The Press. — London, England, 1856-05-31 00:00:00

522 Without exactly going over ground occupied by Scott, the " Crown Ward " follows the vein which he worked so successfully. The scene is laid in Scotland, shortly before James was summoned, by the death of Elizabeth, to wear the English crown. James and his Consort Anne are two of the principal personages in the story, and, without compromising historic fact, they play an effective part in the fiction. The " Crown Ward " is Mistress Mary Kerr ; sho has been assigned by James to the English ambassador, Bowes, and the action of the tale turns principally on the means which a mysterious Italian visitant to the Court of James employs to free the young lady from her hateful engagement, and give her to the arms of her true lover, the young Bueeleuch. The real hero of the story, however, is Kin mont Willie, or Willie Armstrong, a stout, young Moss•trooper of the Border, as bold a rider as William of Deloraine himself. His capture of the Warden's horses, and night ride for his life, excite breathless expectation. Equally effective, though in a different style, is the scene in which the Italian centrols both James and his Consort ; the revel in which the gay Queen favours Buceleuch's escape ; and the surprise of Carlisle, by the Scot Border ban d s. The characters, without being vigorously delineated, are well marked and distinct. That of the Italian is the least successful, as there is a doubt nearly to the last whether he acts from love, or revenge, or policy, and this uncertainty prevents the firmness of outline which the subsequent discovery of his true nature would have justified. He appears a charlatan when he should have figured as a subtle diplomatist. Kinmont Willie, on the other hand, is perhaps too literal a represen tation of his class. He has not a touch of romance in his disposition. He is the shrewd daring Border riever, fond of adventure for its own sake, but liking it still better when plun- der is to be found in its company. Some of the minor personages are well drawn, as old Euphatne, the trooper's grandmother, and David Moyse, King James's gentleman usher. The artistic talent of the book would alone entitle it to commendation, were the results less successful than they are. The author has taken pains with his work. Every part. is neatly finished. The construction is excellent. The narrative is continuous. There are no passages in it which lead to nothing ; none of those disappointing cubs-de-sac which engage us for a time only to retard our progress, and do cause disappointment. Every incident has spine connection ,vith the main story, and the reader feels as he closes the book that what ever pleasure he has experienced from its perusal is fairly due to the honest exercise of the authoi's story-telling skill. We are unwilling to close without an ex tract, and, as the author is conscientious when moving in the strict province of history, we give portions of his sketches of the King and his Consort:— JAMES I. (OF ENGLAND.) Mach consequence has been attached to race. and the tenacity with which it has been supposed to implant its idiosyncracies in members of the same family, and yet, if we except his passion for favorites, there was nothing in the character of the King of Sens to connect him with the Stuarts. His forefathers, improvident often and luckless ever had been distinguished for theirpersonal prowess and their passion for military adventure ; James hated alike the amusements of the tilt-yard and the more perilous en terprises of real warfare. His father, Darnley, and his mother, the unfortunate Mary, were not only refined in manners, but bad [peen to the lust degree vain of their persons and fond of dresses calculated to display them to advantage; James, on the contrary, was almost filthy in his habits, and had such an aversion to a change of rai ment that even in the palmy days of his future kingdom he could hardly be persuaded to resign his worn-out ap parel, even when its rents and patches made the wearing it inconsistent with decency. His grandfather, James V., was active in civil government, and economical if not penurious in expenditure. His grandmother, Mary of Guise, stands conspicuous among the female sovereigns of the age for her personal energy and mmtal powers. James hal nothing of all this. He was educated without being intellectual ; and education but reproduces the thoughts of others—intellectuality creates its own. Without any apparent object beyond the mere pleasure of expenditure, he was profligately extravagant: and was always speaking of the rights of the Crown without ever really exerting them. The habits of the age demanded in the high-born great personal dignity, but James, in defiance alike of public opinion and what the inherent pride of his family might have led us to expect, indulged in a familiarity pf THE PRESS: intercourse with his domestics, and a coarseness of intona tion and phraseology, probably scarcely exceeded by the lowest of his subjects. . . . . The graces of the early Stuarts reappeared in Charles I.; but in his father their courtliness, their gallantry, their pride existed not. ANNE OF DENMARK. Nature had cast her in its happiest mould. The lofty forehead, the nose slightly arched, the large dark brown eyes—dangerous alike when melting with tenderness or hashing with anger,—the pouting mouth, the short curled upper lip, the tall, graceful, and well-rounded figure, the neck, the bust, the waist, each faultless, made her beyond comparison the handsomest princess of her time. Nor was the mind inferior to the person. Like most of the women of high rank of the period, she was an admirable linguist ; learned in Latin, not unacquainted wi►h German, intimate with French, and speaking Italian with the same purity and facility as the language of her own northern land. To these accomplishments were to be added quick nesss of perception, knowledge of character, and felicity of language. Such was the girl who at sixteen, in all the brilliancy of her young beauty, had been consigned to the arms of the dirtiest specimen of humanity in Christendom. History of Greece under Othoman and Venetian Domination, 1453 to 1821. By George Finlay, LL.D. London: Blackwoods. MR. FINLAY completes in this volume his history of Greece under foreign domination. His subject is extensive, his previous three volumes being occupied with-1, Greece under the Romans ; 2, The Byzantine and Greek Empires ; 3, Medieval Greece and its Con• quests by the Crusaders and the Turks. In this fourth division of the work we have a rapid consecutive sketch of Greece under Othoman and Venetian domination —so that the entire work bridges over the space between the subjugation of Greece two thousand years ago and the commencement of the revolution in 1821, by which Greece finally obtained her independence. The whole work was originally intended only as an intro duetion to a history of the Greek Revolution ; but the author found his materials grow on