The Press.
London, England, 1855-09-22 00:00:00

910

ship. In the pages of none of the critics does
he appear to more advantage that in Mr.
Hallam's masculine estimate of his vast
achievements. We are glad to see the rational
tone of Mr. Bell's preliminary account of
Shakspeare's life.
Mr. Bell has recorded his obligations to
Mr. J. 0. Halliwell, whose elaborate life of
Shakspeare has been followed throughout.
We have often thought that sufficient literary
justice has not been done to Mr. Halliwell's
research and scholarship. We may quote
what Mr. Bell says on Mr. Halliwell's " Life of
Shakspeare

The vast amount of information collected into that work,
the variety of documentary evidence by which its state-
ments are supported and illustrated, and the vast expendi-
ture of time and toil bestowed upon its production, render
it altogether one of the most remarkable monuments of in.
dustry and intelligence, concentrated on a single subject, in
the whole range of biographical literature.
That praise is scarcely exaggerated.
It has sometimes struck us as singular how
few have read the poems printed in this
volume. The " Sonnets " appear to give us
something of the subjectivity of Shakspeare.
In his dramas it is difficult to say how much
of himself he put into his characters. There
is not in all his plays a more thoroughly
realised character than his haughty Coriolanus;
and that the same mind could imagine and
paint the hard intellectual criminality of Lady
Macbeth, the sorrows and madness of Lear,
and the gentleness of the Rosalinds and Violas,
is a marvel without literary parallel. Do the
" Sonnets " cast any light upon the personal
nature of the dramatist ?

They do, we think, to some extent. They
represent a sweet and fine spirit, and they
record how long he could sustain an emotional
state of mind. In their style there is the
false taste of the age, and their rhetoric is
decked with many quaint conceits, but we see
in them no contortions. We think that they
also illustrate what has been remarked of all
genius, as distinguished from mere talent,
that there is something of the feminine prin-
ciple in its nature. After perusing their
utterances of sympathy, we can more readily
understand the ease with which Shakapeare
peopled his plays with his female characters.
Here is one (the 71st) of the many sonnets
which illustrate our remarks :
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell :
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
0, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse :
But let your love even with my life decay;
(4. Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

Several more might be quoted of the same
semi-feminine inspiration. Invention of types
of character, and extraordinary closeness of
portraiture, were, however, the master-resources
of Shakspeare's genius. In the subjective
utterance of personal emotion he has been
equalled by some few dramatists. In his
" Sonnets " we would expect more intensity
and fire, when we recollect the vigour of his
plays. In swelling pomp of language, and in
the resonant music of the verse, they are
deficient ; and in that respect they aro strik-
ingly different from the splendid power of the
few sonnets which Milton has left us. Their
specialty is chiefly seen in their pathos, which
is genuine, though at times almost unmanly
in its maundering tone. But we must remem-
ber that in that age a language of endearment
was often used between men which would be
quite ridiculous now-a-days. In our times the
sexes have drawn marked boundaries between
the language of affection appropriate to each.
We have always thought the " Sonnets "
underrated. We place more value upon them
than Mr. Bell seems inclined to assign them,
and we surmise that there is something more
to be discovered of their literary history.
In his introduction to them Mr. Bell ob-
serves :

A conflict of hypotheses, intimately connected with the
date of the sonnets, has been rab,e(l respecting the facts
and persons to which they are supposed to refer. The
whole interest of this controversy is derived Prom the as•
Gumption that they relate to actual occurrences, and repro•

THE PRESS.

