The Press.
London, England, 1854-11-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

what a pity years and years ago they were not made useful
and happy wives at home.
In spite of his tart sayings, John Oldmixon
is at bottom, we are disposed to think, a very
good-hearted fellow, and not free in his own
person from the simplicity which he affects to
laugh at in others. Misanthrophy is different
from cynicism. A nature too fine for the
rough usage and ordinary wear and tear of
life may attempt to revenge itself for its rubs
and scars by assuming a tone of heartlessness ;
but gleams of feeling will now and then show
the delicate texture of the humanity which
lurks behind the prickly exterior. At a con-
cert in Paris of the Philanthropic Society of
Musicians he exclaims :

O how is the soul moved, rapt, at these grand, sweet,
solemn strains, within these noble domes, these hal-
lowed precincts, and amidst this pious, attentive crowd !
For me it was too much : tears betray a still•recurring

DUE, %LLD.-
" Whisper the
O'erfraught heart and bid it break."
Would that I could forget—Forget! such heartaches
cannot be forgotten. The worst of living long,—beyond,
far beyond the ills flesh is heir to,—is losing those we
love—nay, even our tolerable friends and acquaintance.
Often of late years those beautiful lines haunt me—
" Time, which steals something from us every day,
At last it steals us from ourselves away." _

At Nice he laments the sadness of his soli-
tary state, and in his admiration of Lamartine
sinks the snarler in the sentimentalist :

How read unmoved his unaffected sorrows in the Holy
Land, where he lays in her grave his daughter, snatched
from him in her eleventh year ! This touches the chord
in my owo tender regrets Oh, this sinking of the heart,
this bitterness of life—to lose all that makes life sweet!

From this and many other passages like it
we gather that the author has been soured by '
misfortune : it is probable, too, that he has
been disappointed in his worldly hopes, and
that in enforced leisure moody thoughts have
filled his mind to the exclusion of more
wholesome influences. Talk as we may of the
vanity of the world's prizes, and of the futility
of earthly distinctions, rarely can any man
miss them, though the miss be his own fault
or choice, without lasting discontent at a
subsequent period of life. No one can object
to au author's nature colouring his writings,
but it is a mistake of Commander Oldmixon to
suppose that the reading public will care for
reiterated grumbling which has no practical
aim except to give expression to a sentiment
of uneasiness or discontent. One might bear
to be told once that " we English are the most
" hollow, shallow, interested, selfish, affected,
" foolish race of people just now on this world,"
but of what avail is it to din the assertion into
our ears over and over again ? It is some
relief to find in the midst of his abuse of our
laws, institutions, manners, and all consti-
tuting a people, that he does justice to Eng•
lish country and climate. At Cannes—now
enriched by the residence of many wealthy
English families—he writes :
From the ruin of an old castle on a rock over this mole
one sees the whole town and country. Lord Brougham's
villa, and the rest of the English houses westward, close
in the suburbs—their grounds, of no great extent, walled
in—a sort of large gardens, shaded by their fine olive-trees ;
1 see some few orange-trees, but no palms, nor any lawns.
In fact, the summers of this clime burn everything up—
lawns, like our green Axminster carpets, roses, geraniums,
pinks, such as ours, in such beauty and infinite variety,
impossible—still, of course, they have roses t mostly
Chinese), but nowhere does one see that constant and ex-
quisite care or neatness in anything—only seen in dear
old England. 0, land of my fathers, how art thou abused!
—not by me, who love thee but too well :—thy sylvan shadee,
thy glens, thy fields, thy woods, thy thickets, lawns, and
streams ; thy myths through the mists of fable ; thy sylvan
shades, peopled by shadows of our godlike bard—fairies in
the train of thy loved Titania l
There is good sense in the author's reflec-
tions on the contrast between our military
laws and those on the Continent ; and, among
other reforms in the War-office, it is worth
considering whether the system of allowing
the regimental band to be formed and paid for
by the officers might not be altered with ad-
vantage. The passage we quote relates to
Marseilles, and many of our readers can, from
having heard the masterly playing of " Les
Guides" this week, bear witness to its jus-
tice :

It was Sunday: the band (of one of the regiments) con-
sisted of about sixty, and played very fairly : I could not
but think of the difference between us and the French in
this. Here is a strictly enconomical French regiment, has
its music in this full, handsome way; and the equal and
sensible orders of their Horse Guards make it a pleasure
the meanest may enjoy, far above the caprice of colonels or

