The Press. — London, England, 1855-05-12 00:00:00

MAf 12,- 1855._ the enthusiasm of the men. Their plain die• tion and direct appeals constitute the chief merit of these pieces:— Thirteenth, o'er your serried squadrons, Olden days of tame renew; Albuera, and Busaco, Nive, Toulouse, and Waterloo. Oft you've met the foe and conquered, And you'll beat him o'er again. Trumpets, bugles, drums are sounding, Thrilling earth with martial strain. Chorus—Thirteenth, dc. The principal objection, a fatal one, is the fre quent recurrence to Waterloo. We suppose Waterloo is indispensable to the record of re gimental fame. It is clear, however, from this circumstance, that Mr. Taillefer's songs must remain a dead letter as long as the alliance continues. His military ardour places his poetry in an awkward dilemma; but his patriotism must console him. An Officer contributes The Battle of Alma and its Incidents (5), with a short preface describing the ground, miscellaneous notes, and a list of the killed and wounded—the whole of which he dedicates to the Emperor of the French. The measure of the poem is more noticeable than its matter, consisting of lines of seven syllables, occasionally varied by five. As the octosyllabic verse is distin guished by its fluency, so this measure is naturally characterised by airiness and flippancy. Applied to a battle it closely re sembles the heroics of Mr. Higginbotham, in the "Rejected Addresses" ! On they rush—a lurid gleam Scintillates from mound and tower, Lights with death the living stream, Shrouds an iron shower, Harrowed, torn, the ground upheaves As where ploughs have passed, Thousands fall, like autumn leaves, Scared by wintry blast;-- Yet unmoved, with steady nerve, Lo ! the modern Spartan's dress, decimated—do not swerve, But still onward press, As deployed—their lines advance— " Go it England"—forward France ! The context is not always obvious, and the technical treatment of military movements will occasionally perplex the reader who hap pens to be a civilian. Iu this passage we are not quite sure whether it is the lurid gleam or the living stream that shrouds the iron shower, or whether it is the uniform of the Spartans or the Spartans themselves we are to under stand as having been decimated. The same subject is put into a ballad by another writer (6), who anticipates that the critics will immediately institute injurious comparisons with Campbell and Tyrta'us. He may dismiss his apprehensions. The critics will discover the spring-head of his inspira tion in the recondite pages of " Chevy Chace." It will be seen from the following sample that the family likeness is strong, although the race has degenerated : On, Ninety-fifth! with cheering cry, Right well your spurs are won ; Through your rent colours, carried high, Gleams Glory's noontide sun : On, Eightyeighth ! your former deeds Shall well with this compare ; On, English Guards ! on, Scots ! for bleeds The noble Chewton there; On, Twenty-third! your banner'il fame Must still find room for Alma's name. The lineage of this ballad is still more apparent in another stanza, where we find Lord Raglan doffing his hat while ordering the cavalry to charge, and " Duke Cambridge " clearing the broken ground like a sportsman following the hounds : Like pictur'd hero on his steed, Lord Raglan calmly sat. And bidding England's warriors speed, Doffd low his snow plum'd hat; Forth spurr'd Duke Cambridge forward then, And clear'd the broken ground, Like sportsman in old England when The gallant pack hath found; When scarlet coat, and cheering horn, Proclaim a glorious hunting morn. This is exactly in the manner of the " hunting of Cheviot ;" and the author goes into this business of slaughter, by which the living heart of England is now rent with an guish, as if it were a legend of the Douglas and Percy. It is not for the purpose of indi- (5) The Battle of Alma, and its Incidents. By an Office.. London: Hatchard. (6) Rana 1 the Battle of t he Alma. London : Edingham Wilson. THE PRESS. eating the indifference of the imitation that we have extracted these verses, but to exem plify and reprehend a tendency we perceive growing up, to treat the war like a border tra dition or a fragment of Robin Hood. It should be left to the hippodrome and the circus to bring the stern reality upon the stage in a masquerade of spurs and plumes, and to work up picturesque situations by a grotesque falsi fication of costume and manners. Poetry has a higher mission, and incurs a graver respon sibility. Failing in the nobler elements of the subject, it should At least avoid the mistake of delineating the experiences of to-day in the style of our ancestors. What should we say of a history of the reign of Queen Victoria modelled on the chronicles of Froissart? Alma and Inkermann i 7), by Robert Haxell, and The Battle of Inkermann (8), by a retired Liver pool Merchant, hardly justify criticism. The former is a quiet tribute to the brave—the sort of vague commonplace we hear every now and then in the corner of a room, when a timid friendly man is asked his opinion of the war; the latter is rather bolder, and is marked by strange diction, and enthusiasm of the spasmodic type. The retired merchant talks of " splendrous rays," " salient steps," " trackless trails," " singing vales," and the like ; and his idea of a battle seems to consist in rolling, crushing, crashing, and trampling. The force of this kind of writing lies in the unexpectedness and profusion of its adjectives—an imagerial style, which has been brought to perfection in prose a little way east of London-bridge. The Occult Sciences. Sketches of the Tradi tions and Superstitions of Past Times, and the Marvels of the Present Day. By the Rev. Edward Smedley, M.A.; W. Cooke Taylor, LL.D.; the Rev. Henry Thompson, M.A. ; and Elihu Rich, Esq. London : Griffin and Co. MACAU LAY has dwelt with great force on what he calls the strange inconsistency of John son's mind in its ready acceptance of all tales of a supernatural character, while at the same time none were more vigilant and sceptical than the Doctor in the investigation of all evidence that bore upon mere human occur rences. But it has always seemed to us that the great critic has here been led astray by bis desire to convict a political opponent of the sin of superstition. For surely it is not unreasonable