The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-08 00:00:00

Til E PRE SS, AUGUST 8, 1857.

the following anecdote. Some years previously to his own
death an old housekeeper at Windsor Castle, who had
held that situation for near half a century, died very much
regretted by the Royal Family and the whole establish•
wilt. On that occasion he sent for his chaplain, Sumner,
now 13ishop of Winchester, and urged him to improve the
feeling excited! in the household by the occurrence into a
religious admonition: he concluded by saying that he
wished him to preach an appropriate sermon in the chapel
on the following Sunday, and requested that he would take
the following text, "Be ye also ready." The sermon was
preached accordingly.

The following mot from Sheridan is excel-
lent. It is in the light, playful style of graceful
satire. Mr. itaikes relates of George IV.

There is no doubt that for several years before his death,
whether from early indulgence in luxury, or from a malady
inherent in his family, his mind would occasionally
wander, and many anecdotes have been current of the un-
fortunate impressions under which he laboured. After
the glorious termination of the long continental war in
ISM by the battle of Waterloo, it would not perhaps be
unpardonable vanity in him to have thought that the Eng.
fish nation had mainly contributed to this great event ; but
he certainly at tim-,s in conversation arrogated to himself,
personally, the glory of subduing Napoleon's power, and
giving peace to the world. It was upon one of these
assumptions being reported to the sarcastic Sheridan that
he archly remarked, " That is all well enough, but what
he particularly piques himself upon is the last productive
harvest."

There are a few stories of Pitt Amongst the
squibs against him Mr. Raikes preserves one
that has often made us laugh :

One vulgar paper gave the following character of him in
Dog Latin :—lVarcarryontssirous, tazgatherissimus, vinum
guzzleando potentisaimus, prettygirlibus, indifferentiasi•
MII3, et films hitchte damnatissimus."

Of Talleyrand, also, there are some envious
particulars preserved here; and the best por-
trait of him we ever saw is reprinted by Mr.
Itailies from the columns of the Morning Post
in 1838. It thus commences :

Talleyrand i 3 certainly the most extraordinary being of
his kind the world has produced since the creation.
Take him in his physical conformation alone, and think
of his having outlived so long all the great and good of his
time.

Talleyrand was born lame, and his limbs are fastened
to his trunk by an iron apparatus, on which he strikes
ever and anon his gigantic cane, to the great dismay of
those who see him for the first time—an awe not
diminished by the look of his piercing grey eyes, peering
through his shaggy eyebrows bis unearthly face, marked
with deep stains, covered partly by his shock of extraordi-
nary hair, partly by his enormous muslin cravat, which
supports a large protruding lip drawn over his upper lip,
with a cynical expression no painting could render; add
to this apparatus of terror his dead silence, broken occa-
sionally by the most sepulchral guttural monosyllables.
Talleyrand's pulse, which rolls a stream of enormous
volume, intermits and pauses at every sixth neat. This
he constantly points out triumphantly as a rest of nature,
giving him at once a superiority over other men. Thus,
he says, all the missing pulsations are added to the sum
total of those of his whole life, and his longevity and
strength appear to support this extraordinary theory. He
likewise asserts that it is this which enables him to do
without sleep. Nature, says he, sleeps and recruits her
self at every intermission of my pulse. And indeed you
see him time after time rise at three o'clock in the morn-
ing from the whist table, then return home and often wake
up one of his secretaries to keep him company or to talk
of business.
At four he will go to bed, sitting nearly bolt upright in
his bed, with innumerable nightcaps on his head to keep
it warm, as he said, and feed his intellect with blood, but
in fact to prevent bis injuring the seat of knowledge if he
tumbles on the ground ; and he sits upright from his ten-
dency to apoplexy, which would no doubt seize him if
perfectly recumbent. We may remember the newspapers
stating he was found a few years ago, his head having
dropped from his pillow, so drowned in blood that no feature
was to be seen.

We must stop here, though we should like
to take out some more extracts. We should
wish to have remarked upon some of Mr
Greville's letters, but as they were written in
confidence we shall not criticise them. Our
citations will show the general character of
these volumes.

Essays contributed to Blackwood's Magazine.
By the Rev. John Eagles, Author of " The
Sketcher." London: Blackwoods.
THESE essays display a remarkable combina-
tion of shrewd sagacity and ge►►ial sentiment.
They remind us in turn both of Professor
Wilson and Mr. Washington Irving. They
lack indeed the stormy splendour of the first,
and the delicate fancy of the second writer ;
but the sound common sense which ran
through all the lucubrations of Christopher
North, snit that peculiar kindliness of dispo-
sition which distinguishes the American essay-
ist, are both met together in the pages of Mr.
Eagles. Earnestness has at the present day

