The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-22 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

Marshal Marmont—(by the way, his real
name was Viesse de Marmont, and he be-
longed to an old and respectable family,
originally Dutch, but settled in Burgundy for
some three hundred years)—though he began
his career by serving the Republic, and gained
hi 3 title of Marshal, and of Duke of Ragusa,
from Napoleon, belonged, when pursuing his
education at a military school, to the political
faith of which he became in after life one of
the pillars in France—namely, Royalist :

I entertained then for the person of the King a sentiment
difficult to define, and of which I found the trace, and as
it were the power, twenty-two years later: a sentiment of
devotedness of an almost relig.ous character—an innate
respect, as if dne to a superior being. The name of king
had then (some three years after the revolution of 1789) a
magic and a power which nothing had changed in pure
and upright hearts. . . . . Living under the influence
of an education which transmitted love for the sovereigns
RR the inheritance of Frenchmen, that love became a sort
of worship.
At the siege of Toulon, to which he was sent
very shortly after joining the army—he was in
the Artillery—he made a reflection which is
singularly apropos to a grave question now
pending :

A small vessel, freighted with provisions for the English
fleet, fell into our hands. It was navigated by the owner
himself and his sons, and, as the poor man lost in a moment
the fruit of the labour of all his life and the hope of his
family, nothing can express the despair he manifested. I
had my share of the capture, but I was not the less struck
with the barbarism of the legislation which has created for
the sea the monstrous right of despoiling the peaceable
trader. In considering things in an equitable and moral
point of view, what difference is there between a vessel of
war seizing a mercantile ship and a detachment of hus-
sars stopping a carrier on the highway ?

It is well known that Napoleon Bonaparte,
after distinguishing himself greatly in the
siege of Toulon, was arrested on some trum-
pery charge by order of a ferocious and stupid
sans-culotte representative of the people, and
ordered to be sent to Paris, where undoubtedly
he would have been put to death ; but our
author tells us a fact which is less known :
At the moment at which his departure was to take place,
Jnnot, his aide-de-catnp, myself, and a man named Talin,
knowing what the consequences would be, determined to
prevent it at any price ; and so we agreed between our-
selves to kill the gendarmes if they made any resistance to
his release, and to convey him to Getioa.

The Marshal confirms the fact that Bonaparte
thought favorably of the sanguinary Robes-
pierre :

He addressed to me these very words :—" If Robespierre
had remained in the Government, he would have modified
his manner of proceeding ; he would have re-established
order and the reign of the laws."
In describing sonic operations of the re-
publican army in Germany, he notices the
folly of burdening the general-in-chief of an
army with minute details—a piece of folly
under which in our army poor Lord Raglan
severely suffered:—

had to get a permission for two shirts and a pair of
boots signed by the general-in-chief, Pichegru. Although
then very young, 1 had reflected sufficiently on the diffi-
culties of command to feel astonished that u man charged
with such great interests took so little account of his time
as to employ it in such things. Since then 1 have not
seen a single distinguished man, capable of conducting
great affairs, who has not made it a system to free him-
self from all sorts of details, and to confine himself to
judging the work done by others ; and this observation has
always been for me a sure thermometer as to the veritable
capacity of men of reputation, and of the mediocrity of
those who have adopted contrary habits : never has my ob-
servation turned out wrong.

Here is an opinion of the famous General
Desaix :

Be assured that the command of an army is the most
difficult thing on earth ; it is a post which requires the
most capacity in a given time.

In speaking of the events of the Directory,
the author says :

A circumstance which history will record as an image of
the times is what is called " The Ball of the Victims "
. . . got up by subscription, and to which only relatives
of those who perished on the scaffold were to be admitted.
Thus to have the right to dance, people had to produce a
certificate of the death of their father or mother, their
brother or sister! . . . I know not if this spectacle
was not more frightful than the revolutionary massacres.

