The Press. — London, England, 1856-01-26 00:00:00

Olympia in the Crimea (5) belorgs to an obsolete school, formerly known by its productions from the Minerva Press of A. K. Newman. Family Interests (6) is a pretty affecting tale, written to show the injustice of the law which de prives a mother of the guardianship of her children, however dissolute or worthless the father may be. The Spirit of the Holly (7) is an animated Christmas tale, with plates illustrative of fairy doings ; and Jeanne de Vaudreuil (8) is a well-done translation of an interesting and serious French story. Passing on from our batch of stories we come to The Eventful Life of a Soldier (0), containing a nar rative of campaigns in the Peninsular war, and scenes and sketches in Ireland. All military adven tures are interesting at this period; and though its author has the disadvantage of going over ground already trodden by so many distinguished writers, yet he in no respect fails to arrest and retain our attention. He recounts his own share in the various actions of the war in a graphic but unpretending manner, telling us just as much as he saw himself, and no more. His remarks on army discipline are sensible and moderate, and his scenes in Ireland very graphic. A Day at Nimes (10) is a guide-book thrown into the form of a tale. Though the authoress hardly expects readers " beyond the narrow circle of private acquaintance," the little book will be an agreeable companion to the places described. Its size will not be its least recommendation to the tourist., when he is tired of feeling his fat " Murray " dragging down his coat-pocket on a long day at the Pont-du gard. Sir Thomas (11) is a tale in which African scenery, manners, and adventures, are interwoven with a slender thread of fiction. The incidents are probable and amusing enough. The style is straight forward and simple, and occasionally not without a degree of humour. There are a few illustrations, of average merit. The last on our list is a book that does not come under either of the above heads. A spirit of deli cate and minute observation, extensive knowledge, and a healthy, moral, anti religious feeling, make May Flowers (12) a pleasant book. Acheta, one of the most welcome of the numerous (literary) pro geny of the Rev. Gilbert White, has not in this work fallen below the high standard by which her previous efforts have caused her to be judged. Never to blend our pleasure or our pride, With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels, is one of the lessons most earnestly taught in the present volume ; and the chapter especially devoted to the subject of "cruelty" is one which might awake a conscience, even in a boy (the most cruel of animals), if the elegant and spirituel tone of the book in general did not appropriate it to a more ad vanced age. The ethics of keeping cage-birds are nowhere better set forth than in the following ex tract : They lose the range of earth, and the use, for cutting air, of their aire•cutting wings." They gain in the frequent freedom of a room, a measure of resembling pleasure, rendered by comparison with greater thraldom a greater joy. They lose a fickle February mate, They gain, or ought to, for a bird should not be caged alone, a fast fri-nd for all the changing seasons of the year. They lose ( generally) the pleasant exercise of their in stinctive skill in fabrication of a nest, with that of their instinctive affection in tending on their nestlings. They gain exemption from the frequent misery of finding nest invaded and nestlings gone. They lose, from spring to winter, the pleasures of reap ing and gleaning of their self-sown harvests for them. selves. They gain, from winter to spring, protection from win ter's icy arrows, and feast within, while winter in his white cloak may be locking their granaries without. They lose, as regards their instincts, dimmed or oblite rate through want of use. They gain, as regards their higher faculties of intelligence and affection, brighteued and brought out by intercourse with creatures higher than themselves. We must not forget the illustrations. They are well drawn and engraved, and are remarkable for a fine symbolical fancy, united to a prseter-pre-Raphaelite (b.) Olympia in the Crimea; or. the Care of Inkernsan Lon don; Saunders and Otley. (G.) Family Interests. A Story taken from Life. London ; Rope and Co. (7.) The Spirit of the Holly. By Mrs. Octavius Freire Owen. London; Routledge and Co. (8.) Jeanne de rendre-ail. Translated from the French. London: Jame* Nisbet and Co (9.) Eeensfui Life era soldier. By the late Joseph Donaldson, Sergeant in the Scots Brigade. London and Glasgow• Griffin and Co. (10.) A Day at NiA111(8. A Sketch. By Beata Elizabeth Macau- lay. London: Masters. (ll.) Sir Mows: or. the Adventures qf a Cornish Baronet in Western Afriza. By Mrs. R. Lee. London: Grant and Griffith. p(111.) May Flowers: being Notes and Notion. on a few Created 77stney. 13y Acheta. London: Reeve. THE PRESS. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. THE Quarterly Review opens with a careful and most agreeable article upon "'fable talk." The text-nooks are the " Table-talk of John Selden," the " Table-talk of Samuel Coleridge," and the " Table talk of Martin Luther." But the writer leads us as far back as the " Memorabilia" of Xenophon, which he supposes to be the first specimen of table talk on record, coming down again through the witticisms of Cicero and Cgesar, and the parasites and buffoons of the Empire. Luther's talk is happily characterised— " It glows with the fire which burned the Pope's " Bull." The description of Johnson's conversation is so excellent that we select it as a specimen of the whole:— Johnson's conversation is the perfection of the talk of a man of letters; and if, as we believe, the test of Table- Talk be its worthiness to take a place as literature after its immediate effect has been produced, where shall we look for its match? It has a style of its own, and cannot be imitated without absurdity. It is an intermediate some thing between literature and conversation, in which it is impossible to separate the share of the man or letters from the share of the man of the world. He sometimes said things which might have been transferred unaltered to his " Lives of the Poets," and he sometimes wrote things which only required the preliminary " Why, Sir," as wings to send them dying through the dining-room of Sir Joshua or the drawing-room at Streatham ; bit while in his study he was always more or less the scholar, in society he was often a man of the world : and his whole life was such an union of " Town and Gown " as was perhaps never before exhibited by an individual. Coleridge is very briefly passed over—treatment which we do not altogether regret, as we fully agree with the reviewer's description of his conversation. The article upon Lawrence's "Life of Fielding " is substantial and well written—it is a subject of never ending interest. It is a curious thing, by-the bye, that neither Mr. Lawrence himself nor any of his critics have mentioned that Fielding once undet took a translation of Aristophanes, conjointly with the Rev. William Young. It was very badly done, and never got beyond one play, "The Pintas." The " Neology of the Cloister " is a severe and well written attack upon the school of which Mr. Jowett is just now the most prominent representative. In the opening paragraph we find a well known Oxford anecdote, which, as it is very current in the erroneous shape here given to it, we may as well take the op purtunity of setting right:— Some twenty years ago, the members of an Oxford Common-room were shocked and scandalised by the reply of a German professor, whom they were hospitably enter taining, to a theological argument adduced by one of his hosts. The Oxonian had enforced his views by an appeal to the writings of St. Paul; the Prussian rejoined, not by denying the relevancy of the citation, but be questioning the autnolity of the writer. " Paul !" he exclaimed, " Paul was a clayver man, but he had his fancies. His letters 1 have read, but not often 1 agree with him." The dead silence which followed the speech expressed the horror and amazement which it excited, and brought a blush of confusion to the cheek of the perplexed professor, who could not conceive what he had said to shock the company. The truth is, that the professor in question under stood the reference to be made to a certain German writer, one " Poulus," and in no way intended to speak disrespectfully of St. Paul. We subjoin an example of the style in which Messrs. Jowett and Williams are treated : But we must not ignore another argument which is brought in defence of the free criticism of our modern teachers. " You admit," they say, " that the Apostles declared the teaching of the Ohl Testament to be imper fect, and its ethics to be superseded by a higher morality ; why may not we claim the same liberty of judging the teaching of the Apostolic age, which that age itself exercised respecting the inspired teachers of their fathers ? We answer that, if our new instructors possess the same Divine authority as the Apostles, then, but not otherwise, they have the right to supersede the Apostolic teaching by their own. When St. Paul announced that the law was done away in Christ, he claimed to speak with the voice and in the power of God. When our Lord passed sen- tence of imperfection on the moral precepts of Moses, it was because He was greater than Moses. But as that sentence which pronounced the law imperfect virtually abolished Judaism, so would the revelation of religious error in the Gospel virtually abolish Christianity. Another literary article is on " Menander," an author on whom M. Guizot's work has had the effect of directing a considerable degree of attention. To those accustomed only to the Athens of Thucydides and Pericles, the Athens of Menander is a curious study. The article on " The Results and Prospects of the War," though a little out of date, will be read with interest. The writer appears not wholly devoid of that unreasoning hostility to, and distrust of, Russia which is unhappily prevalent in this country. Articles on landscape gardening, the Zoological Gardens. and reformatory schools, complete the number. The