SATURDAY,

lieutenant-colonels. On their promenades, as the day and
hour fixed comes—so does the band, no matter wi.at garrison,
or if only one regiment present. The contrast may not be so
violent with our regiments of the line ; but with our Guards,
and in London, of all places in the world! who but must
look back with regret and contempt at their airs, and their
turn-out of some twenty or two dozen, when they do con•
descend to play to our admiring crowds during the season
in Kensington-gardens! Excessively mediocre as is their
playing (so feeble and thin from want of requisite numbers),
this same genteel, not fashionable, public of "nobodies "
are often disappointed, even at the maximum of two fixed
days each week—this, too, by regiments which cost us,
in officers and men, about ten times as much as continental
ones ; whose officers, besides, are all men of fortune (or
should be, as they effect to be ), independent of their pay.
It is useless guessing at where the fault lies in particular;
Government should set all such things to rights. Few among
us know or care anything about the matter. To be sure
every thing is comparative as to good, bad, and indifferent,
in this artificial world of ours, and ignorance is indeed bliss.
The French, though respectable in their bands, are far
inferior to the German ones in numbers and in taste, if not

in science.
One can never forget the rich harmony of a German
regimental band of ninety or one hundred strong—those
glorious swells! the crescendo, and the diminuendo.
In the account of Naples, and of the oft-
described wonders of Pompeii, the author's
talent as a describer is shown to most advan-
tage. There are some sensible remarks on the
sudden burying of the city :
The thing is settled that it was suddenly covered by ashes
alone from the eruption of Vesuvius, which is here very far
from it, in profile. I cannot understand it—much less
"suddenly.' . . The fact is plain enough—there re:
mains only the how to puzzle one. . . . Nature's
modus operandi never can be known exactly. The
skeletons, the keys, the bread already baked in the
shops—all as if to impress the fact of the instant over-
whelming—only puzzle me the more, from any possible
quantity of ashes thrown such a height, and falling so fax
off !
In Pera itself—the term of our author's
travel—he is more happy with his pencil than
his pen. His frontispiece—of an English tra-
veller in a wide-awake, mounted, and gaping
in astonishment at the strange figures about
him—shows a keen sense of pictorial humour.
The few plates are well sketched and attrac-
tively coloured. The views of the barracks at
Scutari and of the floating bridge over the
Golden Horn vividly realise the scene. We
have spoken of the author's simplicity, and
one instance will suffice. He left his card on
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and was astonished
that his call was not returned. We thought
the silly notion was exploded that the main
purpose of our embassy at Constantinople was
to pay attention to the idle tourists who saun-
ter thither, though it seems still to linger in the
minds of old-fashioned travellers like Com-
mander Oldmixon. His lordship has business
of weightier import to engage him. Besides,
the motive for that hospitality once deemed
part of an ambassador's duty is now past:
an Englishman is at home in every capital of
the globe, and might as well expect social
attentions from his Home Secretary in London
as from his ambassador in Paris or Constanti-
nople.
Our first impression of the book was lees
favourable than a better acquaintance indueel
us to entertain. There is more originality
and depth in the reflections than might at
first be supposed from the flippant tone
assumed ; and, with all his asperity and non-
sense, we have, on the whole, been more
amused by these " Gleanings" than by
smoother and more soberly-sensible composi-
tions. Commander Oldmixon is a genuine
character, made up of flesh and blood, not
moulded from conventional cement—and that
is saying something in his favour.

Nouveau Tableau de la Bourse de Paris. By
Ade Mericlet. Paris : Dentu.
COMPARATIVELY few of the tens of thousands of
Englishmen who visit Paris annually ever
think of going to the Bourse during business
hours. Yet from one to three daily, Sundays
excepted, one of the most extraordinary spec-
tacles the great city presents is there to be
witnessed. In a vast and majestic salle
is
assembled a huge crowd, consisting of people
of all classes, from the banker or jobber who
can command millions down to the greasy
picker-up of greasy sous ; and these people
are of every nation and every clime of the
European quarter of the globe. In the gal-
leries which surround the hall are a closely-
packed collection of spectators—old gentle-
men with small incomes, and nothing to do,

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