777

become a cant word, and, as wo might expect,
true earnestness is proportionably rare. With
this virtue Mr. Eagles is happily endowed.
His investigations of imposture are conducted
in an honest spirit; nor is ho ever carried
away by the torrent of his own invective till
he has written things which his own juigment
condemns, but which, owing to their point
and brilliancy, he has not the heart to eli-
minate. This, the peculiar snare of periodical
writers, Mr. Eagles has luckily escaped, and
the reader may be sure of meeting with nothing
in his pages which has not been well weighed
and carefully ve►ified
The first two essays are in the shape of
letters to a friend about to take holy orders,
and contain a sensible and humorous account
of the difficulties and embarrassments which
await the young curate on his first assumption
of parochial duties. Few of our clerical
readers will fail to recognise the truth of the
following picture :

I have often noted R difference in the sympathy with
the dying in the rich and in the poor. With the former,
there is generally great caution used that the sick should
not think themselves going; if it is to be discovered, it is
rather in a more delicate attention, a more affectionate
look, which the sick cannot at all times distinguish from
the ordinary manner. The poor, on the contrary, tell the
sick at once, and without any circumlocution, that they
never will get over it. Is is that the shock is less to the
poor, that they have fewer objects in this world for which
life might be desirable? But this is sometimes dangerous.
I was once going to visit a poor woman, and met the
parish surgeon, and inquired for his patient. He told me
the room was full of friends and neighbours, all telling her
she couldn't last long; and, said he, " I make no doubt she
will not, for she is sinking, because she thinks she is
dying; yet I see no other reason why she should, and I
could not get one to leave the room." I entered ; my
authority had a better effect. I turned all but one out of
the room, and then addressed the woman, who was ap-
parently exhausted and speechless. I told her exactly
what the surgeon had said, and that she would not die, but
be restored to her children and husband. The woman
positively started, raised herself in bed, and said, with an
energy of which I did not think her capable, " What ! am
I not dying? shan't I die?—No' then thank the Lord, I
shan't die." I gave strict orders that none should be
admitted—and the woman did recover, and has often
thanked me for having saved her life. Clergymen should
be aware of this propensity in the poor, that, when mis-
chievous, they may counteract it.

The curious half-Pagan customs, and the ex-
traordinary ignorance and credulity still to be
met with in remote country places, have found
an observant recorder in Mr. Eagles, and to
many a rural clergyman these papers will
seem little more than a register of his own ex-
perience.
The next paper from which we shall quote
is that upon Thackeray's " Lecture on Swift."
None can say that the reviewer here does
scant justice to Mr. Thackeray's powers. But,
after all, the living can defend themselves—
the dead can not ; and we have read no essay
in the volume with more pleasure and appro-
val than this kind and generous vindication
of libelled genius :
We wish you had written an essay, and not read a
lecture. You would have been both less hard and leas
tender—for, in truth, your tender passages in this " Life of
Swift" are very well to the purpose to catch your audience,
but they are nihil ad rem. And your appeal to the " pure
and tender bosoms," all against poor Swift, as a detestabl e
cannibal—how in his " Modest Proposal " "he rages
against children," and " enters the nursery with the tread
and gaiety of an ogre ;" how he thought the " loving and
having children " an " unreasonableness," and " love and
marriage " a " folly," because in his Lilliputian kingdom
the State removed children from their parents and edu-
cated them ; and you wind up your appeal so lovingly, so
charmingly, so devotedly, so insinuatingly to your fair
audience, upon the blessings of conjugal love and philce
progenitiveness, that yoU must be the dearest of lecturers,
the pet of families, the destroyer of ogres ; and, as to that
monster Swift, the very children should cry out, as they
do in " The Children in the Wood," " Kill him again,
Mr. Thackeray." And this you did, knowing all the
while that " The Modest Proposal " was a patriotic and
political satire—one of real kindness to the people, whose
children he supposes, in the depth of his feeling and his
satire and bitter irony, the Government should encourage
the getting rid of, rather than, in defiance of all his (the
Dean's) schemes for the benefit of Ireland, they should
he made a burden to their parents and miserable them-
selves. All this you knew very well : it was shabby and
shameful of you by your mere eloquence to make this
grave irony appear or be felt as a reality and a cruelty,
and tack on to it an importation from Lilliput of a State
edict. as if it were one in Swift's mind with " The Modest
Proposal." Yes, you knew, the while these your words
were awakening detestation of
a very great sham—all nonsen
pass current but through the
knew how the witty Earl Batty
loved children about him, as •

have done, received Swift's
" A man who has nine children

if Swift, you were oratorising
?use—stuff—that would never
e stamp of lectureship. You
thurst, a kind father with his
goodnaturedly as you should
henevolentlyintended satire.
_adagio' tildren to feed," says Lord

778

Bathurst to Swift, " can't long afford alienos paacere num-
mos ; but I have four or five that are very tit for the table.
I only wait for the Lord Mayor's Day to dispose of the
largest, and shall be sure of getting off the youngest when-
ever a certain great man ( Sir H. Walpole) makes another
entertainment at Chelsea." Here aro your false words to
win all feminine sympathy :—" In fact, our great satirist
was of opinion that conjugal love was unadvisable, and
illustrated the theoty by his awn practice and example—
God help him !—which made him about the most wretched
being in God's world." How cruel was this in you, under
some of the probabilities and all the possibilities that may
be, ought to be, charitably referred to Swift's case—in
his loves or his friendships, be they what they will, for
Stella and Vanessa?

