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THE PRESS.

to be replaced; while the want of money and the heart-
breaking spectacle of numbers of hungry and sorrow-
stricken exiles flocking into the city, made the strictest
economy a duty no less than a necessity. It was a heavy
recommencement for Caroline; but before winter all was
once more in order, though not without considerable
labour and anxiety.

The greater portion of his valuable stock had
been preserved. Despotism has its limits.
First the creditors of Perthes asserted their
claims to his property; and when an order was
issued that his fine collection should be sold
to pay his creditors in the first instance, the
catalogue took such time to complete, that
Davoust had to withdraw before it was
finished.

From this time the life of Perthes was
tranquil and domestic. He took a warm in-
terest in all religious, political, and literary
subjects, and for this reason his life largely re
presents the intellectual life of Germany until
the date of his decease in 1843. He left Ham-
burg in 1822, to establish himself in Gotha, where
he founded a business for the publication of
religious and historical works. His beloved
Caroline was taken from him in 1819; he was
equally fortunate in a second marriage, which
gave him a second family. There is some-
thing touching in his description of the effect
of multiplied domestic ties in loosening the
attachments of humanity. He wrote shortly
before his own death :

Births and deaths, deaths and births amongst children
and children's children have compassed me round during
the last few months, and I have had to look upon many a
sick and dying bed. My affection for my descendants in-
dividually is not diminished by their rumber; but the
wind and weather of a long life has hardened my physical
frame against sorrow, and my soul has learnt resignation
to :he loss of its dear ones. Now that I know I must
soon follow, the death of others makes quite a different im-
pression upon me to what it did in youth, when, though
one indeed acknowledged, one did not feel one's-self
mortal.

Were the life of man much further prolonged
he would cease to be human in the sense we
now attach to the term.

While residing at Gotha he had excellent
opportunities of observing the Royal Family.
In 1839 he wrote :
Late in the summer the ducal household came to
Reinnardabrunnen, and with them the Crown Prince
from Dresden, and Prince Albert from Italy. Their father
has good reason to be proud of them both. The ardour,
frankness, and healthy judgment of the Crown Prince de-
lighted me uncommonly ; Prince Albert is, without doubt,
a highly gifted and thoroughly cultivated young man ;
handsome and elegant, courteous and benevolent. His
thoughtful, cautious temperament, will lessen the difficul-
ties of his future position. We have the Duke of Meinin-
gen, too, and the King of Saxony ; and sometimes no
fewer than fourteen princes go out hunting together.
These meetings between the house of Saxony and the
neighbouring princes should oftener take place. Taken
together, they are not without significance in German rela-
tions, and these wise, restless Coburgs, will tell upon Europe
too; they do not, indeed, form any very comprehensive
plans, but they know, as few men and princes do, how to
seize the passing opportunity, and use the present
moment. They have already secured the thrones of Eng-
land, Belgium, and Portugal, for their own house, and they
have an eye on those of Spain and France as well.

His own death was exceedingly painful, yet
his spirit was sustained by its religious con-
victions. New light, according to the sublime
image of Waller, was let into his soul through
chinks that time had made Physical suffer-
ing lost its hold on him as his end drew near;
" his dreams were not distressing but delight-
" ful ;" "he lay peaceful and joyful ;" and
when he breathed his last prayer, the specta-
tors felt "as blessed as though our Lord
" Jesus Christ were with them in the room."
The strong natural sense and refined senti-
ment of Perthes led him to a conservative
tone of thought and feeling. He distrusted
equally individual ascendancy and democratic
rule, as fatal to that highest kind of liberty
through which each man may assert his
natural place in the social system. He freely
hazarded all that men hold most dear to over-
throw the despotism of Napoleon ; and later
he opposed the ideas of the illuminati and
the secret societies as contrary to the instincts
and social wants of mankind. It seems to
have been one of his fundamental principles
that society required government, but govern-
ment which, while preserving order, gave free
scope for the development of all industrial
and intellectual activity.
The portions of his correspondence printed
here give a high conception of his sagacity.
We have always held that to try principles by

SATURDAY,

extremes is to try them by a most unfair jury.
Perthes writes acutely:—
To insist on carrying out a principle to all its lagical re-
sults, is almost always a highway to error. Every truth,
even a sacred truth of revelation, when defined by a
formula, and carried out to the utmost by the human
understanding, becomes an untruth. A rigid consistency
is, in fact, one of the mainsprings of Rationalism.

