The Press.
London, England, 1853-07-23 00:00:00

Friday, July

ItANKRI'litcY ANM:I.I.I:III.—FDANcts II chehas•
(MA trINW vv.
BAN PTs.--s 11AvEN, Brighton, itnetr--EnwAvrpi
Tutim%%, Elitiry..treel, Pimlico, builder—AS.l,lllM Illommek,
IntllinfitClUrer--MATt II I'M I'UTII
%lOW, Wl!Ware. denier—WILLIAM HAIIiINtI, Cheltenham.
grnetT--.1011% l`:‘ ANN, Tsly !WWI. 1111111111itoll C‘lUri. hotel kooper
luny ltl:t.A N 11, Killil*Intl•IIII011•111111, drapar— 1108011
PIN 111:1t, York, grocer mut lea.desier.

Ilyssits. LITTLE Am) l'AitsoNs, member' of thy'
Assembly Al NeWfollll4lllllllll, have arrived in London.
It appointed delegates, to communicate Terminally
with the colonial authorities on the ntrairt of the

colony.
A Commos; II Ali. of the Livery of the City of
London was held at the titillation yesterday, for
the purpose of electing a Sheriff Of London and
blithllesex, in the room of .1. 'hamley, Esq., who had
been elected, hut refused to Nene. The I.4trit Mayor.
however. announced that eircutostances bed trans
pie' 1 which rendered it advisable to adjourn the pro
(Petting. end the election was aecontingly postponol.
TRU STAR CLUB will hold their lust meeting fertile
present season at the Star and 611.1101% RIOIIIIOII4I.
011 WedllPSlllly, :Irtl of August, when a large muster
of the corps diplomotique is expected. RS well tis
molly members of the 'louse of Commons.
Tin: Hos. E. V. Itimin, having been appointed to
till a diplomatic orrice in connection with the British
Embassy at Berlin, will nut appear as a ettudidate NL
the ensuing election for Canterbury.
t:w CAII LAW.—The working of the new cab
law does not go quite to smoothly as might have been
wished, and it must he yonfeseed that the authorities
more immediately coneerniql are themselves chiefly
blameable for the defective operation ; since they
lone set the law working without the machinery ue
ressary for their own share in executing it. They
have issued enactments and stringent. rules for
magistrates to inkjudicate on subjects of disputed
distances, and have not given the standard for
measuring the distances. Thug is fares," drivers,
and magistrates are all in some confusion,
it elves that Al of them have made mistakes.
That Mr. Fitzroy's bill efleets considerable improve.
meat in the nrrangement of piddle vehicles there is
no 1101111 t. It has already had some practical work-
ing, and it experienee could suggest amendments
there might be yet time to embody them in a supple•
mental bill which might even pass this liessum.
For all our attachment to the present liovernmetst
cannot conceal from us the feet that many men who
use these pithily conveniences look forward with
may to a winter in Imildon with a deficiency of cab
accommodetiiin. It is not a tinily question, how-
tner ; the stability of the present tiovernment is not
involved in the cab question, and we are convinced
that Mr. Fitzroy himself would be as willing as any
man in Parliement to adopt praetical yuletide( of
his useful llWRSllll`.—Globe.
AN EXTUIifitHINIIIV CANE HE THREATENING luau
014'110141 rise magistrates of Cornham, Wiltshire. oc•
casioning some protracted investigations. The pro
sectunr wlt4 the Rev. Dr. llorlock, vicar of Box, and
the prisoners were Henry Sprague, son of
Sprague, late of Box, end Benjamin Bullock, sexton.
Anonymous letters of a most insulting end threaten
ing kind had been, for IL length of time, mysteriously
conveyed to the vicar and his family, and to persona
in the IllighltolllllGlNl. I hie cons addressedto a
y 01111.4 women named Elizabeth Smith, " If you will
make a cake, end buy at a chemist's one drachm of
arsenic, and put it in it, and send it to Miss Horlock.
with a note from yourself, I will give you lilt?.. which
will make you and your relations quite rich, and you
will never not remain in senice no longer." A similar
letter was sent to another woman. A number of
witnesses were called to Kiwi, the handwriting; mid
the magistrates, after a private VIIRSIIIWRIR,
charged Bullock, and committed Sprague to take his
trial at the next assizes.
sToms Perms.—The bolls Commissioners of
her Majesty's Treasury have caused Mr. Wilson to
nequaint the l'contnissioners of Customs that their
lerdships, on lull consideration of the matter, are of
opinion that the duty upon iron and steel orna-
mental matinfactnres should he equalised et 15..
per cwt. ; and it is, therefore, their desire that the
commissioners will cause this duty to be charged on
those articles from the date of the communication.
Mr. Wilson was further directed by their lordships to
state that the said equalisation of duty will be pro-
vided fur in the bill now pemiug before rtuiistueut.

