The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

When the father of the childron Tiff tends
with such fidelity marries again, and brings
home a coarse violent drunken woman, Tiff,
after great endurance, determines on flight
with the young families. There are some
exquisite descriptions of natural scenery as
they roam through the wilderness of the
swamp. Here is a night scene:—

Sometimes the soft night-winds swayed the tops of the
pines with a long swell of dashing murmurs, like the
breaking of a tide on a distant beach. The moonlight, as
it came sliding down through the checkered leafy roof,
threw fragments and gleams of tight, which moved
capriciously here and there over the ground, revealing now
a great silvery fern-leaf, and then a tuft of white flowers,
gilding spots on the branches and trunks of the trees ;
while every moment the deeper shadows were lighted up
by the gleaming of tire-flies. The child would raise her
bend awhile, and look ou the still scene around, and then
sink on her fragrant pillow iu dreamy delight. Every-
thing was so still, so calm, so pure, no wonder she was
prepared to believe that the angels of the Lord were to be
found in the wilderness.

How innocent, soft, and kind are all God's works !
From the silent shadows of the forest--the tender and
loving presence which our sin exiled from the haunts of
men i►ath not yet departed. Sweet fall the moonbeams
through the dewy leaves, peaceful is the breeze that waves
the branches of the pines, merciful and tender the
little wind that shakes the small flowers and tremulous
wood-grasses fluttering o►•er the heads of the motherless
children.

Well, they sleet there quietly all night long. Between
three and four o clock an oriole who had his habitation in
the vine above their heads, began a gentle twittering con•
versation with some of his neighbours; not a loud song,
would give you to understand, but a little low inquiry as
to what o'clock it was; and then if you had been in the
still wood at that time, you might have heard through all
the trees of pine, beach, and holly, sweet gum and larch,
a little tremulous stir and flutter of birds awaking and
stretching their wings—little eyes were opening in a
thousand climbing vines where soft feathery habitants had
hung swinging breezily all night—low twitterings and
chit-pings were heard, then a loud clear echoing chorus of
harmony answering from tree to tree, jubilant and joyous
as if there never had been a morning before. The morn-
ing sitar had not yet gone down—nor were the purple cur•
tams of the east undrawn, and the moon, which had been
shining full all night, stillatood like a patient late•buruing
light in a quiet chamber.

There are not wanting also touches of that
fine imagery by which nature is personified
and brought into sympathy with human
passion. Thus at the end of one of Dred's
harangues :

The tall pines and whispering oaks, as they stood waving
in the purple freshness of the dawn, seemed like broad-
winged attesting angels bearing witness in their serene
and solemn majesty to the sublime words,—" Heaven and
earth shall not pass away till these words have been ful-
filled."

It is one purpose of the book to bring out
in strong relief that principle of the States'
law which declares that " the owner of a slave
" cannot be indicted for the malicious,
" cruel, and excessive beating of his slave, it
"being the policy of the law to protect the
" master from prosecution, even if the whip-
" ping and punishment be malicious, cruel,
" and excessive." That protection which
English law affords to brutes is refused in
the United States to human beings; and
further it seems that the hirer of a slave is
equally protected, it being construed that the
hirer for the time stands in place of the
master. And it is another purpose of the
book to illustrate the working of the principle
" that the master of a slave is protected from
"prosecution by express enactment if the
" victim dies in the act of resistance to his
will." The story of !dilly is introduced to
show what may be, and often is, the practical
effect of these rules of law. It overruns with
tears ; there is a wail and sob in every line.
Maly is a female " Uncle Tom," but repre-
sented as of a higher nature.
The story of Harry Gordon, and of his
sister Cora, shows the monstrous injustice
which results from declaring the slave to be
incapable of making any contract whatever,
even with his master for the purchase of his
freedom. The slave is held pro nullis, pro
mortuis. Harry having paid a large sum towards
the purchase of his freedom, loses it all on
the death of Nina; and Cont, who had been
manumitted, married, and left by her husband
the heir of his property, is reclaimed through
an informality in the manumission, deprived
of her estate, and condemned to slavery with
her children. The close of her tragic story
we gave last week.