sent real emotions ; an assumption justified to some extent
by the air of gravity and truthfulness that pervades them,
but weakened, if not absolutely destroyed, by the want of
agreement in the grounds on which it is maintained.
Schlegel is of opinion that the sonnets reveal the early
life of the poet, and contain the confessions of his youth.
Coleridge believes that they express an actual passion, and
that they were all addressed to a woman, a supposition
which Mr. Hallam holds to be totally untenable. Chalmera
is at considerable pains to prove that they were addressed
to Queen Elizabeth, the allusion to the male sex being in-
tended to typify her majesty in her capacity as sovereign.
Gildon and Sewell had a loose impression that the sonnets
were amatory throughout, and written in praise of a mis-
tress. Tyrwhitt, Farmer, Steevens, Malone, and Drake
maintain that upwards of a hundred were addressed to a
man, but cannot agree as to the exact number, and differ
still more widely as to the person who was the object of
them. Mr. Armitage Brown, who has treated the subject
more elaborately than his predecessors, arrives at the con-
clusion that they are not sonnets at all, and that they con-
sist of six distinct poems, five of which are addressed to a
friend, and the sixth and last to a mistress. Seeing that
these irreconcileable views are asserted with equal confi-
dence, and almost with equal success, a temperate judg-
ment would be less disposed to accept any of them than to
reject them all. If the sonnets were so strongly imbued
with the autobiographical element as their interpreters have
assumed, the probability is that they would have spoken a
more definite language.
And he concludes his introduction thus :
It can neither be proved nor denied that the sonnets
reflect something of the life of Shakspeare. All poetry is
autobiographical. But the particle of actual life out of
which verse is wrought may be, and almost always is,
wholly incommensurate to the emotion depicted, and
remote from the forms into which it is ultimately shaped.
We should remember, also, that poets draw upon two
sources—experience and observation ; and who shall under-
take to separate the realities from the creations ? The
argument that derives from the earnestness of these sonnets
an evidence in favour of the autobiographical theory is the
weakest of all. What phase of life or aspect of passion
or suffering has not Shakspeare painted with equal truth
and fervour?

But Mr. Bell has there made scarcely suffi•
cient allowance for the difference between
what is " autobiographical " and " psycholo-
gical." A work may be full of interest of the
latter kind, and yet have none of the former.
The great mystery about Shakapeare is that
we know comparatively little of his career.
We cannot get at his subjectivity, and hence
we read these sonnets with more curiosity, as
they bring us nearer to the tone of his personal
feeling. Of course it is obvious that they
have no " autobiographical " revelations, but
we think that they may be accepted as
evidences of the mildness that belongs to
natures of the grandest power. Though none
better than he could paint the tempests of the
soul, it is probable that his own spirit was
like an ocean in a calm, serenely unfathomable.

While the introduction to these poems is
composed with adequate literary illustration,
we think that Mr. Bell might have more spe-
cially annotated some of the sonnets. For
example, the 142nd runs thus :

Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving :
0, but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find its merits not reproving ;
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine ;
Robbed others' beds revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee :
Root pity in thine heart, that when it grows,
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self•example mayst thou be denied I
Now, this sonnet deserves consideration, as
there is some doubt about the authorship of
the exquisite song, " Take, oh ! take those lips
away." The first stanza of that song, as
printed here in "The Passionate Pilgrim,"
reads :

Take, oh ! take those lips away
That so sweetly were forsworn ;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn !
But my kisses bring again
Seals of love, though sealed in vain.
Upon which Mr. Bell subjoins a note :

The first verse of this song is in Measure for Measure,
iv. 6, and both are in Beaumont and Fletcher's Rollo, Duke
of Normandy, v. 2. The whole is attributed to Shakapeare,
in an edition of his poems published in A 640. The evi-
dence of the authorship is not satisfactory. The source
of the song may be traced to the fragment Ad Lydiam,
ascribed to Cornelius Gallus.—See " Songs from the
Dramatists," pp. N, 148.
It would have been worth while to show the
resemblance between

Seals of love, though sealed in vain,

of the song, and

SATURDAY,

That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,
rind sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,
in the sonnet.
- -

Large as is the Shaksperian library already,
it would not, of course, be fair to expect that
Mr. Bell could in this volume have produced
any discoveries. But his volume will be par-
ticularly useful to those who are not ac-
quainted with the knowledge that is appro-
priate for these minor poems of Shakspeare.
In the ordinary editions of the poet they have
been left without sufficient notice, and general
readers have certainly neglected them too
much. " The Rape of Lucrece," though bor-
dering on what finical persons would call
coarseness, has luscious force of language,
and remarkably exhibits Shakspeare's opu-
lence of words, while its pictures bear a
Rubens-like depth of colour. ,But for narrative
poetry our language was not sufficiently for-
ward in that time, and it is most fortunate for
the world and for his own fame that Shak-
speare pursued the drama in preference to
epic models.
As a whole, this volume is one of the best in
this edition. As he advances, Mr. 801 l has
shown increased powers of grappling with
difficulties, and he has critically vindicated
the title of "Annotated." We have com-
mented on it freely ; but we have always
placed a high estimate on the intellectual
versatility and varied resources displayed in
its pages, and we felt pleasure in observing
our opinion recently corroborated by the em-
phatic praise bestowed by the Edinburgh
Review upon Mr. Bell's labours.