280

flitrature.

Mount Lebanon ; a Ten Years' Residence from
1M42 to Issl. By Colonel Churchill. Lon-
don: Saunders and Otley.

" Few spots in the East can vie in interest with Mount
Lebanon. The sacred volume is replete with allusions to
it. Sages, warriors, prophets, and kings have made it the
ril-jeer of their st mins and the ground of their exploits.--
haradaelius.
COLONEL. Cnencim.f. might have added that it
is the region of romance and poetry—that the
very name is associated with the heroic deeds of
Our ancestors, with the ardent zeal of the Cru-
saders and the early triumph of Christianity.
It has been illustrated by painters and poets,
and has become to us a land bearing " a spell
beyond its name in story."
It is a melancholy fact that these brilliant
associations and poetic visions are too often
destroyed by a nearer acquaintance with the
objects which excite them. In our travels the
ordinary details of the journey destroy much
of the romantic—fatigue, hunger, and thirst
exhaust the powers of the mind as well us of
the body. Often, in sight of the long desired
goal, the romantic traveller is astonished at
the indifference with which he approaches it,
and is ashamed of confessing even to himself
that the consideration which most occupies
his mind is the purely material one, "Where
am I to be lodged—what shall I get for din-
ner?"
Volumes of travels even in the most inte-
resting countries are frequently little less dis-
appointing. The information they contain,
even when most, valuable anti curious, is often
tedious and ill-arranged ; and the reader finds
himself distmeted with digressions, the con-
nection of which he cannot discover, and with
details which only perplex anti puzzle the nar-
rative Colonel Churchill would, perhaps,
have done wisely to retrench, contract, and
expunge, till ho had reduced his three bulky
volumes to at least half their size. His method
of writing would be better if it were more con-
cise : his facts require arrangement, and his
descriptions are not always vivid or pic-
turesque.
At this moment, however, when the Eastern
question has excited an unwonted curiosity,
and when our public relations with Turkey
seem likely to undergo material alteration, the
public will turn with awakened interest to
the land in which the Mahometan faith was
taught in its infancy, and to which, after a
lapse of four hundred years, it seems likely to
be banished in its decrepitude.
We wish we could look towards the solution
of this eomplieated question with a little more
of heart or hope. NW wish we could bestow
on either of the antagonist parties a larger
portion of our sympathies ; but we wish in
vain. If Islamism is to be rooted out of
Europe, will its place be supplied by any
form of pure and evangelical Christianity ?
We dare not hope it. The Greek Church,
whether we consider that portion of it which
obeys its independent patriarchs, or that
which looks to St. Petersburg as the source of
its inspiration, presents an aspect equally un
promising. Both, alas ! have so far wandered
from the gospel which our Saviour delivered,
in that very land now converted into the
battle-field of angry sects, that we can hardly
trace their descent from the Divine Founder
at all. The Greek Church, though it has its
bigots and its Martyrs, addresses itself' wholly
to the senses and the passions. It is so de-
graded by superstition, anti so encumbered by
ceremony, that the worshipper can hardly
discern the deity he adores, or explain the
doctrine he believes. It keeps the priesthood
in a degrading servitude to the State, and the
people in the spiritual bondage of the priests.
It separates morality from religion, affords no
consolation in sorrow , holds out no incitement
to virtue. no discouragement to vice. The
spirit of intolerance which it exhibited in the
days tat' its supremacy under the Greek empire
yet burns with all its former fierceness, and
we fear its tinal triumph would be the signal
for a renewal of those religious persecutions
of which the Russian etepire has already been
the theatre. Such, we fear, is no exaggerated
description of the Aldo of that " large portion

