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

nese carefully copied it in every piece of the
set. The Voltalian flaw is painfully obvious
in all Lady Morgan's literary muse. Thus the
Passage continues :

Philosophy, meanwhile, leaving reform to its struggles,
and theology to ils sophisms, availed herself of the licence of
the times, and of the inquiring spirit of the age.
This affectation of " philosophy " in " her
ladyship's writings is more than ridiculous.
Her countryman, Mr. Grattan, in his first
speech in the English House of Commons,
while his success was still doubtful, secured
the applause of Mr. Pitt, by a withering
sarcasm against Doctor Dreigman. After
describing the chaos of subjects through
which that learned person had wandered,
Grattan burst firth :—" Here the limits of
" creation interposed, and stopped the gentle-
" roan. I shall proceed to answer him, to
" defend the Catholics against his attack, and
" to rescue the Protestants from his defence."
In the days when Lady Morgan was " a
" literary subaltern," there were many writers
and speakers from whom " philosophy " re
quired a safe deliverance.
It is not, therefore, on such subjects as
" Salvator Rosa and his Times," that we
should expect to find Lady Morgan's talents
appear to most advantage. Her mind was
radically deficient in true poetical passion,
though she had extraordinary facility in
Milesian rhetoric.
Thus, in describing Claude Lorraine's
landscapes, she writes :

The effect of the ever•efective chiaro-oscuro had been
reiterated to repletion, by Adam Elzheimer and his school.
It was the genius of Claude which developed the new
mystery of perspective, until his glorious pictures seemed
to open vistas through the walls they decorated. The
creator of a vegetable aristocracy, this master painter of
the elements ennobled the nature he copied, and was the
first to stamp a beau ideal upon her material aspect, as
Raphael had before done upon the human countenance.
" The creator of a vegetable aristocracy "!
When Lady Morgan wrote that sentence of
Claude Lorraine, she must have been thinking
of Mr Foater—" the father of Irish agricul
ture"—for the political economists always
thought that there was more than an allitera-
tive connection between patricians and pota-
toes in Ireland.
The description of Salvator's landscapes is
better, but it is too much in the best boudoir
manner of Miss Rosa Matilda :
The least of his landscapes was pregnant •pith moral in-
terest, and calculated to awaken human sympathies. His
deep and gloomy forests, whose impervious shade is
relieved by the silver bark of the shattered oak that forms
the foreground, are only given as the shelter of the
formidable bandit, whose bold and careless figure, strangely
armed and wildly habited, fixes the eye beyond sll the
merits of the scenic representation. The long line of
stony pathway cut through masses of impending rack, is
but the defile in which the gallant cavalier, bent on souse
generous enterprise, is overtaken by the pitiless outlaw—
or by the rush of storms, which seem to threaten destruc-
tion at every step his frighted steed advances. The way-
worn traveller, the benighted pilgrim, the shipwrecked
mariner, introduced as accessories into the main scene,
become images that engage the heart as well as the eve,
and give to the inanimate character of landscape a moral
action and an historical interest.

-------
When Lady Morgan's novels come under our
notice—even for the sake of " auld lang syne "
we shall have pleasure in again examining
them, and rendering that critical tribute to
her humorous and sparkling vivacity which
cannot be denied even by those who most
dislike the defects which have detracted from
her literary fame. Too fiercely decried in one
quarter, she was too highly praised in another,
and she is fairly entitled by her eminence to
an impartial adjudication.

Lives of Men of Letters of the Time of George 111.
By Henry, Lord Brougham, F.R S. London:
Griffin.
THIS volume contains the reprints, in the
uniform series of Lord Brougham's works, of
the graphic and interesting sketches of Vol-
taire, Rousseau, Hume, Robertson, Johnson,
and Gibbon. The volume will command, in
all probability, even a larger number of readers
than the preceding one, as the proportion of
those who are interested by literature exceeds
those who can appreciate science. A sketch
and estimate of Voltaire must of necessity be
a performance dealing with a multitude of
subjects, and presenting iu little something
like the phantasmagoria displayed by the