The Press.
London, England, 1858-10-09 00:00:00

SECOND EDITION.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

FRANCE.
(By Telegraph.)

PARIS, Saturday Morning.
The Moniteur of this morning publishes a decree,
by which the exemption of the navigation dues for
cargoes of corn, flour, rice, potatoes, and vegetables
in general, is prorogued to September, 1839.

PRUSSIA.

The following telegram has been received at Mr.
Reuter's office, October 9th, 9.50 a.m.:—
Bawds, Saturday Morning.
The Minister of the Interior, Herr von Westphalen, has
been dismissed. The President, Baron von Flottwell,
formerly Minister of Finance, has been provisionally
appointed in his place.
Baron Flottwell has already arrived in Berlin.

THE PRUSSIAN REGENCY.

BERLIN, Friday.
It is officially announced that the King has
empowered the Prince of Prussia to carry on the
Government with independent powers and according
to his own views until his Majesty shall be perfectly
restored to health. The needful documents are to
be published forthwith in a constitutional manner.
The Chambers are convoked for the 20th instant.

AUSTRALIA.
The following telegram has been received from
Corfu, Oct. 8:

ALEXANDRIL, Oct. 5.
The Cambria sailed this morning with the Australian
mails, and gold valued at 165,0331.
The dates of intelligence are Melbourne, 16th, Sydney.
12th of August.
The May and June mails reached Melbourne on the IA
and 13th of August respectively.
The following are the departures of gold•ships :
July 21tb, the Agincourt, for Loudon, with 70, 760

ounces.
August 14th, the Lincolnshire, for London, with 105,612
ounces.
The contract between the Government and the six
banks for the negotiation of the railway loan was signed on
the 16th of August.
The export trade very dull.
The import-market continued overstocked.
The banks were selling exchange at Ito premium.
At Sydney the supplies of wool were very small.
A fire at Auckland had destroyed a large portion of the
city.

THE WEST INDIES.
The Royal Mail steamship Thames, Captain Gilles,
arrived at Southampton yesterday from St. Thomas's,
which port she left on the 19th ult. The island was
healthy, every trace of yellow fever having disap
peared.
The La Plata, with the outward mails, arrived at
St. Thomas's on the evening of the 10th.
The Thames experienced on the passage fine
weather and fresh winds. She spoke the American
ship Russell, of Boston, with emigrants, steering
westward, in lat. 40.13 N., lon. 18.50 W. Also ex-
changed signals with the British ship Continent,
steering westward, in lat. 40.20 N., lon. 18.35 W.
The Thames comes home for repairs, having been
engaged in the intereolonial service for two years.

ADVICES RECEIVED AT LLOYD'S, from the outports,
report the loss of about twelve vessels, for the most
part coasters, attended in several cases with loss of
life, arising from the severity of the gales from south-
west. Many ships have likewise experienced con-
siderable damage, and found it a task of much
difficulty to reach ports of refuge in time to avoid the
most violent part of the gale which prevailed.

THE WILL OF THE HON. AN!) REV. CHARLES GEORGE
PERCEVAL, rector of Calverton, Bucks, was proved in
London by Sir Charles Edward rrevelyan, K.C.B.
the sole acting executor. The personalty was sworn
under 35,0001. He has devised the freehold to his
sr, and the personalty, saving specific bequests, ttt
his wife for life, and afterwards to his son an.
daughter. The painting of " The Family 01
Darius before Alexander" he bequeathes to
,the
National Gallery, which he considered unfelt
be acceptable for the staircase or vestibult
in the new building that has been Wiwi!
of. The family portraits he bequeathes to his brother,
Lord Egmont, to be held as heirlooms ; and should
his gallery of pictures be sold, that from the produce
1,0001. be given to his widow, and 1,0001. to the Bev.
Chase; and from the remainder one-third to go
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel,
and the rest divided between his children. 'f he will
was made in 1849, and two codicils in 103.

it t a turt.