THE PRESS.

of the Christians of the East" for whose pro-
tection the Emperor Nicolas is so zealous, and
for whom he claims a supremacy with such
unmeasured vehemence.
If the Greek Church commands little of our
sympathy, its great Roman Catholic rival in
the East has no larger claim on our favour. In
both we find religion employed as the mask for
wordly ambition, by wily professors intriguing
in its name for supremacy, and ambitious mo-
narchs pursuing their own aggrandisement
under pretence of zeal for its promotion. The
agents of France and the Roman Catholic mis-
sionaries have been not less active, if less sue-
eessful, than those of Russia; nor can we con-
ceive any quarrel in which England has so
little concern as whether the key of the Temple
of Bethlehem is consigned to priests of the
Greek or Latin persuasions, and whether the
worshippers on Mount Calvary be suffered to
fight out their annual battle, or the strife be
stopped by the cavas of the Pacha or by the
police agents of FrillleC and Russia. The
quarrel, as far as we understand it, stands pre-
cisely thus. The Emperor of Russia asserts that
his coreligionists attach great importance to
periodical pilgrimages into Syria, and to cer-
tain religious observances, in the exercise of
which they have been interrupted ; on the
other hand, it is not denied that the French
Ambassador has interfered at Constantinople
in a manner that infringed on the rights of the
Greek worshippers ; nor can it be pretended
that the interference proceeded from the mis-
take of an over-zealous diplomatist, since
Louis Napoleon, on seizing on the sovereign
power iu France, gave a hint of his purpose
when he assumed, amongst other titles, that
of " Protector of the Holy City." This was in
itself an innovation which might justly give
umbrage to any other power whose interest or
dignity is infringed by the monopoly which this
title implies. Austria may side with her co-
religionists in France, or gratitude and poli-
tical sympathy may lead her to support the
pretensions of Russia; but, unless the ques-
tion haul assumed a difierent aspect, we
could conceive no reason why England should
take the van in this religious warfare—a war-
fare which, whether it has the support of
Islamism in Europe fin• its object, or is a cru-
sade in defence of the Roman Catholic mono
poly in Jerusalem, is, at all events, foreign to
our religious sympathies and interests.
Colonel Churchill devotes a very interesting
chapter in his first volume to the exposure of
the means by which, for years past, the French
on their side have endeavoured to effect
their objects The French Government and
the Pope, he tells us, are liberal contributors
to the seminaries in which the Maronite
youth is edueated ; and, after noticing various
of these establishments, in all of which the
education is gratuitous, he proceeds to a more
particular description of that pursued at the
Convent of Aintoora, where the scholars are
selected from among the most promising
pupils of the inferior schools, to which also
the Maronite emirs and sheiks send their
sons :

That this school (says Colonel Churchill) is one of the
means employed to keep up the prestige of the French
Hanle in this country cannot be doubted. What must be
the moral atmosphere of a schoolroom where the most pro-
minent picture is one of the appetmutee of the Virgin Mary,
with the following inscription exphmatory of its import ;
and not only this, but. medals of the picture are given to
the boys to hang about their necks? The Virgin is repre-
sented as appearing to a nun, in a convent at Patio. The
nun is kneeling in a chapel; the Virgin is seen over the
altar, with arms extending downwards, and rays of light
emanating front the ringers of her open hands. Under-
neath is seen written in French:-
- Towards the end of the year is3o, the young sister of
charity, M—. being at prayers, saw the Virgin of im-
maeulate Conception. as she is represented in the medal,
surneuttled with glory, and having a globe under her feet"
(ou this globe, by the way, is written the wont " France,"
in conspicuous letters). - Vivid rays of light darted in
great profusion from her hands, but concentrated on one
particular spot. Suddenly a voice exclaimed—" These rays
are the symbol of grace which Mary obtains fin• mankind,
and the point of the globe where they fall in more abun-
dance than on any other is France !"rhe following words
were seen at the same time written in letters of gold—' 0
Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse
to thy intercession "the vision all at. once changed ; anti,
by a rapid transition, appeared the letter' M,' surmounted
by a cross, and having underneath the two sacred hearts
of Mary and Jesus. while the same voice was heard to say
Strike a medal in commemoration of this vision ; who
shall wear it, and repeat this prayer, shall enjoy the
special protection of the Mother of "

