The Press.
London, England, 1858-07-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS, JULY 17, 1858.

duty, resigned to the sacrifice and seeking only the glory of
Him to whom the sacrifice is offered. Yon never succeed
better than under these conditions, and everybody is a
gainer ; the speaker, in calmness, dign;ty, and simplicity,
—the audience, in a lof►ier and more penetrating address,
because it is untainted by self►shness and almost above
what is merely human.
Some persons calculate upon giving themselves eowage
by stimulating drinks or by a generous nuerishment. A
strange sort of courage that ! In war, where physical
force predominates, I can conceive such a thing—end it is
a resource not to be disdained before a battle ; but as our bu-
siness is a battle of eloquence, that is of the subtlest, most
intelligent, and most mental element that can be imagined,
there is need of another spirit rather than the spirit of alcohol
or of wine to stimulate the faculties and warm the heart.
Orators who have recourse to such means in order to
become capable of moving their hearers, will never get
beyond the sphere of the imagination and of the senses ;
and if they ever have any eloquence, it will be that of the
clubs, the taproom, and the crossroads,—an eloquence
which has a power of its own, bat in the interest of evil
passions.
We have ourselves felt pleasure in the perusal
of this volume, on account of its literary merit
and its freshness of style ; but it is more suited to
improve speakers who are already partly formed,
than to encourage novices. Of all arts, there is
none in which practice so conduces to improve-
ment as public speaking, up to a given point ;
but a man will not advance beyond that point
unless he be either an original genius, or unless
he has recourse to the critical text-writers who
have elaborately treated of the art of oratory.

Will He Marry Her ? By John Lang. London :

Routledge.
Tun two novels which Mr. Lang originally pub-
lished in Fraser's Magazine acquired for him a
reputation which his subsequent works have
hardly tended to sustain. lie has never, indeed,
evinced the skill necessary for the construction
of a good plot ; but in " The Wetherbys," which
was a photograph of certain phases of Indian life,
and in " The Forger's Wife," where the same
vivid feeling of reality was perceptible, he showed
that kind of power which draws the reader on
from scene to scene, and impresses him with the
truth of each separately, however inconsequent
or improbable the whole may eventually prove.
This effect seems to be attained by the employ-
ment of a studiously matter-of-fact style, and by
a circumstantiality in relating the most ordinary
occurrences, which at first produces an impression
of humorous quaintness, but ultimately of extreme
triviality. The realism of his style frequently
reminds us of Mrs. Crowe, whose ingenuity, how-
ever, in the mechanism of her stones he cannot
be said to rival, as he seems to consider the slen-
derest thread of narrative sufficient for connecting
his situations and adventures. Whether his vein
was exhausted by the production of his second
novel, or whether he has ceased to take pains, it
is impossible to say, but we can hardly imagine
that either " Too Much Alike " or " Too Clever
by Half" would have found admittance to the
PT;of Fraser.
present tale is concerned with Indian
matters, and turns on the attachment of an
European for an " Eurasian" damsel; the
Indian portion serving as a peg whereon to hang
divers episodes of military life. Mr. Lang has a
memory copiously stored with anecdote, and
some of his stories connected with the Sikh war
are amusing enough; nor will the sketches of
prominent characters, such as Lord Avalanche
and Sir Edward Ferret, fail to interest many
readers. But the fitults we have noticed are
more perceptible than ever; and though the main
conception of the plot is not without dramatic
power, it is nullified by the pointlessness of the
conclusion. A novelist should be a kind of little
Providence to his imaginary world, and connect
the fortunes of his characters in some manner
with their previous actions; not necessarily as a
moralist, but at any rate as a philosopher who
can recognize cause and effect. But in Mr.
Lang's present volume, character is displayed,
and hints of its tendency are given, all of which
lead to nothing. The hero, though a courageous
gentleman, is a silly and garrulous fellow, but his
faults have no effect but that of making the
story swerve a little, as it were, from its direct
course, while his virtues cannot save him from
the ultimate catastrophe which is the result of
pure accident. There is a mysterious English,
and an equally obscure, not to say dark, Oriental
trentleman,—a marvellous ring, and a malignant
Eastern prince (a sort of young Nana Sahib)—
, all capital materials for something tragic and

