The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 21,1858.

white in front—the garment forming an ample gorget from
the neck to the waist, the bust of the gown being cut
square, of the antique form, with which you are familiar
in the portraits of Anne Boleyn, but very much 10wer....
The Russian peasant women have a moat bewildering
custom of wearing a very tight waist at mid-neck, and a
very full bust at the waist. Their corsage presents the
aspect of the section of a very ripe, full pear, resting on
its base. Beneath the clavicles all is as flat as a pancake ;
where we expect to profit by the triumphs of tight-lacing as
productive of a genteel and wasp-like waist, we find this
astonishing protuberance. The waist is upside down.
How they manage to accomplish this astonishing feat;
whether they hicteally nourish dumb-hells or babies made
of pig-lead; whether it be physical malformation, or some
cunning sub-camicial str tpping and bandaging; whether
it be the effect of one or all of these, I am not aware ; but
there is that effect in the Baba—baffling, puzzling, and to
me as irritating as though the girl wore a shoe on her
head, or broad-brimmed hats on her feet.
The following is curious :

Every social observance in Russia is franche—peculiar
to one of the two great classes ; it is a noble's custom, or
a moujik's custom, but is never common to both. Russian
gentlemen, within doors, ate incessant smokers ; the
common people use very little tobacco. You never see a
monjik smoking a cigar, and very rarely even enjoying his
pipe. In some of the low vodki shops I have seen a group
of tnoujiks with one blackened pipe among them, with a
shattered bowl and scarcely any stem, charged with this
same mahorka. The pipe was passed from hand to hand,
each smoker taking a solemn whiff, and giving a placid
grunt, exactly as you may see a party of Irish bogtrotters
doing in a Connemara allebeen. Down south in Russia—
I mean in the governments of Koursk and Worensch—
there is a more Oriental fashion of smoking in vogue.
Some mahorka, with more or less dirt, is put into a
pipkin, in whose sides a few odd holes have been knocked ;
and the smokers crouch over it with hollow sticks, reeds,
or tin tubes, each man to a hole, and puff away at the
common bowl. It is not that the Russian peasant does
not care for his pipe, but he has an uneasy consciousness
that the luxurious narcotic is not for the likes of him. For
him to fill the pipe of his lord and master, and roll the
paper cigarettes ; that should surely be sufficient. Haven't
our British matrons somewhat similar feelings concerning
their housemaids' ringlets ?

Mr. Sala's descriptions of the Russian hotel,
the Russian village, &c., are all well done, though
somewhat overloaded by the prevailing condi-
ment. But we are sorry he has given us no ac-
count of that Russian country-house in which
he says he stayed with the aunts of a Russian
who was one of the Emperor's pages. Mr. Sala's
delicacy has, we presume, deterred him from vio-
lating the privacy of the domestic hearth, or other-
wise seeking his own advantage by impertinent
behaviour towards other people.
Mr. Sala's ideas of Russian institutions are all
of the stereotyped John Bull order. That ab-
stract personage ought, indeed, henceforward to
be celebrated for his power of divining, rather
than for his ignorance of; the character of his
neighbours. }or it appears that, while strutting
about his own island with his cudgel under his
arm and his hands in his pockets, he has arrived
at a perfectly correct estimate of the most remote
European people. The Russian police, the Rus-
sian religion, the Russian laws, and the Russian
Czar, are all, according to Mr. Sala, what every
Sunday penny-a-liner delights to represent them
—respectively hopelessly corrupt, hideously gross,
thoroughly iniquitous, and cruelly despotic. How
much of this picture was due to the necessity of
squaring his descriptions with the well-known
sentiments of the journal in which they were to
appear, we cannot presume to say ; but Mr.
Sala, who would have us believe him a thorough
citizen of the world, and above all local preju-
dices, has entirely precluded us from believing
him by the publication of these notes. All we
can say is, that, if this be the Russian despotism,
Mr. Sala deserves a pension from Austria and
Naples.

Novels and Novelist; from Elizabeth to Victoria.
By J. Gordy Jeaffreson. Two Vols. London :
Hurst and Blackett.

(Second Notice.)