History of Friedrich 11. of Prussia, called
Frederick the Great. By Thomas Carlyle. In
Four Vols. Vols. 1. and 11. London: Chap-
man and Hall.
- - -

THE publication of these volumes may probably
be considered as the great literary event of the
present year. Their effect upon the public mind
cannot fail to be great and lasting. A field of
history from which inquirers have hitherto
turned away with disappointment has suddenly
become attractive. A blaze of light has fallen
upon the darkness, a breath of genius has reani-
mated the corpse. The chaos of German history,
to use Mr. Carlyle's own expression, has begun to
become a Cosmos. For the first time a strong
and practical genius has brooded over the wide
confusion ; for the first time a competent critic
has separated that which was worthy of remem-
brance m it from that which was worthy of
oblivion. A large tract of the waste past has
been inclosed and prepared for cultivation ;
henceforth it may be expected to bring forth
fruit : our painters, poets, and novelists may re-
sort to it for subjects, and a store of new images,
vivid and instructive, henceforth make part of
the common furniture of the English mind. So
great are the effects which may be produced
when a strong imagination, an indefatigable in-
dustry, and an earnest love of truth, are occu-
pied with a just division of labour upon the
task of ascertaining, arranging, and interpreting
facts.
After thirty-five years of hard literary labour
Mr. Carlyle shows no sign of exhaustion. His
industry appears as plodding and patient as ever,
his imagination as rich and glowing as ever ; his
vein of grotesque humour is not less copious than
in his younger days. Mr. Carlyle is not the hero
we worship, but we are proud that our country
possesses such a man. We confidently compare
the great humorist of our age with those of past
ages. As a moral preacher, we hardly know
where to find his equal in power. His are
almost the only sermons which men can read in
these sceptical times, but his can always be read.
Though tie repeats himself constantly, though he
has fewer topics than the common declaimer of
the pulpit, so racy is his eloquence, so irresistible
the force of his language, so happy and abundant
his illustrations, so fervent his faith and zeal,
that he procures a hearing—nay, a hundred
hearings—for the tritest platitudes of morality.
Not that we can by any means subscribe to all
the doctrines which he asserts with such energy
of dogmatism. We do not think he is ever
altogether wrong : such a mind as his may err
indeed, and its errors will be dangerous, but they
will generally be errors of excess, and dangerous
not so often to himself; or to his worthy disciples,
as to his servile and injudicious imitators. His
errors will be more instructive, and more sugges-
tive of truth, than the truths of inferior men.
As an example of this, we cannot do better than
refer to that antithesis between talking and
doing which, since the Latter-day Pamphlets, has
been perhaps the favourite topic of his declama-
tion. It may even be considered as the text of this
book. Mr. Carlyle's previous heroes were men
in whom energy was one out of many distin-
guished qualities. His Oliver Cromwell is
great in war and government, but he is also
pious, and, if not a good talker, yet exceedingly
fond of talking. His Mirabeau is even espe-
pecially and principally an orator. But his
Frederick is naked energy and practical
talent—not pious, not amiable, not eloquent—the
hardest and least attractive of men. The choice
of this hero shows how, in Mr. Carlyle's mind,
every other feeling is gradially becoming secon-
dary to this profound conviction of the insignifi-
.. •
expressive words, and the infi-
the least expressive deeds. And
of a hero intimates almost every
book confirms. With that cease-
lich is so characteristic of his
endless humorous illustration—with
and sarcasm, and huddled
Titanic tearing up of rocks and
flinging the whole headlong
business, through twelve hun-
labours to put deeds in contrast
Certainly this doctrine, so impres.