We doubt whether any principles will bear
being pushed to suppositious extremes. Here
is a good rule for young men of intellectual
character:

There can be nothing more perilous than'constant inter-
course with commonplace men ; even if the character do
not sustain direct injury, a dry, dull, reserved condition of
mind is induced, more or less inimical to freedom.

Holding government of some kind to be a
necessity, he held that every government must
have embodied forms and persons. The fol
lowing passage is admirable :
Men must be governed, and they wish it too; but, as they
can be governed only by men, every government must de.
pend on some human accessory, be it a seneschal or a
scullion, a major's wig, or a corporal's staff. It is useless
to fret and kick against the pricks ; and, though you were
to set up among us a political idol from France or America,
it would only be a new Baal, that would burst when his
time came.

There is vital truth in the reasons alleged for
the unfitness of the German mind to act by
means of deliberative assemblies:—

The German is slow in judgment, because he decides,
not like the Frenchman with the understanding alone, but
with his whole nature ; and he wants practicality, because,
instead of contenting himself, like the Englishman, with
the obvious and immediate, he takes into account, and
wishes to make allowances for, a thousand remote and
profound considerations connected with the subject, all of
which the Englishman simply lets alone, proceeding, in
fact, as if they did not exist. In order to judge correctly,
and act with vigour, the German needs, above all things,
time and compt.sure: the forms, however, now demanded
for discussions in the Chambers, oblige the deputies to de-
cide, within a few hours, on matters with which they are
but imperfectly acquainted; they, therefore, enable a few
fluent speakers to take the members who are not so gifted,
and who are always the majority, by surprise ; their
theatrical character is distracting ; and they give an unfair
advantage to the narrow-minded, the crafty, the malicious,
and the rabid, provided only such persons understand the
art of managing a great assembly. Whatever constitution
may be good for the Germans, one that allows such scope
for declamation is undoubtedly bad.

His opinions of the Prussian and Austrian
Governments were both favorable, though in
different degrees. Of Prussia he wrote about
1830:

The result of my observations is, that in Prussia the
German nation is bursting out into a second youth.
Prussia is thoroughly German, and accordingly, along with
all that is great and good, along with abundance of thought
and knowledge, appears a want of practicality, a waste of
power and labour, the ideal aimed at being pitched too high
for the fact. Unless the history of Europe take some unex-
pected turn, northern and central Germany will all be
incorporated into one Prusso-German State : and, from
the way in which affairs are conducted in the smaller
German States, this result would be no misfortune.
Of Austria :

If people determine to call Austria a despotism, it mast
be admitted that it is one of a singular kind, the pressure
being all upwards, not downwards. Perhaps in no other
State in the world is the internal Gover.iment so moulded
and guided by ancient customs and institutions which have
their origin in popular life. Restricti3ns and limitations
of all sorts to which the Austrians have been long aceus•
tom* d, and which they have therefore learnt to bear, they
easily endure ; but it is almost i:npossible for Government
to introduce any innovations, because an unexpressed but
universal opposition of rich and poor, high and low, is at
once raised against it.
With exquisite acuteness he wrote of Louis
Philippe's monarchy :—" Such crowns are more
"fatal to monarchy than republics themselves."
His protest against the hero-worship which
has found such favour in our day is admirably
expressed :

The whole world is sighing now for great men; that is,
in spite of liberalism, all are sighing for a master. This
feeling is as old as the human race ; but, as the govern
ment of powerful individuals is always arbitrary, we have
to thank God that, in the cause of human freedom,
monarchs, i.e., fictions of powerful individuals, have been
found out who render the really powerful individuals
harmless.

