The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

I•
1240 THE PRESS, DECEMBER 18, 1858.

sive recipients. Truly the progress of civilization
is a very up and down affair ! Who could
imagine these women-driving Teutons to be
lineally descended from those Barbarians of
whom Tacitus reports: " Puellis inesse quin
" etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec
" aut consilia earuin aspernantur, ant responsa
" negligunt " ?
- - - -

AVhere the social position of the sex is low,
the standard of sexual morality will be so also.
Of this Miss Johnson supplies abundant and
perfectly reliable evidence :

The following we had from a German lady, who was very
tenacious of the honour of her country. A young girl
presented herself as wishing a place as domestic in the
family. The husband said, " Ask her how many children
she has ; and if she says one, it may be prudent, but
better two or even three : if she says none, send her away
by all means, for it she comes we shall be obliged to
dismiss her in six months."
girl, our travelling companion, toll us that in one town
where she was in the spring, after her return from America,
there was a confirmation [first communion ?) in her
church, and 300 girls were to be confirmed, who were from
fourteen to sixteen years of age, and when the examination
[confession ?) came only sixteen could be admitted to the
church by this holy rite ; all the others were, at this early
age, fallen women. We could scarcely believe our ears,
and should not have credited the statement if we had
received it from one who belonged to a different commu•
nion, but our informer was a member of the same church
and a most earnest defender of her faith.

Although the statistics of the above may be
presumed inaccurate, the general truth of the
fact can scarcely be doubted. Sexual morality,
ceteria paribus, bears everywhere a direct ratio
to the amount of indulgence extended, by public
opinion, towards its infringement. Where to be
the mother of illegitimate children constitutes an
additional recommendation in a servant ; where
ladies, as Miss Johnson assures us, prefer choosing
their nurses among mothers of this class ; and
where the ringless hand smooths down the child's
fair curls without plunging for concealment amid
their clusters,—we may safely assume that the
proportion of the erring to the pure, if not
exactly 941 per cent., as in the instance cited,
will be at least a good round figure.

It is a curious illustration of this principle that
precisely in some of the least moral districts the
most stringent corrective measures are adopted.
In the very village where the competitive ex-
amination above alluded to gave such an
astounding result, Miss Johnson hears the name
of an erring damsel proclaimed through the
streets by the bellman, and learns that such is the
practice, throughout the entire province, " when
" a young girl has gone astray from rectitude,
"and has concealed her sin instead of confessing
"it to the priest as required." Elsewhere she
finds that the custom of placing the unconsecrated
mother upon the doorstep of the church, " with
a paper pinned to her back," has only been a few
years obsolete ; while in other parts an obligatory
coiffure, the absence of the bridal wreath, &c.,
serve a similar purpose. "It was never evident,"
observes Miss Johnson, "that such punishments
" deterred from sin."

As a general rule it may safely be assumed
that all " preventive checks " upon marriage—
except those self-imposed—are direct incentives
to immorality.
The practical value of that "public education,"
for which Germany takes such credit, may be
pretty well estimated from the above facts. On
this subject Miss Johnson very justly remarks :

The people here are taught indeed to read and write—
but they are scarcely more educated and not a whit more
intelligent for this They are both ignorant and
stupid. The Government does not allow them to think or
act, and the children of England or America who do not
know how to read or write are more intelligent and have
more mental activity. We have seen learned professors
who were as stupid as cartuten, and never had one original
thought, and were no better judges of practical things in
the world than children, and no more useful.

The above specimens—selected from some of
the most interesting though by no means the
most entertaining portions of this book—will
suffice to corroborate our opening remark, that
Miss Anna Johnson is no ordinary tourist. The
ground she has gone over is almost untrodden ;
and the rectitude of her aim, the liberal and
kindly spirit of her observations, together with
the copiousness, variety, and general accuracy
of her facts, may well merit indulgence towards
flagrant though merely technical shortcomings in
style, lucidity, and arrangement. That Miss
Johnson is an American our readers are already
aware. Her nationality, indeed, imparts its
peculiar tone and colouring to the whole work.
But if frequent patriotic glorification betrays the
persistent soreness of that " raw," established by
Mrs. Trollope and continually "touched up" by
Mrs. Trollope's successors, we must do Miss
Johnson the justice to state that, in all her
censures upon continental abuses and imper-
fections, England is invariably excepted. England
and America, in her eyes, evidently owe each
other the mutual respect and indulgence which
kin may claim from kin. We only wish that the
same just and kindly feeling were a little more
universal on both sides of that broad ocean
which science has already narrowed to the
dimensions of a stream.