Gertrude ; or, Family Pride. By Mrs. Trol-
lope. Three Vols. London : Hurst and
Blackett.

IN this novel Mrs. Trollope has been an in-
voluntary imitator of Cervantes. She has
designed to represent as purely ridiculous one
of those characters which from being behind
their age are liable to have even their virtues
misunderstood. The Baron Von Schwanberg
is portrayed by Mrs. Trollope as a mere
" pompous fool." He is a noble of the Aus-
trian empire, and has immense estates in
Hungary, where he resides in feudal state,
surrounded by a contented tenantry, scarcely
dreaming of any greatness superior to his own.
His " mouomanical pride" is the theme of the
book : this quality is evidently greatly exagge•
rated—as, for example, in all that concerns
his daughter's marriage and the Almanach de
Gotha—but, allowing for the caricature rarely
absent from such fictitious creations, the cha-
racter is sustained with great fidelity. The
wonder is, that so sharp a woman as Mrs.
Trollope never perceived that this personage,
whom she labours with might and main to
render laughable, is, in fact, the real hero of
the narrative. He is the only honest person
in the whole book, and the only one in whose
fortunes we feel the slightest interest. His
daughter, the young baroness, is an artful,
wicked baggage; her lover, Rubert Odenthal,
is a mean-spirited prig ; Madame Odenthal is
a hypocrite ; and the other personages are in
different degrees either contemptible or
odious. Goethe has an observation in "Faust,"
of which he was not a little proud, that we
are acted on by our own creations. It seems
possible to carry aesthetic philosophy much
further. The creations of artist or poet may
be unintelligible to himself. He may draw
forms from life for which he has little feeling,
and marvel at their producing au effect far
above his own conceptions. This is espe
cially the case when the talent of an intellect
is above its feeling, and great quickness of
observation is dissociated from elevation of
sentiment. Mrs. Trollope, from her sense of
truth in character, has portrayed the Baron
with general consistency, but without under-
standing the worth and genuine nobility of
those qualities which are allied to his family
pride, and perhaps inseparable from it. Mark,
for example, the credulity, arising from his
innate truth and honour, which renders him the
easy victim of transparent deception; the
liberality which induces him to • undertake
liabilities beyond the compass of his means ;
the indignation with which he receives a pro-
posal that his tenants shall be called on to
anticipate their payments; and the boundless

4

SEPT. 22,1855.

love he feels for his daughter, so that she has
no difficulty in making him the instrument of
all her false and intriguing tricks. Had Mrs.
Trollope really understood the character she
was delineating she might have made the
book of a much higher order than it is, but
she has missed the real strength of the
Baron's nature for narrative, and has simply
exhibited its ludicrous side. There are
touches, however, in which the authoress
seems in spite of herself to have brought
forth the bright side of his character. He has
received Rupert Odenthal, a lad born on his
estate, into his house from gratitude for his
service in saving the life of his daughter when
a child. The result may be imagined. The
young lady choses the youth's mother,
Madame Odenthal, as her companion. When,
in consequence of his ready compliance with
his daughter's extravagant notions at Paris,
his circumstances are embarrassed, Madame
Odental suggests a mode of relief:—

It was in vain that Madame Odenthal pointed out to him
the very consolatory fact, that the deficiency was by no
means large enough to occasion him any permanent incon-
venience ; and that if he would please to write a letter to
Rupert, directing him what tenants to apply to, and fur-
nishing him with the necessary authority for collecting the
sum required, he would be sure to transmit the money
to the Paris banker long before any of the tradesmen he
employed would think of troubling him about the payment
of their accounts.