A similar idea is expressed by Mr. Grute in
his " History of Greece." Our fiction of a
constitutional monarch, invested with all the
attributes of ssvereignty, yet divested of de-
spotic power, would be supposes have appeared
incredible to the States of antiquity.
The whole book is full of matter. It is a
publication fitted for all classes of readers, as
all may find in it something to admire It is
equally instructive as a reflection of German
life during the most momentous half-century
of the modem world, and as the picture of

•

AUGUST 9, 1856.

the career of an individual who, with no
advantage of fortune or education, raised him-
self to an influential station in society, and in
all the duties of domestic life and State citi-
zenship played a truly noble and conscien-
tious part.

It is Never Too Late to Mend. A Matter-of-Fact
Romance. By Charles Reade. Three Vols.

London : Bentley.
THE previous tales of Mr Reade, though
sketchy, exhibited so much originality and
power, that we anxiously expected from his
pen a more matured fiction. Ho has now
given us three good-sized volumes, extending
t )gether .to more than a thousand pages of
t )lerably close print. If the quality were
equal to the quantity we should have to con-
gratulate him on a great success.
Our task is less gracious. His present tale
is not an advance on his previous efforts. It
exhibits their defects in an exaggerated degree.
t is more fragmentary, more affected in style,
and less natural in matter. With his. broader
stage, Mr Reade seemri to have lost his force.
He wanders about it distractedly. His three
volumes are made up of three distinct sub•
jects, with the slenderest possible bond of
cohesion. Each subject might have worked
up into a good story, but all are partially
spoilt by the clumsiness of the attempt to j,.in
them together. The first half of the first
volume, and the last hundred pages of the
third, contain nearly the whole of the main
story, and quite as much as ordinary readers
will care to peruse. These portions of the
book are almost complete, and would have
made, in Mr. Reade's peculiar style, an at-
tractive domestic romance. _ _ _

George Fielding, a farmer, has the ill-luck
to be cultivator of very poor land. He is
behindhand with the world, and grumbles at
his lot, the more as he is deeply in love with
his pretty cousin, Susan Merton, the daughter
of a well-to-do farmer. who owed his pro-
sperity to the assistance he had received from
his sister, George's mother. The maiden has
two other lovers, William Fielding, the
younger brother of George, and one Mr.
Meadows, a hard-headed, prosperous man,
who has but to hold out his hand for gold to
rain into it. George is thre itened with a dis-
tress ; he tries to borrow, but the malignant
influence of Meadows is against him. When
the story opens circumstances accumulate to
overwhelm him; he is irritated into a fight
with his brother; he is sharply reproved by
his sweetheart; he is disowned b 3 her father,
his uncle ; his honest name is jeopardised.
He receives an offer to go to Australia, and
clutches at it, bargaining only that Susan
shall be his, if he returns with a thousand
pounds in his pocket to show that he has
something in him. Amid the tears and heart-
groanings of parting, an old Jew, Laurence
Levi, who has had a mortal quarrel with
Meadows for reasons to be sought in the book,
comes forward and offers to befriend the luckless
George It is too late. His mind is made up.
His betrothed he leaves to his brother's care.
The narrative of these occurrences consti-
tutes one-half of the first volumes. It is written
with amazing spirit, and with such flow of in-
vention as leads one to imagine that the
author can continue through three volumes
in the same strain. The fertility in crowding
incident upon incident, and character upon
character, evinced by Eugene Sue and Alexan-
dre Dumas, is combined with that minute Nor
traiture of rural life and its habitudes which
m modern day English writers and English
painters alone seem to have the faculty of
setting forth. Mr. Reade's conceptions of
character are admirable. He places per-
sonages before us with a few scratches of his
pen, just as an accomplished artist with
careless touches of chalk creates a likeness.
Mr. Reade can go further. He can represent
with admirable skill these characters in action
up to a certain point. While they run on pre-
cise lines, or dance upon wires, there is no
fault to he found with them. But when he
attempts to go beyond this, and to combine
them in the complicated, yet natural evolu-
tions of real life, he fails. His characters
never grow; they are ready-made goods, and
we see all of them that is to be seen as soon

THE PRESS.

