The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-08 00:00:00

1174 rents and ravages of time—ever smiling with verdant affection around the withering trunk, or the crumbling stone; enduring all things for the sake of those it loves— the storm, and the frost, and the lightning, and the thun derbolt—that it may cover them with its green drapery, and stay them with its embracing fibres. By some such old ruin do we love to sit and muse at eventide, and call up in the dim light the olden memories of the place and people—the hall, or the cloister, with the shadows of those who lived and died within them, ere yet the green ivy crept to lose, and comfort, and beautify them in their day of desolation and sorrow. "The Old House of Darkbrothers " is concluded in an interesting chapter, and "The Fortunes of Glencore " progresses favorably. The description of the storm at sea is very fine. The concluding article of the number entitled "A Sweep of the Poli tical Horizon " is just what it purports to be, a sweep and nothing more. It is a careful survey of the actual conditions of our present struggle, builscarcely attempts to discuss the principles involved in it. The New Monthly contains a more than usual variety of articles. We cannot, however, notice them all in detail. The " Memoirs of Sir William Moles worth," by Cyrus Redding, is agreeably written, and gives us a very fair picture of the deceased states man, but contains some foolish remarks on the sub jects of "learning," "reason," "authority," and so forth, on which questions all libe •al writers seem a little insane. A saying of Sir William is quoted with great pomp—" Whenever a body of men are found to " be steadily and tenaciously against reason, we may " safely conclude they have interests of their own, to " the exercise of which reason would be fatal." Why, does not every one see that Sir William is here con stituting himself the sole judge of what is "reason "? Why should not "the body of men" be as much in the right as he? Again, in his strictures upon Bishop Copleston's remarks on Locke, quoted ad miringly in this article, Sir William entirely misses the point of objection which the bishop sets up. "Rupert's March " is a good sonorous ballad by Mr. T horn bury : Down on your knees, you villains in frieze, A draught: to King Charles, or a awing from those trees. "Punishment of Criminals in the Eighteenth Cen tury" is an interesting little article; and indeed the series entitled "Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of our Grandfathers" bids fair to become a principal attraction of this magazine. - - . - This is an unusually good number of Bentley. The review of Dr. Strang's book on " Glasgow and its Clubs " makes a most entertaining article, and has the merit of keeping to the subject. " The Crimean Hero," and " The Major's Hoax," are two very lively magazine stories—while they are judiciously ballasted by a couple of substantial articles, one on " The Winter Quarters of the Allies," the other on "Russian Territories in America." In " Marginal Readings " we have a good sketch of Mirabeau. He was of the best blood in Europe, and despised the canaille as only the " Hero Cox combs" could despise them. It is a great mistake to suppose that revolutionary principles are news warily antagonistic to the sentiments of ancient birch. They are so by the force of custom—but by no means essentially. " Monkshood," this month, gives us a careful critique of Prescott's " Philip the Second," and we suppose that the new title given to his article, i.e., " New-Book Notes," indicates that his contributions are henceforth to be more purely critical. ------- The Churchman's Magazine contains a variety of useful articles. The opening one upon Coleridge is, perhaps, the best. No. 11. of "Pariah Machinery " is an instructive paper; and the entire number is likely to prove interesting both to the general reader and the clergyman. No. IV. of the St. James's Medley promises well for this youngest-horn of the Magazine family. "Wet lington and His Times" is a very good idea for an article; as also the "Jews in England," in which certain vulgar prejudices on the subject are ably combated. " Hanged or not Hanged" is the account of his execution by a supposed felon who has been resuscitated. It purports to be a translation from the French, and is very vividly and forcibly done. "The Unmixables" is an article on the late absurd rumour of a coalition between Messrs. Bright and Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli; we subjoin an extract: — On other grounds than political consistency, " the com bination is impossible." Disraeli, far a great length of time, has beets the champion of the country party, has en joyed the confidence of the Tory party in the House of Commons, and has boldly denounced the idea of truckling to Russia; he has ever been a willing advocate of the in crease of our army establishment, for the maintenance of the war on the most vigorous and practicable principles ; whilst he has spoken loudly against coalitions, and against the usurpation of Russia: blaming alike the democratic and peaceful tendencies of Mr. Bright, by ridiculing his trip to Russia, his visionary schemes of peace, and his spirit-moving propensities. He has uniformly supported the Established Church, the Throne. and Constitution ; and has not failed to raise his voice both loud and strong against that stream of democracy which has el late too often threatened our very hearths and homes, and made us