The Press. — London, England, 1856-07-05 00:00:00

" Miss; he's in the bother it, then, if I can ever think of the name of it." " The studio you mean," said she, smiling. "Just so, Miss Mary," replied he, with a sigh, for he remembered certain penitential hours passed by himself in the same loeality. " Do you think you could manage to let him know I want him—that is, that I have something important to say to him ?" " It's clean impossible, Miss, to get near him when he's there. Sure, isn't he upon a throne, dressed out in goold and dimonds, E.nd as cress as a badger, besides, at the way they're tormenting him ?" " Oh, that tiresome picture, is it never to be completed ?" mattered she, half unconsciously. " The saints above know whether it is or no," rejoined Terence, " for one of the servants told me yesterday that they rubbed every bit of the master out and began him all again, for my Lady said he wasn't halt' haggard enough, or worn•looking; but, by my conscience, if he goes on as he's doing, he ought to satisfy them." " Why I thought it was Henderson was sitting," said Mary, somewhat amused at the old man's commentaries. " So he was ; but they tabbed him out, too, for it seems now he ought to be bald, and they've sent him into Oughterard to get his head shaved." " And what were you, Terry?" " Arrah, who knows ?" said he, querulously. "At first I was to be somebody's mother, that was always cryin'; but they weren't pleased with the way I done it, and then they made me a monk ; and after that they put two hundred weight of armour on me, and made me lean my head on my arm, as if I was overcome ; and faith, so I was, for I dropped off asleep, and fell into a pot of varnish, and I'm in disgrace now, glory be to God ! and I only hope it may last." " I wish I shared your fortune, Terry, with all my heart," said Mary, with some difficulty preserving her gravity. Couldn't it catch fire—by accident, I mean, Miss— some evening after dark ?" whispered Terry, confiden tially. " Them's materials that would burn easy ; for, upon mr,conscience, if it goes on much longer there won't be a servant will stay in the service. They had little Tom Regan holding a dish of charcoal so long that he tuk to his bed on Friday last, and was never up since; and Jinny Moore says she'd rather lave the place than wear that undacent dress; and whisht, there's murder goin' on in side now." Whilst Mary was still hesitating what she should do, the door suddenly opened, and a man in a medireval costume rushed out, tugging after him a large bloodhound, whose glaring eyeballs and frothy month betokened in tense passion. 'Passing hurtiedly forward Mary beheld Lady Dorothea bending over the fainting figure of a short little man, who lay on the floor, while her uncle, tottering under a costume he could barely carry, was trying to sprinkle water over him from an urn of three feet in height. " Mr. Crow has fainted, mere fright, nothing mo re,' said Lady Dorothea. "In stepping backward from the canvas he unluckily trod upon Fang's paw, and the savage creature at once sprang on him. That stupid wretch, Began, one of your favorites, Miss Martin, never pulled him off till he had torn poor M r. Crow's coat clean in two." " Egad [cried her uncle], if I hadn't smashed my sceptre over the dog's head, the mischief wouldn't have stopped there ; but he's coming to. Are you better, Crow? How do you feel, man ?" " I hope you are better, sir," said Lady Dorothea, in an admirable blending of grand benevolence and conde scension. " Infinitely better,--supremely happy, besides, to have become the object of your ladyship's kind inquiries," said the little man, sitting up and looking round with a very ghastly effort at urbanity and ease. " I never knew Fang to bite anyone," said Mary. " Doesn't she, by jingo," exclaimed the Artist, who with difficulty caught himself in time, before he placed his hand on the supposed seat of his injuries. Interwoven with the stirring narrative are sentiments worth note by those who keep a commonplace-hook. Mary, in relieving the crowd who come to her for assistance, enjoins silence except in answer to her questions : This may seem a very small matter, and yet to any one who knows the Irish peasant it will appear little short of miraculous. The passion for discursiveness, the tendency to make an effective theme of their misery, whatever par• ocular shape it may assume, is essentially national. and to curb this vent to native eloquence was to oppose the strongest impulses of their nature. • • • • It is a strange characteristic of human nature that at no time do people inveigh so loudly against bad taith, treachery, and so on, as when themselves deeply engaged in some very questionable enterprise. From the crowded dramatis persona, and bristling action, the lovers of adventurous fiction will find plenty of amusement in Mr. Lever's melodramatic pages. Salad for the Social. London : Bentley. THE author of this volume is an American. It is a