Here we beg to take the liberty of correcting
the Marshal. It is true that a " Bal des life-
times," with the condition of admissions
specified by him, was advertised in the news •
papers of the day; but it never took place,
and the advertisement itself was only a hoax
of some heartless rakes. This fact we saw
demonstrated in a fertilleton published in a
Paris paper a few weeks back.

SATURDAY,

The passion of Bonaparte—then in the
flush of his first glory—for Mme. Beau-
harnais excited Marmont's surprise, as well as
that of most other persons :

General Bonaparte became very ranch in love with
Mme. de Beauharnais—in love in all the intent of the
word, in all the force of its ardest acceptation. It was,
according to all appearance, his first passion, and he felt it
with all the energy of his character. He was only twenty-
seven years of age, whilst she was more than thirty-two.
Although she had lost all her freshness she appeared
charming to him ; and it is known that when people love
it is superfluous to ask why—men love because they love,
and nothing is less susceptible of analysis end reflection
than that sentiment. What, however, is incredible, and
yet perfectly true, is that the vanity of Bonaparte was
greatly flattered at being accepted by her. He was always
partial to old ideas, and even when he made himself
Republican he was subject to aristocratic prejudices.. . .
Rut that he should have felt himself highly honoured by
his union with Mme. Beauharnais, and he was really very
proud of it, proves that he was in great ignorance of the
state of society in France previous to the Revolution.
Mme. Bonaparte, however, was not sensible
either to her husband's affection or rising
glory, and when he was in Italy she persisted
in remaining at Paris, in spite of his repeated
entreaties to her to join him. Whether her
conduct there was altogether free from re-
proach is, as all the world knows, doubtful ;
but it is certain that Bonaparte more than
once expressed himself in terms which showed
that he had not complete confidence in her
virtue. He once so spoke to Marmont

In a journey which 1 made with him to inspect the
fortified places of Piedmont, the glass of the portrait of
his wife, which he always carried with him, bloke one
morning. He turned frightfully pale, and the impression
he felt was evidently the most painful. " Marmont '' said
he, " either my wife is very ill, or she is unfaithful to me

We propose to return to these Memoirs next
week.

Aurora Leigh. By Elizabeth Barrett Brown-
ing. London : Chapman and Hall.
MRS. BROWNING writes with the conviction
that she is one of the lights of the age. Into
this book, she says, " my highest convictions
" upon Life and Art have entered." What
those convictions ar•e it is not very easy to
tell from a perusal of the book itself. It
declaims against conventionalism of all kinds;
yet when the reader finishes the story he will
admit that nothing more conventional was
ever devised or penned. All modes of thought
and feeling which are anti-conventional are
shown to be impracticable ; and no novel that
ever issued from the press winds up in a more
formal manner, with a happy wedding and
with the possession of all the substantial and
comfortable goods of life wherewith to com-
mence housekeeping. All the sneers and
tirades against the cold, heartless, formal
world, sink to nothing when we come to the
point. A good landed estate, with a well-
secured rent•roll, are shown to be infinitely
preferable to philansteries and socialism ; and
Romney Leigh is glad to accept a wife from
his own station, and with breeding consonant
to his rank, instead of a drab from the purlieus
of St. Giles's.
The highest convictions of Mrs. Browning,
except in one point to be presently noticed,
amount to no convictions at all. Her• elo-
quence is all of a sceptical character, and how
easy it is for a sceptic to be eloquent every
one knows. She views the world as out of
tune; but she pretends to no key or skill to
set it right. A kind of dreamy pantheism
pervades the book, with an evident leaning to
that philosophy which regards our Lord and
Saviour• us the first sans-culotte. Her convic-
tions aro unconvictions, and many of her
finest pasgages inere;y illustrate the negation
of belief.
The one exception is her conviction that
women are born for public, or at least for
artistic, life. If the book has any purpose at
all, it is to set forth this principle. Aurora
Leigh is a poetess, and is so intent on estab-
lishing a place for herself in the world's esti-
mation, that she sacrifices to this desire the
prospect of a happy union with the man whom
(as it subsequently appeals) she ardently
loved. It is true that in this fiction her• plan
is made to answer ; those lucky accidents
which poets and novelists have always at
their disposal to shape human destinies accord-
ing to their will save her from the natural
consequences of her own imprudence. But,

I

I

NOVEMBER 22, 1856.

after all, every one must feel that throughout
she acted much like a fool, and that she did
not deserve the good fortune which the author
has reserved for her.

