The Press.
London, England, 1855-02-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

In modern history events are so numerous
that it requires much skill to determine in
what manner they can be most conveniently
told. Mr. Massey has attempted something
like a classification of subjects. He separates
the King's domestic life from political history,
but he has not carried the principle far
enough. Hansard is a bad model for the
modern historian, though an excellent autho-
rity. Within the compass of twenty pages of
this history more than as many subjects are
discussed having no connection with the
other, except that they happened to come
under the notice of Parliament at nearly the
same time. Thus rapidly following each other
we meet with the headings—" Indian Policy."
" State of Ireland," " Exportation of Corn
Restricted," " East India Company," " Breach
of Parliamentary Etiquette," "Anarchy of the
Government," la " Revenue from America,"
" Chatham taken ill," &c. It is impossible to
engage the mind of a reader, or give him a
correct idea of any one question, by this frag-
mentary style of narrative. Oue fault of the
work is, that too much importance is attached
to mere parliamentary proceedings and their
chronological order. There are inconveniences
attending the classification and separate treat-
ment of historical subjects, but the advantages,
on a fair view, greatly preponderate. It was
by the adoption of this system that Gibbon
succeeded in rendering his massive pages so
fascinating. If we desire to know the origin
and progress of the American war, it is ob-
viously better that we should find it related
succinctly, or divided into periods, than that
we should have to hunt out the several inci-
dents of it in their order of time, mixed up
with a vast multiplicity of details which have
no kind of connection with them. More is
required in a historian than industry in the
collection of facts. "A history well divided
" and arranged," said Bossuet, "is already
" half written." No one should pretend to
commence a history who has not maturely
considered how the events he has to tell can
be best related.
Mr. Massey's narrative is generally accurate,
though tinged with prejudice against the King,
but we notice some remarkable slips. In
speaking of the accession of George 111., it is
said :
The King himself, with a happy recognition of his good
fortune, in his speech to the Parliament boasted of his
English birth and education, a topic which seemed to re-
vive in the nation that generous sentiment of loyalty which
had remained in abeyance since the expulsion of the lineal
race of kings.
Every reader of the period knows that the
King gloried in being born a Briton, and that
this expression, which it was supposed was
suggested by Lord Bute, raised a clamour at
the time, was seized hold of by Wilks, and
was years afterwards made a subject of re-
proach against the King and Bute in the libels
of Junius. Mr. Massey does not seem to have
consulted the memoirs of Lord Hardwicke,
where all the circumstances connected with
this speech are given at length. Amongst the
faults of the King is classed his " more than
" rpyal forgetfulness of services," though we
think it would be extremely difficult to estab-
lish the charge. It is said that the celebrated
remonstrance of the Duke of Beford, which
so excessively hurt the King, "was not stronger
" than it behoved a Minister of State to em-
" ploy ;" a strange opinion, when the King was
accused of consulting with Lord Bute, after
his express denial that he had done so. In
noticing the progress of political writing, it
is said that, " after Swift, Addison, and Boling-
" broke, party literature degenerated all at
" once from the classic standard, and fell into
"the vilest hands ;" yet during the very period
embraced by this volume, George Grenville,
Burke, and Johnson wrote party pamphlets,
and surely the compositions of Junius are not
to be despised.
The general policy of the King in the early
years of his reign is fairly stated in the an-
nexed paragraph :
Chatham still retained the seal of his office, but his
administration was now virLually at an end. The King
had pUppOrted him from first to last, with a sincerity which
none of his fortper Ministers, with the exception of Bute,
had ever experienced. His Majesty had, in fact, supported
both WA the self-stime principle of restoring the indepen-
dence of the Crown, which insolent and Sordid factions
combined So destroy. Getirge M. sad, from the com-
mencement of his reign, been intent upon this one object

.V

SATURDAY,

of breaking up and dispersing those connections of the
Whig aristocracy which had, for all practical purposes,
usurped the prerogative and monopolised the government
of the country. In the pursuit of this object he had made
many mistakes, sustained many reverses, and much per-
sonal insult ; but now, after an incessant warfare of six
years, it seemed that his perseverance was likely to achieve
the success which usually attends that invincible virtue.
The Sovereign had succeeded in engaging his greatest
subject in his design of emancipating himself from the
duress of party. Chatham had every qualification for so
difficult an undertaking, and, supported by the public con-
fidence, soon to be recovered with the vigour of his policy,
it is more than probable that he would have succeeded in
crushing the cabals which were hardly less odious to the
nation than irksome to the Crown.

