The Press.
London, England, 1857-11-28 00:00:00

THE PRESS, NOVEMBER 28,1857.

1162

attachment to Germany, and the firm for whom he was
working.

There is also in the office a certain Herr von
Fink, a young man of high birth and great
expectations, or, as he puts it himself, " heir
" of the largest store of train oil in the world,"
whose father has placed him with Herr
Schroeter to steady him. A quarrel between
him and Wohlfart ends in a firm friendship,
and through his means the hero gains an
entree into polite society, meets the lady of
his dreams, and becomes her slave. In the
meantime the baron, her father, has fallen into
the clutches of Ehrenthal, and has been in-
duced to raise money, establish sugar facto-
ries, which fail, and generally complicate his
affairs. While Ehrenthal is plotting to gain
possession of the nobleman's estate, Itzig is
carrying on a counterplot for the same pur-
pose, and between the two the victim becomes
hopelessly involved, and, to add to his mis•
fortunes, loses his sight. At this juncture
Wohlfart comes to the rescue. He gives up
his situation, and undertakes the management
of the baron's property. He and the family
retire to a half-ruined Polish castle which the
baron has been swindled into purchasing by
the representations of Ehrenthal. A Polish
insurrection breaks out, and as they aro pre-
paring for a siege, Von Fink opportunely
appears, and with his aid and that of his fol-
lowers they succeed in holding the castle until
relief comes. All this while Anthony has been
enduring daily indignities from the pride and
petulance of the baron, whose misfortunes
have soured his temper. Nor has he to sup-
port him that love for Leonora which he at
first entertained. The feelings of Loth have
by this time cooled down to a calm brotherly
and sisterly affection, and Anthony, finding
Fink not indisposed to relieve him of his
duties and his mistress, returns to the capital,
partly to search for some missing documents
which compromise the Baron Rothsattel's
honour, and partly to have a last interview
with tha sister of his former master, the Frau-
lein Sabine, who he discovers is the real occu-
pant of his heart. He is received at first
coldly by the merchant, who looks upon him
as a lost sheep, but ultimately reinstates him
in his good opinion on learning the true his-
tory of the past. Anthony busies himself
about the recovery of the baron's papers,
which he discovers to have been stolen at the
instigation of Itzig. The latter, baffled and
terrified at the prospect of detection, makes
away with his accomplice, and in attempting
to escape from the police is drowned, some-
what melodramatically, at the very spot where
he committed the murder. The stolen deeds
are recovered, and Anthony's chivalrous
labours being now at an end, he prepares to
start afresh to seek his fortune, unconscious
of Herr Schroeter's feelings and intentions
towards him. We give the denouement in the
words of the author :

Sabine put her hand into a chest, took out two books
bound in green leather with gilt edges, and laid them on
the desk. She took Anthony's hand, and with trembling
voice, said : ' Come, pray look at my" Debit and Credit." '
She opened the first book. Under artistic flourishes stood
the words : `By the help of Uod, the secret book of T. 0.
Schroeter.'

Anthony started back : ' It is the secret book of the Firm,'
be exclaimed; ' this is a mistake."

'lt is no mistake, I wish you to look through it,' said
Sabine.

' That is impossible,' replied Anthony ; ' neither your
brother nor you seriously wish it. God forbid that any
one should touch this hook, except the heads of the Firm.
So long as a commercial house exists, these leaves are for
the eyes of none but the master, and at his death fur his
nearest heirs. Whoever looks in this book, learns what
no stranger ought to know. and with respect to it, the truest
friend is a stranger. As a merchant and an honest man I
dare not grant your wish.'
Sabine held his hand fast. ' Nevertheless, look at it,
Wohlfart,' she said, ' look at 'he title.' She opened it
again, In this book T. 0. Schroeter is written,' she
passed her hand over the leaves ; ' there are only a few
empty pages, it ends with the last year.' She opened the
cover of the second book, and said : ' This book is empty,
but it is another Firm : what is written here?'

Anthony read : By the help of God, the secret book of
T. 0. Scbroeter and Co.'
Sabine pressed his hand, and said in a low voice : ' And
you, my friend, are to be the new partner.'
Anthony stood motionless, but his heart throbbed
•iolently, and the colour rose to his cheeks. Sabine still
held his hand, and he felt her kiss upon his lips like a
soft breath. Then he put his arm round the beloved one,
and they held each other in a mute embrace.
The door opened, the merchant stood on the threshold.
* /lola the fugitive fast,' he cried out ; ' Yes, Anthony, for

years I have been longing for this hour. Ever since you
knelt by my couch in that foreign country, and bound up
my woun,l, I have cherished in my heart the wish of
uniting you for ever to our life. When you left us, I saw
with indignation my fondest hopes destroyed ; now we bold
you, wanderer, in the pages of the secret book, and in our
arms.' He embraced the lovers.

