The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-31 00:00:00

Thorndale ; or, the Conflict of Opinions. By
William Smith. London : Blackwoods.
WE presume from the position of Mr. Smith's
name upon the titlepago of this work that he
is the veritable author, and that the whole
story about the invalid and the deserted villa
is the coinage of his own imagination. We
cannot see the necessity for such a device.
Nobody will be thereby induced to absolve
Mr. Smith from the many silly things which
the book contains ; while they will perhaps be
provoked by this unnecessary mystery into
saying harsher things of him than he deserves.
We entertain a hearty dislike for all these
pasteboard contrivances. If a man has any-
thing to say on Life, or the Universe, or the
Beautiful, on social progress or individual
folly, let him say it straight out, in the good
old fashion of Paley, and Butler, and Hume.
Why dregs it up with these claptrap appen-
dages? Such, in our opinion, was the leading
defect of the otherwise admirable and eloquent
" Friends in Council." If by these means we
escape from the formality, pomposity, or dry-
ness of a set essay, we find too often what is
in our opinion infinitely worse,—an offensive
affectation of sprightliness, clumsy personali-
ties intended to be friendly banter, and all the
quackeries of grave men affecting the character
of wits. When we take up an argument in
politics or morals, we like it to be as lean and
muscular as a well-trained animal—no super-
fluous flesh, no decorations. Argument is
like beauty—when unadorned, adorned the
most. The symmetry of a close logical state-
ment is sufficient ornament unto itself, and
we care not to be interrupted in the middle of
it by silly pleasantries which break the tr•►iu
of thought without refreshing the faculties.

The framework of " Thorndale " is as fol-
lows :—A young Englishman named Charles
Thorndalc, cursed with a competency (a phrase
we detest), and more cursed by an nnrestrain-
able craviog after " the truths of the Universe,"
is the ostensible writer of these papers. As
such an appetite is just about as easy to
gratify as a longing for the apples of the
Hesperides, no wonder the hero becomes
melancholy in mind and attenuated in person.
To add to his wretchedness, his heart becomes
a prey to unsuccessful love and his lungs to
an only too successful malady. In this disas-
trous plight he takes refuge in a delicious
villa near Naples, where he pens these MSS.,
and where after his death they are discovered
under the parlour table by Mr. Smith and his
fellow-tourists. They contain a broken and
discursive biography of the deceased—a re-
cord of his impressions and observations on
various moral, metaphysical, and religious
subjects—a series of conversations upon topics
principally of a social and political character—
and, finally, "The Confessions of an Eclectic
and Utopian Philosopher, A.D. 1ti50."
These various portions of the work are of
very unequal merit. The autobiography is
not without interest, but the reflections are
mawkish, commonplace, and shallow. Witness
the two cr three following :

I have been sitting here. I kn trt not how long, watching
this beautiful sea bird. I saw it sail up from the far
horizon, steadily up towards the zenith, and there pause—
the slight centre, for a time, of one whole hemisphere.
I n this clear sky and universal calm, I could watch, I
could almost feel, each soft stroke of its wing—soft,
measured, strong. Oh, what a pulse of health and joy
seemed beating through the wide air ! With what con-
scious power it soared, and then poised itself motionless
on its secure and outstretched wings ! There it still
hangs—calm and alone, one little speck of life, one sentient
breathing thing, suspended in this dome of heaven, and
over this illimitable sea. There it. hangs, alone, fearless,
calm, in all this world of light, and beauty, and omnipo-
tence.

Vain, beautiful bird! were the wish of mortal man to
live in such peace as thine. It is not the buoyant wing
he wants ; not even, or altogether, the buoyant h-tart. It is
thy single-thnughted spirit that floats thee fearless and
peaceful over these illuminated solitudes. Man hopes too
much, and knows too little.

In all this blaze of light he looks be3ontl the sun.

For myself, I am very little interested in these debates
about the material or immaterial substance. My organic
frame, or one like it, can, if it please the Creator, be recon-
structed in any part of the universe. So that if you insist
upon the necessity of an organic frame to my thinking,
even this would not render impossible the perpetuity of my
consciousness. There is no necessity to suppose that we
take anything oat of the world material or immaterial.
The creation is where God is.

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