In this desire of the King we have a key to
the political struggles of his reign till the
accession of Lord North's Ministry, when the
royal policy finally triumphed. Had the
author, however, attentively read the Rocking
ham correspondence, he would have discerned
that the King was equally as firm in his sup-
port of Lord Rockingham as of Bute or Chat-
ham. As a rule, the -King upheld his Ministry
for the time being against all opposition, and no
one who has learnt to what a pitch of insolence
the domination of the great Whig families had
reached previous to 1760 will feel surprised at
this policy of the King. George IT. felt his
thraldom, but could not escape from it. " I
see," said he, on one occasion, to Lord Hard-
wicke, " that in this country Ministers are the
" King,." The great Whig families, to main-
tain their rule, practised corruption on an
enormous scale, and there was great danger
that their system would smother public
liberty at the same time that it crushed the
royal prerogative. The King resolutely set
his face against bribery in every shape ; and
the change effected in the first ten years of his
reign is conspicuous in all the memoirs of the
period.

The rule by family connection was destroyed
before the legitimate action of party com-
menced. The principal statesmen who bore
part in the politics of the early years of
George 111. died or retired together. There
was no effective resistance to the Ministry of
Lord North—opposition was for the time well-
nigh extinet—and the ascendancy of the
King was immediately followed by the most
disastrous epoch in our annals—the American
war. There was no large mind in the Govern-
ment to control or to balance the strong will
of the King, or to foresee the consequences of
his policy. Through the break-up of all poli-
tical combinations and party ties the Court
became absolute, and there can be no question
that to this cause, and to the administrative
rule of the agents and clerks resulting from it,
the country owed all the misfortunes of the fol-
lowing ten years. The ascendancy of the Court
is an object always desired by courtiers and by
politicians who have deserted their party, and
who are in a true sense, whatever their rank,
mere political adventurers, and have no hope
of office but from royal favour. But this as-
cendancy can never be secured in a constitu-
tional country without destroying the balance
and weakening the force of the Government.
It overthrew, as M. Thiers, with great political
sagacity, foresaw it would, the rule of Louis
Philippe.
The most inveterate opponent of George 111.
must concede that he possessed one great
qualification for kingly rule—force of will.
Firmness in a good cause is obstinacy in a bad
one. The line must needs be narrow, and de-
pend much on opinion, which makes a virtue
or a vice of the same quality, according to its
exercise. This strong will has characterised
the house of Brunswick from the accession of
George I. to the present day, a period of one
hundred and forty years, and, on the whole,
has been eminently beneficial in its action. A
curious contrast might be drawn between the
fortunes of this house and that of the Stuarts'.
The latter was often distinguished by great
talents, fine intellect, by sensibility, ac-
complishments, and rare personal grace,
yet calamity constantly dogged its steps,
owing to its almost uniform infirmity of pur-
hpose. The race of Brunswick, on the contrary,
as been coarse in its tastes, sometimes brutal
in disposition, destitute of imagination, of
learning, of wit, of intellectual refinement in
any shape ; but it has possessed strong resolu-
tion, and, when its mind has been amide up, has
been equally insensible to persuasion and to

FEBRUARY 3, 1855.

threats. George 111. would sooner have laid
his own head on the block than have signed
the death warrant of Strafford. To the reso-
lution of the sovereigns of this house must
their invariable success as rulers be attri-
buted, as the calamities of the Stuarts must
in great part be ascribed to their vacillation.
To sum up our opinion of Mr. Massey's
volume, the style is easy, and as a chronicle it
fairly embodies the facts contained in recent
authentic publications. But he does not
always comprehend their importance. His
matter wants better arrangement, and we sus-
pect from the tinge of prejudice which colours
his narrative, when he evidently wishes it to
be impartial, that he has not strength of mind
to form a really independent judgment on
characters and events, or to survey them from
that intellectual height which enables the
historian to discern leading principles amidst
the intricacies of the past, and to s t them
forth with breadth and distinctness.

