The Press.
London, England, 1856-10-04 00:00:00

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE Westminster Review contains eight articles, of
which certainly six are excellent, and on well-selected
topics. There is nearly as much merit in this latter
point as in good writing, and we should think, as
regards the circulation of a Review, a great deal
more. "Edinburgh Fifty Years Ago," " Silly Novels
by Lady Novelists," and " France before the Revo-
lution of 1780," are admirable papers, whether we
regard style or matter. From the first of the three
we select an extract, showing that, even from the
Whig or Radical point of view, Scotland was con-
tented and nourishing under the rule of Pitt and
Dundas :

An awful state of things this must seem to our modern
politicians ! A country without political life, without
public meetings, without newspapers, without a hustin is
Could any endurable existence be led in such a set of con•

954

ditions—could any good come out of it? Incredible as it
may seem, there is evidence that in this state of things the
Scotch did contrive, in some way or other, to lead not only
an endurable, but a very substantial and jolly existence ;
and that not only a great deal of good, but much of what
ScJtland must now regard as its best and most charac-
teristic produce, had its genesis in these times, though the
exodus is nearer our own. The various liberties of the
human subject may be classified and arranged according
to their degree of importance, and a great many of them
may exist where the liberty of voting for members of Par-
liament and of openly talking politics is absent. So it was
in Scotland, at least during the reign of Dundee and
Toryism. The million and a half of human beings who
then composed Scotland and were scattered over its sur-
face, in their various parishes, agricultural or pastoral, and
in their towns and villages, went through their daily life
with a great deal of energy and enjoyment, notwith-
standing that Dundas, and the lairds and the bailies as his
agents, elected the members of Parliament and transacted
all the political business of the country ; nay, out of the
airds and the bailies themselves, and all the business of elec-
tioneering, they extracted a good deal of fun. What mat-
tered it that now and then some long-tongued fellow who
had started a newspaper was stowed away in jail, or that
at Edinburgh lawyer like Muir was transported for being
incontinent in his politics? Could not people let well
alone, obey the authorities, earn their oatmeal, and drink
their whisky in peace? Few of Scott's novels come down
so far as this period of Scottish life, and it has hardly yet
been described in our literature of fiction ; but there are
many yet alive who remember it, and delight in recalling
its savageries and its humours. 0, the old Scottish times
of the lairds, the moderate ministers, the provosts, and the
baities ! The lairds speaking broad Scotch, farming their
own lands, carousing together, marrying their daughters,
and writing to London for appointments for their sons;
the moderate ministers making interest for their sons,
preaching Blair and " cauld morality " on Sundays, and
jogging to christenings or presbytery dinners through the
week ; the provosts and bailies in their shops in the fore-
noon, or meeting in the morning to their deid-chack "
after a man was hanged ! Every considerable town then
had its hangman, who was generally a well-to-do person
who sold fish. And then all through society, the flirtations,
the friendships, and the long winter evenings at the fireside,
with the cracks between the gudeman and his neighbours,
and the alternative of a hand at cards or a well-thumbed
book for the young folks. What stalwart old fellows, both
of the donee and of the humorous type, oracular and re-
spected in their day. and whose physiognomies and maxims
are still preserved in local memory, lived and died in those
days and made them serve their turn ! Nay, of the list
of Scotchmen recently dead, or still alive, who have been
eminent in the intellectual world, what a number belong
by their birth to the reign of Dundas, and were nurtured
amid its torpid influences! Burns closed his life in the
moist of it ; Stewart and Watt lived through it ; Scott, and
Jeffrey, and Chalmers, and Wilson, and Hamilton, and
Carlyle are all more or less specimens of what it could
send forth. rizere fortes ante Agamemnona : there was
pith in Scotland before parliamentary reform.

Our only objection to the paper on novels is, that
too much importance is given to one or two, so
totally absurd as to require no exposure at all, and
which are, in fact, dignified by the censure.
" George Forster " is a good biographical sketch, and
the review of Emerson an impartial Lxposition of
the opinions expressed in his recent volume. The
summary of contemporary literature forms, as usual,
a most attractive feature in this Review.

The New Quarterly continues to give its readers
acute criticism on the literature of the quarter, wisely
avoiding the elaborate essays which make up the
bulk of the other Quarterlies. The books brought
under notice are fairly treated, the criticism being
at the same time pungent and discriminating. The
only fault we notice in the present number is that
the reviews are all on subjects which float on the
surface of literature. As a Quarterly has time for
reasearch and consideration, it should depart from
the highways of publishing, and discover in obscure
places the germs of thought and newly developed
impulses destined one day to mightily move the
world of intellect. Of the reviews, we have been
most pleased with that on Mr. Reade's " Never
too Late to Mend." We doubted in these columns
the prudence of an author describing, even in fiction,
distant scenes of which he bad had no experience.
The reviewer remarks justly :
The Australian scenes which follow suggest t o us the ques-
tion how far a novelist should introduce descriptions of a
country he has never visited. The value of fiction is in pro-
portion to its approximation to truth ; and we apprehend
the worth of a novel is seriously impaired by the introduc-
t'on of descriptive passages utterly at variance with truth.
What should we say of an artist who, never out of London
yet panted and exhibited " views in Switzerland ?" No
one whit less ridiculous is Mr. Heade's attempt to describe
a country he has never seen, and the characteristics of
which le knows nothing about. All bis information on
Australia, obtained at second-hand from indifferent autho-
rities, is coloured for stage effect. He starts first with a
silly blunder, making his ship experience a gale of wind off
" the banks of Newfoundland;" so that, for the moment,
we were led to believe that George was emigrating to Ca-
nada, till, at the end of a page or two, we find him safely
moored in Port Jackson, where, he tells us, the land
glistened like " a thousand emeralds." The good Sydney
folks would be glad to see an approach to anything of an
emerted colour at the period given for George's arrival in
the burning heat of their December. Mr. Meade has quite
forgotten the sandhills which surround Sydney.