his hands, and as he wrote he became con vinced that " in history there is no present " no present, that is, which can be dissociated from the past. We are not inclined to criticise adversely the process which has given to the public a valuable historical work. Authors are often mastered by their own designs ; but as Mr. Finlay is from circumstances peculiarly fitted to write a history of the Greek Revolu tion, we hope he will not forego his inttn tion through his introduction having grown into the proportion of a separate historical work. We have previously expressed a high opinion of the research, the scholarship, and the literary talent of the author His plan led him to follow steadily the stream of history, not to linger by its banks, and hence his narra tive is concerned only with events of real historic importance, and avoids those episodes which make the histories of particular epochs so attractive. In the present volume the first chapter is on that organisation of the Otho• man empire by which the Greeks were re tained in subjection ; the tribute of children exacted from the Christian provinces —one male out of every twelve—was at once a source of strength to the governing power and of weakness to the subjugated countries. The second chapter relates the naval conquests of the Turks in Greece, and affords a favorable example of the author's narrative power. N•;ver had the Hellenic race fallen so low in the social scale as while these conquests were in progress ; the people declined both in civilisation and numbers. The third chapter, en the social condition of the Greeks (1453- 1676), shows the degradation resulting from their bondage : The darkest night of ignorance covered Greece in the 10th and 17th centuries, and it was then almost as much forgotten in Christendom as it was neglected by the Othoman Government. The unfortunate people were solely solicitous to save their children from the tribute and their scanty substance from the exactions of their conquerors. "At last, poverty, depopu " lation, and insecurity of property seemed to " threaten the Greeks with utter ruin." It speaks strongly for the vitality of their race that they were able to survive, and to pre serve their nationality through this time of terrible trial. Their sufferings were in the end relieved by the extinction of the tribute of SATURDAY, children, a concession made not to humanity, but to an a . prehension that the country would return to waste through depopulation. The last recorded exaction of this tribute was in 1676 Chapter four (16841718) relates the war between Venice and the Porte (during which the Parthenon was destroyed), and the period of Venetian domination in Greece. In chapter five and last (1718-1821) the long night of Greek distress is relieved by gleams of light. The people grew out of serfdom ; they acquired property in the land ; their numbers increased ; they engaged in commer cial enterprise ; their character rose with their improved condition ; the desire for national independence became a passion. Mr. Finlay writes : The career of the Othoman conquerors in Greece was now terminated. They were themselves involved in a struggle to maintain their national existence against poli- tical anarchy and external attacks. But their domination in Greece had not been without its use : it had accom plished a task which neither the Roman power nor the Orthodox Church had effected; it had nationalised the Greeks, and compressed their various communities into one body. A great cycle in the history of Greece was completed. The tribe of Othoman had fulfilled its mission in Hellas, and it was now to depart from the land like the Romans, the Crusaders, and the Venetians. 'NMI On many accounts we think this volume the most valuable Mr. Finlay has yet produced. It arches over the chasm between the fall of the Greek empire and the assertion of Greek nationality on its own proper soil, and collects all the notices that have been preserved of the state of the people during the three centuries and a half that they languished under the barbarous rule of their conquerors. This volume has therefore more pretensions to originality than those previously issued ; the materials are well arranged, and if it stood alone as a history of Greece under Othoman domination, it would be a contribution of un doubted worth to historic literature. Mr. Finlay appears to regard the future of Greece with hope. The literary progress of the people is encouraging. They have rescued their tongue from the confusion in which so many political mutations had plunged it, and have thus laid a foundation for intellectual growth They have made their spoken and written language an instrument of national centralisation, distinct from all provincial dialects, yet intelligible and harmonious to every Greek. The whole of Mr. Finlay's last chapter is so good that we wish he had entered more largely on the topics it suggests. He is now on the threshold of modern Greek history; we hopo he ivill not stop there. Ismeer ; or, Smyrna and its British Hospital its 1855. By a Lady. London : Madden. Tins lady volunteer was one of the party who left London early in March, 1855, for the British Hospital at Smyrna. She has briefly set down in this volume the results of her experience, commencing with her first day's duty on March 20, 1855, and end ing with the breakup of the hospital, and her depar ture from Smyrna on Ist September following. There is not much positive novelty in her narrative, the greater part of it being taken up with mamas ex:raneous to hospital duties, as the social life of the Turks and Greeks, but it agreeably confirms all tat we have previously heard respecting the happy influence of the ladies' efforts, and the moral power they exercised over the minds of the sick soldiery. Here, as in all previous accounts, we find testimony borne to the necessity of a distinction between the professional nurses and the ladies. The regulation costume was abandoned as positively injurious ; it was throtuli the recognition of the social position of the ladies that they were enabled to command so much respect both within and without the hospitll. • On the first arrival of the nurses the hospital was in much confusion, but order was soon attained. Miss N—, who had one nurse under her charge, had a division assigned her. At once, and without a struggle, all feelings of fear, false delicacy, alid repugnance were vanquished by her womanly sym pathy : The one [divisionl which fell to my lot had from sixty to eighty patients; and I must say I felt a little strange just at first on finding myself the only female, save my nurse, among so many sick soldiers. But how soon self is forgotten when you are in the midst of sickness and suffer ing, and know that people are depending on you for relief. The fear, horror, and disgust, which would probably affect an inactive spectator, have not the smallest place in your mind, and you have but one feeling left—pity, and a desire to alleviate pain.