SATURDAY,

The population of the mountain, we collect,
is well disposed, laborious, and patient; but
that the missionaries should fail in the.r en-
deavours to purify the " Christio-Pagan:sm,"
as the author terms it, of the mountain into a
more enlightened piety, the reader will not be
surprised, or that it has not produced a ye?
high tone of morality throughout this romant.c
district. The Maronite peasantry is kept i 2
complete subjection by the clergy, and this
submission is inculcated almost as an article
of religious faith. Our author tells us
In the Maronite Catechism the following queries and
answers occur:
Q. If you were to see an angel and a priest walking
together, which should you adore the most?
A. The priest.
Q. And how would you show your adoration for the
priest ?
A. By falling down and kissing the ground on which he
is walking.
Q. Why is a priest to be adored more than the angel?
A. Because he is vastly superior to the angel.
Q. Why so?
A. Because the angel is a minister and servant of God,
whereas the priest can command God to descend frost
heaven as in the mass.—Vol. iii. p. 89.
This extract sufficiently speaks for the nature
of the contest of which the rival Churches
are made the stalking-horse. If England had
not political interests at stake she might very
properly remain an indifferent spectator of
the struggle. With respect, however, to the
other questions involved, some valuable illus-
trative materials will be found scattered
through Colonel Churchill's volumes.

The Life of Benja►nin Robert Haydon. Edited
by Tom Taylor, Esq. Loudon : Longman
and Co.
THE great Michael Angelo, who really founded
a new style of art, at which Haydon aimed,
was accustomed to say that every artist could
at least paint his own portrait well; he did not
say write his autobiography, from feeling that
the pen is less easily managed in such hands
than the pencil. This modern attempt comes
before the public under peculiar advantages :
the original sketch passed from the easel of
the artist to the studio of an editor at once
kind, intelligent, and experienced. Mr. Taylor
has gently cleaned the canvas, effaced many
a hard outline, softened many a dark shadow,
and, skilfully enlisting the sympathies ef his
readers for the personal sorrows and struggles
of his hero, has varnished the low and repul-
sive tones of an historical picture, in which
there was more calculated to give pain than
pleasure. Mr. Haydon, an incarnation of pre-
sumptuous egotism, and the god of his own
idolatry, had left behind such a representation
of his own " heroic lineaments" as he wished
posterity to believe to have been the reality,
and perhaps believed himself. Failing alto-
gether to see his own proportions as others
saw them, he conceived himself the cynosure,
the observed of all observers ; and fancied
this overcrowded. overbusied world's chief
duty was to foster his private projects which ran
counter to public wants and wishes ; and when
by repeated borrowings and bickerings he had
wearied every body, instead of feeling that he
had made a mistake, he turned against man-
kind, and considered himself a spectacle for
gods, and a good man struggling against the
storms of fate. In was in this vein that he
sat down to record his own view of his unre-
quited merits and ultdeserved wrongs, in
twenty-seven folios of MS. memoirs, for he
wrote on a scale as large as he painted on.
As the gift of being long, and entertaining too,
is given to few, Mr. Taylor has judiciously
simmered down these masses into three
tomelets of pleasant and profitable reading.
He has exhibited Mr. Hayden with his perver•
sions, exaggerations, and unworthy actions,
set off by his yearning for the advance of high
art, his indomitable will, and his gladiatorial
pugnacity, it must he admitted ; and when he
fell at last, like Lucifer. it was after a manful
stand-up fight against a mountain accumula-
tion of mental and physical distresses. Nor
since the confessions of Rousseau has the mor-
bid anatomy of humanity been more revealed :
this demonstration is free at least from the
prurience of the filthy Swiss egotist, and in
some sort realises Mr. Haydon's hope that to
future artists his successes might act as a
stimulus, and hie mistakes as beacons. These

auLY 23, 1853.