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romantic, but which "fog off," as gardeners say,
into nothingness, and leave the fate of the hero
and heroine to be determined by causes over
which nobody could possibly have had any con-
trol whatever. A German critic would probably
be led by these abortive preparations to the con-
clusion that Mr. Lang, like Homer, was of the
plural number, and that :the different Cyclic
individuals composing him had failed to fuse their
materials into a consistent whole. But Homer
nods, and Mr. Lang's dreams have perhaps been
a little incoherent. If he had omitted some of
the earlier and more matter-of-fact portions of
this book, and had worked up some of the threads
to which we have alluded into a firmer web, he
might have produced a good story ; as it is, we
fear it can only be classed with the tribe of rail-
way novels we reviewed a fortnight since, the
value of whose contents is in an inverse ratio to
the brilliancy of their outward aspect.

Among REPaorrs we have from Mr. Bentley
a cheap and convenient edition of " The Initials"
—one of the most charming novels that was ever
written. No one who begins this book can fail
to be fascinated by the freshness of the style, the
novelty of the manners depicted, and the keen
observation of character which pervades every
part. We have re-read it—after we fear to say
how many previous perusals—with renewed
pleasure.
- - -

Messrs. Smith and Elder have issued a hand-
somely printed and cloth-bound edition of
" Wutherm,g Heights " and " Agnes Grey—com-
pleting the Brontii series.
Messrs. Chapman and Hall send a cheap and
readable edition of " Agatha's Husband —a
novel, but not so good as some later works
good the same authoress. It turns a little too
much on those perverse and improbable misun-
derstandings which the female novelists of the
day love to paint, and with which they have by
this time thoroughly nauseated most sensible
readers ; but it is among the least flagrant of
such offenders.

The Quarterly Review. London: Murray.
WE have just received the July number of this
Review. We have, as yet, only had time to
glance at three or four of the articles, relating to
subjects of more or less immediate interest. All
these, however, seem to us to possess very high
merit indeed, and to give us reason for asserting
that this is one of the best numbers of the Review
that has appeared for many quarters.
We are especially glad to notice an uncom-
monly brisk and witty onslaught upon that
Daniel Lambert of literature, Mr. Buckle. It is
high time that this gentleman's inflated reputa-
tion was reduced to its proper limits. And it is
surprising to see what a few judicious pricks from
the Quarterly pen have done towards this de-
sirable consummation.
The article upon Blake is interesting and well-
timed, and on a lhture occasion we hope to give
some picturesque quotations from it. The tone
adopted towards the Puritans we cannot altoge-
ther approve in the pages of the Quarterly ; not
because we do not fully believe all that the
writer here says of their moral worth, and the
mistaken odium under which they have hitherto
laboured, but because obviously, cateris pari-
bus, which he himself admits to have been
the case, it was every sailor's duty, as a
king's servant, to have adhered to the King.
While the notion that the fleet, while,
sweeping. the Channel and intercepting succour
from their lawful sovereign, were playing a neu-
tral part and " keeping the ring," is an assertion
which, we think, the author of this article will
without much reflection admit to have been pre-
cipitate. But in every other respect the paper is
very good, and one of the best in the number.
The article on Wycliffe—being a review of
" Faaciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif
" cum Tritico. Ascribed to Thomas Netter, of
" Walden, Provincial of the Carmelite Order in
" England, and Confessor to Henry V. Edited
"by the Rev. Walter Waddington Shirley,
" Tutor and late Fellow of Wadham College,
" Oxford. Published by the Authority of the
" Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Tree-
" sury, under the direction of the Master of the
" Rolls "—is perhaps the piece de resistance
of the present issue. We shall recur to it in
a future notice. In the meantime, we give

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