The Press.
London, England, 1854-06-03 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

we subsequently find him moving from place
to place, everywhere stirring up insurrection,
even among tribes which had consented to
receive the Russian yoke. Like most enthu-
siasts, he considers that his mission dispenses
him from the ordinary obligations of morality.
"No faith with the enemy" is both his pre
cept and his practice. In 1837 his master and
predecessor, Khasi-Moullah, took a solemn
oath of fidelity to the Czar, and forthwith
broke it; au example which dues not seem to
have been lost on the disciple. He professes
to have visions and revelations, but does not
on that account neglect the ordinary means of
exciting a people to action. Decorations, dis-
tinctions, and military rank, are bestowed
freely among his troops. He has in pay a
foreign legion of 4,000 deserters, adventurers,
and refugees, of all nations; but trusts his
personal defence to a picked body of followers
of his own creed and nation. He governs
quite as much through fear as through
love

Schamyl had for a long time a potent rival to his power
in the person of Tashew-Hadshi, who, conscious that he
could not effectually struggle against his influence, ac-
knowledged his supremacy in 1837.
Religion, union, and violence, are the three springs of
Schamyl's power. He has known how to establish unity in
religion, to reconcile Ali with Omar, to mingle all sects
into a single one, and through faith to keep the different
populations united in their common hatred of the
" MOSCOVb." But fear has more share than interest in
maintaining the various souls under his domination ; for he
chastises traitors and subdues rebels. We should be wrong
indeed if we believed that the populations which obey
him are pleased with his sway. In fact, he raises regular
and irregular contributions in coin, in men, and in provi
Biota, which are considered as vexatives. Every tenth
man is obliged to rally around his standard, and the others
to keep themselves ready to obey the first order, or to en-
counter the first danger. Every family pays a tax of a
silver rouble ; and the tenth of the harvest is taken to the
storehouses of the chief. Discontent is so great that
Schamyl dares not to appear in public unless surrounded
by a numerous escort.
Thus, when in '44 the people of the Kabardas
refused to listen to his exhortations, he in-
vaded their territory, destroyed sixty villages,
and plundered and wasted the country with-
out mercy. He tried similarly to influence
the Circassituis of the seacoast, but failed,
owing to diversity both of language and of
interest. His power of eloquence is described
as remarkable, and we have the following
sample of his proclamations, inflated indeed
and hyperbolical in expression, but full of
vigour :

Do not believe that God favours number ! God sides
with good men, and they are always less numerous than
the wicked. Carry your eyes around you, and everywhere
you will find the confirmation of what I am telling you.
Are there not less roses than ill weeds? Is there not more
mire than pearls, more vermin than useful beasts? is nut
gold more scarce than common metal? And are we not
nobler than gold sad roses ; than pearls and horses, and all
the useful animals taken together? for all the treasures of
the earth are transient whilst we have been promised an
eternal life.
But, if there are more ill weeds than roses, are we,
instead of extirpating them, to wait until by their growing
and increasing they have stifled noble flowers ? And if
our enemies are more numerous than we are, is it wise to
allow them to take us in their nets ?

•
• • • • •
Do not, therefore, be astonished at the infidels increasing
so quick, and sending always fresh troops to the field
of battle to replace those which we have destroyed. For,
I tell 3ou : A thousand mushrooms and venomous plants
grow out of the earth before a single good tree has reached
maturity. lam the root of the tree of liberty ; my Murids
are the trunk, and you are the branches. But do not
believe that the rottenness of one branch will cause the
decay of all the tree ! God will cut off bad branches
and throw them into the fire of hell ; for he is a good
garnerer.

The Red Man. A Lecture by the Rev. Lord Wrio-
thesley Russell. London : Seeleys.
This lecture was delivered to the Church of England
Young Men's Society. Its author distrusts the so-
called science of ethnology. lie reminds his hearers
of an important fact :

" You will permit me to observe, that, although superfi-
cial ethnologists, like superficial geologists, have at times
been too ready to allow their own crude theories or imper-
feet knowledge to aisle them reject the received scriptural
account of the origin of man, the testimony of more accu-
rate investigators, more profound philosophers, Adelung,
and Blumenbach, and Curler, and Lawrence, and Rosen-
muller, with other names of eminence in science, all con-
cur in supporting the Mosaic account."
Elsewhere he says:—

" Following, then, the threefold division of Curter, who
enumerates the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, and the Mongo-
lian races, we assign to Shea the noblest of the three, that
is, the Caucasian race. To him was given blessing. The

521

Caucasians are the salt of the earth—the erangelisers—the
possessors of the one true faith, in Judaism, and after-
wards of its developmeut in Christianity. The Ethiopian
race bears the curse of Ham—bondage; and to the Mon-
golian, who claims descent from Japhet, belongs enlarge-
ment—the widest extension over the face of the habitable
globe."
Only sciolists sneer at the ethnological importance
of the Caucasian race, and it would be well that they
should Recollect, as Lord Wriothesley Russell teaches,
that the illustrious Cuvier recognised its high im-
portance. The lecture is firs,..c..llly written, and has
a pleasing tone of thought.