New Quarterly Review proceeds in its excel• lent plan of reviewing the literature of the current quarter, avoiding mere essays. Its critical talent, however, is not always equal to its position. Th• SATURDAY, editor is sometimes at fault. The contributors are permitted to contradict each other —as, for in stance, in one page we are told of Mr. Browning's " tortuous versification—each line hke the snake in the otter's mouth "; and a little further on that the said Mr. Browning's " Men and Women " is "a pro " foundly thoughtful and vigorously-written book. . " alive with a bold and vivid beauty." In the review of Mr. Hughes's " Log of the Pet" it is said : _ _ Mr. Hughes has gone to the war, and has strewn some fresh flowers on the path already somewhat worn. What is the meaning of this ? Are we to suppose that the path of war is worn by the flowers which have been strewn upon it? Some of the notices are written with judgment and fairness ; but the editor must exercise a more vigilant eye over the whole, if he wishes his Review to become, what it might easily be made, an authority on the merits of modern pub lications. Sound and careful critical opinions, avoiding both slashing sauciness and fawning flattery, would require time to make its way, but it would in the end gain the confidence of the public, and give the Review a character for independent and impartial thought—a qualification much required in the present nay. We drop these hints in no un friendly spirit. The ability displayed in the Review requires severe training and discipline; mere dash is, in literature as in war, a poor substitute for the judicious combination and sustained effort by which admirable results are obtained. The most attractive article in the number is that on " Illustrated Books," in which specimens are given of the designs of Mr. Birket Foster, Mr. George Thomas, Mr. Harrison Weir, and other well-known artists. There is no reason why the peculiar merits of an artist should not be explained by the quotation of his drawings. In this instance the wood-engravings are well chosen and carefully printed. A more critical consideration of the artists' abilities would, however, have been desirable. Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. No. I. We are inclined to augur well for the success of this new adventure in the field of periodical literature. The essay on Tennyson is a carefully-considered paper. One of his leading characteristics is suggested in the following sentence : In " The Two Voices " I shall particularise only the union of intellect and feeling, which, as it is one of the most essential qualifications or poetry, so it distinguishes many of Tennyson's longer poems in the highest degree. Indeed if I were to select that which I think most excellent in him, I should have little hesitation in choosing this. The three stories (nut continuations) are supe rior to the average of magazine- tales. With the reviewer's opinion of Longfellow we cannot agree, but it is well written. The essay on " The Newcomes " is worthy of the other articles; and on the whole we fancy that under the modest appella tion of "Members of the Two Universities" some names of note in the literary world must be con ceale3. Laura Gay. A Novel l Two Vols. London: Hurst and Blackett. Ax agreeable, well-written novel, more remarkable for social sketches, well-sustained portraiture, and lively conversation, than for constructive skill or narrative power. The story is commonplace : Charles Thornton and Laura Gay are dev ted to each other; they are as true as they are loving; but they are separated for a time by a commercial misfortune and an intercepted letter. The work evidently uro ceeds from a masculine pen, and the etherial senti ment, which is so charming in fiction, is subordi. nated to the intellect which concerns itself with material business. Publishers find that, with rare and very illustrious exceptions, the most popular novels are produced by ladies. Good sense and a love story rarely harmonise well together. The author of" Laura Gay" composes pleasingly, but seems deficient in the imagination and passion, essential to fiction of a high class. The doubtful merit of sin gularity would have indicated more promise than so even a performance. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.—JIN. 24. BOOKS. Modern Painters. Vol. 111. J. Ruskin, M.A. Smith and Elder. Evelyn Forester. Routledge. Notes on the late Expedition against the Russian Settlements in Eastern Siberia. Longmans. Obscure Nervous Diseases. E. Wilson. Works of the Rev. Thos. M'Crie, D.D. Blackwoods. Amberhill. A. J. Barroweliffe. Smith and Elder. An Address Delivered at the A;;;;1 Soirée of the Hudders field Institute. Groornbriige. A Review of the Evidence before the Second Court•rnartial on Lieut. Perry. Bosworth. 4 Catalogue of School Books and Educational Works. Versirles. Longmans. Bosworth. Remarks on the Ad of Parliament for the Formation qf Companies with Limited Liability. E. Wileon• The British Controversialists and Self ethication. Honlianne. An Essay on Anemology and Ombrology. Walker. Civil Service Superannuation. Harrison and Son.