The Press.
London, England, 1858-09-04 00:00:00

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THE PRESS, SEPTEMBER 4, 1858. 849 I
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days, copying
the manners of the present time, assertion with you. The millions by whom you are cur- made light and cheerful though by coins andwindows of
she might do much better. Her sense of reality rounded exist in your imagination only for your use. There white sarsdenatone ; high peaked French roofs, with i
they are, so many " niggers," John—so many " black louvers and dormers, haunted by a thousand swallows
requires to be strengthened, and we should fellows" to work for you, to fight for you, to die for you, to and starlings. Old walled gardens, gay with flowers, shall
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advise her to study Miss Austen's "Pride and • render up their substance to you, to be shaped according to stretch right and left. Clipt yew-alleys shall wander away 1
Pre udice" or " Emma," and cease to rely on the rule and plummet of your home-bred notions. All that into mysterious gloom; and out of the black arches shall
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The use of the word belongs to them is wrong, all that belongs to you is right. come tripping children, like white fairies, to laugh and
facility of rhetoric.
You cannot for a moment divest. yourself of your indivi- talk with the fair girl who lies dreaming and reading in
"Torrance" on the titlepage will not prevent a
duality, and look at the questions before you from any the hammock there, beneath the black velvet canopy of
reader from requiring that the claims of reality e other than your own point of view. " India for the the great cedar-tree, like some fair tropic flower banging I
should be regarded. English" is your cry. The children of the soil have long from its boughs. Then they shall wander down across • ,
been in your estimation so many stocks and stones. Men the smooth'shoro lawn, where the purple rhododendrons
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fresh from England, with hot English blood in them, are hang double, bush and image, over the water's edge, anti 1
PERIODICAL LITERATURE. prone to violence ; and hundreds, who would not lift up call to us across the stream, " What sport?" and the old
----- their hands against an English beggarin the etreet,have been squire 'hall beckon the keeper over the long stone bridge,
We have a ver good show of magazines this month, wont to strike their Mohammedan and Hindoo servants and return with him, bringing luncheon and good ale ;
y as though they were beasts of burden or mere insensate and we will sit down and eat and drink among the bur-
Blackwood contains little controversial matter. The machines. They who are ordinarily considerate in their dock leaves, and then watch the quiet house, anti lawn, and
two papers upon Cherbourg are both excellent in language and their demeanour towards the natives of flowers, and fair human creatures, and shining water, all
a serious account of the India, are men who have resided long in India, who know sleeping breathless in the glorious light beneath the glee
their way—the one giving
lspectacle, the other the livelier impressions of an the people, and who speak their language; or those who, rions blue, till we doze off, lulled by the murmur of aindividual spectator M.P. From the former we ex- lacking much Indian experience, are moved by the tradi- thousand insects, and the rich minstrelsy of nightingale
tract the following : tions at which, John, you are prone to sneer. You talk and blackcap, thrush and dove.
about offices in India being heirlooms in certain families ; Peaceful, graceful, complete English country life and
Let us take a parting ands bird's eye peep of the locality.
you say that you wish to see new names in the fiats of the country-everywhere—everywhere finish and polish, neatness
The Montagne du Houle is our point fur this. It is a hill •
Indian services ; and that you would fain see those services Nature perfected by the wealth and art of peaceful ceill
standing at the mouth of the valley, aof the
natural citadel, and
overborne by an independent European community. My turies ! Why should I exchange you, even for the eight
a picturesque background for every view. town from
exclusiveness has often excited your vehement indignation. of all the Alps, for bad roads, bad carriages, bad inns,
every point. Look at it where you will, right
from
Your theory was right, John. But, practically, this ex- bad food, bad washing, bad beds, cud fleas, dean, fleas?
the sea or the land, there behind rises Is ninnlwine, some.