' You have chosen a poor partner,' said Anthony, as his
new brother pressed him to his heart.
' No, my brother, Sabine has acted like a wise mer-
chant. Property and wealth have uo value, either for
individuals, or for the State, without the sound qualities
which give life and movement to the dead metal. You
bring to the Firm your youthful energy and tried judg-
ment. Welcome to our house and hearts.'
_

Beaming with delight, Sabine held both hands of her
be'rothed. ' I could hardly bear seeing you so silent and
sorrowful. Every day at dinner when you removed your
chair, I felt as if I must fly after you, and tell you that
you belonged to us for ever. You blind creature not to
have seen what was passing in me, and yet Leonora's
bridegroom knew it all.
He ?exclaimed Anthony. ' I never spoke to him about
you.'
See here,' cried Sabine, taking Fink's letter out of her
pocket. It contains nothing but the words, " Loving
friendship, Frau sister-in-law." '
Again the happy Anthony embraced his love.
Von Fink of course marries the Fraulein
Leonora. In fact, in this disposition of the
characters at the close lies, as we imagine, one
of the morals of the story, if morals are in-
tended. Herr Frey tag seems to be one of
those stanch supporters of social order, a fun-
damental dogma of whose philosophy it is that
the happiness of the terrestrial ark is best se•
cured by pairing off its inhabitants, male and fe-
male," after their• kind." Had the aristocratic Von
Fink marriel the burgher's sister or Wohlfart
the daughter of the Baron Rothsattel, as seemed
probable at the commencement, it would have
been a contravention of this law, notwith-
standing the merits of the hero and the poeti.
cal justice of such a finale.
We do not anticipate a sensation caused by
the appearance of " Debit and Credit" in
English, but that it will have a fair share of
popularity we have little doubt. From the
outline of the story and the extracts we have
given, it will be seen that it is not deficient in
interest or in power, and we may add that, as
a picture of German life and manners, it is
excellent.

The History of England, from the Earliest
Times to the Peace of Paris, 1856. By

Charles Duke Yonge. London : Rivingtons.
WE have here a stout book, containing up-
wards of eight hundred pages, and holding as
much matter as is usually minted in two large
octavo volumes. It contains a full and flow-
ing narrative of the chief events of English
history, and it is not a mechanical or servile
compilation. The mind of a writer is visible
in its pages, and the subjects are discussed
in an independent tone. The style, though
deficient in closeness, is easy and natural, and
occasionally rises into eloquence. It is a
meritorious effort to supply the public with an
intermediate book between the dry epitomes
of Pinuock and the large editions of the
standard historians.

Fairness of spirit is its highest intellectual
merit. We would infer that the author is
mildly Conservative, but he never allows his
prejudices to warp his narrative. Sometimes
he escapes from difficult questions by evad-
ing them. His account of the progress of
the Reformation, for example, is deficient IR
fulness, even with the limits assigned by the
author to his subject. The point is not
strongly brought out that, if Germany intro-
duced, it was England established the Refor-
mation ; and on many questions where vigorous
thinking is required the author is rather tame
and languid. Still, however, he has attained
his chief object iu giving a good popular ac-
count of the history of England. He has
prefixed a full table of contents, with a good
chronological arrangement ; but he should
have added an index of names and subjects,
which would have increased the value of his
volume.

In pronouncing upon the characters of the
chief personages in English history, Mr.
Yonge speaks out frankly. He thus writes
of the execution of Mary Queen of Scots :

Elizabeth had shown herself revengeful and merciless ;
she was now to show herself contemptible. Always a dis.
sembler, she now outdid any scene of hypocrisy that has
ever been recorded ; not scrupling to ruin her too faithful
secretary in order to keep up a pretence which imposed

upon no human being. She put on mourning for the death
of Mary as her cousin ; she wrote a long letter to King
James, in which she called heaven and earth to witness that
she had never dreamt of consenting to his mother's 'teeth.
She could not deny that she had signed the fatal warrant,
but declared that she had never authorised Davison to take
it to the council ; and for this offence she threw hint into
prison, and caused the Star Chamber to inflict a fine on
him, which reduced him to beggary; yet scarcely two
months afterwards she created Hatton her chancellor,
post for which he had no earthly qualification, but which
he was supposed to owe partly to the address with which
lie had induced Mary to appear before the commissioners,
though that was not his original introduction to, nor was
it believed to be his strongest hold on, the favour of his
mistress.