collection of good sayings and doings, com piled in the Dr. Doran manner, but in rather a more slip-shod style than marks that amusing retailer of anecdote. How would Disraeli the elder shudder could he see the brood of book makers to which his " Curiosities" have given nsd. Itt such books correctness should be the first requisite, but the practice now is to print anecdotes without the slightest inquiry into their authenticity or reference to their ori ginals. The best chapters in this book are on medi cine and law. But we quote with hesitation, nut feeling the slightest reliance on the inte grity of the writer. Between authors and doctors there has long been a mortal feud; and in noticing their opposition, the witty caricatures of the mediciners of his time by Moliere might appropriately have been re ferred to. It seems, however, that the keenest satirists of the practice of medicine have been doctors themselves : Dr. Akenside, himself a physician, has said, " Physi cians, in despair of making medicine a science, have agreed to convert it into a trade." Sir Anthony Carlisle said, " that medicine was an art founded in conjecture, and improved by murder; that he never could discover any rational principle in a physician's treatment of a case, and that, therefore, it was all guess-work." The late Pro fessor Gregory used often to declare in his class-room, " that ninety-nine out of one hundred medical facts were so many medical lies, and that medical doctrines were for the most part little better than stark roaring nonsense." . . . Dr. James Johnson, of London, has left upon record the following extraordinary admission. " I declare as my con scientious opinion, founded on long experience and COTl viction, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, chemist, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevail." - - Physicians have not unfrequeutly been dis tinguished for wit : The celebrated Zimmerman went from Hanover to attend Frederick the Great in his last illness. One day the King said to him, " Yon have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world ?" This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor ; but the dose he gave the King in return was a judicious mixture of truth and flattery : " Not so many as your Mejesty, nor with so much honour to myself." The New Yorkers, keen as they are, are not, it seems, too keen for quackery : Among the excrescences that infest our Broadway, with its ever varying light and shade, its disguised poverty, reckless extravagance, and obtrusive vanity. may be seen two specimens of the real old fashioned quack. It is a pleasure to look upon something so broad and full of character ; there can be no cheating here, all above board ; note his peculiar turned•up hat, unlike any other ; specs fixed upon the very tip of his nasal protuberance ; his bright blue silk neckerchief ; a cloak, embroidered with a superfluity of velvet, d3es the luxurious for his shoulders ; and all this weight of material and immaterial, stuffed into a pair of Hessians; a foreign title, too, and the man is developed. The other Samaritan may be known by a certain air of solemnity that accompanies him—enveloped in a coat and continuations of the last century, black silk stockings, and silver buckles to match. Smaller fry there are innumerable ; but we cannot stop to enumerate all the prowling vagabonds we meet, so leave them to pursue their Elysium their own way. The chapter on law relates some curious in stances of its expense and delay ; but we are doubtful how far they may be trusted : In the Chancery Court of England the case of Narty v. buncan occurred, in which suit actually two thousand pounds sterling were expended in determining which party was liable to paint a board and whitewash a sign. About a hundred years ago a Scotch gentleman be queathed to his " poor relations of whatever degree" the sum of 20,0001. In effect, he left them a Chancery suit, which has remained in the family ever since. In the first place, the next of kin disputed the validity of the bequest; but it was established by Lord Chancellor Camden, and 463 persons mule nut their relationship. Thereupon, in the year 1766, a bill was tiled for the distribution of the money amongst them, which has not been effected to this day. In the United States there was a case recently deter mined, which had been pending three years, before the courts in Withering county, New York. It was a suit to recover twentyfive dollars, the am , unt of a note given ; the verdict was ultimately rendered for the plaintiff in amount claimed, with the modest item of costs, 800 dollars. A brief and a deed are neatly expressed in verse : For pay, to prove the honest man a thief, For pay, to break the widow's heart with grief, To stifle truth, for lies to gain belief— That's a brief! Ten thousand words, where one would serve the need, Ten thousand meanings, dis‘wird meant to breed, Where none can understand, and few can read — That's