The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-16 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 16, 1858.

1012

converted from his evil habits. Stirling himself
thus relates the fact :

I had been all day in the public•house, and at night,
when I came borne, my wife, as usual, was reading a
chapter to the children. When she was so engaged, I went
in slipping like a condemned criminal. The portion of
Scripture read was the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew's
gospel, in which these words occur :—" When the Son of
man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with
him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And
before him shall be gathered all nations ; and he shall
separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth
his sheep from the goats : And he shell set the sheep on his
right hand, but the goats on the left." Our youngest boy,
then about four years old, was lying with his head on his
mother's lap, and just when she had read those awful
words, he looked up earnestly in her face, and asked :
" Will father be a goat then, mother? " This was too strong
to be resisted. The earnest innocent look of the child, the
bewilderment of the poor mother, and, above all, the
question itself, smote me to the heart's core. I spent a
sleepless, awfully miserable night, wishing rather to die
than live such a life. I was ashamed to go to church on
the following Sabbath. I stopped at home and read the
" Six Sermons on Intemperance," by Beecher, which had
found their way into the house, but how I never knew.
But so it was, that when looking about the house for some
suitable book to read on Sabbath, I laid my hands on
them, and they seemed as if written and printed and sent
there for me alone. I was now decided. My resolution
was taken, as it had never been before. All the men on
earth could not tempt me to drink, clear or brown, thick
or thin.

There is pathos of a high character in the child's
question, " Will father be a goat then, mother ?"
Stirling was a great lecturer on temperance,
and he had the secret of influencing the lower
classes, by addressing them in language which
they could easily understand. He had originally
possessed, like many humble Scotchmen, a con-
siderable amount of literary education, and that
he was of an emotional temperament can be seen
by the following reminiscences of his early days,
when he was cattle-herding

:--

While I was at my sheep and cattle herding, I always
took such books as came in my way to the moors with me,
and read them there. Amongst them were the " Pilgrim's
Progress ; " Sir David Lindsay of the Mount's four books
of " Monarchy," " Experience and the Courtier,"
" Complaint of the Papingos," and " The Curate and
Kitty," all in rhyme ; "The Scottish Worthies," Flavel's
Husbandry Spiritualised," " History of Britain " by Stack-
house," Wallace and Bruce," " Robinson Crusoe," " The
Gentle Shepherd," " Robin Hood," " iEsop's Fables,"
together with what history and geography fell into my
hands, all of which were eagerly devoured. When reading
" Wallace," and some passages in the " Scottish Worthies,"
my heart swelled to my throat. Then would I read aloud
to give vent to my feelings, until the tears flowed in streams
from my eyes.

His recollections of the scenes of life through
which he passed are interesting to those who care
for the homely sorrows of the poor; and the
poet Crabbe would have had ample matter for
one of his stern pictures from nature in the con-
tents of this volume.

Mr. Wallace quotes from Lord Cockburn's
" Memorials of His Own Time" ; but we have
seen such a severe critical exposure of some of
the misstatements in that book that we cannot
receive it as an authority. Lord Cockburn was
either apt to exaggerate or else his memory
failed him. Stirling, however, confirms Lord
Cockburn in the learned lord's account of the
extravagant drinking in Scotland in former days.
He relates as follows

