The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-09 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

liation of the crimes of Catherine de Medici ?—or that
would extenuate in the eyes of the world the brutal treat-
ment to which Frederick William of Prussia, father of Fre-
derick the Great, subjected his son?—or would be an
apology for tie atrocious tyranny and savage brutality of
Judge Jeffreys?—anything to excuse the cold, calculating
murders of Henry VIII. ; —or the refined crimes of, and
thirst for blood exhibited by, Robespierre ?

• • •
Catherine de Medici's disposition did not show itself
until after the death of her husband. I am not in a position
to say how much of her conduct was to be attributed to the
shock of his dissolution; but it is said she suffered from
d 'nination of blood to the head, so severe in its cha-
r.ie ••r as to require occasional bleeding for its relief. Fre-
derick William of Prussia was a debauchee and a drunkard.
He conceived, without any reason, an inveterate hostility
to his eldest sister, and to the prince his son, afterwards
Frederick the Great. He compelled them to eat the most
unwholesome, disgusting, and nauseous articles of
diet. He was in the habit of spitting in their food, and
behaving towards his son with great ferocity. King
Frederick suffered from severe attacks of hypochondriabis,
and great mental depression, and it was during one of
these paroxysms that he attempted suicide. Who can
entertain a doubt of his insanity, or of the good that would
have resulted had his brutality and cruelty been considered
symptoms of some affection of the brain, and he had been
treated accordingly? Robespierre, after his death, was found
to have extensive visceral disease; and it is notorious he
suffered much from this affection during life. It is re-
corded that he rolled on the ground for hours in acute pain.
Judge Jeffreys. it is said, was " tortured by a cruel in-
ternal malady, which had been aggravated by intemperance."
In the celebrated Western or " Bloody" Assizes, this mon-
ster is said to have hanged 320 and transported 855 per-
sons for "the most part of blameless life and of high
religious profession!" Previously to his starting for the
circuit, Jeffreys' health and spirits had given way.

• •
There are crimes for which men have been hanged
which might have been prevented by physical treatment.
Damien persietA in declaring to the last that had he been
bled in the morning, as he wished and requested, he never
would have attempted the assassination of Louis XV. It
is recorded of Caligula, that his reign commenced with
mildness, but that the end of the first year, after a violent
attack of bodily illness, he commenced his career of
cruelty, violence, and crime, slaughtering the noblest men
of Rome, and hunting the spectators of a public show into
the waters of the Tiber!
If this theory be just, whole classes and
nations would have occasionally to be put
under medical care, and a council of physicians
would be the best preservative against national
mania.
The third and most important of the lectures
is on medico-legal evidence in cases of insanity.
Though careful to surround with prudent
limitations those principles which at first
sight would appear startling, yet on the whole
the author gives us an impression that the
conduct which is unnatural or irrational may
most often be referred to a diseased condition
of the brain. " Positive, dangerous, and
" irresponsible insanity," he says, "is often
" unassociated with any manifested delusive
" impression, or appreciable hallucination." If
this be so, how is insanity to be defined? The
author relies on what he terms
the great psychological fact, thut no mind can properly
be considered to be " unsound" or " insane" which is not
subject to actual disease, the " insanity" and " unsound-
ness" being invariably the products—the effects—the con-
sequences, of some deviation from the healthy condition
of the brain, its vessels or investments, disordering the
mental manifestations.
But then arises the question how the fact of
cerebral disease is to be determined :
As medico-legal witnesses, we have to deal with phe-
nomena of the essence or intimate nature of which we
know absolutely, positively, nothing It is our duty to
elucidate principles of belief, to unravel motives of action,
to explain erratic conduct the most anomalous and extra-
ordinary; we have to trace the line which separates passion ;
the subtle and shifting transformations of wild, ungovern-
able,and impetuous passion from the excitement of mania
and the morbid emotions incident to the minor forms of
diseased mind; to sketch the varying frontier, the nice and
shadowy distinctions which separate lunacy from malig-
nity—madness from brutality ; to point out where folly
merges into mental derangement ; where responsibility
terminates and irresponsibility commences ; to distinguish
between eccentricity and insanity—crime and alienation of
mind—vice and mental derangement—between the delu-
sions of the lunatic and the false conclusions, the illogical
deductions, the uriphilosophical reasoningof men of sound
intellect and of rational understanding—to separate the
normal rhapsodies of the healthy imagination from those
morbid conceptions and thick " coming fancies," the pro-
ducts, the well-recognised, indisputable symptoms of a
mind thrown off its healthy balance by actual cerebral
disease.