Mr. Thackeray is not formed by nature to
appreciate a character like the Dean of St
Patrick's. He cannot sympathise with the
" fierce delight " of political warfare, nor do
justice to the zeal and the faith and the
gallantry evoked by the conflict of parties.
His dislike of Swift's politics, and of the
ardour with which he pursued them, has
coloured his estimate of the man. He sus•
pects him of selfishness where the Dean is
only effecting the best compromise of which
circumstances admit, parsimony where he is
only prudent, and of irreligion where he is
only ironical.
Two other very good papers are on " Civili-
sation" anti " The Census." Mr. Eagles is
evidently very much inclined to regard the
latter as a huge piece of humbug. Ile questions
the veracity of the returns, and objects very
justly to the language in which they are con-
veyed when the subject of religion is in-
volved :

Parliament has thought it worth while to employ a
great part of a session upon Assumption of Title Bills.
The labour could only be justified by a previous assump-
tion, an acknowledgment of the Church of England as
the Established Church, of which the Queen and her
Government are supposed to be members, and preservers
by oath of her rights and dignities. The Church of
England and the Constitution of England, however tole-
rant both happily are—and may they ever be so—acknow-
ledge but one Church—the Holy Catholic or Universal
Church. This acknowledgment is embodied in the au•
thorised formularies of the Church. The Constitution
does not declare that there shall be no other religions,
tolerating dissent to the utmost. A form of religion
differing from her own is also established in one portion
of the dominions, but not so as in any degree to nullify
the title of the Church of England as a branch of the
Church Catholic iii England. Our Queen Anne was so
sensitive upon this subject that she spoke of Dissenters
as that portion of her subjects who had "the misfortune
not to be members of the Church of England." In our
day, no such expression would be used. I only mean to
show by what I have said that, in making a report to be
laid before the Queen, the Government, and the People,
legitimate titles and distinctions should be preserved ;
and I should draw this inference, that a writer of a
census who errs in this respect is not a member of the
Church of England, or, if he thinks himself one, must
be mistaken. The report before me is not for all the
Queen's dominions, but for " England and Wales," within
which limits one would suppose a member of the Church
of England would not enumerate " Protestant Churches."
But the classifier, to act up to his profession of freedom
from " bias," treats all opinions and sects with equal
indifference, or, it may rather be said, with equal respect,
and lifts up and dignifies the disgusting subscribers to the
blasphemy of Joe Smith, the Mennonite, with a place
among " other Christian Churches." Taking the very,
respectable accounts of the multitudes of creeds, with the
equally respectable classification, it would not be very
unfair to imagine them to have been made purposely for
a people in search of a religion ; and that the compiler,
as a general agent for all bodies, would show the honesty
and impartiality of his agency by an equal and fair die.
play of all their commodities, without presuming to indi-
cate a preference or bias. More than this, the pedlar's
pack is ready to exhibit the quilts and cradle of the mad
Johanna, and advertise that there are yet four insane
congregations of Southcottians, into any of which the
looker-out fur a faith may enroll himself or herself. I
cannot believe, Eusebius, that he would willingly, know.
ingly, omit any sect • that he has not noticed, therefore,
the Princeites and the Agapemone, I put down not as of
any evil intention, or of disrespect to them, but merely
to that carelessness and negligence which have caused
so many omissions and inaccuracies. And this is the
more surprising as his very lengthy and flattering ac-
count of the Mormonites would have led him, one would
have supposed, to as full a narrative of so congenial a
sect; for it does not appear that any degree of insanity,
or worse, is to annul the title of faithful believers to be
a " Christian Church !" I would not wish to speak too
lightly ; but, in truth, in this report the area of religion
seems to be treated as that of a fair, in which any set of
actors may set up a booth and claim from the Queen's
printer the advantage of advertising bills for general
distribution. You remember, Ensebius, Sir Godfrey
Dueller's dream; being, as he professed, of no particular
religion, he was desired to make a free choice.

!tut why was this enumeration and this history of and
inquiry into creeds made at all? Why proceeded in,
when, as 1 before stated with regard to school inquiry,
it was aacert►ined there could be no legal demand for
truthful replies? If the Church of England is made to
appear to au untruthful advantage, it is hard to withhold
a suspicion that there has been a bias somewhere or other.