SATURDAY,

Throughout the book there glows an intense
hatred of slavery which gives it the vitality of
an earnest and mighty aim. It is insisted
that no reform in the institution is practica-
ble. Slavery commands the support of the
great body of the olergy in the Southern
States, and these divines are visited with un-
sparing satire. It is stated as a fact that

Colonel Burford's regiment, famous for murder isid
pillage in Kansas, was despatched from Smith Carolina
with religious services by clergymen, accompanied with &
presentation of bibles.

It is a proof of the art with which the book is
written that opportunity is adroitly taken to
show the wretched condition of the white
people in the slave States who have only their
labour to depend o►►. The " poor white trash -
is the phrase applied to them by the niggers,
and they are represented as so debased as to
be glad to seize the bones and offals which
the slaves on plantations have cast away. The
reader will observe how Governor Roeder, iu
his address at New York, insists that the
States which sanction slavery become closed
to the industry of the white population. A
direct conflict of interests is thus produced
which admits of no compromise.
The general impression gathered from the
book is,. that in the contest neither party will,
give way, while each is too strong to be coerced
by the other. The conclusion is obvious, and
it is a conclusion to which this work points in
a most emphatic manner. There is a prospect
of the Union being violently dissolved.
_

As regards the question of authorship, there
aro passages in the book which it is most un-
likely that Mrs. Stowe could have written.
We invite the reader to ponder these words,
put into the mouth of Frank Russel, one of
the shrewdest characters of the story :

Now, Clayton, to you I always speak the truth, I won't
humbug you ; I worship success ; I am of Frederick the
Great's creed, " that Providence goes with the strongest
battalion." I wasn't made for defeat; I must have power.
The preservation of this system whole and entire is to be
the policy of the leaders of this generation. The fact is
they stand where it must be their policy. They must
spread it over the whole territory. They must get the
balance of power in the country to build themselves up
against the public opinion of mankind. Why, Clayton,
moral sentiment, as you call it, is a humbug ! The whole
world acquiesces in what goes—they always have. There
is a great outcry about slavery now, but let it succeed, and
there won't be. When they can outvote the Northern
States, they'll put them down. They have kept them sub-
servient by intrigue so far, and by and by they'll have the
strength to put them down by fume. England makes a
fuss now, but let them only succeed, and she'll be civil as
a sheep. Of course, men always make a fuss about in-
justice when they have nothing to gain by holding their
tongues, but England's mouth will be stopped with cotton ;
you'll see it. They love trade and hate war. And so the
fuss of anti-slavery will die out in the world.

We need not say how different all this is from
the professed, and apparently sincere, senti-
ments of Mrs. Stowe respecting England.
In the two lights in which the book may be
ree-arded, it appears to us—first, most skil-
fully adapted to fulfil its end of rousing the
north against the south, even to a contest of
extremity; and, secondly, considered as a work
of fiction, though entirely wanting in con-
structive skill—a necessity, if we regard it as
the product of more than one pen—it em-
braces literary excellences of the highest kind
and the most opposite forms. In action the
character of Dred fails. It is the creation of a
rhetorical poet (which, we take it, Mrs. Stowe
is not), much rather than of the dramatic
faculty, which we imagine her to possess. The
same may be said of the character of filly.
of the Claytons, and of a very large portion of
the book.

The Stereoscope ; its History, Theory, and Construc-
tion. By Sir David Brewster. London: Murray.
THE history of the stereoscope is that of the history
of most discoveries. First, facts are observed ; then
principles are deduced from them ; next, for purposes
of scientific curiosity and experiment, the principles
are embodied in forms of artificial construction ; and
lastly, by various modifications and improvements,
the apparatus is applied to practical uses. It is the
third and fourth stages of discovery, and most com-
monly the fourth, that give rise to disputes as to
priority of invention. It is curious to note how
regularly these stages can be marke I in the history
of the stereoscope. The observation is as old as Euclid
at least that each of the two eyes, as it surveys objects
from different points of view, takes in a dissimilar
picture of each object ; these dissimilar pictures are
united in vision. An excellent illustration of the

SEPT; 13, 1856.