" Aurora Leigh " is not a poem, but a
Browning revelation of what poetry ought to
be. It is artificial and egotistical, both to an
extreme degree. The book is no more a
genuine poem than the antics of a master of
the ceremonies are a ball. All is flourish and
parade. We look for creative beauty—for that
childlike impulse, vehemence, and simpli
City, which constitute so large a part of all
genuine poetry, and we find only " settled
" convictions about Nature and Art." We
never meet with a literary character ex-
alted into a hero and heroine but we blush
for our craft. In such characters we rarely
find the versatility, the weakness, the foibles,
and the liability to temptation which com-
monly mark literary genius They are, on the
contrary, rigid, pompous personages, very
Satuns for pride, and very gods for all other
qualities. They are always conscious of the
amazing sensation they are creating, and are
separated from the rest of the world, not from
their greater facileness and freedom, but from
their spasmodic contortions, and their rude
and impertinent speech. Like unpractised
sculptors, attempting to mould the human
form into godlike proportions, the superna-
tural merges into caricature.
That Mrs. Browning may the easier express
her settled convictions of nature aad art, she
has written " Aurora Leigh " in blank verse—
a form of poetic composition which we should
gladly see limited to the drama. Mrs. Brown-
ing's verse is much in the manner of that of
Sheridan Knowles, being pieced out with such
expletives as " You sir, you ;" and often differ-
ing from prose only in being ranged ten sylla-
bles in a line True poets do not grudge the
pains required for their music. They love to
sing, not pour such " bald, disjointed chat " as
is here spun out by the yard. If the octo-sylla-
bic verse presents " fatal facility " to poets,
what shall we say of such verse as this, sup•
posed to he the conversation in church on the
morning of a wedding?—

—" Yes, really, if we've need to wait in church,
We've need to talk there."—" She P 'Tis Lady Ayr,
In blue—not purple ! that's the dowager."
—" She looks as young."—" She flirts as young, you mean!
Why if you had seen her upon Thursday night,
You'd call Miss Norris modest."—" You again !

I waltzed with you three hours back. Uluat six,

Up still at ten scarce time to change one's shoes.

I feel as white and sulky as a gLost,—
tio pray don't speak to me, Lord Belcher."—" No,
I'll look at you instead, and its enough
While you have that face." "In church, my lord ! fie, fic!"
—" Adair. you stayed for the Division ?"—'l Lost
By one." " The devil it is ! I'm sorry for't.

And if 1 had not promised Mistress Grove " .
—" You might have kept your word to Liverpool."
" Constituents must remember, after all,
We're mortal."—" We remind them of it."—" Hark,

The bride comes! Here she comes in a stream of milk!"
—" There ? Dear, you are asleep still; don't you know

The fire Mies ? always dressed in white

To show they're ready to be married."—" Lower!
The annt is at your elbow."—" Lady Mnud,
Did Lady Waldemar tell you she had seen
This girl-of Leigh's ?" " No,—wait ! 'twas Mrs. Brookes,
Who told me Lady Waldemar told her—
No, 'twasn't Mrs. Brookes."—" She's pretty."—" Who'
Mrs. Brookes? Lady Waldemar ?"—" How hut!
Pray is't the law to day we're not to breathe?
You're treading on my shawl—l thank you, air."