The dying injunction of a Highland sergeant was, that
every one who attended his funeral was to be sure to get
drank before reaching a certain stream half-way to the
churchyard. It is needless to add that the injunction was
most faithfully carried out. The closing orgies were such,
however, that even the sergeant, with all his martial
character and love of whisky, could not have anticipated.
The party quarrelled before reaching the grave, but on
entering the burial-ground the quarrel rose to its height.
Clanship, and family pride, and rivalry, added fuel to the
flames which whisky had kindled, and some of the bones of
a former occupant, that lay scattered about the grave's
mouth, were usei as weapons in the bloody fray. In a
certain part of the North Highlands there was a famous
stone up to a very recent period, called the M'Leod's
Stone, as the only men in that quarter who could move it
were a few who bore that name. This stone was a great
eyesore to the M'Kenzies, none of whom could budge it a
single hair's-bi eadth. All funeral parties rested at this
stone, when the short kegs of whisky were again produced.
If any of the M'Kenzie's were present, the M'Leods moved
the stone, and of course there was a quarrel. A funeral
party drew up here as usual, some years ago, but it was
found that this stone of contention was broken to pieces.
An old shrewd blacksmith, one of the M'Kenzies, dreading
a renewal of hostilities, applied his foreliammer to it on
the night before the funeral. In the Highlands it was no
uncommon thing at a burial to have several rounds in or
about the house before starting, several on the road, when
the burying-ground was at a distance, another pull at the
bottle in the churchyard, and a few more applications on
returning to the house. When an innovation was at last
made upon these unseemly practices, by a proposal to
diminish the number of rounds at funerals, an old

Highlandman, who had not only been accustomed to hard
drinking on such occasions, but also to the bagpipes, left
in high dudgeon, muttering, " They may bury the deid that
like, or the deid may bury their nainsell; but I'll hae
naething tae dac wi a cauld dry burial."

Unhappily, it is too certain that even still there
is an immense amount of intoxication in Scotland,
and in Ireland there has been much reaction
against the partial reform effected by the late
Father Mathew. In England, the use of malt
liquors is a guard to a considerable extent against
a violent excess in alcoholic stimulant. A pint
of malt, however, is dearer than a glass of whisky
or gin, and the latter are the more deleterious
beverages. Coarse, raw, alcoholic stimulant,
taken on empty or partially-filled stomachs, must
have a ruinous effect on the brain, in persons
of only an average constitution. There are cases
of great topers who have lived to an extraordi-
nary age; but in those, as in other instances, the
sins of the parents are often visited on the off-
spring to the second and third generation. Two
great legal celebrities, within the last sixty years,
who climbed to earldoms, one in England and
the other in Ireland, were conspicuous for their
powers of hard drinking. They both lived to a
great age ; but in their sons and grandsons there
has been cerebral derangement, as recorded by
the proceedings in our courts of law. We were
much struck by the statement of Sir John Sin-
clair, in his treatise on health. He observes that,
after having collected particulars about longevity
in several cases from England, Scotland, and
Ireland, he could not identify sobriety with lon-
gevity. Hard drinkers, in many cases, had been
the longest livers, but early rising, in most cases,
was the habit of the longest-lived persons who
came under his notice. The Scotch philosopher
omitted, however, to dwell upon the important
question, What were the results to the off-
spring ?" Consumptive persons, by care and
regularity, often attain a comparatively long
spell of life, but their offspring wither and rapidly
decay ; and the analogy is applicable to
drunkards. Many of these may live to great age,
but their children pay the penalty of the paternal
vices.

This little volume has literary merits of a far
higher order than is common to " teetotal lite-
rature." It will be a useful addition to the library
of working men, and it is very suitable to village
collections of improving books. Mr. Wallace
writes with constderable power, though occa-
sionally he is betrayed into an affectation of fine
writing. The following is a fair sample of the
descriptive eloquence of Mr. Wallace :
Look back seventy years, and group all the circumstances
together; recall the old grey kirk, the quiet kirk-yard, and
the lovely scenery all around it : the lofty range of hills
immediately in the background, and the glorious panorama
stretching far away to the south and west, in which are
blended a thousand varied features of loveliness ; and then
turn to the mother, as she sits on the gravestone in the
corner of the kirk-yard, buried in the multitude of her own
sad thoughts, an object of sympathy and wonder to the
herd-boy, who is looking over the wall ; and then pass into
the public-house at the gate, and see the coarse, swearing,
drunken landlord, and his boon companions, and his chil-
dren hastening to ruin, and this heritor and the other
staggering homewards drunk, and you have the evils con•
nected with a public-house strangely and horribly corn-
mingled with all that is peaceful and pure, lovely and
sublime in nature, and with all that is hallowing in the
immediate precincts of a parish sanctuary, nestled at the
foot of the green range of Campsie Hills, and in one of the
loveliest of our Scottish straths. What a blot upon the
beauty of nature, and what a sad picture of the evils of
drinking, is seen in that poor mother weeping in the quiet
kirk-yard ! She has long since gone to her rest, where she
so often wept; but no one who ever reads the graphic
words of Stirling that depict her sufferings, and who shall
visit the kirk-yard at Strathblane, can fail to see her still
weeping there, like " Rachel for her children, and will
not be comforted." To the eye of fancy, there she still sits
and weeps on the gravestone beneath the spreading plane-
tree, the type of many mothers who weep at this moment
over their fondest hopes, crushed in the dust by the hoof
of the destroyer.