a deed ! The impromptu lines of Sir George Rose, Mr. Leach made a speech, &c., are ludicrously misquoted here. A correct version is given in a notice of Lord Langdale's He in the Quarterly Review two or three years ago. But one of the strangest errors we have marked in the volume relates to the a►►thor's count►;yman Franklin, the "Bacon of the New World" as he is absurdly called. At page 353 we read : An edition of Cicero's "Da Senectute," with annots► thus, appeared in Loudon a'oout the time of Franklin's mis+ion to that capital, as translated by himself, with his portrait annexed, when it is well known he was incom petent to such a task. The translation was really made by Logan, who founded the Philadelphia Library. - - This is termed a " literary peccadillo '." it should rather be called a mare's-nest. The statement is as full of errors as of words. We happen to have the original book before us, and the titlepage bears the imprint, " Philadelphia : Printed and sold b) B Franklin. MDCCXLIV."—many years previous to his visit to England The preface by Franklin himself explailis the only part he had in the production of the book : This version of Cicero's tract, "De Senectute," was made ten years since by the honourable and learned Mr. Logan of this city; undertaken partly for his own amuse• ment (being then in his sixtieth year, which is said to be nearly the ago of the author when he wrote it), but princi pally for the entertainment of a neighbour then in his grand climacteric ; and the notes were drawn up solely on that neighbour's account, who wrs not so well acquainted as himself with the Roman history and language. Some other friends, however (among whom I had the honour to be ranked), ostained copies of it in MS. And as I be lieved it to be in itself equal at least, if not far preferable, to any other translation of the seine piece extant in our language, besides the advantage it has of so many valuable notes, which, at the same time they clear up the text, are highly instructive and entertaining, I resolved to give it an impression, being confident that the 'niblick would not un favorably receive it I shall add to these few lines my hearty wish that this first translation of a classic in the Western world may be followed with many others, performed with equal judgment and success, and be a happy omen that Philadelphia shall become the seat of the American Muses. Philadelphia, Feb. 29, 1743-4. We fancy the book abounds with similar errors, but it would be a tiresome and un gracious task to point them out We hope that in future compilers of the author's class will make it their first care to verify the anecdotes they publish, and note the sources whence they are drawn. Revelations of Prison Life; with an Inquiry into Prison Discipline and Secondary Punish- ments. By George Laval Chesterton. Two Vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. THAT a work on this subject by a gentleman who has had such opportunities of observa tion as the author should be either dull or un instructive is manifestly impossible. Even the commonest police case, when well re ported, never fails to arrest attention. Be tween the most abandoned and most virtuous of mankind there must always be some thing in common ; and those who have never felt the temptation to commit crime are often unable to forbear asking themselves what would be their own behaviour and sensations when placed in the felon's dock. Mr. Chesterton, therefore, need offer no excus% for the present publication ; and we must beg him to remember that any strictures we may pass upon it are intended for the execution, and not in any way for the design. We have several faults to find with the former. A great variety of stories is crowded into these " Revelations" which are in them selves no revelations at all. We do not re quire to be told either that respectable men may turn out felons, or that felons may be come respectable men. The circumstances of each particular case—i.e., its origin, progress, and ultimate consequences to the criminal — are what constitute its interest, and whenever these are wanting, and whole pages together dwindle into a mere register, we feel that we are being victimised by a bookmaker rather than instructed by aldiilosopher, as some of our contemporaries hive not scrupled to aver. A story which breaks off in the middle, leaving an awakened curiosity wholly unsatisfied. should not have been inserted at all. And that there are many such in the present volumes no one who has read them through can deny. In the next place, we think Mr. Chesterton would have done well to have given us more systematised information concerning the va rious penal theories. We see what his own opinion is ; and of course, as far as any one man's opinion can go, his is entitled to respect. Ditt we should have liked to have found in this work some assistance towards the dis covery of a principle—something that might have led us to a law—instead of the diftjointed