There is much more to the same effect. As
Mrs. Browning has had to fill four hundred
pages of tolerably close print, she has not
thought it necessary to be very particular as
to quality.
Poems have commonly two aspects. The
interest of the fable is one thing—the merit of
the composition is another A critic whose
admiration of " Aurora Leigh " is so excessive
that he can only express himself in tropes and
similes, lets out the truth that it is a " three-
volume novel" in poetic guise. Of the story
we must judge as we would of the plot of a
novel or drama ; allowance must be made in
modern romance for some exaggeration, but
in what is meant for a representation of exist-
ing life we cannot afford to altogether dispense
with truth and probability.
Aurora Leigh is the daughter of an English
gentleman—a very matter-of-fact person till he
went to Italy and was transformed in soul by
the beauty of a Tuscan girl whom he first saw
in a procession. This girl lie weds, becomes a

_?t~v3a~

THE PRESS.

poet in heart, and dwells in Italy. His wife
dies while Aurora is a child, and he does not
long linger after his idol. This part of the
story is, in our judgment, the best part of the
book. But it occupies only a dozen pages.
Aurora is taken to England to live under her
aunt's guardianship ; and from this time the
poetic character of tho young lady rapidly
develops itself. Her aunt is a formalist, and
here is at once a specimen of the education
Aurora received, anti of the verse in which she
records her early recollections :
I learnt my complement of classic French
( Kept pure of lialzac and neologism ),
And German also, since she liked a range
Of liberal education,—tongues, not books.
I learnt a little algebra, a little
Of the mathematics,—brnshed with extreme flounce
The circle of the sciences, because
She misliked women who are frivolous.
I learnt the royal genealogies
Of Oviedo, the internal laws
Of the Burmese empire, . . by how many feet
Mount Chimborazo outsoars
What navigable river—
WO spare the reader more of this verse. Mrs.
Browning is especially fond of such expres-
sions as,

brushed with extreme flounce
The circle of the sciences.
Nothing assists her in a metaphysical argu-
ment like an illustration from a fashion-book.
In due time, Aurora, in spite of her aunt's vigi-
lance, lights on the poets :

As the earth
Plunges in fury when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing fiat
The marts and temples, the triumphal gates
And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom—thus, my soul,
At poetry's divine first finger•touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.
• • • • • •
While your common men
Build pyramids, gauge railroads, reign, reap, dine,
And dust the flaunty carpets of the world
For Kings to walk on, or our senators,
The poet suddenly will catch them up
With his voice like a thunder—" This is soul,
This is life. this word is being said in heaven,

Here's God down on us ! what are you about?"
This passage is merely characteristic of the
style in which the authoress commonly ex-
presses her " highest convictions upon Nature
" and Art." As Lee's tragedies were in fashion
once, there is no reason why verse like the
above should not have its day. When people
are credulous, the boldest kind of imposture
answers the best. From first to last our fair
poetess, in the slang of the day, " goes the
pace " with undoubting confidence.
Aurora soon begins to write, and, as her
mind gains freedom, her frame gains strength.
She loves to wander abroad with her cousin,
Romney Leigh. One fine morning early ho
discovers her secret through finding a volume
of her verse. As he meets her to restore it
she has just placed a wreath of ivy round her
head ; whereupon a long philosophical conver-
sation takes place between them, not very easy
to follow. He thinks versifying will bring
headaches, and that to clamber for ivy is not
good for

Clean white morning dresses.
She answers him with due elolemnity

Learn this :—I would rather take my part
With God's dead, who afford to walk in white
Yet spread His glory, than keep quiet here
And gather up my feet from even a step,
For fear to soil my gown in so much dust.

I choose to walk at all risks.
Soon the conversation turns on the manner in
which the world can be best benefited. The
world can only be regenerated by poetry, per•
sists Aurora. Romney demurs,—first, poetry
is not woman's main business in life ; next,
social ills can only be remedied by socialist
schemes. The future disciple of Fourier and
Compte " looms out " in such sentences as
these :

I, I sympathise with man, not God,
I think I was a man for chiefly this;
And when I stand beside a dying bed,
It's death to me.
Aurora is indignant that he should rate
socialism above poetry, and that he should
beseech her to join with him in his cause,
slighting her poetic gifts. He asks for love—
for " life in fellowship through bitter duties."
She replies grandly :

1121

"Now," I said," may God
Be witness 'twist us two !" and with the woad,
Meseemed I floated into a sudden light
Above his stature,—" am 1 proved too weak
To stand alone, yet strung enough to bear
Such leaners on my shoulder? poor to think,
Yet rich enough to sympathise with thought ?
Incompetent to sing, as blackbirds can,
Yet competent to love like tint?"
I paused :
Perhaps I darkened as the lighthouse will
That turns upon the sea. " It's always so !
Anything does fur a wife."