It is not a little curious that historical re-
search in late years has decidedly darkened
some of the most repulsive features in the
moral characters of both Queen Elizabeth and
Mary Queen of Scots. Fraser Tytler's most
laborious researches have unquestionably con-
firmed by new evidence the charge of gross
hypocrisy to which Elizabeth was always
liable; and the masterly history of the Scottish
Queen by Nliguet has convicted Mary, by
almost irrefragable evidence, of complicity in
the crimes of which her partisans have always
asserted her innocence. Of the mean con-
duct of James 1., the author writes:—

That no one in any way connected with Mary's affairs
might escape their full share of disgrace, James contrived
to exhibit almost as much baseness as Elizabeth herself.
He had indeed, when he heard of the sentence passed upon
his mother, sent ambassadors to Elizabeth to remonstrate

against such an invasion of the rights of nations and of
sovereigns, but one of his envoys, the Master of Grey, is
believed to have betrayed his trust, and to have assured
Elizabeth that she would find no difficulty in pacifying
James after the event. If he did, he proved a true prophet.
James did, indeed, affect a decent indignation for a day or
two, recallel his ambassador from England, and refused
to admit the English envoy to his presence, but in that
feeble display all his wrath evaporated. It was in vain that
his nobles put on mourning ; that Lord Sinclair appeared
at his court in complete armour, telling him, with natural
high spirit, that that was the proper mourning for the mur-
dered queen ; that others with similar feelings urged him to
take up arms; and that even the Scottish Parliament, a
body not generally over respectful to their sovereign, assured
him of their willingness to spend their lives and fortunes
to enable him to revenge her. He speedily began to repent
of the boldness of his first measures, so inconsistent with
the incurable cowardice of his natural disposition ; to cal-
culate the chances of success if he should engage in war;
the risk of injuring his prospect of succession to the
English crown if he should offend Elizabeth ; and finally
accepted her apologies, and renewed as friendly an inter-
course with her, showing himself equally destitute of
shame, of affection, and of courage.

The reign of Charles I. is one of the best
written in the volume, and its recital of
events is full in matter, and is drawn up with
a large and candid spirit of appreciation of
the qualities shown by the Cavaliers and
Roundheads. We still want a thoroughly
English account of the whole civil war from
the accession of Charles to the death of
Cromwell. Lord Macaulay is pitiless to the
King, and extravagantly exaggerates the cha-
racter of Cromwell. We had recently to
comment on his character, and we may
applaud the excellent tone in which this
author has treated of the Protector. His
account of him is too long for extract, but Mr.
Yonge in the following passage closely states
the reasons why Cromwell should never be
held up as a patriot, nor why, as some assert,
his statue should be set up in the Palace at
Westminster:—

As a ruler we must recollect, in the first place, that, till
the last year of his life, his power was an undisguised
usurpation. His original assumption of the protectorate
was a compliance with the petition of a few persomi, not
authorised to express any opinion but their own ; it rested
simply on force—that is, on the support of the army ; and
the sanction latterly given to it by the Parliament was a
mere farce, for a body so elected, and so winnowed of all
members obnoxious to him, had no right whatever Li be
considered as speaking the sense of the nation. Nor did
the manner in which he exercised his power at home make
any atonement for the means by which he acquired it. It
is true that his project of a legislative union between the
three kingdoms was a wise design, and the alterations
wh ch he made in the representation were (or the most part
well•imagined and beneficial ieforms, but in other retireds
his government was an unmitigated and merciless tyranny.
For a long time, in proportion to the brief duration of his
sway, he governed without a Parliament, raising taxes by
his own authority, imposing heavy penalties on a largo
class of his subjects in the same illegal manner. By his
high court of justice he put to death a great number of
persons whom be studiously deprived of a fair trial, and
even sold free-born Englishmen for slaves, an atrocity un-
exampled in any other country in Europe.
- -