nacle, but failed in transforming his Xantippe into
a meek Christian spouse,—and around these four
principal characters a number of subordinate
figures, the Xantippe aforesaid among the rest,
skilfully arranged,—furnish the materials for a
highly-interesting dramatic tale in three acts.
To the vivid portraiture of the manner of life
and the modes of thought which characterized
the London world a hundred years since,
presented by this three-panel picture, is ap-
pended, in a subsequent portion of the vo-
lume, by way of supplement, " a picture
of England a century ago " (worked up from
that faithful mirror of the times, the chronicle of
Sylvanus Urban), which contains a variety of
curious matter, additionally flavoured in the
recital by an occasional glance at the contrast
between things as they were then and as they are
now.

In accounting for this deplorable state of things
our author has certainly hit upon one of the
efficient causes—in the direct impediments
thrown by Government in the way of marriage.
In Bavaria,

Neu' Pictures and Old Panels. By Dr. Doran.
London : Bentley.
FROM among the scraps of historical lore which,
in the course of his explorations in the less-
frequented nooks of the old mansion of Dame
Clio, he has " promiscuously " picked up, Dr.
Doran has selected a tolerable variety of subjects,
and strung them together in the present volume
for the entertainment of his readers. Beyond the
fiction of " a company of artists, some half-dozen
" from various parts of the world," and a " lay-
friend," who, meeting from time to time, calmer-
savone fashion, produce from their portfolios
divers sketches as starting-points for discussions
which branch out into numberless recollections
and associations, there is nothing to connect these
" New Pictures and Old Panels " with each
other. The sketches from the apocryphal port-
folios, and the discussions to which they give rise,
are, one after another, thrown into the form of
sprightly narratives, with an ever-flowing
undercurrent of sly satire, of philosophy
oftener playful than grave, and of pleasant
fancy, sometimes approaching the loftier
regions of poetry, but for the most part disporting
itself close to the earth's surface.

the laws concerning marriage and property are so
severe that thousands cannot acquire sufficient to unable
them to pay the priest and sheriff, and therefore live
togeiher without any form of marriage at all.
If a young girl, born in one duchy, removes to another,
she cannot marry a citizen of the place to which she lies
removed without paying a sum which few among the
lower classes can command ; and this is why we see, in
so many instances, young men married to old women who
have, by a former husband, acquired the means of pur-
chasing the citizenship of a stc.)nd. A woman with this
advantage will offer herself to a young man in the factory
or shop where he has served his apprenticeship, and if he
declines her proposals be will be dismissed from service.
We know one instance where a young man had married,
in this way, a widow with one child, in order to acquire
the right of citizenship and the position of muter work.
man in a large town, and after her death wished to
marry again a young girl who was not a citizen of the place,
though she had lived there three years. l;ut her means
did not allow her to pay the sum, which is 2.5.0 dollars,
and before he could marry her Le must pay this, and also
deposit a certain sum for the support of the child of his
former wife, and another to make sure that he had a com-
petency for his new housekeeping, as the State, in its
parental wisdom and kindness, will not allow pop* to
marry without the certainty of a pravision for a . . .
That hundreds of children are born every year, for whose
maintenance no one is responsible, is known and per-
Mitted ; but people cannot be allowed to wear the badge
of respecteNlity without piling the State ID hutch money.