"Aurora, dear,
And dearly honoured " . . he pressed in et once
With eager utteranee,—" you translate me ill.
I do not contradict my thought of you
Which is most reverent, with another thought
Faund less so. If your sex is weak for art,
(And I who said so, did but honour you
By using truth in courtship) it is strong
For life and duty. Place your fecund heart
In mine, and let us blossom for the world
That wants love's colour in the grey of time.
This conversation is a key to the rest of the
story. Rejected by Aurora, Romney devotes
himself more resolutely to hib socialist duties.
Aurora's father has excluded her from the suc-
cession to his inheritance by his foreign
marriage Romney takes her place. When
her aunt dies she is destitute, but grandly
refuses thirty thousand pounds he endeavours
to trick her into accepting. She goes to
London to commence poetess, and he
patronises socialism on a grand scale. I'o
give the world an example of social equality
he determines to marry Marian Erie, the
beautiful daughter of a drunken county
tramp. Aurora hearing of the intended
marriage, visits the gill. The following pas-
sage may be taken as a sample of the mod.:
in which real life is depicted :

Two hours afterward,
Within St. Margaret's Court I stood alone,
Close-veiled. A sick child, from an ague-fit,
Whose wasted right hand gambled 'gainst his left
With an old brass button, in a blot of sun,
Jeered weakly at me as I passed across
The uneven pavement; while a woman, rouged
Upon the angular cheek-bones, kerchief torn,
Thin dangling locks, and flat lascivious mouth,
Cursed at a window, both ways, in and out,
By turns some bed-rid creature and myself,--
" Lie still there, mother ! liker the dead dog
You'll be to morrow. What, we pick our way,
Fine madam, with those damnable small feet !
We cover up our face from doing good,
As if it were our purse ! What brings you here,
My lady? is't to find my gentleman
Who visits his tame pigeons in the eaves?
Oar cholera catch you with its cramps and spasms,
And tumble up your good clothes, veil and all,
And turn your whiteness dead blue." I looked up ;
I think I could have walked through hell that day,
And never flinched. " The dear Christ comfort. you,"
I said, " you must have been most miserable
To be so cruel,"—and I emptied out
My purse upon the stones: when, as I had cast
The last charm in the cauldron, the whole court
Went boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors
And windows, with a hideous wail of laughs
And roar of oaths, and blows perhaps.
She finds Marian (a girl of ineffable sweetness)
in a top attic of this court, and hears from her
lips the offer Romney had made to her :

Marian, I being burn
What men call noble, and you, issued from
The noble people,—though the tyrannous sword
Which pierced Christ's heart, has cleft the world in twain
'Twist class and class, opposing rich to poor,—
Shall we keep parted ? Not so. Let us lean
And strain together rather, each to each,
Compress the red lips of this gaping wound,
As far as two souls can,—ay, lean end league,
I, trim my superabundance,—from your want,
You, joininot in a protest 'gainst the wrong
On both sides'—
Aurora approves, yet is uneasy. Site deter-
mines to attend the wedding, where for once

St. Giles in frieze
Was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold.
The church is thronged by curious crowds ;
and no wonder—Romney has promised a
marriage feast on Hampstead-heath to all the
ragamuffins of the metropolis :
Of course the people came in uncompelled,
Lame, blind, and worse—sick, sorrowful, and worse,
The humours of the peccaut social wound
All pressed out. poured out upon Pimlico,
Exasperating the unaccustomed air
With hideous interfusion.
Romney's friends and acquaintances gather
round the altar. We have already extracted
from thtir conversation. The whole multi-
tude is expectant, but the bride does not
come. At last a letter is put into Romney's
Al hand. She has fled, because she believes he
does not love her. Romney is obliged to

