The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-14 00:00:00

42

attribute the conduct of the Emperor Nicholas to a
desire to extend his dominions when he has promised
to retire " from the principalities as soon as the
" Sultan complies with his requisitions." The jour-
nals are indeed dull not to see the beautiful dis
tinction between an acquisition of territory and an
acquisition of authority over the population of a ter-
ritory. But the following extracts will give a better
idea of this strange performance than any words of
ours :

" The friends of peace and progress, however, were
speedily consoled by a quiet observation of Lord Aber-
deen, in reply to an Opposition peer, that no treaty ex-
ists by which we are bound to assist Turkey, iu case of
war with Russia
•."
•
" The demands of Prince Mentschikow, followed by the
occupation of the principalities, was a grievous offence
towards the powers, who were bound in union with the
Emperor of Russia to the independence of Turkey, and to
its integrity, such as it existed at the time of that agree-
ment ; the occupation being an overt act in direct oppo-
sition to the chief object of that allianc3; and the offence
having been aggravated by the second note of Count Nes.
selrode."

The rest of the pamphlet is similar. From its
conflicting and confused propositions, which it would
require logic of a peculiar kind to reconcile, from the
pedantic accuracy with which the Russian names are
spelt, and from its Russian and Ministerial leaning,
we were in some doubt whether to attribute it to the
Baron Brunow, the Chanceller of the Exchequer, or
the Cabinet, On consideration we think it must have
been conceived by the first, executed by the second,
and revised by the last.

Pictorial Calendar of the Season, &c. Edited by
Mary Howitt. London : Bohn.
THE titlepage tells us that this work exhibits " the
" pleasures, pursuits, and characteristics of country
" life for every month in the year, and embodies the
" whole of Aikin's Calendar. of Nature. " It is,
indeed, a charming nulange of poetry, anecdote, and
description, culled and gleaned from various sources,
including many of our popular authors and some of
our best poets, Shelley, Wordsworth, Southey,
Burns, dc. The illustrations, of which there are
1(K), are, with few exceptions, all good, and some
superior. A snowstorm in Scotland, which lasted
for thirteen days, is described :
" At the termination of the storm, on the thirteenth day,
there were many farms on which not a single sheep waslelt
alive. Misshapen walls of dead bodies, surrounding a
central knot of other sheep, also dead, was the sight which
in too many instances met the eye of the ruined shepherd
or farmer. On those farms which were situated in the
glens between mountains, many of the sheep survived the
storm, but their constitutions suffered so severely that few
ultimately recovered. Nine•tenths of all the sheep in the
south of Scotland are supposed to have perished II this
snowstorm. In the pastoral district of Eskdale Muir, out
of twenty thousand sheep, only forty young wethers and
five old ewes were preserved. Many of the fiums were so
utterly ruined as to become tenantless and valueless for
several years,"
This was certainly very dreadful ; but when we read,
" indeed it is said that even now the mention of this
" period to an old shepherd on a stormy winter's
" night seldom fails to," dm., frighten him in fact,
we notice this because it is an imaginative kind of
writing which Mr. Macaulay has made fashionable,
and is entirely opposed to facts. " The neighbour-
" ing villagers long remembered," dc., " Old people
" whose grandsires, dm, still can tell," dc., are expres
sions thickly scattered over Mr. Macaulay's works,
and he is corrupting our lesser writers by his ex-
ample. The snowstorm of which Mary Howitt
speaks occurred in 1660 ! and she might as well say
that we are afraid now when the wind rises because
the greatest storm of wind ever known in this
country swept over England in 1659. Instead of
being influenced by past dangers, men treat them
as if they could never recur. Cottages cover the
slopes of Vesuvius, and the Swiss peasants cannot be
induced to quit the mountains which move and will
one day surely fall, as others did before. Our criticism
is directed more against a style of writing than
against the " Pictorial Calendar," which is a delight-
ful volume of nearly 000 pages.

The Coming Era of Practical Reform. By James
Silk Buckingham. London : Partridge, Oakey,
and Co. _ .

- - -
WI-MN an author commences a prospectus of his
intended publications with an allusion to his "in-
" creasing age and decreasing physical powers . . . .
" with several recent and emphatic warnings as to
" the insecurity of health," &c., it is an appeal which
almost disarms criticism. Still, when Mr. Bucking-
ham tells us that "sixty years of his life have been
" passed in a more than usual activity," we cannot
refrain from observing, not only that he was well
entitled to repose, but that, if the book before us
( which is the first number of a projected series) is a
fair specimen of what we are to expect from his pro-