The Press. — London, England, 1856-11-22 00:00:00

1120 After the death of Mr. Canning, Lord George Bentinck did not take an active part in poli tics; and the charges which Sir It. Peel (in 1846) taunted the noble lord with not having made in 1829, were then made by more fluent and practised speakers. Lord George Ben tinck was not in 1829 a prominent member of Parliament, and on the subject of the Canning episode his lordship might have (then) thought that enough had been done in the ejection of Sir R. Peel from Oxford, and in the opinions freely vented on his conduct. Besides, Lord George Bentinck was a sup porter of the cause of '• Catholic Emancipa tion," which his illustrious kinsman (Mr. Canning) had so much at helart ; and would it have been for Lord George Bentinck then (under such circumstances) to have raised a purely personal question, when " Emancipa• tiou " was before the Legislature ? We are satisfied that all our readers would answer in the negative; but this consideration of Lord George Bentinck's position in 1829 is of great consequence when examining the artful manner in which Sir R. Peel, in 1816, tried to escape from the charges brought against him. The mock candour with which Sir R. Peel pressed that plea was in the finest style of that demeanour which gained fin• him from Whig pens the stereotyped nick name of " Joseph Surface." Mentoires du Due de Raguse. KNOWING that for some time past very great interest has been felt in the political and literary circles of Paris with respect to the memoirs left for publication by the late Marshal Marmont, Duke de Raguse, we received with much curiosity the first volume of them, which has been brought out within the last fortnight in that capital. It was said that from the distinguished part played by the Marshal in the wars of the first Napoleon, and subsequently on the political stage--not of France alone, but of Europe—his memoirs would constitute the most remarkable addi tion made in our times to the inestimable collection of that class of literature which France possesses; and this assertion gained great credit from the fact that in his will he laid positive injunctions on his heirs to have the memoirs published exactly as he wrote them, without any alteration, correction, or suppression whatsoever. even under the pretext of improving the style. But we cannot honestly say that the first volume at all justifies the fuss that has been made about the memoirs. It treats principally of the siege of Toulon, the campaigns in Italy, and the expedition to Egypt, and of the part which Bonaparte and other generals, and, above all, Marmont himself, played therein. And it gives in extenso the letters which Mar mont (who seems to have been in the early part of his career tin bon jeune homme) wrote about his exploits, his hardships, and his ne cessities, to his admiring father and mother, together with not a little of his correspondence with Bonaparte and others, and even—save the mark !—copies of orders and official despatches on the principal combats. Nov, with all due respect to the distinguished author and his ad mirers at Paris, we think the Toulon siege, the Italian campaign, and the Egyptian expedition, are subjects so thoroughly exhausted, after the stupendous piles of volumes to which they have given rise, that it is impossible to say anything at all about them worth the trouble of reading; and as to the letters and docu. ments, which actually fill upwards of one hun dred pages out of the 430 of which the volume consists, we regard them as perfectly unne cessary. In saying this we do not, of course, prejudge the volumes, not fewer than seven in number, which are yet to appear,—they, probably, will be as interesting as this is dull ; especially when they get beyond the downfall of Napoleon, when Marmont (whose abandon ment of the hero caused him perhaps more pain than that of any other of his companions in arms) became more of a politician than a soldier. It would be strange, indeed, if a man who was mo re or l ess b e hi n d th e political scenes of the world in an epoch of stirring events, and of remarkable policy, has not something to tell the public about men and things which it will be glad to know. Paris : Perrotin. hhhimmolimmommomemo THE PRESS. Marshal Marmont—(by the way, his real name was Viesse de Marmont, and he be longed to an old and respectable family, originally Dutch, but settled in Burgundy for some three hundred years)—though he began his career by serving the Republic, and gained hi 3 title of Marshal, and of Duke of Ragusa, from Napoleon, belonged, when pursuing his education at a military school, to the political faith of which he became in after life one of the pillars in France—namely, Royalist : I entertained then for the person of the King a sentiment difficult to define, and of which I found the trace, and as it were the power, twenty-two years later: a sentiment of devotedness of an almost relig.ous character—an innate respect, as if dne to a superior being. The name of king had then (some three years after the revolution of 1789) a magic and a power which nothing had changed in pure and upright hearts. . . . . Living under the influence of an education which transmitted love for the sovereigns RR the inheritance of Frenchmen, that love became a sort of worship. At the siege of Toulon, to which he was sent very shortly after joining the army—he was in the Artillery—he made a reflection which is singularly apropos to a grave question now pending : A small vessel, freighted with provisions for the English fleet, fell into our hands. It was navigated by the owner himself and his sons, and, as the poor man lost in a moment the fruit of the labour of all his life and the hope of his family, nothing can express the despair he manifested. I had my share of the capture, but I was not the less struck with the barbarism of the legislation which has created for the sea the monstrous right of despoiling the peaceable trader. In considering things in an equitable and moral point of view, what difference is there between a vessel of war seizing a mercantile ship and a detachment of hus sars stopping a carrier on the highway ? It is well known that Napoleon Bonaparte, after distinguishing himself greatly in the siege of Toulon, was arrested on some trum pery charge by order of a ferocious and stupid sans-culotte representative of the people, and ordered to be sent to Paris, where undoubtedly he would have been put to death ; but our author tells us a fact which is less known : At the moment at which his departure was to take place, Jnnot, his aide-de-catnp, myself, and a man named Talin, knowing what the consequences would be, determined to prevent it at any price ; and so we agreed between our selves to kill the gendarmes if they made any resistance to his release, and to convey him to Getioa. The Marshal confirms