tremble, lest the seat of government should ere long be ih. THE PRESS. hastily removed from old St. Stephen's to an empty cotton mill in Manchester. Part XIII. of the Home Companion is highly creditable to the proprietors. Fur sevenpence we have a mass of literature considerably above that contained in most of the cheap publications of the day—enlivened by great variety and distinguished by solid information. The December number of the Martins of Cro' Martin contains some excellent scenes. The dinner at which Merl and Maurice Scanlan figure is very cleverly done, and the perplexity of the former is highly enjoyable. The Newspaper Press Directory for 1856. This should be in the hands of all interested in news papers, and to those who may contemplate starting one, the information it contains on the subjects of advertisements, stamps, Sze., would prove invaluable. Little Dorrit. No. I. By Charles Dickens. London : Bradbury and Evans. THE commencement of a serial by Mr. Charles Dickens is an event of sufficient interest to demand record as a piece of literary intelligence. Beyond such record the journalist can, in fairness to an author upon whose first scene the curtain has hardly risen, eay little. That little is that the opening inci• dents of the book take place in Marseilles thirty years ago, and that we are introduced to a group of very varied dramatis persona, including a couple of foreigners, one charged with wife-murder, the other apparently no worse than a smuggler ; an English husband and wife, comfortable, kindly, and carica ture, their " pet" daughter, and their protegee, a foundling girl, called Tattycoram. A second family group of a less pleasant character is exhibited in London, but, except in the case of a bed ridden Cal vinistic old woman, we have no very defined idea of the nature of these personages. " Little Dorrit" is not described, but is alluded to as having been in the old woman's room during a conversation which is set down. A mysterious lady with a purpose also ap pears but to vanish. The foundation of the story is laid in the detached, melodramatic fashion of the French romance•writera, but any attempt at antici pating its general character would be altogether pre mature. As every one will read the number, prolonged extract would be surplusage, but two or three para graphs, in proof that Mr. Dickens retains all his graphic power and felicity of epithet, may be ap pended:— A MARSEILLES SUN. The universal stare made the eyes ache. Towards the distant line of Italian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved by light clouds of mist, slowly rising from the evaporation of the sea; but it softened nowhere else. Far away the staring roads, deep in dust, stared from the hillside, stared from the hollow, stared from the interminable plain. Far away the dusty vines overhanging wayside cottages, and the monotonous wayside avenues of parched trees without shade, drooped beneath the stare of earth and sky. So did the horses with drowsy bells, in long files of carts, creeping slowly towards the interior; so did their recum bent drivers when they were awake, which rarely happened; so did the exhausted labourers in the fields. Everything that lived or grew was oppressed by the glare, except the lizard, passing swiftly over rough stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his dry hot chirp like a rattle. The very dust was scorched brown, and something quivered in the atmosphere as if the air itself were panting. Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings were all closed and drawn to keep out the stare. Grant it but a chink or key hole, and it shot in like a white hot arrow. The churches were the freest from it. To come out of the twilight of pilars anl arches— dreamily dotted with winking lamps, dreamily peopled with ugly old shadows piously dozing, spitting, and begging—was to plunge into a fiery river, and swim for life to the nearest strip of shade. So, with people lounging and lying wherever shade was, with but little hum of tongues or barking of dogs, with occasional jan gling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. SUNDAY IN LONDON. It was a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the brick and mortar echoes hideous. Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of Root steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows in dire despondency. In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and down almost every turning, some doleful bell was throbbing, jerking, toll'ng, as if the plague were in the city and the dead-carts were going round. Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people. No pictures, no unfami• liar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural or arti ficial wonders of the ancient world—all taboo with that enlightened strictness that the ugly South Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed themselves at home again. Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. No thing to breathe but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to change the brooding mind or raise it up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do but to compare the monotony of his seventh (lay with the monotony of his six days, think what a weary life he led, and make the best of it—or the worst, according to the probabilities. At such a happy time, so propitious to the interests of religion and morality, Mr. Arthur Clennam, newly arrived from Marseilles by way of Dover, and by Dover coach, the Blue-eyed Maid, sat in the window of a toffee-house on SATURDAY, Ludgate•hill. Ten thousand responsible houses surrounded him, frowning as heavily on the streets they composed as if they were every one inhabited by the ten young men of the calender's story, who blackened their faces and be moaned their miseries every night. Fifty thousand lairs surrounded him, where ?eople lived so unwholesomely that fair water put into their crowded rooms on Saturday night would be corrupt on Sunday morning, albeit my lord, their county member, was amazed that they tailed to sleep iu company with their butcher's meat. Miles of close wells and pits of houses, where the inhabitants gasped for air, stretched far away towards every point of the compass. 'Through the heart of the town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed in the place of a fine fresh river. What secular want could the million or so of human beings, whose daily labour six days in the week lay among these Arcadian ob jects, from the sweet sameness of which they had no escape between the cradle and the grave—what secular want could they possibly have upon their seventh day ? Clearly they could want nothing but a stringent policeman. .:, A CALVINISTIC CHILD'S SUNDAY. There was the dreary Sunday of his chi!dhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract, which commenced business with the poor child by asking 'aim in its title why he was going to perdi- tion ?—a piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and drawers, was not in a condition to satisfy—and which, for the further attraction of hie infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. These. c. iii. v. 0 & 7. There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when like a military deserter he was marched to chapel by a picket of teachers three times a day, morally handcuffed to another boy, and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of infeticr mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. There was the interminable Sunday of his nonage, when his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a bible, bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with one (hilted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves, as if it, of all books, were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse. There was the resentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat glowering and glooming through the tardy length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolators. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable bitterness and mortification, slowly passing before him. We have only to add that Mr. Dickens retains the questionable assistance of " Illustrations by Phiz," which at all events have the negative merit of being too feeble to intrude between the reader and the author. The Post °lice London Directory for 1856. London: Kelly and Co. THE fifty-seventh annual publication of this useful Directory has just been issued, and this year it stands alone. The attempt to establish a rival Directory, though prosecuted with great enterprise, has failed. The undertaking was a hopeless, almost an impos sible, one. Publications of this magnitude can rarely be produced at a start—they require years for their growth and development. There is not a greater difference between the first issue of the Times and that journal at present than the first number of this Directory and the immense volume before us. Such enterprises partake more of the nature of institutions than of private speculations ; they are carried on, not only from year to year, but from generation to gene• ration, and increase their claims to public support by the application of their growing resources to the im provements which experience suggests. In this way their continued prosperity conduces even more to the convenience and good of the public such enterprises are intended to serve than to the profit of the proprietors; and the kind of mi.nopoly they enjoy arisen not from any exclusive privileges, or• even from any prejudice in their favour, but from a well grounded conviction that no rival can displace them, because no rival could gain at once their experience, their system, or even command their resources and capital. The present issue of " The Post-office Directory " contains no less than 2,652 pages of close print, a great part of the pages containing three columns in each. The volume is not only by far the largest issued from the press, but it is necessary that the whole should be produced with great rapidity, so that the latest changes may be introduced. The machi nery by which all London can be simultaneously cata logued, and the whole of the matter in this prodigious volume simultaneously printed, must needs be of a very complex kind ; end when hostile ingenuity picks out a few errors from such an amazing number of of details, a tribute of praise is really paid to the general correctness of the work —as exceptions prove rules—and our wonder is moved, not that some errors should occur, but that they should be so few in number. In the references we have had time to make we find that very recent alterations are duly recorded, and that strict accuracy has been in sured to almost the very date of issue. The volume seems now to contain all the informa tion that can possibly be desired in a Directory. The ibinding is not only strong but handsome, and th e exterior index conduces greatly to facility of reference. We have only to wish the proprietors the success their enterprise justly raeritea