The Press.
London, England, 1853-08-20 00:00:00

Lour.

379

The suggestion that the reward was too
large for their imagination " practically to
grasp" has a touch of unconscious drollery.
Those faithful mountaineers were quite shrewd
enough to know that they would have been re-
munerated munificently if they had delivered
up the fugitive Prime. Though no Jacobites
in our sympathies, we agree with Sir Walter
Scott in believing " that while the blue
of the Scottish mountains tower to the 8171:10
long will the time of these generous High-
landers be honoured amongst men." It con-
trasts very strongly with the conduct of that,
Scottish Parliament that took money for deli-
vering up Charles 1., and even with the states-
men of the Revolution Parliament, if we eau
accept the following description of them front
11Ir. Burton :
Professing tontwanily to he governed by the loftiest and
purest of all motives, religious fervour, they all knew each
other to be conventional hypocrites; and as each believed
that his companion was, in reality, led on by SUllle other
impulse than that religious one winch he professed, so each
attributed whatever baseness his malignity or Ida own self.
-"uotess might suggest to the motives of his neigh-

We have no sympathy with historians who,
like Thiers and other writers, blindly pander
to national prejudices ; but we have as little
liking for those cold and dreary pedants who,
in place of reproducing for us the forms of
past life, give us dissertations MI of merely
retrospective wisdom, without any respect for
national glories. To expect that a writer of
Mr. Burton's school could do justice to the
annals of Scottish history would be like look-
ing for sound views on religion from a disciple
of 1)r. Strauss. But he has other defects than
those of defieieney in moral sympathy and
depth of thought. There is not that display of
historical research in his work which the subject
demanded. Page after page is printed with-
out a footnote ; and he is evidently not deeply
read in rho Scottish literature of the time. We
never met with a writer so blind to the per-
ception of originality. We expected that
Fletcher of Saltoun would have given him a
topic on which he might have shown either
felicity of style or special knowledge. He
presents us with a catalogue of Fletcher's qua
lities ,jumbled together ineoherently, and de-
votes some pages to the analysis of one of him
most remarkable works. From this critique
upon " The Right Regulation of Governments"
he leaves out that pregnant aphorism which
has obtained such notoriety—" If a man were
permitted to make all the ballads he need not
cure who should make the laws of a nation "
a sentiment which derives great force from its
peculiar applicability to Scotland. But this
" philosophical " writer passes over the sen-
tence, and dismisses a most remarkable politi-
cal work to which he had devoted five pages
with the following flippant remark
are some of the characteristics of this amusing
paper. It lets one into the ideas und thoughts of s remark •
able testier of it temarksble party. For suy actual illative•
tion on principles goveniment it might be as 'Shay
searched as Cicero de Itepubliei.
If' the tract were only " an amusing paper,"
why should this " philosophical" historian
give five pages to its examination, when he
gives Flora Macdonald's exploits only as many
lines, and dismisses the romantic fidelity of
the Highlanders in a rough, short sentence,
and that a disparaging one ? It is in reflec-
tions that we should expect a "philosophical"
historian to excel ; and could anything be
weaker or more trivial than the following cant-
ing platitude on the fall of the Pretender
in '45 ?

He did not go unpunished ; and thmugh toilsome, de-
jected wanderings, and privations to the utmost endurance
of the human frame, he had opportunities for reflecting
whether he had, in unselfish sincerity, followed the divine
law by which he professed to be gulls!, melon scattering
around him to much calamity in efforts to grasp a MVP,
had been truly iwting as representative on eiuth of a
beneficent Deity.

But, though we could have desired more of
sympathy with Scotch glories and virtues thau
we find in this ponderous dissertation, we
could desire the absence from the work of
Scottieisms in grammar. Writing of Carstaini,
the author says :
Ile hail scarcely the rhetinical and literary talents of
his mail, hut he was entirely/ere it, that prelate's foppish
love of consequence, and dangerous IncuLtinetico of
tongue.