the fact that Bonaparte thought favorably of the sanguinary Robes pierre : He addressed to me these very words :—" If Robespierre had remained in the Government, he would have modified his manner of proceeding ; he would have re-established order and the reign of the laws." In describing sonic operations of the re publican army in Germany, he notices the folly of burdening the general-in-chief of an army with minute details—a piece of folly under which in our army poor Lord Raglan severely suffered:— had to get a permission for two shirts and a pair of boots signed by the general-in-chief, Pichegru. Although then very young, 1 had reflected sufficiently on the diffi culties of command to feel astonished that u man charged with such great interests took so little account of his time as to employ it in such things. Since then 1 have not seen a single distinguished man, capable of conducting great affairs, who has not made it a system to free him self from all sorts of details, and to confine himself to judging the work done by others ; and this observation has always been for me a sure thermometer as to the veritable capacity of men of reputation, and of the mediocrity of those who have adopted contrary habits : never has my ob servation turned out wrong. Here is an opinion of the famous General Desaix : Be assured that the command of an army is the most difficult thing on earth ; it is a post which requires the most capacity in a given time. In speaking of the events of the Directory, the author says : A circumstance which history will record as an image of the times is what is called " The Ball of the Victims " . . . got up by subscription, and to which only relatives of those who perished on the scaffold were to be admitted. Thus to have the right to dance, people had to produce a certificate of the death of their father or mother, the i r brother or sister! . . . I know not if this spectacle was not more frightful than the revolutionary massacres. Here we beg to take the liberty of correcting the Marshal. It is true that a " Bal des life times," with the condition of admissions specified by him, was advertised in the news • papers of the day; but it never took place, and the advertisement itself was only a hoax of some heartless rakes. This fact we saw demonstrated in a fertilleton published in a Paris paper a few weeks back. SATURDAY, The passion of Bonaparte—then in the flush of his first glory—for Mme. Beau harnais excited Marmont's surprise, as well as that of most other persons : General Bonaparte became very ranch in love with Mme. de Beauharnais—in love in all the intent of the word, in all the force of its ardest acceptation. It was, according to all appearance, his first passion, and he felt it with all the energy of his character. He was only twenty seven years of age, whilst she was more than thirty-two. Although she had lost all her freshness she appeared charming to him ; and it is known that when people love it is superfluous to ask why—men love because they love, and nothing is less susceptible of analysis end reflection than that sentiment. What, however, is incredible, and yet perfectly true, is that the vanity of Bonaparte was greatly flattered at being accepted by her. He was always partial to old ideas, and even when he made himself Republican he was subject to aristocratic prejudices.. . . Rut that he should have felt himself highly honoured by his union with Mme. Beauharnais, and he was really very proud of it, proves that he was in great ignorance of the state of society in France previous to the Revolution. Mme. Bonaparte, however, was not sensible either to her husband's affection or rising glory, and when he was in Italy she persisted in remaining at Paris, in spite of his repeated entreaties to her to join him. Whether her conduct there was altogether free from re proach is, as all the world knows, doubtful ; but it is certain that Bonaparte more than once expressed himself in terms which showed that he had not complete confidence in her virtue. He once so spoke to Marmont In a journey which 1 made with him to inspect the fortified places of Piedmont, the glass of the portrait of his wife, which he always carried with him, bloke one morning. He turned frightfully pale, and the impression he felt was evidently the most painful. " Marmont '' said he, " either my wife is very ill, or she is unfaithful to me We propose to return to these Memoirs next week. Aurora Leigh. By Elizabeth Barrett Brown ing. London : Chapman and Hall. MRS. BROWNING writes with the conviction that she is one of the lights of the age. Into this book, she says, " my highest convictions " upon Life and Art have entered." What those convictions ar•e it is not very easy to tell from a perusal of the book itself. It declaims against conventionalism of all kinds; yet when the reader finishes the story he will admit that nothing more conventional was ever devised or penned. All modes of thought and feeling which are anti-conventional are shown to be impracticable ; and no novel that ever issued from the press winds up in a more formal manner, with a happy wedding and with the possession of all the substantial and comfortable goods of life wherewith to com mence housekeeping. All the sneers and tirades against the cold, heartless, formal world, sink to nothing when we come to the point. A good landed estate, with a well secured rent•roll, are shown to be infinitely preferable to philansteries and socialism ; and Romney Leigh is glad to accept a wife from his own station, and with breeding consonant to his rank, instead of a drab from the purlieus of St. Giles's. The highest convictions of Mrs. Browning, except in one point to be presently noticed, amount to no convictions at all. Her• elo quence is all of a sceptical character, and how easy it is for a sceptic to be eloquent every one knows. She views the world as out of tune; but she pretends to no key or skill to set it right. A kind of dreamy pantheism pervades the book, with an evident leaning to that philosophy which regards our Lord and Saviour• us the first sans-culotte. Her convic tions aro unconvictions, and many of her finest pasgages inere;y illustrate the negation of belief. The one exception is her conviction that women are born for public, or at least for artistic, life. If the book has any purpose at all, it is to set forth this principle. Aurora Leigh is a poetess, and is so intent on estab lishing a place for herself in the world's esti mation, that she sacrifices to this desire the prospect of a happy union with the man whom (as it subsequently appeals) she ardently loved. It is true that in this fiction her• plan is made to answer ; those lucky accidents which poets and novelists have always at their disposal to shape human destinies accord ing to their will save her from the natural consequences of her own imprudence. But, I