The Baron listened to her with a countenance that be-
came redder and fiercer with every word she spoke ; so
much so, indeed,'that she became frightened and stopped
short, long before she had said all that it was in her power
to say, respecting the perfect facility with which a gentle-
man in his position might obtain what he wanted without
the slightest difficulty of any kind.
" What ! " he exclaimed, in the very loudest tone to
which his very loud voice could be raised ; " what ! do
you suppose I am going to send about begging-petitions
to my tenants, imploring them for charity, to pay me
my rents before they are due ? Woman ! are you
mad ? What have you ever seen in my conduct
or in my character, which can justify your holding so
base an opinion of me? I go begging to my tenants?
I? And which among them do you think would
do me the great wrong of believing that such a message
could come from me ? Your son is a very worthy, respect-
able youth, my good woman, and the manner in which I
have permitted him to domesticate himself with me. has
conferred upon him a degree of distinction which nothing
else could have done ; and, as you must have observed both
in his case and your own, has induced that distinguished
portion of society to which I belong, to permit his approach
to them, as if, in some mysterious manner, he really
belonged to their class. T am as much aware the effect
my patronage has produced, as either you or he can be ;
but I am not so bewildered in intellect as to suppose that
if he were to be the bearer of such a message to my tenants,
as you have named, they would any one of them believe
that such a message ever came from me."

When at last he is persuaded to comply
with this suggestion, the consequence ex-
torts, in a manner, this admission from the
authoress :

He knew himself to be an immensely great man, and
assuredly enjoyed the consciousness of being so not
a little ; but he really did not know that he was, moreover,
a very kind and liberal one, into the bargain.
But his prosperous tenants knew it, if he did not; and
the lively description which Rupert gave of the delight, ay,
and the gratitude also, with which his application to them
had been received, awakened such a pleasant consciousness
of this truth also, in the mind of the worthy Baron, that he
was evidently more touched at heart by it than he had
ever before been seen to be by anything in which his
daughter was not personally concerned.
Gertrude watched all this with a sort of pleasure that
was quite new to her; and when a quiet smile, having no
reference whatever to his grandeur, softened his proud fea-
tures as he listened to Rupert's very graphic narrative,
Gertrude was so touched by it that she sprang from her
chair, and impressed a kiss of very genuine fondness on
Ilia forehead.

"It pleases you to hear all this, my dear child!" said
her father, throwing his arm round her. " And so it does
me, Gertrude," he added with great simplicity. " I am
sure I don't know how it has happened that it never came
into my head before, that they might feel that sort of love
for me that Rupert describes. 1 have never done any-
thing for them except just not using them ill, but I really
like to hear that they take it so kindly."
With more delicate handling, the Baton might
have been made a masterpiece; but Mrs.
Trollope is too coarse in her conceptions to
comprehend the opportunity she has lost.
The construction of the novel is singular.
The opening chapter relates to events near
the end of the book. With the marriage,
indeed, or soon after it, the narrative might
advantageously have closed. All the " lying
in" part of the story, with the artifices used to
conceal the parentage of the babe, is in vile
taste. Mrs. Trollope has departed widely
from established models of romance, but we
cannot congratulate her on the success of her

THE PRESS.

experiment; there is enough latitude for fic-
tion without entering on details and inuendoes
which should be sacred to midwifery.

The Married Life of Rachel Lady Russell. By M.

GuisoL Translated from the French. London :

Bosworth.
Tars slight but interesting sketch of the life of Lady
Rachel Russell first appeared in the Revue des
Deux Mondes, and has now, by desire of the pre-
sent Duke of Bedford, been translated as a valuable
accompaniment to the recently-published edition of
Lady Russell's letters. The chief incident of her
unhappy life is too well known to need comment;
suffice it to say, that the talent of the writer, and the
deep feeling which he evinces, have in this instance
lent peculiar interest to the subject.
- - -