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 9, 1858.

sively preached, ought to do good. We might
all of us be much more practical than we are.
We are, all of us, more or less under the slavery
of words—more or less blind to facts. But the

antithesis is not altogether a just one. Without
a good deal of explanation, it is likely to mislead
those who use it, and it has led Mr, Carlyle him-
self, as we believe, into monstrous extra-

vagances.
Talking is not properly opposed to doing ; it is
included in doing. The man who talks does.
The principal things which are done in the
world are done by means of words. Napoleon
was certainly a man of acts ; yet almost all his
acts were achieved through the tongue. The
literary man for whom Mr. Carlyle has so much
contempt—Mr. Carlyle himself, for example—
delivers lectures and writes books; Napoleon
delivered directions to his officers and his troops,
and wrote proclamations and despatches. Each
is a talker to about the same degree as the other,
and each is, or may be, a worker. It is not talk-
ing, but only a particulari kind of talking which
can be opposed to doing. The antithesis which
is really in Mr. Carlyle's mind is that between
preaching and practising, between proclaiming
what ought to be done and doing it. It appears,
then, that Mr. Carlyle has no right to infer, as
he constantly does, that the present age is not a
working age, from the fact that it is a talking
age. Before he can be allowed to draw such an
inference he must show that the talk of the age
is not of that kind which is itself work. A book
of history, any book communicating useful infor-
mation, is a thing as strictly practical, and has
as much right to be called an act, as a general
order of the Duke of Wellington which may
have decided a victory. On the other hand, a
book which is of the nature of a sermon, which
tells us what we ought to do, and eloquently
adjures us to do it, is strictly a talking book, and
comes under Mr. Carlyle's censure. Poor Dry-
asdust, who gets such hard measure in the book
before us, is a worker in his way ; who shall be
our example of a talker ? Really Mr. Carlyle
himself is the best example we can find.
It is a sad truth, he tells us, that every time a
man expounds eloquently what ought to be done
he becomes less and less disposed to do it. This
is the penalty which Heaven inflicts upon talkers.
If this be true, what must Mr. Carlyle's own case
be by this time ? If there is any man living who
has passed his life in eloquently expounding what
ought to be done, it is Mr. Carlyle. Year after
year he has gone on declaring our duty to us
with an eloquence which seems inexhaustible—
with an ingenuity of expression which, we verily
believe, was never exhibited in the world before.
And what does he declare to be our duty ?
Above all things not to talk, not to study fine
language, not to be eloquent ! Perhaps a
humorist like Mr. Carlyle may be amused by
this singular incongruity. If, however, he
makes any defence, we suppose that he alleges in
excuse the want of room and opportunity for
action in our overcrowded country. The excuse
does not seem satisfactory. England may be
crowded, but emigration is open ; vast tracts of
country wait to be tilled by enterprizing
Englishmen ; new States are springing up, bar-
barous races are being civilized. Is there not a
field for the man who would be practical ? Such
a field as Adalbert found in his day, such as the
Teutonic Knights, the objects of our author's
admiration, found in theirs. It is open to Mr.
Carlyle, if literary work is so useless and idle, to
become the Adalbert of New Zealand or the
Boniface of India, or to take the predatory Kaffir
by the hand and say to him, "'This earth is a
shadow. What is a few oxen more or less ?
Listen to the Eternities. Acquaint thyself with
the Silences." This is Mr. Carlyle's opinion of'
the Teutsches Ritterthum, or Order of Teutonic

•
Knights :
On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom for the first cen-
tury and more was a grand phenomenon, and flamed like
a bright blessed beacon through the night of things in those
northern countries. For above a century we perceive it
was the rallying place of all brave men who had a career
to seek on terms other than vulgar. The noble soul, aim-
ing beyond mcney, and sensible to more than hunger in
this world, had a beacon burning (as we say) if the night
chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow too intricate,
as is not uncommon. Better than the career of stump-
oratory, I should fancy, and its Hesperides apples, golden
and of gilt horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's
poor spiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), such as it may
be, in building the lofty rhyme, the lofty review-article,
for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare ! Times
alter greatly.