1122

address the crowd. Here is another of Mrs.
Browning's scenes from life:—

Then spoke a man,
" Now, look to it, coves, that all the beef and drink
Be not filched from us like the other fun ;
For beer's spilt easier than a woman is!
This gentry is not honest with the poor;
They bring us up, to trick us,"—" Go it, Jim,"
A woman screamed back,—" I'm a tender soul ;
I never banged a child at two years old
And drew bloLd from him, but I sobbed for it
Next momeut,—and I've had a plague of seven.
I'm tender; I've no stomach even for beef,
Until I know about the girl that's lost,
That's killed. mayhap. I did misdoubt, at first,
The fine lord meant no good by her, or us.
He, maybe, got the upper hand of her
By holding up a wedding.ring, and then . .
A choking finger on her throat, last night,
And just a clever tale to keep us still,
As she is, poor lost innocent. Disappear !'
Who ever disappears except a ghost?
I ask you,—would a girl go off, instead
Of staying to be married ? a fine tale !
A wicked man, I say, a wicked man !
For my part I would rather starve on gin
Than make my dinner on his beef and beer."—
At which a cry rose up—." We'll have our rights.
We'll have the girl, the gill ! Your ladies there
Are married safely and smoothly every day,
And she shall not drop through into a trap
Because she's poor and of the people : shame !
We'll have no tricks played off by gentlefolks;
We'll see her righted."
There is a dreadful riot, quelled by the police.
But what has become of Marian? Aurora
suspects a certain Lady Waldemar, who had
confided to Aurora her passionate love for
Romney. Like all the other characters of the
book, this Lady Waldemar, a fine, fashionable
lady, speaks the Browning language :

Of a truth, Miss Leigh,
have not, without a struggle, come to this.
I took a master in the German tongue,
I gained a little, went to Paris twice;
But after all this love! You eat of love,
And do as vile a thing as if you ate
Of garlic—which, whatever else you eat,
Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peach
Reminds you of your onion.
• • • •

I came home
Uncured, convicted rather to myself
Of being in—love. That's coarse, you'll say;
I'm talking garlic.
Aurora, after the disappointment of poor
Romney, feels wretched. She determines on
a visit to Italy—sells her books, places her last
poem in a publisher's hands, and sets off. In
Paris she discovers Marian. The girl had
been induced to fly by the arts of Lady
Waldemar. Moreover, she has been ruined,
when she was unconscious, and she has an
infant. In due time the sad story is learnt by
Romney. He comes to Marian, and again
proffers his hand. The story has attained its
crisis. What will now he done ? Will all the
fine professions and exalted sentiment of the
book be carried out ? Will convention be
sc,wced in practice, as it is scorned in theory ?
While. the issue is in suspense there is much
godlike feeling and angelic rapture. Marian
is tl►e deity who cuts the knot at length. She
exclaims with enthusiasm :

Oh it does me good,
It wipes me clean and sweet from devil's dirt
Th it Romney Leigh should think me worthy still
Of being his true and honourable wife.
But—and the but settles everything:—

I shall tell the truth,
Which is I do not love you Romney Leigh,
I do not love you.
She only worships him ; her love is for her
child. She knows where Romney has set his
heart, and plainly indicating Aurcra, she
vanishes to appear on the scene no more.
Previously Aurora and Romney have ex-
changed confidences All his socialist schemes
have failed. His philanstery has deplorably
broken down, and the mob have burnt Leigh-
hall to mark their sense of his reforming
anirit. Aurora has something also to tell
him:— _ _

" Stay," I answered him;
" I've something for your hearing, also. I
Have failed too."
" You !" he said, " you're very great;
The sadness of your greatness fits you well :
As if the plume upon a hero's casque
Should nod a shadow upon his victor face '-"
I took him up austerely,—" You have read
My book, but not my heart; for recollect,
'Tis writ in Sanscrit, which you bungle at."