to expect that the same intellect which is eminently acute in the discussion of all such subjects as it may judge to come within its grasp shoald be also well calculated to determine at what point that grasp becomes powerless ; and Johnson's decision that such questions are not within the jurisdiction of man's intellect, and can be neither affirmed nor denied without presumption, is, we think, one to which few sensible and impartial men are at the present day unwilling to bow. There is no more genuine mark of a weak and ill regulated mind than excessive incredulity, which Raleigh termed the "wit of fools." and we are glad to remark as a hopeful sign of the times that this one vice is rather on the decline—that there is growing up among the rising generation a wholesome distrust of dog matism—the _tornado oppositi of logic—which may perhaps, under proper guidance. do much to correct the materialistic tendencies of the age, and restore a more wholesome tone of thought in regard to the spiritual and unseen world. The book before us, which is a republics tion from the "Encyclopedia Metropolitana," appeals strongly to this more manly and ra tional view of the subject in question, and at the same time denies that there is any danger to the philosophic ;90; from the pursuit of these inquiries : On the contrary, the philosophy of this age has every thing to hope from the revival of subjects possessing so much personal interest, and so important in their bearing on the chief doctrines of revelation. The classification of the subject which is here given appears to us excellent. First we have the question of the belief in supernatural (7) Akita and Inkermann. A Heart• Offering to the Brave. A Poem. Ry Robert Haxell. London. Hope and Co. (d) The Battle of Inkermann, a Balled; with Balaklava, Alma, Sinope, &c. By a Retired Liverpool Merchant. London : Virtue, and Co. 455 beings discussed with great ability and abun dance of illustration ; next to that, the " locali ties " of incorporeal creatures ; and then the various occult powers that have at any time been, or been supposed to be, resident in mortals. Thus the reader will see the whole subject is mapped out before him ; and though the authors do not profess to have exhausted details, yet the inquirer will find under each head either the information he is in search of, or the sources stated from whence it may be obtained. The portions to which the general reader will turn with the greatest interest are those taken up with the history of apparitions, and that of spirit-rapping, table-turning, and mes merism. The idea of the incredibility of "ghosts" is treated with the utmost contempt as a sentiment unworthy of philosophy ; and many stories are here circumstantially nar rated which we cannot pretend to refute Who, then, we may ask (says the writer), are the philo sophers in such a case ? They who reason away the plain evidence of facts, or they who, reverently admitting them, seek further light, according to the method of Bacon, by the study of Nature as she exhibits herself in these phe nomena? On the vexata qualtio of table-turning his opinion is as follows :-- There can be no doubt that a vast amount of delusion, often of fraud, has been mixed up with it. Perhaps it may be safely affirmed that Mr. Faraday's hypothesis accounts for the larger number of instances in which the table has moved round without rising from the floor. When it rises or tips, a more occult force is at work, and if the table tipping be made to answer as a code of signals, so ILA to elicit intelligible 'espouses, it can hardly be doubted that the force employed is under the direction of an under standing. We scarcely know what our old acquaintance the "practical man" will say to these opinions: we are somewhat afraid he will set down their author as a visionary, or perhaps, in his in dignation, something worse. For ourselves, although we think Mr. Rich has in many places used language likely to startle the public, we yet entertain no aversion to his views when interpreted by the intellectual rule which he has himself laid down; and WO think, indeed, anything is better than the ridicule which that " half reasoning elephant," the world at large, is prone to shower on all that it cannot understand. On the whole, we can pronounce " The Occult Sciences " a very useful book either for information or amuse ment It is full both of real learning and humorous anecdote ; and, above all, it is ad. mirable for its union of the philosophic and reverential spirit in the discussion of subjects which trench on the domains both of natural science and theology. Travels and Adventures in the Province of Assam during a Residence of Fourteen Years. By Major John Butler, 55th Bengal N. I. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. THIS work, interesting both from its subject and its execution, belongs to a class of travels very much too rare. Major Butler, in a plea sant and varied relation, enables the reader to form a pretty fair idea of a wild and bar barous district and people, and preserves throughout sufficient of the personal narra tive to give life and action to his descriptions, without filling the book with himself to the exclusion of his subject. Assam, though it would appear one of the most inhospitable districts, and, as regards revenue, one of the least productive, has yet excited of late considerable interest in Europe as the habitat of the tea plant, the cultivation of which might help to increase in a valuable degree the exports of India, the progress of which is so important both to that great de pendency and to the empire. With this par• ticular view of the present and future of Assam Major Butler does not deal at any length, his work being more devoted to its aspect as the field of future government by Indian authorities. Of the district of Now- Gong, however, he gives a very favorable ac count, as a field for agricultural, and even mining, industry The district of Now• Gong, being intersected by nume rous rivers and streams, all more or less navigable for many months in the year, is thus rendered particularly well adapted for commerce. The soil is rich ; it abounds in fine forests of NMI timber in Dantipar, with this advan tage over other parts of Assam, that from no point has the timber to be conveyed a greater distance than four miles