Tit for Tat; or, American Fixings of English
Humanity. " Tit for Tat is sharp sauce." By
a Lady from New Orleans. London ; Clarke
and Beeton.

THAT " ' Tit for Tat' is sharp sauce," accord-
ing to the old English proverb, we have no
wish to deny, but that it loses very much of its
original pungency when mixed by American
hands, we think every ono will allow who
glances over these " Fixings." There are only
three kinds of repartee, says Charles Reade in
" Peg Woffington "—Ts quoque, to mentiris, ed
tl9B dantnemini—and the " Lady " from Now
Orleans has chosen the first and feeblest of
the three. When we took up the book, we
frankly admit that we expected to find some-
thing more than a tirade of trumpery
taunts—we anticipated some hard facts,
which would remind us of another old
proverb about people living in glass houses,
&c., and we thought, indeed we hoped,
that the men who roasted negroes and flayed
regresses, who flogged, tortured, starved, and
cruelly ill-treated in every way those whom
dollars and rascality had subjected to their
will—we thought that these enlightened gentle-
men would have been able to write a good book,
or at all events to get a good book written for
them, upon some of our social evils, by way of
retaliation for the enthusiasm which was dis-
played in this country for Uncle Tom and
Mrs. Stowe. But we have been disappointed,
and " those proprietors, male or female, who
" are resolved unflinchingly to uphold the
" domestic institutions of the southern States,'
will, we fear, suffer as much personal pique us
pecuniary loss when they hear how slight has
been the effect of these " Fixings" amongst us.
We doubt much if those " Britishers who wept
" a Mississippi of tears" over " Uncle Tom" will
be moved to that extent by this story, the ob-
ject of which is to show to the world that we, as
a nation, have no right to complain of slavery
when we allow the most cruel system of oppres •
sion to be inflicted upon " the chimney-
sweep." But there is a wide distinction to be
drawn between a legalised system o: slavery
and an illegal evasion of the law. We admit
that the evidence taken before parliamentary
committees in 1852-3, disclosed a lamentable
amount of cruelty and vice among the class of
chimney -sweeps, and also a great evasion of
the law with regard to cleansing flues; but why
such an evasion of the law in England is to
he made the basis of a defence for such a
" happy domestic system" of slavery as exists
in the southern States of America, we are
rather at a loss to conceive. But to the story.

A certain gaunt Marquis of Hardheart, " who
"had been brought up to the profession of arms,
"and once wore the steel and purple of the
" Royal Horse Guards Blue" (how this reminds
us of Thackeray in some of his military
sketches !), has a great house and large estates
in the country, preserves strictly, and is the
terror ofall poachers. Transporting one of these
gentry, the most innocent of the gang, as the
case always is in a fiction, the marquis incurs
the intense hatred of the young man's father,
who swears the most terrible revenge. Among
the peculiarities of the marquis, who is impe-
rious, unamiable, and saving, is a remarkable
disregard for the laws of his country in

THE PRESS.