Next to England, France contributes largely
to the contents of the volume. The chapter
entitled " Tableaux de Paris in the Last
Century," after Louis Sebastian Mercier and the
Baroness d'Oberkirch, opens a vista into the
state of society in France during the last years
of the reign of Louis XVI., when thoughtless
folly was dancing on the thin crust that covered
the burning volcano underneath ; and to this, as
further illustrations of French life both before
and after the period indicated, may be added, an
account of the Rue St. Denis in the days of its
glory, and, connected with it, the history of the
painter-family of the Vanloos ; a portrait of the
Marquise de Pompadour; and a sketch of Andre
Chenier, the poet, whose works and literary fame
did not emerge from the obscurity in which the
calamities of the times had buried them, until
nearly a quarter of a century after lie himself had
fallen among a band of illustrious victims in the
last terrible sacrifice offered on the altar of
Jacobin " Liberty."

More strictly in the nature of biogra-
phical sketches are, the portraits of the four
daughters of Charles I.,—Mary, Princess of
Orange; the heroic little Princess Elizabeth,
who died, within a year and a half after her
father's execution, at Carisbrooke Castle; " Happy
Anne," who died in infancy ; and the celebrated
Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orleans ;—the
" portrait of a Lady," introduced under the name
of " Marie Lucille," who, from a peasant-girl
of the Upper Loire, rose by her energy of
character to be the foundress, and for many
years the superintendent, of a still flourish-
ing educational establishment in the French
metropolis ; an account of the career of Adam
Oehlenschliiger, the Danish dramatist and poet,
who from beginnings scarcely less humble rose,
by the innate power of his genius, to the proud
position of Poet-King of Scandinavia, solemnly
crowned with the laurel wreath by his brother
poet, Bishop Tegn4r, in the Cathedral of Lund;
a notice of Farinelli, the ragazzo of Naples,
whose vocal powers extorted the homage of
flattery from the haughty lips of Maria Theresa,
and soothed, as by magic, the moody madness of
Philip V. of Spain ; and reminiscences of AbOard
and HOoise, whose romantic history has been
revived of late in France, by a hot controversy on
the merits or demerits of the former as a theolo-
gian, and on the question whether he is to
be reckoned among the forerunners of the Refor-
mation.

--------
Then we have a curious chapter under the
title " A Group of Queen's Unqueened
some of these voluntarily descended, in widow-
hood, from their royal rank—as Adelicia, the
Fair Maid of Brabant, Queen Consort of Henry
I. of England, and atter his death witit of his
cupbearer, IVilliam de Albini, Lord of
Buckenhani ; Isabella of AngouWme, Queen
Consort of John, and mother of Henry 111.
of England, who, after the decease of her royal
husband, returning to her first love, wedded I lugh.
de Lusignan, Count de la Marche ; Isabella of
Valois, the child-bride of Richard 11. of Eng-
land, who, a widow in the ninth year of her age,
became five years later the wife of Charles, the
Poet Duke of Orleans, then but a boy of eleven ;
her sister, Katharine of Valois, who, after sharing
the throne of England with Henry V., bestowed
her hand upon Owen Tudor, the brewer of Bean.
marls ; and Katharine Parr, the last, the luckiest,
and perhaps the wisest, of the Queens of Owen
Tudor's terrible descendant, Henry VIII., who
alienated the liberty of her third widowhood to
her former suitor, Sir Thomas Seymour? before

In the anteroom of the richly-stored
gallery to which the author's well-earned
fame temptingly invites the lovers of lite-
rary and biographical curiosities, our attention
is arrested by " a picture in three panels," pre-
senting in singularly graphic outlines a group of
personages whose familiar names give more than
ordinary piquancy to the cleverly imagined scenes
in which they are brought upon the stage.
William Dodd, a century ago the fashionable
preacher, greedily run atter by admiring London
audiences, the only serious part of whose career
was its ignominious termination,—Mrs. Bellamy,
the brilliant and lighthearted actress who divided
with the popular divine the homage of the town,—
Oliver Goldsmith, struggling for bread as the
literary drudge of Griffiths, the publisher at the
Dunciad's Head, while fretfully conscious of
the powers of his mind and ambitious of
fame, to which he was as yet unknown,—
and John Wesley, the enthusiast, the Pro-
testant Loyola, who converted sinners into
saints, and the New Wells Theatre into a taber-