as they make their appearance, whether in
smock-frock, gaberdine, or clerical coat. They
may surprise us at first, but they never sur-
prise us afterwards. There is no depth in his
portraiture.
After George's departure from Australia,
some 350 pages of the fiction are occupied
with the discipline of a gaol conducted on the
silent system. There is great force in many
of the sketches, but the reader feels that the
whole account is dragged into the book with-
out any natural connection with its other
parts. The horrors of the system, and the
possible brutality of governors and turnkeys,
and despair of prisoners, may be a proper
subject for fiction, but these should have legs
of their own to stand upon, which here they
have not. A mind with any artistic talent
would at least have split this dreary episode
into fragments. The redeeming point in it is
the character of Mr. Eden, one of the best
the author has ever presented, with the piety,
the loquacity, and the confidence often met
with in clerical personages.
When this episode is got rid of, we encoun-
ter another quite as dreary. George Fielding
goes through surprising adventures in Aus-
tralia ; he is followed by the old Jew, Laurence
Levi; imaginary scenes at gold-diggings are
related in detail, and a number of brutes are
introduced for no other purpose apparently
than to show to what degradation brutish na-
tures may sink. After a volume of this
wretched Australian compilation (for it is no
better) we return to the story nearly at the
point at which it was left at page 150 of
vol. i. _ _

Through some strange perversity of mind,
the author shows most affectation in those
parts of his narrative where it is most inappro-
priate. Two Australian ruffians are nick-
named by him Mephistopheles and Brutus,
and these names he has an insane propensity
to print without capital letters whenever they
occur :—Ex. gr. The two worthies have pur-
chased a lot of tracts from a pedler, suppos-
ing them to be flash stories :

mephiato. "Mend your ways," a tract.
brutes. I'll break his head instead.
mephiato. "Narrative of Mr. James, the missionary.'
bruins. The cheating undermining rip.
mephiato. And here is another to the same tune.
bruins. Didn't I tell you so. The hypocritical hum•
bugging rascal.

When these brutes contemplate a murder,
the author, with his own peculiar notions of
typography, relates :

The assassins now divided their force. mephistopheles
took his station to leeward of the tent.

Brutus to windward.
It is impossible to think very highly of a
writer who descends to such paltry tricks with
the hope of creating effect.
A more serious fault in the book is its lapse
of truth. Let the reader turn to that part of
the book, commencing vol. iii. p. 13, in which
Meadows is represented as acting the part of
an Australian proprietor, and selling out of
hand for 12,5001. some land in Australia
which he had a few moments before purchased
for 5001.. and say whether anything more
thoroughly unreal was ever presented under
the garb of " matter of fact" fiction. The
incident is as little in accordance with the
character of Meadows, as with the usages of
London mercantile life. All that relates to
the Jew is just as unnatural.
Mr. Reade seems to pride himself most on
that part of his book which details the horrors
of the silent-system gaol. The governor is
depicted as a brute delighting in the torture
of his unhappy prisoners, yet able to sympa-
thise with the sufferiegs of Uncle Tom, and
touched with indignation at the cruelties of
Legree. After driving some prisoners to
suicide, and torturing others to death, he is at
last detected, tried, and sentenced to three
months' imprisonment, on which the author
bursts out into this choice specimen of rant :
I revoke that sentence with all the blunders on which it
was founded. . . . . It shall stand alone

in all its oblique pity, its straightforward cruelty rnd ab•
surdity ; and no judge shall dare to copy it while 1 am
alive, for if he does, I swear to him by the Grid that made
me that all I have yet said is to what I will print of him
as a lady's whip to a thresher's flail. I promise him on
my honour as a writer and no hireling, that I will buy a
sheet of paper as big as a barn•door and nail him to it by
his name as we nail a pole-cat by the throat. I will take
him by one ear to Calcutta, and from Calcutta to Sydney,

761

and by the other from London via Liverpool to New York
and Boston. The sun shall never set upon his gibbet,
and when his bones are rotten his shame shall live. Ay I
though he was tbirty years upon the bench, posterity shall
know little about his name and feel nothing about it but
this—t'iat it is the name of a maddle•head who gained and
merited my loath.ng, my horror, and my scorn !