blandly-termed mistakes, be it said, were the
fruits of a headstrong, ill-disciplined character,
which, sowing in the storms naturally reaped
in the whirlwind. The narrative in some sort re-
sembles a Greek play, in which the coming catas
trophe casts a shadow throughout, without fore-
stalling the interest, which is sustained by the
step-by-step progress, and by the moral and
melancholy which, like a low note, runs
throughout the tragedy.
Mr. Haydon was -born iu 1788, at Plymouth,
where his father was a bookseller. The organs
of the athlete and artist were early developed,
by the boy's delight in drawing guillotines and
caricaturing his schoolfellows. Placed behind
the counter, he insulted the customers. and
in 1804 started for London, reckless of his
father's advice and his mother's tears. The
wild lad opened his schemes, on his arrival,
to his townsman, old Northeote Heestori
caul peinter 1" replied the world-wise miser,
" ye'el starve—anatomy's no use—Sir 'Joshua
didn't know it," " But Michael Angelo did,
sir." " Michael Angelo ! what's he to du here?
You must paint portraits here, or ye'ell die
with a bundle of straw under ye'er head."
Haydon turned a deaf ear to this true prophet
—clung to the fantastic Fuseli—aud was
cheered and misled by that congenial hater of
portraits. Mr. Haydon's daguerreotype of his
strange Mentor evinces his Hogarthean powers
of portrait bordering on caricature. Arrived
at the terrible threshold, galvanised devils
met him in anticipation. " I heard the foot-
" steps of Fuseli (whom he fancied a giant), and
" then saw a little bony hand slide round the
" edge of the door, followed by a little white-
" headed, lion-faced man, in an old flannel
" dressing-gown, tied round his waist with a
" piece of rove, and upon his head the bottom
"of Mrs. } usell'a work-basket." The stu-
dent proceeded to sit down doggedly to draw the
figure at the Academy, and formed a friend-
ship with Wilkie—" a raw, pale, queer Scotch-
" man"—which continued all their lives, widely
as they diverged and differed in character and
art. The anecdotes and inklings of Wilkie
scattered through these pages form some of
the interesting portions, for Haydon had a
graphic power of describing incidents and per-
sons. The canny Scot, who bowed to every
storm and to every great man, achieved fame
and fortune by painting what his patrons do
sired to have, while the wrong-headed, sturdy
Saxon, who fought against the pricks, by trying
to force down what no one wished for, lived
and flied in disgrace and distress.
The road to fortune was soon opened to both
by Lord Mulgrave and Sir George Beaumont,
whose hobbies were politics and pictures.
Wilkie took the tide at the ebb, but Haydon
neglected the sound advice of his patrons to
paint smaller subjects and portraits, as a relief
to mind and purse—nay, was proud of quar-
relling with at man of rank. When too late he
found out his many errors, and turned (to
keep the wolf from the door) to subjects and
sizes which if, as he maintained, inde
pendent of high art, at least made artists in-
dependent, by tilling their sacks, which never,
when empty, can stand upright : in the end this
martyr to principle, this champion of high art
in theory, descended to an habitual practice of
moral and artificial lowness almost without
example ; and yet for every tergiversation and
dereliction his self-love found a ready excuse.
He began with a false start, and, ascribing to
the jealousy of the Royal Academy the un-
favourable position in which his first picture
was hung, forthwith threw away the scabbard,
and commenced an internecine war with that
corporation, embittering it with personalities
which recoiled on their author. He flew at
Martin Shee with that bull-dog spirit by which
we have seen his pupil, Eastlake, recently as-
sailed by an opponent into whom—if there be
truth in metempsychosis—his fiery and furious
spirit has transmimstted. Endued with the
" pluck" and" bottom" of a bntiser, RS he boasted,
he waxed fiercer from opposition; and while his
friend Keats—slain by a paper pellet—allowed
himself to be snuffed out by an " article," and
while Wilkie, when president West pitted the
poor Bird against him, nearly gave up the
ghost, Haydon " determined to fight it out,"
and returned blow for blow with all his might,
and, standing like a stag at bay, gored without
mercy, reckless if his hood wero singed,