general, and for that law in particular which
compels the cleansing of flues by machines
instead of children—an amiable eccent►icity,
we are told, peculiar to the aristocracy. The
Marquis of Hardheart will build his own
chimneys, and will not have any soot-doors
in them, against the advice of his archi-
tect, who is discharged for his interfer•
ence, while the marquis continues the altera-
tions and builds his chimneys upon the most
approved principles for torturing the poor
children who will have to sweep them. But a
retributive
,justice lived in each brick, and as
sure as this obstinate peer planned chim-
neys with right angles and long flats in
them, so sure was he doomed to meet with& hor-
rible punishment by our" Lady" of Orleans The
Marquis of Hardheart has an only son, a beau
tiful boy of course, with flaxen curls and light
blue eyes, the Earl of Hopemore, and within a
week after the country chimneys have been
successfully swept for the first time, and the
marquis has come to town for the season, the
bright-eyed little earl, during his father's
dinner one evening, is beguiled away from the
house, kidnapped by some vagabonds, carried
off in a butcher's cart and taken to Manchester,
where, thrust into a cellar, his lovely curls
are cut off, and, clothed in sooty rags,
this heir to a marquisate is condemned
to be a chimney-sweep ! This is the revenge of
the poacher's father. The noble marquis then
goes mad, catches the smallpox, and is fright-
fully disfigured for the rest of his life ;
while his boy, "the pride of his heart and
" the joy of his house," is condemned to
slave and work, and suffer all the tortures
and hardships which were proved in evidence
to have been inflicted upon the climbing-boys
After a lapse of years the boy at length escapes
from his servitude, is adopted by a lady of
rank, educated and sent to sea, and at length,
just as this war breaks out, finds himself in the
service of the Emperor of Russia, superintend-
ing the fortifications of Cronstadt. He escapes
from his position, reaches England safely, and
is immediately introduced to the Lord Presi-
dent of the Council, and invited to an evening
party at his lordship's residence. Of course he
is discovered, and is restored to his long lost.
father, who dies in his son's arms, and thus
expiates his contempt for the laws of his
country and his obstinate predilection for
climbing-boys and chimneys with two right
angles and a dead fiat. And this is the story
which is, we suppose, to make us weep a
" Mississippi of tears," and suffer a Vesuvius
of burning shame for our social evils! We
have given more space to this nonsense than
it deserves, as there is at the present moment
a very charming Tit for Tat to be heard and
seen at one of our theatres, and we would wish
our readers most distinctly to understand that
that excellent version of the subject has no
connection whatever with this trumpery fiction
from the shop " over the way."

NEW FICTIONS.
A NUMBER of fictions have accumulated on our table
which we must dispose of summarily, though some
of them, from their originality and merit, well de-
serve more lengthened notice. The form in which
a majority of them are published shows that this kind
of literature meets with a large and increasing pri-
vate sale. The two neat pocket volumes, commonly
containing a domestic tale, seem to answer well, from
the number of them we meet with, particularly in
country houses. But we must first notice some of
the three-volume novels—the mould until lately in
which nearly all fiction was cast. It has assumed,
on the whole, a healthier tone since it has been
emancipated from its fetters, and since it has ad-
dressed itself to the taste of book-buyers, instead of
trusting wholly to the demand of circulating libraries.
Mrs. Gore can well afford to come before the
public in the established three volumes, as her repu-
tation is sure to create a run for her book. "The
Hardships of an Heiress is written with her usual
vivacity. Were such a being as a "lady aboujtown"
possible, one would swear that Mrs. Gore belonged
to the class. She knows everything—sporting and
gastronomy, Latin and seamanship—is as familiar
with the tricks of the Stock Exchange as with the
flirtations at Almack's, and is always well up in the
latest forms of fashionable slang. Let the pace of
the age be as "fast" as it may, she manages to keep
lip with it. It was a saying in the last age that no
one could possibly be so wise as Thurlow looked,
• Mammon; or, Hardships of an Heiress. By MrP. Oure. Hurst
and Blackett.

and we aver that no one can possibly be so knowing
as Sits. Gore seems. However, her crisp thyle and
happy audacity of invention always sustain the spirit
of her narrative, audit must be allowed, if her know-
ledge of men and things is often made up of scraps,
she manages to retail them with wonderful skill.
Her tattle comes perfectly natural to her. A gentle-
man entering his stables, tries to obtain some infor-
mation from a little drudge of the servants, and
fails :