Dryden in his bitter satire on Shaftesbury
(" The Medal") expresses, as we think, what

ought to be the national sentiment towards
Cromwell :
God tried us once ; our rebel fathers fought;
He glutted them with all the power they sought,
Till, master'd by their own usurping brave,
The free-born subject sank into a slave.
It is only natural that those who deify Crom-
well should not see any speck in the conduct
of William 111. In this history the conduct
of William in the Glencoe affair is set forth
in the light by which we fear it must always
be regarded. After stating that the Glencoe
massacre had " left the darkest stain on
" William's character," the author gives a
detailed account of that bloody episode, and
thus concludes :
The blood that had been thus ruthlessly shed cried aloud
for vengeance, but it was long before it could make itself
heard at all. It was not till the end of the ensuing year
that William, at the earnest request of the Queen, ap-
pointed a commission to investigate the matter, and as the
Duke of Hamilton, the president, died soon afterwards, he
let the investigation drop, hoping apparently to evade the
inquiry altogether, till at the beginning of 1695 the indig-
nation of the Scotch Parliament could no longer be trifled
with, and a second commission was appointed. Even then
the expedient of delay was tried to blunt the wrath of the
kinsmen of the victims, and the report was reluctantly
produced. It absolved all but the Master of Stair ; and the
Parliament, in a series of resolutions founded on the re-
port, left itto the royal wisdom to deal with him in such
manner as might vindicate the honour of the Government,
while at the same time they requested his Majesty to order
Camptell, Lindsay, and the other officers actually con-
cerned in the massacre, to be prosecuted. The fatal war-
rant had been signed by William both at the top and at the
bottom, in a manner only used to denote his desire for
prompt obedience, but the Parliament had resolved that this
fact did not show that he intended the results which had
taken place. Unhappily for his fame he chose to prove to
all the world that he had intended them. He did, indeed,
dismiss Stair from his office fur a time, but he took many
opportunities to show that he had in no degree lost his con-
fidence, and his whole conduct towards him was a proof
that he had consented to the bloody deed before, and that
he did nut in his heart condemn it after the execution.

Glencoe will always be to William 111. what
the assassination of the last of the Condos
was to Napoleon I. It is " the damned spot "
which will not " out." For the character of
contemporary historians, we rejoice to say that
rhiers has written in the most fearless and
unflinching style about " the mighty crime "
of the Duke D'Enghein's death.
Though Mr. Yonge is a good narrator, he is
not ajudicious critic. The following passage,
attempting to characterise the literature of
Queen Anne's reign, is loose and inaccurate,
and conventional :
It has often been called the Golden Age of English
Literature, and though perhaps it may be found not quite
to deserve so high a panegyric, nor to have produced
writers, as a body, equal to those of the present century,
yet it may well be proud of Bolingbroke, perhaps the
greatest orator of our country, and certainly one of
the most powerful and eloquent of political writers ;
of Addison, whose exquisite liveliness of fancy was
set off with the purest taste and a correct elegance
of language which has never been surpassed, and
who still more deserves the grateful admiration of pos-
terity because, in a gross and scoffing age, his pen
was always enlisted in the cause of religion and virtue,
so that, according to the beautiful panegyric of a suc-
ceeding moralist, he taught virtue not to be ashamed, and
even turned many to righteousness; of Defoe, the his-
torian of the Plague and of the Union, and still more uni-
versally known as the author of the tale which has fasci-
nated the childhood of every reader, and which has not lost
its attraction for those of more mature age, " Robinson
Cnisoe ;" of Swift; whose writings, though often defaced
by shameless scurrility, and still more discreditable gross-
ness, yet exhibit a vigour of genius and a mastery over
the language which place him high among our English
classics, though, by a singular caprice of fortune, he owes
the greater part of his celebrity at the present day to his
" Gulliver's Travels," which, designed as a political satire
for a temporary purpose, has become a favourite book of
numbers, who devour it as an amus!ng tale in utter disre-
gard or ignorance of its original object. In a different line
of literature, Bentley, now in the prime of life, was raising
the character of English scholarship by a combination of
profound learning and unrivalled critical acuteness which
places him at the head of all the scholars cf modern
Europe ; and Pope, the most harmonious of poets, was
beginning to smooth the hitherto somewhat rugged ca-
dences of English verse into rhythm as well suited to
enchant the ear as the playful fancy which breathed
throughout it with ever-varying imagery was calculated
to delight the sense, and though not equal to Dryden in
either the loftiness of his ideas or in the exuberant
richness of his language, was laying the foundation of a
school which lasted till the end of the century, and
which still finds numerous admirers and some not alto-
gether unsuccessful disciples.
Lord Brougham has ably given his reasons
for holding Bolingbroke to have been the
greatest orator, not merely " of our
country," but of " modern times." Defoe's
history of the " Scottish Union " is not a
classical work, and is referred to in our time