He admits that
there is no mode by which we can penetrate behind the
curtain, or tear aside the veil that divides the material
from the immaterial—mind from matter ; there is no pos.
sibility of our obtaining access to that mysterious chamber
where the spiritual portion of our nature is elaborated ;
we have no gauge, no square rule, by which we can ascer-
tain in all cases, with any approach to chemical or math*.

SATURDAY,

matical accuracy, an accurate idea of the actual condition
of the mind, when apparently under a cloud. In the
elucidation of these points, we are in a great measure left
to our unaided mental sense—to the uncertain guidance
of our own deceptive experience, and alas! often, fallible
judgment.
- -

It would appear, therefore, that a positive alle-
gation of cerebral disease, in cases where " the
" varying frontier, the nice and shadowy distinc-
tions," render it difficult to pronounce an
opinion, even on the manifestations of the
mind, must be received rather as a convenient
definition of insanity than a pathological fact.
Towards the close of his third lecture the
author suggests a consideration which belongs
rather to the moralist than to the physician :

I maintain, and facts—an overwhelming mass of facts—
clearly, irresistibly, and conclusively demonstrate my posi-
tion,—that there is a vast amount of crime committed by
persons who, if not " legally" or " medically" insane,
occupy a kind of neutral ground between positive derange-
ment and mental sanity. Ido not broach this idea with
the view of support►ng the absurd, unphilosophical, and
dangerous opinion, that all crime is more or less referable
to aberration of m lid; but I do affirm, that, in estimating
the amount of punishment to be awarded, it is the solemn
duty of the judge, not only to look at the act itself, but to
consider the physical condition of the culprit—his educa-
tion—moral advantages—prior social position—his early
training—the temptations to which lie has been exposed—
awl above all, whether he has not sprung from intem-
perate, insane, idiotic, and criminal parents.
Dr. Haslam maintained that all persons were
more or less insane, and to push the above
thought to its legitimate conclusion would
exempt all crime from punishment. A careful
review of some of the principal judicial criteria
of insanity, and some leading rules for medical
witnesses, conclude a volume full of important
suggestions upon a point of the most material
importance to the well-being of society.

Indian Leisure. By Captain R. Guthrie Mac-
gregor, Bengal Retired List. London :
Smith, Elder, and Co.
CAPTAIN MACGREGOR belongs to a class of
writers who have, in our ()pinion, a peculiar
claim to be gently treated by critics. We
speak of conscientious and competent transla-
tors who make the great mass of readers
familiar with the masterpieces in a foreign
tongue, yet who are rarely thanked for their
labour. If the translation fails, the translator
is blamed; if it succeeds, all the praise is
bestowed on the original. The most perfect
and the most prosperous translation brings
little credit to him who has executed it, and
his pecuniary reward is always small. Thus,
while there is little pay and no honour for the
best translations, the penalty of probable and
frequently inevitable failure is very heavy. It
requires no great calculation, therefore, to
compute the value of translation to any man
of letters as a speculative undertaking. If
some great author be spoiled in the render-
ing, and be consequently exposed to an
injurious estimate, there is no mercy for the
unlucky offender. In mere vindication of the
author the translator is pilloried.
All this is fact ; and a considerable part of
it is justice also. But, when we reflect how
very useful translations sometimes are, and
how often they are necessary ; that every
science, and every art, and every calling, have
their own literatures ; that the works of one
country are, on a thousand occasions, by
means of translation, the enlightenment of
another ; that by translation civilisation, amity,
and emulation, are promoted ; we ought to be
cautious of rendering an office already so
unpromising to those who undertake it utterly
discouraging and repugnant., and afford to
good, and painstaking, and able translators
like Captain Macgregor their honest due in un-
grudging praise.
There are several conditions, both extrinsic
and intrinsic. necessary to make a translation
valuable. The extrinsic are chiefly two : first,
that the book translated should be worth it;
and, secondly, that it should be in some tongue
not so commonly understood in the transla-
tor's country as that almost all readers would
prefer using the original to using the version.
The intrinsic conditions are those which Cap-
tain Macgregor exhibits—capacity and earnest-
ness. His passages from Petrarch, we confess,
have surprised us. They might be taken for
original English compositions, so completely
has he mastered the difficulty of finding Eng-
lish idioms to correspond with the Italian.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1854.