Perceiving that it would be easier to ezt-act a rational
neigh from any one of the tine animals enjoying their
churn cum divailate, and hay, cam corn, in the polished oaken
stalls of his magnificent stables—" forty seeding like one,"
Sir John, &c.
Does not every one in an instant recognise the—
stmle shall we say ?—of our saucy, rattling novelist in
this passage, as carelessly lavish of her words as a
coquette of her smiles, and for the same reason that
she knows they will be sure to please. Fine delinea-
tions of character are not her for.e. Most of her
personages bear the vaudeville stamp, and their
range is not very wide. The curtain falls on them
in one dress, and rises on them in another. The
bigotted old Tory and enlightened liberal philan-
thropist have done duty so often that it is time they
were dismissed, with other creations of her fancy,
to the " tomb of the Capulets." There is
very little story in her last novel. The son
of a grasping, old, Tory baronet marries for
love, albeit he has an " old head on young shoulders,"
and is rewarded just as he tires of his bargain by a
legacy of 70,00111. a year, which goes to his second
son or eldest daughter. In due time he becomes
possessed of his paternal estates, 8,0001. a year more,
and of his mother's fortune, 150,0001., in addition.
The heiress is his daughter, and the narrative is oc-
cupied chiefly with the petty miseries she encounters
till she is settled just in the style a well-behaved,
amiable, pretty, young lady with such a fortune as
hers should be. The story wants pith and point;
but its scenes of many-coloured life—chiefly fashion-
able, of course—carry it forward with animation, and
the broad dioramic sketches of society give reality to
the whole composition. One of the cleverest passages
is the letter of Reuben Howard (iii. 3(0.302), but it
will not do for quotation. The presentation a the
heiress at the last drawing-room of the season will
supply us with a good example of Mrs. Gore's slap-
dash manner. Every one, of course, knows the young
slips of aristocracy in satin and lace who have the
honour of attending Majesty on state occasions :
Even the little pages of the household, no higher than
grenadier's cap, were eager for a glimpse of the debutante.
Look at the girl in white and silver, Georgy," said one
of them to his companion page, who was at home from
Eton for the day. " That's the famous Miss Wraysbury, the
greatest heiress in England; beats Miss Coutts by ever so
many chalks. How l should like to run away with her I
Wouldn't I have a stunning brace of guns, and hire a deer
forest, and build a swam-yacht—that's all."
" As if such a bundle of bank notes would stoop to an
ensign in the Guards—the most you'll ever be, Bob, even
if you're not spun in your examination. Why they say
that a duke was bespoke for her the very day she was
born; and Alan Hill, my long cousin in the Life Guards
(whose mother presents Miss Wraysbuty to-day), declares
that her father spends his life with " Burke's Peerage" in
his hand, pricking for a son-in-law."
" What a bore, to know that your daughter will be mar-
ried for motley ; and have to shell out to some Shylock in
peer's robes, who would not care if she were hanged!"
" Only right that there should be some hardships even
for an heiress," retorted the precocious philosopher of the
white satin aiguilette. But look at her governor. What
snob ! What a sneak! He looks thoroughly ashamed of
himself ; but not half so much as I should be of him were
I to marry the girl."
The novel is exhilirating in tone, and exhibits follies
and weaknesses of life in a spirit of playful sarcasm.
The manner is better than the matter; but this must
often be the case in representations of good society,
where, on the whole, comedy prevails much more
widely than tragedy. If, as the Spanish fabulist
Yriarte supposes, the manufacture of the brain bears
some analogy to that of the hands, we should say that
this latest work of Mrs. Gore's pen resembles thread
lace, in being infinitely more valuable from its style
than its material.
" Philip Lancaster"• is a well-written tale of do-
mestic life. Without containing much to excite the
imagination or stimulate the curiosity of the reader,
it fascinates his attention by the simplicity and quiet
grace of the. narrative. The scene is laid in a village
near Oxford, and, in her delineations of country life,
the authoress reminds us of Miss Austen, though
she more than rivals that lady in portraying the
persons who take part in the story. Every character
she introduces is drawn with daguerreotype fidelity.
The wicked Lord Pennington; the easy, good-natured,
vhist-loving, old rector; his successor, a disciple of
Anglican party; and the intelligent, God-fearing,
'ing minister, Mr. Morris, are brought vividly
s eye of the reader. The authoress depicts
•-%%i11y as she does character. Some of

eery as
woodls

• Philip Lancaster.