attacked with. liesidea this, there was a three-gun battery, built up between the dock-