After Marian's disappearance, there is no
more concealment, but great agitation. Rom-
ney is about to bid. Aurora farewell, when she
interrupts him :

THE PRESS.

A moment! Heavenly Christ!
A moment. Speak once Romney. 'Tis not true.
1 hold your hands, I look into your face—
You see me.
Presently Romney's " divine Aurora " is more
explicit :

But I love you, sir,

And when a woman says she loves a man
The man must hear her, though he love her not.
Aurora has all the while adored him without
knowing it. For some years past they have
been playing at cross purposes. Now they
are united, Aurora being still triumphant, as
Romney aoknowledges her intellectual supe-
riority. He bids her work for two, and he
will love for two :

Come thou, my compensation, my dear sight,
My morning•star, my morning ! rise and shine,
And touch my hills with radiance not their own ;
Shine out for two, Aurora, and fulfil
My falling.short that must he ! work for two,
As 1, though thus restrained, for two, shall love!
Gaze on, with inscient vision toward the sun,
And, from his visceral heat, pluck out the roots

Of light beyond him.
If this be not fine writing, we know not what
fine writing is. The conclusion is in the
loftiest style of incomprehensibility:--

My Romney!—Lifting up my hand in his,
As wheeled by seeing spirits toward the east,
He turned instinctively,—where, faint and fair,
Along the tingling desert of the sky,
Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,
Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass
The first foundations of that new, near day
Which should be builded out of heaven, to God.
He stood a moment with erected brows,
In silence, as a creature might, who gazed ;
Stood calm, and fed his blind, majestic eyes
Upon the thought of perfect noon. And when
I saw his soul saw,—"Jasper firet," I said,
" And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony ;
To rest in order, . . last, an amethyst."
Ts this really a story to aid the regeneration of
the world? Does it fulfil that ideal of nature
and art promised in the lady's dedication ?
How, in a dramatic tale of this kind, can we
afford to dispense entirely with truth? The
mawkish, extravagant substitute for it which
Mrs. Browning has provided never can exercise
a healthy influence. The stomach of our
sense has not been so nauseated for many a
day as by this outrageous fiction.

The extracts we have given sufficiently show
what is the composition of the poem. It con-
tains many beautiful and some shrewd pas-
sages, but, on the whole, we cannot bring
ourselves to assign to it a much higher rank
than is due to the tragedies of Mad Lee. The
fashion of fustian changes, but the fustian
subsists. A great part of the poem is rank
unmitigated rant.
There is something well-nigh sublime in
the authoress's presumption. She is satisfied,
no doubt, that she has produced the greatest
poem of the age. We are extremely sorry to
say anything that may appear severe of a lady
who has manifested rare poetic gifts, and who
shows, even in this volume, that they have not
yet deserted her. But neither should we be
dealing honestly with the public nor with her,
if we (lid not frankly express our opinion that
she must of late have been dwelling within
that confined mental atmosphere which be-
comes poisoned through being ton often
breathed. I'oets should sing from themselves,
not of themselves It fates badly with them
when they seek their world within, not with-
out, and when they substitute the fantasies of
a heated brain, and a close and clouded at-
mosphere, for God's creation and the free
breath of Nature.

A Life's Lessons. By Mrs. Gore. Three Vols.

London : Hurst and Blackett.
MRS. GORE has somewhat departed from her
usual style in " A. Life's Lessons." It is not ex-
clusively a tale of fashionable life. The
romantic element predominates in it, and in
the first volume especially we have sketches of
secluded village life and wild scenery in a dis-
trict of North Lancashire, which Miss Brenta
might have penned, and pictures of Dutch
fidelity and homeliness, which agreeably
remind us of the pleasant portraiture of
Washington Irving. The heroine is the
daughter of a Dale farmer and of the simple-
minded servant of an old Dutch family which
came in with William of Orange. Nannie
Balfour is a pretty, graceful creature, who,
from her native seclusion, is gradually brought

SATURDAY,

into the great world, visits 'foreign lands,
passes through many trials and temptations
sans reproche, and escapes at last from the
region of romance in which her youth was
passed to the kind reality of domestic joys.
The spirit of the tale is admirable, and the
narrative agreeably toned down from the dash
of most of Mrs. Gore's previous productions.
She writes more like a woman who knows the
world than a woman of the world. Her lite•
racy talents, which are considerable, and her
social experience, which is wide, are here com-
bined to produce a pleasing fiction, suitable to
the taste of the whole world of novel-readers.

