The Press.
London, England, 1858-04-24 00:00:00

THE PRESS, APRIL 24,1858.

tary bands, that reaches the ears only as noise, while the
trumpet is yet speaking to the cannoneer, and he to
heaven, the vision has vanished: the observed of all obser-
vers seems to have melted from before the eye, which finds
itself gazing once more on vacancy. The father is gone,
but has dropped his blessing on bis loving children.
We think it was from the banks of the Avon,
and not of the Tiber, that the Cardinal derived
the above inspiration. Is it not the King in
Hamlet who says,

Give me the cnps,
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens?
We fancy, likewise, though the sentiment
comes from a woman's lips, it was no St.
Ursula, or St. Agnes, but a certain stage
heroine, called Ophelia, who spoke of

The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers .
When we combine the dramatic language
with the dramatic ideas above quoted—the
bells and drums, and crash of bands, the
balcony, and the flabellte or fans of state—
we must confess that the Cardinal transports
us in imagination to a playhouse rather than
to a church ; and we have before our mind's
eye a procession at Drury Lane, or a " revival "
at the Princess's Theatre; or Mr. Elliston, as
George IV., in the ever•memorable piece
wherein the coronation was dramatised, and
his mock-majesty blessed the people over the
footlights.
It is not as if Cardinal Wiseman had been
endeavouring to paint up this one scene in
order to make a point; but his whole book is
a mosaic of tho same curious combinations of
word-effects. The following passages are
taken at random :

The swelling chorus of the hymns and psalms before
him evidently did nos reach his ear; the smoke of frag-
rant incense just under him did not soothe his nostrils ;
the waves of a multitude, swayed to and fro with the mur-
mur of a sea, traced not its image on his eyeballs : he was
himself abstracted from all that sense could convey, and
was centred in one thought, in one act of mind, soul, and
heart, in ono duty of his sublime office, one privilege of his
supreme commission. He felt, and was, and you knew
him to be, what Moses was on the mountain, face to face.

• •
•
That central pile, with its canopy of bronze as lofty as the
Farnese palace, with its deep-diving stairs leading to a court
walled and paved with precious stones, that yet seems only
a vestibule to same cavern of a catacomb, with its simple
altar that disdains ornament in the presence of what is
beyond the reach of human price—that, which in truth
forms the heart of the great body, placed just where the
heart should be—is only on such occasions animated, and
surrounded on every side, by living and moving setup-
tuousness. The immense cupola above it, ceases to be a
dome over a sepulchre, and becomes a canopy above an
altar; the quiet tomb beneath is changed into the shrine
of relics below the place of sacrifice—the saints under the
altar ;—the quiet spot at which a few ;4evout worshippers
at most times may be found, bowing under the 100 lamps,
is crowded by rising groups, beginning from the lowest
step, increasing in dignity and in richness of sacred robes,
till, at the summit and in the centre, stands supreme the
Pontiff himself, on the very spot which becomes him, the
one living link in a chain, of which the very first ring
is riveted to the shrine of the apostles below.

• • •
There is one word introduced in this latter
paragraph that hits the blot—" sumptuous-
ness "; and as sumptuous material, unless
made up with refined taste, inevitably results
in an appearance of gaudiness and vulgarity,
so sumptuous expressions, neither harmo-
nized nor blended, produce a similar result.
It might, perhaps, be objected that we have no
right to take so much exception to the
" manner" of a Cardinal, and that the matter
of his book is that to which we ought to ad-
dress ourselves. But Cardinal Wiseman's
matter is the "colouring matter" of which the
manner is the result. They are so close of
kin that, like the Siamese twins, it would be
cruelty to cut them asunder.
There is a song in Bombastes Furioso which
speaks of " a tub thrown to a whale to make
" the fish a fool." We take it this has been
the object of the work before us There
is a shoal of people afloat in society who
either have recently embraced the Romish
faith, or are inclined to be " reconciled." The
one class, enamoured of the " dramatics" of
religion, are hungry to have something thrown
to them ; the other needs to be baited. They
have got the Cardinal's tub, which is an un
usually ornate piece of literary cooperage, but
it is full of emptiness. In language and
material it seems to us to depend upon tinsel.
The stage-foil glitters upon the words and the
ideas. No doubt there are people who like