The sense runs smoothly and naturally in the
trammels of the rhymed verse of an artificial
metre not the best suited to the character of
oar mother-tongue.
There is in the same volume an adaptation,
in blank verse, of Alfieri's tragedy of Agante»t-
non. It belongs to a class of subjects which
never excited our sympathy. There is also a
spirited essay in prose on the character of
Othello ; a version, in our regular heroic
couplet, rhymed, of the only epic the French
possess, Voltaire's " Henriade "; and some
original miscellanies.
A man may be able to adequately translate
what he could not have written ; but no one
who has not considerable poetic feeling could
render a great poem into another language
without making that poem ridiculous, and, as
Captain Nlaegregor's versions are judicious
and pleasing, we may fairly congratulate him
on the manner in which he has employed his
Indian leisure.

The Happy Colony. By Robert Pemberton. Lon-
don: Saunders and Otley.

As Sir Thomas More wrote his " Utopia" in the
grave spirit of a social reformer, though some of his
institutions must now be thought absolutely cruel
and barbarous, enthusiasts like Mr. Pemberton may
be excused for thinking that they have a patent
from Providence for the remodelling of society. This
gentleman, assuming the perfectibility of man, pro-
poses to found a colony in which all distinctions of
rank are to be; set aside, money to be abolished,
and a fraternity of workmen with payment in kind
established in lieu thereof. Men and women of
all trades are to go out and found the colony forth
with, and the succeeding generation is to be brought
up and educated upon a divine and natural system.
The course of education is to consist of three stages,
each of seven years. In the first period children
are to be instructed in the scientific nomenclature of
all objects in nature, art, and science, in lectures of
one quarter of an hour's duration, by professors of
the most polished manners. From seven to fourteen,
the second stage, the children, among other accom-
plishments, are to be taught manual trades, with
music, poetry, and the fine arts, and to wash them-
selves, brush their own hair, and clean their teeth,
in a proper and businesslike manner. From four-
teen to twenty-one, the last stage, they are to perfect
their previous system of manual and mental educa-
tion, and to acquire the art of scientifically depriving
oxen and sheep of life. The results of such an
elaborate system of education are expected to pro-
duce beautifully and scientifically educated women,
philosophical men, and intellectual children. War,
quarrels, fights, inebriation, taxes, and police are to
be unknown. There are to be no prisons or gaols,
poorhouses or fortifications, in this happy colony : it,
is to be one united family, perfect in science, art,
labour, and love. It is not likely that Mr. Pember-
ton will make many converts, though he does ad
dress himself to the " working classes," who have
so often been the dupes and victims of like schemes
tor
.their regeneration. These lawgivers are all
terribly despotic, though he is but a wretched pedant
who supposes that human nature, and especially its
intellectual part, can be most profitably drilled and
disciplined till it acts mechanically by fixed and cer-
tam laws. This Utopia, like others projected by
wiser men, supposes that individual liberty is a
curse, whereas its struggles and contests—weakly
deplored as evils—brace the energies and advance
the interests of the human race.

History of Rome. From its Earliest Period to the
Death of Vespasian. By W. C. Mac Dermott,
Esq., Barrister-at-Law. London : Groombridge.

SINCE Niebuhr and Arnold begait to investigate
Roman history, all former works upon the subject
have become almost obsolete. Their researches, in
the way of verification, comparison, and deduction,
have given us so much to add, and forced us to re-
tract so much, that all our histories of ancient Italy,
for whatever class of students they might be designed,
must of necessity he rewritten. This task Mr.
Mac Dermott has performed for the benefit avowedly
of the "more advanced classes in schools," and has
done his work with much care and skill. Without
adopting largely and blindly the conclusions of any
preceding authorities, however high their reputation,
he has formed an independent judgment, both re-
garding the evidences of fact and the bases for infer-
ence, and has given the result in a history which
embodies all the best-authenticated facts, and weighs
all the more probable guesses regarding the con-
struction and character of the great Roman empire.
The book is written in a lively but unpretending
style. The subjects are well arranged, and the mean
is very successfully hit between cumbrous prolixity
and dry succinctness in fitting the volume for the

class of readers whom it is specially intended to
serve. That class is a large one, and among them
the value of Mr. Mac Dermott's work is likely to
a,tain a wide and permanent recognition.