elusiveness had its uses. There was a traditional into-
tunes closer and more precipitous, sometimes less rugged, Let that last thought be enough. There may be tot-
rest in India—a traditional kindness for the people kept •
hes, there may be sorrows, there may be sins (thought I
but ever the great feature. The face of the rock towards
alive in many families. It was no uncommon thing for
the town has been scarped into
.deep slopes, crossed and know there are no very heavy ones;, in that fine old
a •oung civilian or a young soldier, on landing in India,
divided here and there by zigzag ridges or fissures, which house opposite, but, thanks to the genius of my native
to be met by one of the native servants who had dandled
shine on its white surface like dark veins. On the side oflaud, there are at least no fleas.
him in his boyhood, eager to see "Harry baba," and,
the valley it has been left in its natural ruggedness ; and Think of that, wandering friend ; and of this also, that
perhaps, to
India, follow his fortunes. Youths of this stamp,
tufts of bright heather, clustering now in the clefts and P you will find your warm bath ready when you go to bed
born in and taught to look to India as their future
mil the boulderlike points, give finches of beauty to the
home, if not somewhat denationalized, John; were at all to-night, and your cold one when you rise to-morrow
dark stones. This Montagne:du Route is the centre•point
events less encumbered with the national self-love of which morning ; and, in content autl thankfulness, stay in Eng-
of a ridge of hills not high or continuous, but threaded
l have been speaking. Their good English spirit did not land, and be clean.
with pretty valleys, and here and there softened into
teach them to hate or to despise the " tuggers." They had
gentle wooded slopes, which extend in a semicircle to- In some respects the most remarkable paper in this
learned better thoughts and better feelings from their
wards the sea, enclosing a level luxuriant Champaign, number is Mr. J. A. Freud's reply to his critic in the
parents. It is not from the mouth of the " old Indian,"
iti the midst of which lies Cherbourg. From our height Edinburgh Review (no other, we believe, than Mr.
we look upon a panorama of plains, villages, gardens, even now, that
yoncondemned. will heat the people of India, as a
nation, aweepingly Gold win Smith) ; that he convicts the new Professor
town, and sea, all brought and toned into one beautiful of Modern History of knowing less than himself
picture by the bright lights which fall upon and float over The September number of Fraser is capital. The upon that subject, of flippancy, temerity, and haste,
it. Long the eye dwells upon it in all its completeness first paper, upon " Work and Play," is certainly oppor- is, we think, as clear as that he has not suc-
and beauty, not caring to break such a whole into details ; tune and just, though somewhat inconclusive. It ceeded in completely vindicating some of his own
then turns to the east, where the ridge is highest, and appeals especially to the luckless. race of journalists, assertions.
juts most prominently out on the sea. There at its foot
lies a village, nestled amid trees, with its church tower just none of whom can ever, if they do their duty, be
rising above the tops, and all around are masses of verdure absent from their post for a month together. Every The best article in the Dublin University Magazine
made up of tree-tops and green patches. other kind of work can be put off. Every other —and, indeed, one of the best critical articles we
Onward travels the eye, and lights now on a line of business admits of interruptions. But the printing- have perused for some time—is entitled "Religious
rocks along the shore, on the end of which stands Fort press is an inexorable monster, to whom the loss of Biography," and consists of a careful claseificatiou
des Flamands, large, massive, and regular, with its polished a single meal is fatal. Nothing can stave off the arrival of its different schools. We can only afford space