elongated sentences, and redundant phrase-
ology. What we consider vicious, they would
esteem " sumptuous;" moreover they would,
perhaps, tell us that " sacred robes," and
" canopies," and " altars," and " catacombs,"
and " waving multitudes," and " fragrant in-
cense," and "soothed nostrils," and the before-
mentioned trumpets, drums, and cannons
cannot be described, except in glowing
language. This would seem to us very
like asserting that the description must be
theatrical in phraseology, because the
thing described is theatrical in its cha-
racter. IVe shall not argue the point;
for, even if it be tine, a critic is by no
means bound to consider what are the causes
of a faulty style. His business is only with what
is put before him ; and, looking through these
pages, we must confess it is very disappointing
to find a man of acknowledged power and
considerable familiarity both with science,
and art, and letters, condescending to string
together whole pages of letterpress that
narrowly escape being no better than verbiage ;
and even when the ideas they are intended
to convey (which are the thinnest possible
veneers extended over a vast unseasoned sur-
face of words) are collected together, they
convey—to us, at least—but one feeling, viz ,
that Cardinal Wiseman has been endeavouring
to enamour the small-fry of England, among
whom he is angling, with a fancy for the
Romish ritual, by describing the gaudy ex-
ternals of his religion in what he considers
an attractive and fascinating manner.
Ever and ever we have the pomp of popes
thrust upon us, and the pomp of kings
sneered at. Take the following as a speci-
men :

Could any sovereign periodically become, again and
again, the centre of anything so magnificent, morally
as well as materially? Could he bring together
thousands of strangers and of subjects, ambassadors,
kings, and even emperors, with multitudes of poor, who
would make pilgrimage from distant regions on foot, and
collect them in a grand square, that they might look up to
him for a few moments, ay, and fall on their knees daring
them, as he showed himself at a window of his palace?
The ides of au attempt to do such a thing is so mon•
strously preposterous, that it excites laughter.

To us the " idea" is preposterous, and excites
our laughter, though we have not the smallest
doubt that there have been spectacles in which
sovereigns have been engaged quite as im-
posing as the one in which the Cardinal's
mind revels. There have been scenes de-
scribed in history in which kings and their
people have stood face to face both " morally
" and materially" as grand as the scene here
alluded to, which we have witnessed as well as
the Cardinal, and can therefore speak of with
equal authority. Nay, we believe we might
even affirm that on a recent occasion, had it
been known that the Queen of this country
would from the balcony of her palace have
presented her married child to the people on
her wedding•day, the many
.thousands who
accidentally witnessed that todchiug spectacle
would have been multiplied into a congrega-
tion of loyal subjects infinitely more vast than
we beheld in front of St. Peter's.
But it is needless to discuss such points :
the animus throughout the whole book is so
evident that we can safely leave the dignity of
Protestant kings to take care of itself when
put in contrast with the magnificence of Papal
Pontiffs.

Here is another touch after the same style
—Protestant-" plastered" London in antithesis
to Papal-marbled Rome :

Were London ever again to become a ruin, a few frag-
ments of plaster might disclose the whereabouts of a dis-
senting chapel, and a queer old tablet might tell of some
humble almshouses, founded by an eminent merchant.
The remaining inscriptions would be the debris of shop
fronts and facies (whatever that means), with a few brass
plates bearing the names of a dentist or a drawing-master,
or, what Lord Macaulay's sketchy New Zealander might
consider a leave for admission to some congenial fumy
sports of cudgel or fist, " Knock and Ring."
Rome ! home of Pontiffs; London ! home of
dentists "Dens' Theology," we believe, is a
favourite text-book with the Cardinal. We
presume in that work the catechist must ask,
" Who lives in Rome? Answer : The Pope.
" Who lives in London? Answer: The Den-
" tist."

The Cardinal is merry at our expense ;
despite we have the dome of St. Paul's, not
very inferior to St. Peter's in size, and quite
as beautiful in construction, and as lasting in