983

The Teutonic knight had certainly a more
prosperous career than the modern reviewer.
Besides the pleasure of spitting upon his lance a
few Paynims and inducing a few more through
dread of the same fate to receive baptism, he
might look to make a handsome fortune on this
temporary earth, not to speak of his prospects in
the other world. A pleasant method truly for
the modern reviewer " when the world grows
too intricate "; but conversion at the point of the
lance, the lands of the party converted being con-
signed over to the party converting, is not a
fashionable practice in these squeamish and
degenerate days. For the rest, we do not see
why the reviewer's work, if conscientious, should
not be as honourable and as useful as that of the

niedimval knight ; it is probably equally laborious
and more unpretending.
Into such extravagances may Mr. Carlyle be
led by a seductive antithesis. Still, as we inti-
mated above, he is generally saved by his shrewd
practical discernment from the result of his own
errors. however violent his declamation against
talking and talkers, no one knows better than he
that the talker may be a most useful and prac-
tical worker. He has not, in fact, wasted his
eloquence upon New Zealanders or joined
Livingstone in his attempt to civilize the
Kaffirs; he did not, in fact, go out to fight in the
Crimea. He knows very well that his business
is to write books, to set great examples before
our eyes, to pour scorn and ridicule upon every
form of effeminate weakness, to preach obedience
to eternal laws. And so it comes to pass that we
see a man who declares it to be his deepest con-
viction that eloquence is a thing useless at the
best and generally mischievous, ushering into the
world, as we compute, about sixty square feet of
eloquence to prove it.
The studies of Mr. Carlyle's life must con
stantly have brought Frederick the Great beffire
him. In contemplating Goethe and Schiller,
and the great period of German poetry, he must
often have been led to consider the awakening
influence of the victories of Frederick upon the
German mind. Voltaire brought Frederick
before him in another aspect. When he con-
sidered the deep disease of European society
which issued in the French Revolution, the
effeminate weakness which had infected all the
continental nations, the lack of political energy
and genius, Frederick again presented himself
as the single conspicuous exception. Once more
and especially, when he maintained his favourite
position that national greatness is rooted in
virtue and belief in God, the case of Frederick,
the infidel and profligate, yet at the same time
the consolidator of an empire which still grows
and prospers, must often have been adduced
against him by others, and often, too, have
occurred to his own mind as a difficulty requiring
solution. Some one, perhaps, may have reasoned
with him thus—" You say, and grandiloquently
"assert, that injustice never prospers in this um-
" verse ; that all nature is leagued against it ; that
" the triumph of the wicked is short, and so on.
" A fine theory ! much in favour with poets and
"moralists. But look at facts. Does not history
" rather teach us that a course of steady and
" prudent self-aggrandisement is what prospers
"in the long run ; that strict honesty generally
" proves the ruin of those who practise it ?"
" Look at Prussia," this reasoner might go on to
say, " what State has been more uniformly
" prosperous ? And what has been the secret of
" its prosperity ? This : that its rulers have
" always pursued a course of cautious encroach-
" ment ; that they have devoted themselves ex-
" elusively to the aggrandisement of the empire
"by fair means and foul. The history of Prussia
"is the history of villany rewarded. First, the
"Teutonic Knights took possession of it, under
" pretence of mtroducing Christianity. Then
" Hochmeister Albert seized it for his own family,
"calling himself Duke of Prussia. Then Frede-
rick the Great robbed Maria Theresa of Silesia.
" Finally, the same successful knave appropriated
"a slice of Poland. And the whole mass of
"stolen property now bears the sounding name
"of the Prussian Empire, and is, in fact, one of
"the most flourishing States in Europa. With a
" fact like this before your eyes, can you venture
"to repeat the old saw of 'honesty the best
" policy ?'" Or again, " You say that heroism
" springs from belief in God. It may be true
" that Cromwell's success in war was due to his
"faith and to that of his God-fearing

cance of then most
rite significance of
what the choice of
paragraph in the bi
less iteration whi
style—with endle
torrents of rant,
abuse--with Tita
trees—in short,
Carlyle into the
Bred pages he lab
with words Cert

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