Hospitals and Sisterhoods. London : Murray.
A SMALL volume compiled, rather than originally
written, to advocate the formation in the Protestant
Church of sisterhoods analogous to those which in
the Roman Catholic Church are known as Sisters of
Charity, &c. The experiment has, it seems, been
successfully tried at Kaiserswerth, in Prussia, where
I'astor Fliedner has organised a body of women,
called " deaconesses," who administer spiritual con-
solation and instruction to the sick whilst they dis-
charge the duties of nurse. These devout women
are not under vows, but they voluntarily undertake
to serve for a certain period, receiving in return no
wages, but only a decent maintenance. This, if it
could be introduced, would certainly in many respects
be a great improvement on our Pi iggs and Ciampi,
but we doubt its practicability. l'he subject is, how-
ever, worth serious consideration. This unpre-
tending little volume is written in an earnest spirit,
and contains much information on the subject of
those sisterhoods both in the Old World and the New.

Jack and the Tanner of Wymondham. By the
Author of " Mary Powell." London.: Hall, Virtue,
and Co.

THIS IS a tale of "ye olden time," written in the
style which has gained so much popularity for the
author's works. The story dates back to the reign of
the boy-King Edward VI., and Garnet and Gillian
make proper use of " Aye marry " and " By my fay."
The setting, in short, though it might not satisfy a
Ilitgon, is sufficiently antique to give an air of vrai-
semblance to a stirring, well-told story, designed to
beguile the tedium of a journey through deep cuttings
and tunnels of railway travel.

The Autobiography of a Working Man. By
Alexander Somerville. London : ilardwicke.
This is the second edition of a noteworthy work.
The author has experienced many vicissitudes in life,
writes well, and, as we believe, relates truly the
various incidents of his career. In the obscure strug •
gles of the son of the bumble but high-minded
Scotch peasants there is a Smollett-like force and
fidelity which invests the most ordinary incident with
interest. The volume does not embrace his services
with the Legion in Spain, nor his connection with the
Anti-Corn Law League. Men born in an humble
station, with superior mental powers, may derive use-
ful warnings from the contents of this autobiography.

The Lamplighter. London : Clarke, Beeton, and Co.
THIS is a reprint of an American fiction. It is a
sentimental description of the sufferings of a for-
saken child, and the interest sought to be excited is
of the harrowing kind. But we yawn oftener than
weep as we peruse its prolix narrative. There are
obvious attempts at imitating various styles of our
female fictionists, but the writer is not successful.
For a tale of common life it wants truth of local
colouring, and there is absence of reality throughout.
Mere sympathy will not compensate for the genuine
power that results from knowledge of life.

A Trip to Sea from 1810 to 1815. By George Miller.
London : Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.

WE notice this little book because it affords a remark-
able instance of the mania for authorship which pre-
vails, and of the facilities which exist for its gratification .
Mr. Miller is now " the oldest butcher and auctioneer
in Boston," where be " fixed" in the year ltil7. But
he had previously been a sailor, and the old story of
the " persuasion of friends" induced him to publish
this account of " the every-day life of a common sai-
" lor," though "fully sensible he was but ill-qualified
"for the task." Mr. Willett, with his pipe in his
mouth, looking wisdom at his boiler in the Maypole
parlour, may be an important personage in the eyes
of his cronies, but it by no means follows that his re-
miniscences will possess interest for the public. If
this mania continues we may soon expect to see ad-
vertised "Cabs and Cold Without; or, Glimpses of
the Haymarket by Moonlight. By the Lriver of a
Hansom."