The case of a certain county gaol in the
west of England is, we suppose, intended
by the author. Every one will agree
with the writer that prisons should, as far as
practicable, be reformatories, not places of
torture. The best of them require to have the
light of publicity thrown into them, and no
false scruples should save from exposure the
officers who abuse their trust. But fiction
may abuse its trust also. While indicating
realities, it can exaggerate or pervert them to
any extent. It has power to promulgate
slander which cannot be mistaken, but which
yet cannot be punished. It can so label
hideous falsehood as to make it pass for fact.
It may defame without responsibility, and lie
without being called to account.
From the best part of the book we quote the
passage describing the parting of George and
Susan :

In a hutch near the corner of the house was William's
pointer Carlo. Carlo observing by the general movement
that there was something on foot, had the curiosity to come
out to the end of his chain, and as he stood there giving
every now and then a little uncertain wag of his tail,
George took notice of him and came to him and patted his
head.

" Good bye, Carlo," faltered George ; " poor Carlo—
you and i shall never go after the partridges again, Carlo :
the dog shows more understanding than the Christian ;
bye, Carlo." Then he looked wistfully at William's dog,
bat he said nothing more.
William watched every look of George, but he said
nothing at the time.
" Good bye, little village church, where I went to church
man and boy ; good bye churchyard where my mother lies ;
there will be no church bells, Susan, where I am going;
no Sunday bells to remind me of my soul and home."
These words, which he spoke with great difficulty, were
hardly out of young Fielding's mouth when a very painful
circumstance occurred; one of those things that seem the
contrivance of some malignant spirit. The church bells in
a moment struck up their very merriest peal !
George Fielding started, he turned pale, and his lips
trembled. " Are they mocking me?" he cried. "Do they
take a thonght what I am going through this moment, the
hardhearted—"

" No! no ! no I" cried William ; " don't think it,
George ; I know what tell ye."

" *hit is it?"

" well, George, it is Tom Clarke and Esther
Borgherst married to-day; only they couldn't have the
ringers till the afternoon.'
" Why, Will, they have only kept company a year, and
Susan and I have kept company three years; and Tom and
Esther are married to-day ; and what are George and Susan
doing today? God help ma! Oh, God help me! What
shall Ido ? what shall Ido ? " And the stout heart gave
way, and George Fielding covered his face with his hands,
and burst ont gobbing and crying.
Susan flung hsr arms round his neck—" Oh ! George,
my pride is all gone ; don't go, don't think to go ; have pity
on us both. and don't go." And she clung to him—her
bonnet fallen off, her hair dishevelled—and they sobbed

and wept iu one another's arms.
Meadows writhe.l with the jealous anguish this sad sight
gave him, and at that moment he could have cursed the
whole creation. Re tried to fly, but he was rooted to the
spot. He leaned sick as death against the palings.
George and Susan cried together, and then they wiped
one another's eyes like simple cosintry folk with one
pocket-handkerchief ; and then they kissed one another in
turn, and made each other's tears flow fest again ; and
again wiped one another's eyes with one handkerchief.
• • • • •

She trembled violently ; and then George gave a cry
that seemed to tear his heart, and darted from them in
a moment. _ . .

Poor_ Susan uttered more than one despairing scream,
and stretched out both her Mods for George. He did not
see her, for he dared not look hack.
" Bob, loose the dog," muttered William, hastily, in a
broken voice. _ _

The dog was loosed, and ran after George, who, he
thought, was only going for a walk. Susan was sinking,
pale and helpless, upon her brother's bosom.
" Pray, sister," said gentle William ; " pray, sister, as I
must."
A faint shiver was all the answer; her senses had almost
left her.
When George was a little way up the hill, something
ran suddenly against his legs—he started—it was Carlo.
He turned, and lifted up his hand to Heaven ; and William
could see that George was blessing him for this. Carlo
was mcre than a dog to poor George at that cruel
moment. Soon after that George and Carlo reached the
crown of the hill. George's fignre stood alone a moment
between them and the sky. He was seen to take his hat
off, and raise his hands once more to Heaven, whilst he
looked down upon all he loved and left, and then be turned
his sorrowful face again towards that distant land, and they
saw him no more !

