The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-28 00:00:00

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Joan 28,1854.

The true test of faith is the belief in revela-
tion, without attempting to travel beyond the
limits of human thought, in order to get rid
of seemingly insoluble difficulties.
So far Mr. Manse' deals with the philosophy
of the question. It is disappointing to find
that on the theological point—the eternal
duration of fisture punishment--he declines
to enter; for few possess the acuteness, the
learning, the clearness of style that he could
have brought to the discussion. He insists,
however, on the necessity of holding fast that
conception of eternity which human conscious-
us as an important regulative truth,
ness gives
and the danger of endeavouring to exchange
it for a speoulative idea of "a fixed state out of
time," as this must be vague and meaningless
to human intelligence.
In concluding this meagre summary of a
pamphlet full of close and lucid argument, we
must repeat our regret that the author has
modestly refrained from pushing his principles
to all their doctrinal consequences, as the
discussion would have gained greatly, and the
possibility of misunderstanding the principles
themselves would have been precluded.

The Private Letters of Sir Jaw Brooke, K.O .8.,
Rajah of Sarawak. Edited by John C.
Templer, Esq. London : Bentley.
SIR JAMES BROOKE we believe to be both an
able and an honest man ; and his persecution
has diplayed in very unamiable colours the
tendency to invidious disparagement of merit
which exists among a certain class. But, if
we are to speak truth plainly, Sir James seems
to us to have been somewhat unlucky in his
choice of friends. His former confidential
agent is now his bitter personal enemy; and
the gentleman whom he leaves in charge of
his English interests, the editor of this COM.
spond enee, has jeopardised his fame by the pub-
lication of papers which certainly ought never
to have appeared in print. Macaulay 's remark
on Boswell applies to these volumes : consi-
dering how unsparingly all the weaknesses
and failings of the hero are exposed by his
biographer, it furnishes strong proof of his
real merit that so little can be found to urge
against him. But such experiments ought
not to be tried : they are at best dangerous ;
they provoke ridicule as well as censure ; and
they lay open their subject (who must be pre-
sumed cognisant of what is done in his name)
to a charge the most fatal of ail to heroic pre-
tensions, that of an interested puffing of his
own good deeds. We cannot but feel, in re
viewing the Brooke correspondence, that we
are dealing with doeuments not meant for our
inspection. It is bad enough to rummage the
drawers of a dead hero for every scrap of paper
in his handwriting, and to expose his most
private and familiar notes to the criticism of a
careless or hostile public. But it is tenfold
worse to do this in the case of a man who is
still living, who holds an official station abroad,
who is notoriously the target for bitter and
unceasing attacks, and whose weakest point is
perhaps an oversensitiveness to that obloquy
which invariably attaches to a distinguished
career. We could almost suspect Mr. Tem-
pler of being an enemy in disguise ; or, dis-
carding that hypothesis, we can only con-
clude that the vanity of authorship, and pos-
sibly the desire to connect his own name with
that of an eminent personage, have seduced
him into this grievous blunder. We repeat it
emphatically—ordinary prudence, ordinary
delicacy, nay, the common feelings of a gen
tleman, ought to luaus dictated the suppres-
sion of at least one-half of what is here dis-
closed. Nor can we attach the slightest validity
to Mr. Templer's editorial apologies, which
are to the effect that his friend Sir James
placed the correspondence in question in his
hands to be used for the vindication of his
diameter against the attacks of Mr. Hume
and others. We are told that Sir James "sug-
" gested the propriety of publishing his let-
" ters ;" but did he recommend the publica-
tion of all, in this unabridged, unniutilated
form ? If so, we regret it the more, because
it would then be a natural inference that the
letters were written for publication, which is
'Fite sufficient to destrpy their value as evi-
dence of intention: ;To gum hap ko uttgrly