Further Arguments in Favour of the Abridgment of
the Morning Service. By the Rev. James Hild-
yard, B.D. London Groombridge.
Ix is a proof of the interest excited by the subject
discussed iu this pamphlet, that Mr. Hildyard's pro-
duction has already reached a fourth edition. This
success is due as much to the manner in which
Mr. Hildyard deals with the whole question, as to
the importance attached to the subject itself. He is
pious, thoughtful, and most sincerely attached to the
services of our Church ; and he suggests alterations
only with a view to increase the efficiency of public
service, and to augment. the number of its regular at-
tendants. His case is, that the Morning Service in
particular—more especially when the administration
of the Lord's Supper is added—is unnecessarily
long, that from its repetitions it is apt to ho felt
wearisome, and that certain portions of the service—
as, for example, long catalogues of names in the Les-
sons, and the Creed of St. Athanasius—have a tendency
to distract the mind and impair its reverent aspira•
tions. In considering this question of the length of the
service, we must recollect that the greater portion of it
is always the same, and that it is extremely difficult for
the best disposed mind to fix its attention for any
length of time together on the intent of words with
which it is perfectly familiar. Mr. Hildyardsupposas,
with reason, that many persons who would gladly
avail themselves of the privilege of attending public
worship, were it shorter, are now kept away front
age, infirmity, and other causes. The alterations—
with a view to abridgment—proposed by Mr. Hildyard
are not extensive, but they would accomplish the
purpose in view, that is, compress and shorten the
Morning Service. The mode in which any altera-
tion can be accomplished must be, he thinks, an
inquiry by ROYAL COMMISSION. The points alluded
to in the pamphlet, and the arguments employed, are
too numerous for recapitulation ; and we can only
further say that all who are interested in the subject
will find it hero discussed in a temperate and
thoroughly Churcbmanlike spirit.

The Treasury of Geography. Commenced by the
late Samuel Maunder; completed by W. Hughes,
F.R.G.S. London: Longman".
THE late Mr. Maunder produced so many Treasuries
of Knowledge, and his labours were always su in-
telligently directed to the convenience of the public,
that it would be unpardonable not to notice, with the
commendation it deserves, this Treasury of Geo-
graphy, designed by him on the plan of his former
volumes, and commenced previous to his lamented
death. The plan is to present the reader with a
general survey of the globe, commencing with re-
marks on the progress of geographical knowledge,
and then (beginning with Europe) describing in
detail the most remarkable features of every country,
and giving the facts therewith connected from the
latest and most authentic sources of information.
A copious index at the end supplies, to some extent,
the purpose of a Gazeteer. The plan is nearly that, of
the bulky Encyclopedia of Geography compiled by
Mr. Murray, and issued by the same publishers. The
great recommendation of the Treasury is its com-
pactness, systematic arrangement, and clever selec-
tion of leading information. As far as we can judge
from a hasty inspection, Mr. Hughes has fulfilled
his duty with great diligence. The maps of the
volume add to its utility, and the plates to its attrac-
tiveness. A handier volume for a small library could
not be desired, and its cheapness places it within the
reach of all classes.

AN ERROR occurred in our last week's impression in
the review of " Ivors," in which the novel of " John
Halifax" is, by an oversight, attributed to Mr.
Holme Lee. We had thought of comparing
Claude Egerton with Gilbert Massenger, and
afterwards remembering that John Halifax was a
much more suitable in.tance, altered the one name
while forgetting to alter the other. "John Halifax,"
which we were perfectly aware was from the pen of
Miss Muloch, independent of other proofs, could
never, from internal evidence, be mistaken for the
production of a man.