The Press. — London, England, 1856-04-19 00:00:00

as that before us is not worthy of introduc tion to the English public, and if it were al lowed to pass unchallenged the precedent would be most injurious. Take, for example, the mass of assertions concentrated into the following paragraph : Napoleon at Aspern, for the first time in his life, lost his presence of mind ; crossing the Danube among the execra tions of his own soldiers, he returned to his old head quarters at the chateau of Kaisers-Ebersdorf. Here ha slept one unbroken sleep for thirty hours, after having given strict orders that he should not be disturbed. The danger was so pressing during this long sleep, that his generals had a secret consultation in which it was determined that, in case of Napoleon being killed or made prisonei, Eugene Beauharnois, the viceroy of Italy, should be intrusted with the chief power, to conclude a general peace and to lead back the army to France ; so that, for once, they might enjoy their ease in the bosom of their families. Nay, in those critical moments, the question was even mooted whether they had not better deliver up Napoleon to the English at Fiume, dead or alive. The secret clubs in the French army were in correspondence with Fouche and Talleyrand; who had become Napoleon's deadly enemies ever since he had, at Tilsit, come to an understanding with the Russians. On the news of the defeat of Aspern and of the thirty hours' sleep at Kaisers-Ebersdorf, Fouche wrote back from Paris, " What! such is the state of affairs, and you expect us here in Paris to make the beginning? If you have but a dozen resolute men, you will strangle him in his bed and throw him in a sack into the Danube, and all will be right. The rest will follow as a matter of course." Not a single footnote, or reference, or autho rity of any kind is cited to support these statements, and so throughout ; but we have noticed this book from our duties as critical police, and we have quoted enough from its pages to stamp the character of the perform ance. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. IN the Westminster the most interesting article is on " Scandinavia, Past and Present." After a brief but lucid sketch of the wars and alliances of the two Baltic kingdoms, the reviewer proceeds to consider their present relations with Russia. He is in doubt whether the union of Denmark and Sweden into one kingdom would or would not render them a more powerful bulwark against Russia, but he comments with great severity on the treaty of 1852, to which Lord Palmerston was a party, by which the ultimate succession to the throne of Denmark is secured to the house of Romanoff. This is no visionary danger : Let Russia, then, complete her railways. Let her be able to bring down in a iew days her countless hordes from Tartary, Siberia, and the very borders of China; let her once possess Denmark, eornmand Hamburg, Lubeck, and Bremen, the Eyder, the Weser, and the Elbe, hacked and supported by nympathisin,,a Prussia, and lesser German States; and Eurape will be prostrated at her feet. This may appear, as M. Thiers has remarked, a chimerical idea, but everything in the history of Russia for the last hun dred years warrants us in believing with him that it may become a terrible reality ; and we contend that every pos sible exertion should be made at this important crisis to guard against such a contingency. For this, it is not enough that we have made a defensive alliance with Sweden ; we ought on no account to give back the Aland Isles, and it should be made a sine qua non that Russia should renounce the claims ceded to her in the protocol of Warsaw, and confirmed in the treaty of 185% on Den mark and the Duchies. " Sunday in Great Britain " is, we think, in the main, a just article. There can be no doubt that Sunday is a festival ; but then, before we determine whether its original character can be fully carried out not, we must award careful consideration to the altered conditions of society. At a period when saints' days were days of religious worship for the whole community, there was obviously less necessity for the strict appropriation of Sunday to that pur pose. " The Congress of Vienna" is a vary interest ing and lively article : we have amusing sketches of all the celebrities engaged at it, and the host of famous visitors which so great, an occasion brought together from all parts of Europe. The summary of contemporary literature in this Review is always good, and the current number is fully up to the mark. The present is a fair number of the London Quar terly Review, though perhaps a little heavy. " Our Peninsular Heroes" is a readable analysis of Mr. Cole's work. "The Cathedral Commission" seems, as far as we can judge, to be a temperate statement of abuses ; and the review of Macaulay's " History of England" to be intelligent and accurate. "Christian Theism" and "Religion in Common Life " are two substantial essays : Mr. Caird's ser mon is judged not to be anything very remarkable, nor likely to have attracted the attention of the public had it not been for the royal command. The National Review contains an article upon Mr. Macaulay which is, in our opinion, the best which has - written upon that author. It is which has yet bee' 1111111116 THE PRESS. not a critique of the history but of the historian, and his idiosyncracy is laid bare in a masterly style. " As "was said of the second Pitt, ' he never grew, he "was cast;'" and so what Mr. Macaulay was when he eft Cambridge, that he is still. He has learned nothing from contemporary events. He spoke just as well upon India in 1833 as in 1852—just as well before he