solid masonry, looking almost red in the sunlight ; then on of that dreaded Friday which summons the unhappy for one specimen, which is a beautiful analysis of a
again, over meadows, fields, and orchards, with hedgerows penman from the rural retirement wbere he had striven beautiful species of literature:—
worthy of Devon, and over hamlets and suburban clusters for a time to forget the invention of printing. Every The englican type of religious biography is soft and
of houses, all girt with trees, and some close at the foot of Englishman is seized with restlessness at this period soothing. It is not the sort of panegyric which a popular
the Montagne, standing amid gardens of rich bright flowers, of the year: one would steam up a German river— preacher would declaim from a pulpit. It is set in the
till it falls on the canal with its sloping sides and muddy
another is haunted by reminiscences of English key to which we attune our voices when we walk under
waters, lined with tall trees, and then passes on to the the churchyard limes, in a summer evening, acid talk
Bassin du Commerce, crowded now with ships, followieg it stubble.fields—and even in his dreams the whirr of
until its pier throws its two long arms into the sea the rising covey as sweet music to him as the lth ingly and solemnly of the holy dead. It fails, perhaps,
in giving us any very vivid ght into the alterations
Then comes the town, a huddled mass of roofs, seeming as trumpet to the soldier. Dear to another are the die
of the spiritual combat. It is somewhat too reserved in
if they were cut out of a rocky ledge, only the church sipations and recreations of an English watering- its manifestations of the inner life. The paces are blis-
towers rising markedly above, looking as if it were only place—the morning bath, the meridian billiards— tered by no scalding tears, by Ito sweat-drops of spiritual
a suburb to the great arsenal which, isolated and bound by On afternoon drive ant: the evening ball. One begins agony ;we rather feel than are told from whence the
its high wall and encienfe mililaire, seems to rise in its to fidget with his trusty walking stick that has ac- odour of their holiness proceeds; as in walking up a
regular enclosure, tier above tier, of wall, and abed, and companied him half over Great Britain—through country lane, in the dusk, we perceive the presence of
building, the waters of the basins gleaming like lakes Devonshire lanes—over Welsh hills—by northern the honeysuckle by the fragrance of its hid len wreaths.
between, and the bastions behind lying like green terraced
lake, and through southern woodlands. Everybody The biographer does not exhinit to us Pilgrim, mocked
slopes. On the eye sweeps to the point at its end made by
Fort Hommet, its seaward citadel, and then glances across ie more or less unhappy if doomed to tread the at by his wife and children, and faring forth with fiery
terror in his heart. Rather do we see him lying in his
the Rade to the ever-present Digue, which lies between the London pavement in September. And the stoppage
chamber, Peace, and hear him singing a gentle hymn,
two ends of the semicircle as though it hail connected them of this natural inclination is in its way as injurious
with his eyes on the window that opens towards the sun-
together, and the line been broken by the two passages ; to the individual as the sudden interruption of the rise, looking at the outlines of the heavenly city, which he
the Isle de Pelee standing as though it were a fragment left ordinary bodily functions. We heartily thank the is soon to enter. The subjects of these lives are generally
by the waters, and looking from hence like an old sea-girt Fraserian critic for his thoroughly genial observa- men of cultivated intellects, profound theologians as well
ruin rather than as the well-built fort it is. Turn we now dons concerning work and play, fully agreeing as sincere Christians. Hence the calm, unhesitating
and look behind on the valley at the foot of Route, and the with him that everybody worth his salt naturally conviction of truth, the sober handling of Scripture, not
ridge beyond, from which it must have been broken.