It is strange that Mr. Reade, with so much
ability as he undoubtedly possesses, should
have run into the affectations which disfigure

762

this book. Can he have to learn that talent
does not consist in tricks of typography ? We
fear he has been spoilt by injudicious praise.
He has been flattered into the belief that he is
above rules, until now it is a toss-up, so
mingled arc his merits and defects, whether he
will attain the topmost round of popular
authorship or sink into an affected scribbler.

Essays, Critical and Imaginative. By Pro-
fessor Wilson. Vol. I. London : Black-
woods.
THAT literature was made for man, and not
man for literature, would seem to be the sort
of principle which Professor Wilson, by his
manners and writings, endeavoured to estab-
lish. Considering that man was a composite
being—intellectual, moral, and physical—it
was the theory of the Professor that these
three faculties should each be duly developed.
He had not much sympathy with those who
achieved great eminence by the exercise of one
faculty at the sacrifice of the other two ; and
he looked upon all human pursuits—art,
science, literature, education, government—as
subservient to the one great end of cultivating
the whole nature of man We cannot at pre-
sent discuss the correctness of this opinion ;
but that it was the cherished opinion of
Christopher North must be the conviction of
all who do not refuse to see in the " Noctes
.Ambrosianm" and the present Essays some-
thing more than the mere random ebullitions
of a vigorous and sensuous temperament. We
believe they were written on principle, and
intended as an antidote to the notion—which,
however, was even then on the wane—that the
country is the birthplace of coarseness and
vulgarity, and that country sports and true
conviviality are incompatible with a high
order cf intellect and a high polish of polite-
ness. This, the favorite dogma of the wits of
the eighteenth century, Wilson delighted to
think himself the man chosen to demolish.
Hence his maledictions on all who show any
symptoms of either physical or moral weak-
ness—his jovial denunciation of Cockneys
and bagmen—his eulogies on good living—
and his constant recommendation of a
" caulker."

It is in the first five or six essays of this
volume that these doctrines are specially
enforced Yet, in the paper on " Health and
Longevity," after having stated that " no man
" need write for Ma;.-.Ta with the most distant
" chance of admission," unless he eats and
drinks on a scale then and there laid down,
and of such magnitude as to have satisfied
even the giants in Mr H. Ainsworth's "Tower
of London"—embracing as it does four meat
meals a day,with three quarts of porter,a bottle of
claret, four glasses of hock, four of champagne,
two of port, and two of Madeira, three jugs of
toddy and a caulker after breakfast—he
nevertheless goes on to tell us that much of
all this kind of exaggeration is assumed—
" much of our swilling is imagination "—and
so no doubt it was. We do not believe he was
habitually guilty of excess, though his strong
constitution enabled him to be a free liver
without any inconvenience or injury. With
an extract from his letters on early rising we
have done with this side of his character:—
Finally, it is taken for granted by early risers that early
rising is a virtuous habit, and that they are all a most
meritorious and prosperous set of people. I object to both
clauses of the bill. None hut a knave or an idiot—l will
not mince the matter—rises early. if he can help it.
Early risers are generally milksop-spoonies, ninnies with
broad unmeaning faces and grozet eyes, cheeks odiously
ruddy. and with great calves to their legs. They slap you
on the hack, and blow their noses like a msil•coach horn.
They seldom give dinners. " Sir, tea is ready." " Shall
we join the ladies? " A rubber at whist, and by eleven
o'clock the whole house is in a snore. Inquire into his
motives for early rising, and it is perhaps to get an appe-
tite fur breakfast. Is the great healthy brute not satisfied
with three penny rolls and a pound of ham to breakfast,
but he must walk down to the pier-head at Leith to in-
crease his voracity? V 1 here is the virtue of gobbling up
three turkey's eggs, and demolishing a quartern loaf,
before his Majesty's lieges are awake? But I am now
speaking of your red, rosy. greedy idiot. Mark next your
pale, sallow early riser. He is your prudent, calculating,
selfish money-scrivener. It is not fur nothing he rises. It is
shocking to think of the hypocrite saying his prayers so
early in the morning, before those are awake whom he
intends to cheat and swindle before he goes to bed.

Wilson's literary judgmm•nts are charac-
terised, on the whole, by great fairness, as
well as great breadth and power. It may