went to India as afterwards. "It is cha. " racteristic of such a man," says the reviewer, " that he should think literature more instructive " than life." The following sketch of "the Cavalier nature" is excellent:— _ _ A Cavalier seEms always young. The buoyant life arises before us rich in hope, strung in vigour, irregular in action ; men young and ardent, framed in the " prodi• gality of nature," open to every enjoyment, alive to every passion, eager, impulsive ; brave without discipline, noble with nit principle, prizing luxury, despising danger, capable of high sentiment, but in each of whom the Addiction was to courses vain ; His companions unlettered, rude, and shallow, His hours tilled up with riots, banquets, sports, And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity. We see these men setting forth or assembling to defend their king and church; and we see it without surprise: a rich daring loves danger; a deep excitability likes excite ment. If we look around us, we may see what is analo gous. It has been said that the battle of the Alma was won by the " uneducated gentry ;" the " uneducated gentry" would be Cavaliers now. The p litical sentiment is part of the character. The essence of Toryism is en joyment. Talk of the ways of spreading a wholesome Conservatism throughout this country : give painful let tures, distribute weary tracts (and perhaps this is as well— you may be able to give an argumentative answer to a few objections, you may diffuse a distinct notion of the dignified dulness of politics) ; but as far as communicating an•l es tablishing your creed are concerned— try a little pleasure. The way to keep up old customs is, to enjoy old customs ; the way to be satisfied with the present state of things is, to enjoy that state of things. Over the " Cavalier" mind this world passes with a thrill of delight ; there is an exul tation in a daily event, zest in the regular thing," joy at an old feast. Sir Walter Scott is a curious instance of this. Every incident, habit, practice of old Scotland was connected and inseparably associated in his mind with strong genial enjoyment. To propose to touch one of those institutions, to abolish one of those practices, was to touch a personal pleasure—a point on which his mind re posed, a thing of memory and hope. S 3 long as this world is this world, will a buoyant life be the proper source of an animated Conservatism. The " church-and king" enthu siasm has even a deeper connection with this peculiar character. Carlyle has said, in his vivid way, " Two or three young gentlemen have said, ' Go to, I will make a religion '" This is the exact opposite of what the irre gular enjoying man can think or conceive. What is he with his untrained mind and his changeful heart and his ruleless practice, to create a creed ? Is the gushing life to be asked to construct a cistern ? is the varying heart to be its own master, the evil practice its own guide ? Sooner will a ship invent its own rudder, devise its own pilot, than the buoyant eager soul will find out the doe trine which is to restrain it. The very intellect is a type of the confusion of the soul. It has little arguments on a thousand subjects, hearsay sayings, original flashes small and bright, struck front the heedless mind by the strong impact of the world. And it has nothing else. It has no systematic knowledge; it has a haired of regular attention. What can an understanding of this sort do with refined questioning or subtle investigation ? It is obliged in a sense by its very nature to take what comes; it is over shadowed in a manner by the religion to which it is born ; its conscience tells it that it owes obedience to something; it craves to worship something; that something, in both cases, it takes from the past. " Thou bast not chosen me, but I have chosen thee," might his faith say to a believer of this kind. A certain bigotry is altogether natural to him. His creed seems to him a primitive fact, as certain and evident as the stars.—The political faith (for it is a faith) of these persons is of a kind analogous. The virtue of loyalty assumes in them a passionate aspect, and over flows, as it were, all the intellect which should be devoted to the topic. This virtue, this need of our nature, arises, as politics' philosophers tell us, from the consctous neces sity which man is under of obeying an external moral rule. We feel that we are by nature and by the constitution of all things under an obligation to conform to a certain standard, and we seek to find or to establish in this outer sphere an authority which shall enforce it, shall aid us in compelling others and likewise in mastering ourselves When a man thoroughly possessed with this principle comes in contact with the institution of civil government as it now exists and as it has always existed, he finds what he wants—he discovers an authority ; and he feels bound to submit to it. All this Mr. IVlacaulsy, according to the reviewer, is as much unable to understand as he is the deep, earnest, and enthusiastic faith of the Puritan : The history of the English Revolution is the very history for a person of this character. It is eminently an unim passioned movement. It requires no appreciation of the Cavalier or of the zealot; no sympathy with the romance of this work' ; no inclination to pass beyond, and absorb the mind's energies in another. It had neither the rough enthusiasm of barbarism nor the delicate grace of high civilisation; the men who conducted it had neither the deep spirit of Cromwell's Puritans nor the chivalric loyalty of the enjoying English gentleman. They were hard headed sensible men, W:I0 