Dangers to England of the Alliance with Men of the
Coup d'Etat. By Victor Schoelther. London :
Triihner and Co.

A PUBLICATION attacking the present Emperor and
Ministry of France, iu Victor Hugo's sarcastic
tone of Republican bitterness, though inferior in
force to the " Napoleon le Petit," which M. Schoel
cher appears to have taken for a model. The most
pointed portions of the book are those which illustrate
the unsteady opinions of our leading journal upon the
character of Louis Napoleon at different periods
since his accession to power. "Never mind what
you say," cried Nordicots once to a young artist,
" because one man's word is as good as another's,
but always, always, be careful what you write." It
is to be regretted that our contemporary, by neglect-
ing this wholesome remark upon the " litera scripts.
manet," Kbould have exposed itself to M. Schoel-
cher's impeachment. If the Emperor's government
was correctly described on the 14th of April last as
" the noblest representative of RIGHT and JUSTICE, and
" of MORAL as well BS MATERIAL PROGRESS, what is to
be thought of the discernment which previously cha-
racterised it in the most foul and abusive terms ?
The expediency of our leading journal during the
last thirty years would make a curious volume.

Sybil Lentiard. By Mrs: lirey. London: Thomas

Hodgson.
" SYBIL LENNARD " here reprinted is a tale of the
Adelphi school, full of thrilling situations, asterisks,
seduction, remorse, disease, and sudden death. The
leading characters undergo a fearful amount of suf-
fering in hysteria, syncope, delirium, and puerperal
fever, while drowning, hanging, and murder are in-
troduced as elements of interest. This accumula-
tion of physical distress is becoming very much the
practice of modern novelists, and although, as Syd-
ney Smith said of Delpbine, •' we are willing to allow
" that there should be a reasonable amount of sick-
" ness in every novel, and will cheerfully permit the
" heroine to be once given over unto death, yet we
" cannot consent that the interest which ought to
" be excited by the feelings of the mind should be
" transferred to the sufferings of the body." Though
showing mental culture, the novel is not well chosen
for republication.

1. Fish and Fishing in the Lone Glens of Scotland.

Dr. Knox.
2. Shooting. By R. Blakey.
London : Routledge and Co.

- - 7
1. Dn. KNOX is thoroughly national in his admiration
of his native mountains and streams, and apt to fall
into very unnecessary extremes of contempt for any-
thing else than a hillside stream or a Scotch glen.
His book, he says, is only addressed to those " who are
" weary of the commonplaces of every day life, whom
" the luxuries of life, social converse, well-carpeted
" rooms, dic. &c., have wased to please "—people, in
fact, who suffer under a plethora of cash and disquie-
tude. But notwithstanding these rhapsodical remarks,
verging occasionally on the absurd, the book will be
found a good descriptive companion to " the lone
" glens of Scotland," and may be perused with ad-
vantage by all who purpose to fish in their waters
this autumn or next spring.
2. Of Mr. Blakey's book it is only necessary to say
that it is a compilation from well-known authors,
without pretension to original knowledge or sports-
manlike skill, but containing in a convenient shape
much information of standard quality.

Adventures of Mr. Sydenham Greenfinch. London :
Routledge and Co.

A HUMOROUS STORY of London life in the present
day, and of the impressions such a life produced
upon the mind of a quiet young gentleman who had
hitherto lived in the country with a maiden aunt.
One error common to books of this bort is, that they
make their fast heroes exceedingly clever men, and
ultimately gaining the highest honours at college.
This is quite opposed to general facts, for, although
fast men may sometimes possess talent, they rarely
employ it to such advantage. The volume is illus-
trated with numerous woodcuts.

Christianity. By Robert Montgomery. London :

Woolridge.
THE first part of a cheap reissue of Mr. Montgo-
mery's prose works, carefully revised and corrected by
the author. Few divines furnish in their ordinary dis-
courses so much original thought and poetical senti-
ment as the reverend author; and in these pages,
Notaining the substance of four sermons delivered
at Percy Chapel, will be found an eloquent and
orthodox exposition of Christianity.

THE PRESS.