Though Mr. Wallace's style is rather too rhe-
torical, an affectionately earnest spirit gives it
life and natural power. The character of this
volume will be seen in the author's following
reflections :

If the eye of any poor inebriate shall fall upon these
pages, let him take courage and manfully resolve, in the
strength of God, to do battle with his worst enemy. With
such a life•atory as these pages make known, there is
hope for the drunkard. Let no one despair. After Bunyan
and Newton, who may not obtain mercy? and after James
Stirling, what drunkard may not be reformed ? The wasted
part of his life, and that extended over a period of many
years, is a sad, but a too common, illustration of the evils of
drinking ; the latter part is a standing testimony to the
applicability and power of temperance principles. In such

a life, and, thank God, it is far from being a solitary
instance, we have one of the strongest arguments for the abso-
lute necessity of the temperance movement; and at the same
time we have a noble testimony to its efficiency in producing
a marked change for the better, even upon the very worst
materials.

The book is meant well, it has much readable
matter, and as a record of a Scottish working
man who, under Providence, did much to atone
for his early aberrations, deserves the attention
of those who are interested in that great object,
the moral advancement of the working classes.

CARLYLE'S " 'HISTORY OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.'
—A great pressure on our space compels us to hold
over the second portion of our review of this work.
It will appear next week.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

BOOKS.
The United States and Cuba. By James M. Phillips.—
Pewtress and Co.
Guide-book. Algeria, Considered as a Winter Residence
for the English.—Pewtress and Co.
Quicksands. A Tale. By Anna Lisle.--Crroombridge.
--•------- -

PERIODICAL.
The Ladies' Treasury.—Ward and Lock.

ar S z L.

DRURY LANE.—Flotow's Martha, borrowed from
the libretto of a Parisian ballet entitled Lady lien.
riette, was produced, for the first time in this country
in English, by the Pyne and Harrison company, who
are certainly doing all in their power to render
operatic compositions in our native tongue attractive.
Like all specimens of the same school, this opera
depends rather on its piquancy than on its merits as
a musical composition as a whole, though some of
the concerted pieces are of a high order. This
remark is particularly applicable to its early parts, in
which the comic element strongly prevails; but
when it lapses into the serious and sentimental
it sadly disappoints musical taste. To the perform-
ance itself we can accord the most unqualified praise,
and, if anything can render Fiotow's music accept-
able in this country, the admirable efforts of the
English Opera Company should have that effect.
Nothing could have been wore charming and more
thoroughly effective than the singing of Miss Louisa
Tyne. Her sister, Miss Susan Pyne, played the
part of the soubrette with remarkable vivacity and
expression ; and Mr. Harrison, who was in fine
voice, was deservedly encored in some of the sentimen-
tal ballads. Mr. Patey, a young singer of consider-
able promise, made a most successful debut
in the character of Plunket ; Mr. Honey also well
sustained his reputation as the courtier, whose follies
received their fair reward in the merriment they
aroused. The orchestra, under the able management
of Mr. Mellon, perioneed the instrumental music
carefully and in good taste, and the chorus was
perfect. Some very beautiful scenery and tasteful
costumes of the old English period added to the
eclat of the opera. The house was well filled
in
every part, and the performance was greeted with
marked approval.