As romance is so much in request (observes M. Guizot)
why not search for it in history ? There will be found
life with its most varied and dramatic scenes, the human
heart with its strongest as well as its most gentle passions,
and above all a sovereign charm, the charm of reality. I
admire and appreciate as much as any person the creative
power of imagination, which places before us, endowed
with life, animation, and feeling, ideal beings invested with
the attributes of humanity, and displaying all the riches of
the mind through the ever•varying vicissitudes of fortune;
but those persons who have really lived, who have actually
experienced calamities, passions, joys, and sorrows, the
contemplation of which is so interesting to us, fascinate
me still more powerfully than the most perfect productions
of poetry or romance. The living creature, the work of
God, when seen under its divine aspects, is more beautiful
than all human creation, and of all poets God is the greatest.
And the life of Rachel Lady Russell bears sad
witness to this text. Married and widowed in early
years, she chose for her second husband a man by
whom she was passionately adored, and to whom she
was as passionately attached, only to lose him by a cruel
death after a still shorter period of domestic happi-
ness. Condemned hereafter to a long and sad
widowhood, she devoted herself to family duties ; and,
though engrossed by her own inner world of grief,
she was neither inattentive to nor uninterested in
the welfare and happiness of her children and friends.
Yet her heavy calamities did not cease with the
death of her husband : in after years, in the full
bloom of life and in possession of rank and honours
showered on them by Willian 111., her son, then
Duke of Bedford, was cut off by the smallpox, and
her second daughter died in childbed. Amidst
such terrible griefs she never lost that sincere trust
in Divine Providence and lively appreciation of His
mercies by which alone she endured her heavy trials,
and bowed contented and sudmissive to His will.
How hard the trial was may be seen by the fol-
lowing extracts from letters written shortly after the
execution of her husband, and the death of her
children :

-------
All kinds of (painful ideas assail my weakened and deso-
late heart, add when I have surmounted one I fall into
another. If my affliction abates for a moment, a thousand
reflections on the past arise before me. Who knows if
some important act has not been omitted? If we had per-
severed more, he would perhaps have gone away ; if such
or such an error had been corrected during the trial, if
other steps had been taken, he would perhaps have been
acquitted, and he would have been still in the land of the
living. . . . I think I am wrong to torment myself thus by
all these unavailing regrets, but they not the less increase
my grief. . . . Lord ! let me understand the reason of
these dark and wounding providences, that I sink not
under the discouragement of my own thoughts I I know
I have deserved my punishment, and will be silent under
it; but yet secretly my heart mourns, too sadly I fear, and
cannot be comforted, because I have not the dear compa-
nion and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. I want him
to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with. All these
things are irksome to me now ; the day unwelcome, and
the night so too. All company and meals I would avoid,
if it might be ; yet all this is, that I enjoy not the world in
my own way, and this sure hinders my comfort. When I
see my children before me, I remember the pleasure he
took in them ; this makes my heart shrink ! . . . 0, if I
did but stedfastly believe, I could not be dejected ! . . . I
most willingly forsake this world—this vexatious, trouble-
some world, in which I have no other business but to rid
my soul of sin, secure by faith and a good conscience my
eternal interests

When Nature, who will be mistress, has in some mea-
sure with time relieved herself, then, and not till then, I
trust the Goodness which bath no bounds, and whose power
is irresistible, will assist me by His grace to rest contented
with what His unerring providence has appointed and
permitted. And I shall feel ease in this contemplation,
that there was nothing uncomfortable in his death but the
losing him.
In summing up her character as a woman, her un-
ostentatious virtues call forth from M. Guizot an
eloquent appeal against the social doctrines of the
present age :
Oar age is tainted with a deplorable malady ; it believes
in no passion, unless accompanied with exaggeration ; un-
bounded love, perfect devotion, all those exalted and ardent
feelings, the masters of the mind, only seem possible to it
when carried beyond the pale of the laws of morality and
social propriety ; all order is in its eyes a yoke which para-
lyses all submission, a slavery which debases ; every flame
is extinguished if it does not become a conflAgration. An
evil the more serious, since it is not an attack of foyer, nor