Such a sentence recoils us to the marginalia
of Swift, preserved in the Oxford edition of

Burnet, where the witty commentator, finding
the recurrent phrase, " free of those vices,"
instead of free from them, notes—" He (Burnet)
means as a person is free of a cormation !"
A writer like Mr. Burton who makes such
mistakes need not go out of his way in three
different places to tell us of Lord Dundee's
ignorance of grammar and rhetoric.
In the twenty-first chapter Mr. Burton puts
forth his power to assail the Highlanders, and
denude their history of aught that is brilliant
or romantic. It is evidently penned in the
spirit of an attack ; but we never read so long
a dissertation with so few notes or references
to authenticate the hardy assertions in the
text.. We do not care much for the opinions
of one who, writing of the Grants and Ca-
inerons, calls them " capricious savoyee," uud
calls the plaid " the many-coloured blanket of
the mountain Ravage." He even recurs to the
word " blanket" with special gratification ; and
it is most amusing to observe his evident
pleasure as he attempts the part of an histori-
cal iconoclast, and flings his ponderous but
not formidable sentences at the objects of
national enthusiasm. Mr. Burton requires to
be reminded that a writer is not neces-
sarily profound or original because he wants
pathos, sympathy, or vivid genius. So deter-
mined and bigoted an utilitarian must be
warned that " utility" itself requires that a
historian should exhibit the art of portraying
the inner life of a people, and making us
iteputinted with their springs of action by
a picturesque analysis ; for history written
otherwise can seldom meet, with readers,
never with admirers ; and the spiritless want
of human sympathy is almost invariably pu-
nished by a toil without fruit, and the retribu
t ion of—oblivion.

A Charge at the Second Visitation of Thomas Arch-
bishop of York. John W. Parker and Son.
_ .

Tuts charge has been printed at the request of the
clergy of the archdiocese of York, and will he read
with pleasure by those who are interested in the
questions appertaining to "Convocation." Its style
is smoothly elegant, and displays the peculiar merits
of chastened composition. We observe that Arch-
bishop Musgrave is not very friendly to the intro-
duction of Scripture readers into clerical offices. lie
says
" There is now less occasion to dispense with the usual
p►e-regnisites of a professional education, when the means
of obtaining it at a cheaper rate, told after a shorter term
of preparation, have been se► multiplied in ditlerent parts
of the kingdom. By adhering to this rule, save in some
exceptional and remarkable cases which might possibly
went., 1 shall consider that 1 shrill best discharge the duty
of my office in this respect, and best uphold the character
of the ministry, and the honour and usefulness of our
various academies% establishments."
So that due provision be made for the " exceptional
cases " here referred to, we think that the general
opinion of friends to the Church coincides with the
sentiments of Archbishop Musgrave.

A Reply to Lord Stanley's Pamphlet on Church
Rates. By the Rev. Merewether. M.A. London :
Rivington.
AN earnest work, and worthy all consideration;
evincing the animus of a gentleman and the caution
of a scholar; and in the latter respect careful of
overstating its conclusions.

City Insprarensents and Mr. Charles Pearson. Lon.
don : Effingham Wilson.

'l'in writer discourses very sensibly upon the too
notorious fact that London streets are become lintel'
too narrow for London traffic. We want elbow room
sadly. The ordinary remedy, that of widening the
streets, he adds, is enormously expensive, and affords
but a transient amelioration after all. Wider streets,
by facilitating traffic, increase it, and their natural
tendency, therefore, is to make themselves again too
narrow in a few years. Seeking for a complete and
permanent cure, he then advocates with much
cogency Mr. Pearson's scheme of metropolitan rail-
roads with city termini, by which all the inhabitants,
down to the humblest, might live out of town, and
London proper be reserved solely for a place of bu-
siness, where all who had business to transact might
come and go as easily as the I►ank-clerks enter or
leave the scene of their labour.

Rosee's Cab Fare London : Samuel Rowe.
A tismir. little manual, offering some much-wanted
information, arranged upon a sensible plan. Twenty -
three "centres" are taken, Mantling all the railway
stations, and comprising the chief points of depar-