principle is applied by Brewster. Hold a thin book
at arm's length midway between your eyes, and you
will see the back of the book and its two sides
at tho same time. Shut the right eye, and you
will see the back of the book and the left side only ;
shut the left eye, and you will sea the back and the
right side only. Each eye then takes a separate view
of the object, and it is by combining the two views
that ordinary vision is effected. Paley ingeniously
supposes that the period of infancy is engaged in
learning to see. Galen distinctly asserts the prin-
ciple of binocular vision, and explains it in almost
the terms of the above illustration. Leonardo da
Vinci notices the principle as of practical importance
in his art, and it has been referred to by others.
The facts anti the principle being established, Mr.
Elliot (according to our author), acting on the prin-
ciple that the relief of solid bodies seen by vision was
the effect of the dissimilar pictures of those bodies
seen by each eye, conceived the idea of an instrument
-which should unite the separate views of a landscape,
as separately seen by each eye, into one picture. It
is admitted, however, that no latch instrument was
:actually formed by him until 1839. Mr. Wheatstone,
in June, 1838, read a paper to the Royal Society on
binocular vision, showing how the vision of both eyes
was composed of separate and dissimilar vision by
each eye, and in the August of that same year read
his paper to the British Association at Newcastle,
and—we quote Sir David—" exhibited an instru-
" meat called a stereoscope, by which he united
" the two dissimilar objects of solid bodies." It is
indisputable that the term stereoscope was then first
.employed by Wheatstone to designate his instrument,
from anpeo;. solid, and altowitv, to see. The third
stage of discovery was now reached, and the philo-
lophie toy, or apparatus to illustrate a great natural
principle, was produced. Sir David Brewster—who
thoagh an ingenious man is a most hot, uncandid,
and ungenerous controversialist, afflicted with the
genus irritabile from which philosophers are not always
tree, though it is in them peculiarly unbecoming—
begins at this point to contest the merit of Wheatstone's
discovery. He labours to show that his theory was
erroneous and his instrument imperfect. Let us
:admit both points, and still Wheatstone would not
the less be the inventor of the stereoscope, and en-
aitled to all the honours of the discovery. That the
instrument should be susceptible of great improve-
ment was only what might be expected, and it is
extremely unfortunate that original inventors, the
nee who first gave to the airy nothing of a principle a
local habitation and a name, should so often pass
unrewarded, while the merely clever adapter, the
man who filches another's brains and turns them to
'Lis own uses, should often reap all the substantial
rewards of the discovery. Sir David, according to
his own account, was led, in consequence of the
discussion at the British Association on Wheatstone's
paper, to make experiments with the stereoscope
for himself, and to form that modification of the
instrument which he terms the lenticular stereo
scope. He had various kinds of this instrument
made, he says, and employed it on photographic
pictures, but be wag unable to induce any of the
opticians of London or Edinburgh to bring it into
use. In 1850, he took his instrument and binocular
drawings to Paris. M. Duboscq saw the value and
practical utility of the invention, and began to make
them for sale. The fourth step of the discovery was
attained. How far Brewster is entitled to the credit
of converting a philosophical apparatus into a useful
art should be left an open question until we hear
zoom ; but it is impossible for any one to read his
owe statement without being offended at his unfair
and even virulent attempts to depreciate the merit of
Wheatstone. To steal his instrument was bad
enough—to depreciate his fame is worse still. We
must warn Sir David that in his splenetic outbursts
he writes down himself much more than the persons
be attacks. His fury is blind ; be builds a wall that
be may dash his own head against it. The book,
After the chapter on the history of the stereoscope,
gives a lucid explanation of its theory and uses. It
its abundantly illustrated with engravings; its general
.ability makes us regret the more that the author
.cannot be fair and candid as well as acute and in-
forming.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED, Aro. 11.
BOOKS.

The Norlhmen in Cumberland and trealnierland. R. Fer-

guson.

Longmans

The Census of Ireland for the Fear POI. Puri VI.
General Report. Thorn and Sons
The Barber's Shop Simpkin and Marshall
The Science of Mind on Pneumatoloyy. Vol. J. bongraans
The Communion of Labour. MTN. Jameson. Longmans
The Hills of the Shalanuc. Author of " The Wide Wide
World." Sampson Low and Co.
Lays of Memory, Sacred and Social. Br a Mother and
Son. Hurst and Blackett