There, on that plateau of rock, stood the Norman castle hates the former. "An English Scholar in by crumbling it into little texts, but by taking its general
nod sound review not too ton scope, and the ready appeal to primitive antiquity, which
(Sold time ; and on from it, along the valley,and ha vi is a lin of Greece," is a gg
plateaus, covered each with creeping verdure, eng " Chalk stream Studies "is another beautiful rural* sound, perhaps, somewhat coldly in the ears of an age that
is eminently impulsive and unscientific in theology. In
Nome little summer-house or tent on its summit. Below essay, redolent of that refined adoration of the
justice to such men, who may seem to us too studious end
rims the railway; and in the little hollow, near the Bassin country peculiar to cultivated Englishmen. How
contemplative, we should remember that they were cast in
du Commerce, stands the new station, half bidden among exquisitely truthful and charming is the following au age when it was not impossible fora Christian to adjust
tree' ; and so the picture is complete. picture :--- his time between contending claims. The clergyman's
"What will he do with it?" seems to be approaching And here we come to a strip of thick cover, part of oar daily, or festival services, his monthly communions
(then
to a crisis. If we may be allowed to utter a passing squire's home preserves, which it is impossible to fish, so thought" a distant return to primitive frequency ), his Sun-
criticism on this interesting story, we should say that closely do the boughs cover the waiter. We will walk on day morning sermon, his afternaon catechizing, his
Darrell's behaviour to Lady Montfort is a little through it toward the hall, and there get— what we begin I'f circuits" of his little parish, his study, thud" up his
strained and unnatural. "The Light on the sorely to need—something to eat. It will be of little use entire work, which was quietly etigrassinFt
for
thantehxa-t
Hearth "is the first instalment of another promising fishing for some time to come ; for these hot hour* of the citingolyinatentse
tse.
if
the Herbert
oone:tims to
e ol take
)t
so
hilsyohrogntat
hnattad soms
tale. "A Parochial Epic" is a poem in alternate afternoon, from three till six, are generally the " deadest of
o S
od
time " of the whole day. his Ajmer' and hupmbler parishioners can taste of his
octoeyllabics, giving an account of how the old- cheer at a comfortable dinner, and hear his voice discours-
fashioned rector died and the new one introduced And now, when we have struggled in imagination
ing sweetly of his master. The clergyman then was not
dietension, cant, and gormandizing at Lea aeries. through the last bit of copse, and tumbled over the pilings
hustled front meeting to meeting, driven from the lecture-
into the lawn, we will see a scene quite as lovely, if you "John Company's Farewell to John Bull " is like all room to the platform, and burned from one class to another.
will believe it, as any Alp on earth.
tile productions of this clever writer—shrewd, witty,'Flue age was different from ours. Therefore, the details of
cud, in a narrow signification of the word, sensible. What shall we see as we look across the broad, still, the men'. lives were different. They cannot be literally
But he is too much an advocate to be listened clear iiver, where the great dark trout sail to and fre lazily imitated ; but the spirit which animated them is living yet.
" an authority. The following remarks are,how to-
in the sun ?—for, having free-warren of our fancy and our It is something es different front Romanisin as the scent
ever, worth quoting : paper, we may see what we choose. of ft violet front patchouli ; as an oratoriaa ditty from Ken's
White chalk-fields above, quivering hazy iu the heat. evening hymn ;as a modern Itotnish meetimehonse, with
It is this intense self-appreciation, John, which makes A park full of merry haymakers ; gay red and blue waggons, dressed dolls and artificial flowers, from au old Saxon
`on so indifferent a citizen of the world. Whilst your stalwart horses, switching off the flies ; dark avenue., of church. The nearest external reproduction of it is in the
n'oPeeasable enterprise and your iudumitable energy tall elms ; groups of abele, " tossing their whispering study of some English parsonage. One may hear the sound
mnke for you new homes in every corner of the globe, you silver to the sun ;" and amid them the house. What of its voice in the deep, calm, mss-ire sentences of some •
can seldom make yourself at home without first expelling manner of house shall it be? Tudor or Elizabethan, with of the better English clergymen of the old school.
the old inmates of your new dwelliefeplace. Where you oriels, mullioned windows, gables, and turrets of *stamp
ttlurtize, the aborigines disappear. In India, you do not shape? No . that is oomwonpface. Everybody builds
tuenapt to colonize. and you nevermake yourself if at home. Tudor houses. now. " Gerald Fitzgerald " progresses favourably. '' Ast
Our house shall smelt of 'nip Jones , Life in Rome " sustains the interest of the earlier.
"I you carry the sale' 0 egoluaive, absorbing spirit of Belt: or Christopher Wrea. A great, avert., redbrick mass, chapters. " Homtk of the South" it; 3 310 311401(1
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