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522

I

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

Blackwood opons with a review of Mr. Morley's
" Biography of Jerome Cardan," a work which was re-
cently noticed in the PRESS. Our monthly contempo-
rary gives rather a history of Cardan than a critique on
the work. The article is carefully and agreeably
written. Essays on miscellaneous subjects, by
Shoshee Chunder Dutt, is the text of an interesting
dissertation on India, of which " Young Bengal " is
the title :

" A large section of the intellectual classes in Calcutta
and the neighbourhood (where the English character has
had more momentum and more scope for its action)
have earned the name which stands at the head of our
paper by baldly discarding the past, and endeavouring to
give their unhappy country a new civilisation, based pro-
fessedly on foreign principles. It is to this class that we
must refer our author himself, who has devoted to his
fellow-labourers a long and fervent treatise, in which he
confers on them the synonyme of ' the Hopes of India.
To those who have ever frequented the taverns, the
billiard-rooms, the racecourse of Calcutta, the name of
Young Bengal' will call up associations of turbans, top-
boots, and trumpery trinkets worn by persons naively de-
scribed by our Baboo as ' men of licentious habits and
dissipated character; and a love for food proscribed by the
Shastras are the chief causes of their liberalism.' These
members of `Young Bengal' are unfortunately those of
whom the European resident sees the most, but they are
not the fair type of the class. It can boast of names dis-
tinguished in literature, in society, in patriotism, in law,
physic, and even in Christian divinity. Many in this
country may remember the earnest Rammohun Roy, who
unhappily sought for truth in the broken cisterns of Deism,
and the magnificent Dwarkanauth Tagore, who, like him,
died of our ungenial climate—victims both to a love of
knowledge, which rarely breaks through the bigoted con-
bervatisin that binds the Hindu° to his native shores. To
these may be added the names of Prosamoeomar Tagore,
the munificent patron of education ; of Ramgopul Ghose ;
and of the whole family of the Dutts, sons and nephews of
Baboo Russomoy Dutt, a well-known and deservedly-
respected judge in Calcutta. No less than five of these
gentlemen have relieved the active pursuit of the various
avocations of the schoolmaster, the lawyer, and the clerk,
by the production of English poetry of very considerable
excellence."

Some specimens are given which fully justify the
praise. " Mary Russell Mitford," the next article, is
a pleasing subject, but the composition betrays care-
lessness. "A Letter from Madrid," by Vedette,
written with force and viva.:ity, gives a lamentable
account of that unhappy country. The misconduct
of the Queen—" the innocent Isabel"—in whose
cause half Spain took up arms, is described without
the slightest ambiguity. According to Vedette the
banditti of Spain are not the picturesque brigands of
the Sierra Morena; but here is a picture of one of
them:—
" Observe yonder stately gentleman, rolling by in a well-
appointed carriage with coroneted panels. He is still a
young man, and, but a few years ago, was an unknown
clerk in a private office, poor, and not of very good repute.
Gifted with audacity, and with that slippery, unscrupulous,
sleight-of-hand cleverness which in Spain is often a pass.
port to power, although in other countries it would lead a
man at most to that sort of distinction attained by Barring.
ton the pickpocket, or Robin the conjuror, he has ascended
in the social scale by huge leaps, passing over the heads of
hundreds of better men than himself. He is now titled
and a millionaire, his breast is covered with stars and
decorations, and he is the councillor nearest to hie
sovereign. It is certainly not out of a Spanish minister's
salary that he has economised, during the short time that
he has received it, the princely fortune he is well known to
possess. Your simplicity will excite unbounded astonish.
ment in any Spaniard of whom you inquire how this
fortunate adventurer accumulated his wealth. If Ministers
of State are not to make their fortunes, who, in the names
of Mercury and Plutus, are so to do? It seems considered
here that a statesman's paramount and first duty (to him-
self), when he is so lucky as to attain office, is to get rich.
And it may truly be said that it is a duty in which few are
here remiss."
There are 103 ex-Ministers at present in Spain, all
receiving pensions, including the members of one
Cabinet which only held office for twenty-four hours.
Th ese pensions are paid with the utmost regularity,
those who have the custody of the purse never know
ing when they may be in the condition of the reci-
pients. " The Recent Growth of the United States
of America " is a valuable statistical contribution,
whilst Mr. Ruskin's recent "Lectures on Architecture
and Painting" affords the critic an opportunity of
maintaining the ancient character of the magazine, Ly
dealing out trenchant strokes in defence of the archi-
tectural glories of the modern Athens.

THE writing in Fraser has lately assumed a good
practical character. The papers, though we may
dissent from their views, seem the work of competent
hands, and are usually distinguished by original
thought and good information. The able article on
Cronstadt in the last number is followed up in this
by remarks on "Russian Ships and Russian Gun-
ners." Information is rapidly collected in England
upon any subject which interests the public. Six
months ago little was known of Cronstadt, save that
it was a fortified island at the mouth the Neva;