911

the outbreak of exuberant force ; it has its source in per-
verse doctrines, in the rejection of all law, all faith, all
superhuman existence, in the idolatry of man, putting
himself in the place of his Creator—himself, and himself
alone, his only pleasure and his sole desire : and to this
evil another is added, not less deplorable---man not only
does not worship inure than himself, but he worships him-
self only as one of the multitude iu which all individuality
is lost ; he bears hatred and envy to all that rises above the
common level ; all superiority, all individual greatness, of
whatever kind or name, seems to such minds at once mad and
degenerate, a sin and an oppression towards that chaos of
undefined and ephemeral beings which they call humanity.
When some great scandal is discovered in the highest
ranks of society, some odious instance of vice and crime,
they triumph, and bring forward these disgraceful coca-
rences against social superiority. They wish us to believe
that these are the ordinary morals, the natural consequences
of high birth, great wealth, and aristocratic rank, no matter
by what title or on what foundation it is raised. When we
have been assailed by these base doctrines, and the shame-
ful passions which give them birth and spring from them,
when we have felt the repugnance and weighed the danger,
it is a refreshing enjoyment to meet one A those noble
examples which give them so brilliant a contradiction. As
much as I respect human nature in its whole, so much I
admire and love these exalted images of mankind, which
personify and place on a lofty eminence, under visible
features and with their real name, that which is most noble
and most pure. Lady Russell presents to the mind this
beautiful and honest gratification. She is a noble, Chris-
tian lady.

In whatever point of view we contemplate her cha-
racter, we find an eminently pious, contented, and
submissive mind, alike under the greatest earthly
happiness or domestic calamity. Few of us can
read her letters or her life without being fascinated
by the purity of her love and the constancy of her
g►ief. After a life of almost unequalled happiness at
first, and then unexampled affliction and severe cala-
mity, she died at an advanced period of life, in the
arms of her solo surviving child, faithful and de-
voted to the last. In a licentious age, she was the
most virtuous and attached wife, the most tender and
careful mother. Her fame and her virtues have
achieved an immortality for her; at once a heroine
and a saint, she lives in the hearts of all people a
model of domestic virtue, true piety, and sincere
submission.

Female Life among the Mormons. fly the Wife of a

Mormon Elder. London : Reutledge.
THIS book professes to be a narrative of the adven-
tures of a young woman who, driven from her
home, was inveigled into marrying a Mormon, and
resided for some period of her life at Utah, the
Sacred City, until she committed the crime of listen-
ing to a conversation concerning State secrets be-
tween two of the elders. Being discovered, to
save her life she was forced to tly ; when, after a few
uninteresting adventures, she ultimately returns to her
disconsolate friends. In this narrative, so much con-
cerning matrimony in its plural sense and so many ma-
trimonial events are alone related—for, in point of fact,
scarcely a chapter can be found without a proposal for
a wife, or an account of a wedding—that we are in-
clined to look upon the book with suspicion. There
is some little curiosity excited about the Mormons
just now ; every mail from California brings us more
or less intelligence about them : their agents, more-
over, are numerous in this country ; and polygamy
has just so much novelty about it as to excite the
curiosity of both sexes, so that a book containing vivid
accounts of the domestic life of those men who treat
themselves to a dozen wives would have a good
chance of popularity. But the description given
in this book of female life among the Mormons
is poor stuff after all. We have only the most
insipid improprieties—pictures of "sensual brutes"
threatening " beautiful maidens ;" or of men
with a "revolting exterior," with twelve wives and
thirty children, proposing for the hands of a couple
of sisters; or of respectable elderly married gentle-
men, who bad become Mormons, as they tell their
wives, without exactly knowing what it meant, sud-
denly leaving the virtuous partners of their joys,
seduced by some artful girl who has a design upon
their money as well as morals. But all these things
are related in that melodramatic, mock-modest,
brummagem style which stamps them as impostures.
In a word, the book just fails ; it is neither firm and
honest enough in its tone to do good, if it ever had
that intention, and too insipid to do harm ; it is a
sort of compromise with the productions of "un-
recognised publishers ;" and as for incident or ad-
venture, it is utterly without an, pretension to into-
res or amuse.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
My First Season. Beatrice Reynolds. Smith and Elder.
Illustrated, Historical, and Picturesque Guide to Boursessouih.
Longman..
Ward and Lock.
Routledge.
Do.

The Wild Tribee of London.
The Kitchen Garden. E. S. Pelamer.
The Old Commodore. Railway library.
The Bombay Quarterly Review. Smith and Elder.
The Limited Liability Act. J. H. James. Butterworth.
The Subjective Logic of Hegel. John Chapman
Ow the ReAnnation of Young Offenders. Routledge.

912

rnustrnents, et.

PHOTOGRAPHIC PICTURES OF THE
CRIMEA.