knew that politics were a kind of business, that the essence of business is compromise, of practicality concession. They drove no theory to excess; for they had no theory. Their passions did not hurry them away ; for their temperament was reason calculating and still. Locke is a character of his era. There is nothing historian such as we have described r gild hend, or could not sympathise with prehend. We have read this article with the and we hope it may be widely article upon " The English Stage and most true, but presents us with gestions for remedying its present Austrian Peace " is written in a and contains what is in our opinion neous view of the position of Austria. The Oxford and Cambridge - only four articles. The first, u, shapeless masa of nonsense. admirers would do well to remem never render their idol pupuiar offensive peculiarities. A writer scend to put before us in plain Engi definite, practical, and immediate drawn from those cloudy and st which the philosopher loves to might perhaps do him good service. sent reviewer is wholly unequal to is too much of a babe to stom strong meat, and throws it. up gested lump, merely exhausting gusting his readers. The essay upon wild fantasy, written, we should this with very little knowledge of the sr' of the world—the really hardworking of this generation—look back upon education. This sickly discontent thusiasm, bred of idleness and inexi. detestable. The article on Ruskin, callBd "Frank's Sealed Letter," merit, but the whole number must great falling off from the previous It is refreshing even to turn read a leaf from " My African NI V. Bridgeman, It is a simple in, rivalled interest, and really, on the to have happened. "Respectable mund Yates, possesses a similar with the additional advantacte that contained in it come to us recomm' vious utterance of Bulwer and ' Times," by William P. Hale, is that quiet drollness and copious which the writer is deservedly celebrated. The Martins of Cro' Martin contt of old Martin, and the refusal of Merl accept any terms about the post-obits. the accepted suitor of Mary. The Military and Naval Interpreter Bryon, formerly an Officer in Service. London: Francis. THE title of the above work suffici' its utility, and thr, opportunities wl. enjoyed of becoming thoroughly acq subject are a fair guarantee that it is It contains the Russian, Tartar. Arabic alphabets, with the prow vocabulary of the English, French, Tartar, Circassian, Arabic, and P , It contains also a detailed accoun' graphy ; the distances between the villages ; the public roads and footpaths, various lines of communication; and of the rivers, lakes, and streams Peninsula. It is for Oriental scholars upon the fidelity with which Mr. Bi his comparative tables of languages. is praiseworthy, and we are sure with common accuracy, it will prove addition to the officer's bookshelf. " the war, we must expect that our . these countries will be for the future creased, and we are glad to see the towards facilitating our familiarity long unexplored by Western travellers. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVE . BOOKS. Travels in Persia, Georgia, and Koordistan. Modern Painters. Vol. IV. John Ruskin. Smith, Thoepar Recollections. Richard Cromwell and the Restoration of A Cyclopedia of Geography. Literary Addresses delivered at various Popular Institutions. tto Di Jack Tier. Parlour Library. Hodgson John Halifax, Gentleman. Hurst and Blackett &adman and Abiscil. An Allegory. J. W. Parker and Son The Primitive Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, J. 13. M o zles, B.D. Murray The Lion Hunter of South Africa. Gordon Cumming. . ; 4 .1 ...--4,:4 1 111 Ditto Ditto Dug-Breaking. Colonel \V. N. Hutchinso n. Gienntorven, or Nedky lisotory. H. T. Aitilissy. Hops sal Cep _~ . mil_: 11111101111111 1 .1111 JIM SATURDAY ) Lt was calm, and their e is the type of the best. nothing lu him which a ied could fail to compre. with when he did cow- the greatest pleasure, ely circulated. The ,age " is very sensible with no original sug- asent defects. " The a disagreeable tone, nion an entirely erro. .ustria. e Magazine contains upon Carlyle, is a . That gentleman's nember that they will war by copying his ,er who should conde- English what are the Late conclusions to he stormy effusions in o vent his opinions ervice. But the pre- -Ito such a task. He omach Mr. Carlyle's p again in an undi- rig himself and dis. sy upon Oxford is a 1 think, by some one a spirit in which men 'orking, practical men upon their university tent and affected en. inexperience, is most Luskin, and the story are not without ust be pronounced a :us ones. .rn to the Train, and Notebook," by John incident, but of un- he whole, not unlikely able People," by Ed- tilar sort of merit, hat the observations mmended by the pre- Thackeray. " Old is distinguished for ous information for :elebrated. contains the death f Merl, the usurer, to ist-obits. Scanlan is preter. By Thomas :n the Russian Civil sufficiently proclaims which the writer has y acquainted with his tt it is well executed. artar, Turkish, and ronunciation, and a ich, Turkish, Russian, 1 Persian languages. unt of Crimean geo- the towns, forts, and footpaths, with the ; and some account earns of the Tauric cholars to pronounce Bryon has compiled ages. But the attempt ire that, if executed wove a most welcome If. Independently of our intercourse with future, very much in- the first step taken lrity with regions so tvellers. lED.—Aran. 10. Telistan. Hurst and Blackett Ruskin. Smith, Elder, and Co. Trabner and Co. Is of the Stuarts. Bentley Griffin and Co. ma Popular Institutions. Ditto Hodgson til.nkett