FURTHER examination of this work only reveals
its great defects. We shall allow Mr. Jeaffreson
to exhibit under his own hand the class of
authors to which he belongs. In the opening
passages of his notice of Sir Bulwer Lytton he
says :

One of the great drawbacks of the present age of
" action " to the young man is, that he is compelled by it
to impudence and assumption, is forced to throw aside that
habit of reverence which is really congenial to generous
youth, and to jostle, scan, measure, end judge his superiors,
as though he were at last their equal. The young author
may not rest content with admiring the great masters of
his art, with feebly imitating them, and gratefully ac-
knowledging the benefit oftheir instructions ; other conduct
is required of him—the pen is put in his hand and he is

commanded to criticize. Nor is he allowed to use the
to tell the deeper and more honourable feelings of his h
emotions of love, wonder, even of genial Sympathy restrain, and in their place must foster h
arrogant and flippant self-sufficiency ; by turns he
censure with a gibe and praise with a sneer, affect
r
cold contempt and now an insulting pity, It is for hi
point out not the author's beauties but his defects, not
patient research and general truthfulness, but his super,
foist foist errors and occasional failings. But it must be done
The bookseller cries f n copy, and hunger cries for dinner
" The bookseller cries for copy, and hunger
for dinner" ! This is indeed very like
plaintive utterance of a voice from Grubb•sti
The young authors of the present age will not ,
likely to accept this writer as a trustwonh,
witness ; nor will literary men desire to
judged by a scribe who can indite the following
most absurd rant about the transcendent merits
of the modern English novels :
Sneer at it as we like in our moments of savage disdain
for the respectable and the genteel, still the modern
fashionable novels of Marlborough street manufacture
must be allowed a high place in our critical esteem•
best of them abound with vivid descriptions of whet i..
dazzling, perchance, also, most vicious in European
capitals ; with subtle delineations of character, the a
cacy of which is often not surpassed in the conceptinni
Shakespeare ; and with complicated and astoundingly
genious plots, epigrammatic wit, poetic language, a•
wealth of scholarly allusion that proves their writers
students of deep and varied research. And the worst
them are pleasant, lively narratives of love and folly, I
as would have turned the fifteenth century mad
excitement. These books have refined the manners,
the tastes, of the generation ; and mainly to them it
be attributed that a simple yeoman, who has passed
on his paternal acres, is often found to possess the
self-possession, dignified bearing, and polished address,
which, in the last century, were never attained to by men
who had not profited by foreign travel, and a prolonged
residence in courts.
After this absurd and overstrained puff collective
for " the modern fashionable novels of
borough-street," the reader might be tempted
cry, " The bookseller cries for copy, and hunger
cries for dinner." Still, under the exigencies
any cries for more copy, or any sighs after dinr
another style of writing should have been shown
this work than that which is presented to us;
" Subtle delineations of character not surpassed
by Shakespeare." " Astoundingly ingenious
plots." " Epigrammatic wit." Such a stnng r
superlatives takes away the breath ! And
serve the absurdity of stating that many
.a
yeoman has now " the dignified bearing
polished address " which was attained in the
century only by " a prolonged residence
foreign foreign Courts." A trip to a circulating-l='now-a days achieves what the "grand tour'
formerly. " Wonderful, if true," as the American
editors say. This author's panegyric on
novels of the Marlborough-street manufacture
more disagreeable when we observe how -
he disparages the character and genius
Walter Scott.

There never was a novelist who raised
literary value of the Novel to so high a pit
Sir Walter Scott. Great as were the
exhibited by Fielding and Smollett, the ad.
of public taste revolted against the coarseness
their writings, and the women of the
generation rarely examine " Tom Jones
" Roderick Random." In blending history.
fiction, Scott effected a great advance. Ibierry
confesses that his mind derived new ideas urn
the art of writing history after the perusal
" Ivanhoe " ; and the style of Lord Macaulay
obviously influenced by the famous
novelist. Recollecting the splendid triural
achieved by this illustrious writer, it would,
absurd to attempt decrying his position.
wealth of knowledge, his personal resources,
his extraordinary literary faculty place
the first class of the select few of
geniuses. No country ever owed more
single man of letters than Scotland and
Scotch owe to the author of "The I.ll'
" Marmion," and " Waverley," and " Guy
nering," and "Rob Roy," and " Old Mortalit.
and " The Heart of Mid Lothian," and--but
the list of his achievements is too long to -
In a party of eight at Holland-house, one
the question was proposed, " Which was
of Scott's novels ?" It was left to a ballot,
on each slip the name of a different nos'
written. " Scott," said Byron, "is thi
" wonderful writer of the day ; his novels
" new literature in themselves. I kno,„
" reading on which I fall with such alacril
"on a work of his. I love him, too, for the
" liness of his character," &c. And in