AN exhibition of photographic views of the Crimea
was opened on Thursday last at the Water-colour
Gallery, Pall-mall. This series of views and por-
traits has been taken during the present year by
Mr. Fenton, the eminent photographer, who appears
to have executed his task with considerable ability.
The pictures in all number some 280, and comprise
portraits of the most distinguished officers who have
been and are engaged in the war, besides various
views of the camp and the trenches. As specimens
of photography, considering the circumstances under
which they were taken, some allowance must, of
course, be made ; but the interest of the exhibition
does not lie so much in its art as in its subject; and
though a few of the pictures here and there are not
so sharp and effective as could be desired, yet most
are accurate and excellent specimens, and, from the
grave historical interest attached to every spot of
ground now so well known by name, the
exhibition is one which directly appeals to our inte-
rest and curiosity. The living likenesses of many of
those who have since gone to their long home will be
found here, Lord Raglan, General Estcourt, Colonel
Shadforth, and many others; while of tl ose that yet
" live and move and have their being " we have clever
and characteristic portraits. That in particular of
General Bosqiiet (No. 110 giving orders to his staff
is extremely clever. The position of the general, his
outstretched arm and his sharp, eagle eye, with the
earnest attention of the staff officers, is admirably
caught; while Marshal Pelissier ( No. 264) looks
precisely what he is—a most determined general.
The groups of soldiers, officers, or Croats, are all re-
markably good: taken in an idle moment, a better
opportunity was probably afforded the photographer.
The views of the camp enable one to obtain an ex•
cellent idea of the spaces and distancei, as well as of
the positions of the different batteries and the appear-
ance of the town from our lines. Among other things,
in those views which represent it, it is remarkable
how low the Malakoff Tower looks. About the
best views given will be found in the series of eleven,
from No. 152 to No. 162 inclusive, presenting a pano-
ramic view of the plateau before Sebastopol, from
Inkermann round, including part of the French left
attack, a centre view of Sebastopol, with the Radon,
Malakoff, and Mamelon, and Cathcart's-hill, with the
Cemetery, &c. Another excellent specimen of pho-
tography is No. 260, "The Quarries." "The Plains
of Balaklava" (No. 243 to No. 247) are also clear
and good views, and the " Group of Croats " (No. 265)
is remarkably clever. It is to be regretted almost
that portraits should have predominated in such an
exhibition of camp life as this purports to be. Still.
life, perhaps, is essential to the photographer, and
hence he would be limited in his subjects ; but Mr.
Fenton might have given us more landscape and less
portrait. Like Virgil's heroes, we have here not only
tie living likenesses of the leading generals, but
"fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthem." By
photography we gain in accuracy what we lose,
by the pencil, in variety ; but in a series of represen-
tations of camp life, at the time of the vigorous pro-
secution of a siege against a vast fortress, if we do not
find, we sadly miss those scenes of that active, despe-
rate life we know is led in tho trenches. As the first in
the field of exhibitors, Mr. Fenton's exhibition is,
however, full of interest and attraction, and we have
no doubt will obtain a large share of patronage. The
views, we believe, have been already submitted to the
approbation of her Majesty the Queen, and also of
the Emperor of the French, under whose august
patronage the publication of the views in these clas-
sified sections of scenery, incident, and portrait is
about to be undertaken by an eminent house in Man-
chester. The first part of each section is to appear
I n October, and to contain six subjects, to be con-
cluded in ten parts.

THE AFRICAN Tvrtits, EoYrrlAN•nAls,.—ln these
children is to be beheld one of the most remarkable
of Nature's freaks. United for their lives, back to
back, by a band of flesh in the lumbar region,
and, in the most peculiar and extraordinary manner,
sharing the functions of certain organs, they pre-
sent a singular phenomenon. It is for a medical
journal, of course, alone to enter into a minute
description of the physiological and anatomical
features which the children present, and to decide
whether or not the vertebtte of the back are joined,
or the spinal chords affected ; but it is open to all
observers to remark the leading features of the
phenomenon presented to them. Distinct in dispo-
sition and feature, having no peculiar similarity of
taste, possessing separate wills, with different pulses,
and in perfect health, these children offer a living
puzzle to physiologists and surgeons. Unlike the
Siamese twins, there is no possibility of separation
in this instance, on account of the extreme narrow-
ness and thickness of the ligament which joins
them, and a community of organ in a vital part