The Press.
London, England, 1856-01-26 00:00:00

89

the history of a young man, who, being tempted
into infidelity at college, is so horrified when he
comes to reflect upon his condition that be flies to
America. Having there recovered his peace of mind,
he returns to England, marries, and is happy, and
has also the satisfaction of converting on his death-
bed the man who had years before seduced himself.
Christian Melville is his sister, and as an isolated
portrait is ably done, but she does not help the
action of the story in the slightest degree. The
whole tale is indeed powerfully written, and we have
no doubt., with a certain section of the public, will b
very popular. But in our opinion these exaggerated
pictures of mental anguish are of little service to
the cause of religion ; and it is much to be questi9ned
whether any original of Halbert Melville could be
found among the young men of the present day
Walter Forsyth, too, the t, mpter, with Hs glittering,
malicious eye, is rather an obsolete character.

Of Dorothy (2) we can speak in terms of much
less qualified commendation. It is an exceedingly
interesting story, and we should imagine written by
a lady. It is something between the style of Mrs.
Marsh and Miss Sewell ; and w.' do not often find a
better drawn character than that of Dorothy Mowbray.
In all the characters there is displayed considerable
knowledge of human nature, and shrewd observation
of those trifles which, in the ordinary intercourse of
the world, form our only clue to the dispositions of
those we meet. The dialogue is uncommonly
sprightly and natural, and the scenes in which
Dorothy endeavours to check the forwardness of her
admirer, Robert Selby, are singularly clever. The
only ill managed circumstance in the book is Colonel
Mowbray's second marriage, which seems to us to
answer no purpose, and to be very little in accordance
with the colonel's character as displayed in the
earlier portions of the story. Wesubjoin a specimen
of Miss Dora's conversation:—

" Have you been riding a great deal, Dora ?"
" About as much as usual."
" If you rode earlier, I should have a chance of seeing
you."
" You may as well wish that the courts at later,
and agitate for a law reform. It is just as likely to

happen."
But, Dora," said Robert, persuasively, " I wonder
you do not sometimes ride later in the afternoon, when
Rotten•row is the gayest Else* I know, quite full of
riders." _ _

" Mr. Robert Selby included. Rut as papa and I ride
for exercise, and not for society, we are not inclined to
alter oor hours."

" And so," said Robert, dolefully, "you do not miss me
in the least? Do you remember that happy time when I
passed my summer holidays at Chudleigh, and we went
out riding together?"
" Did we?" said Dora, carelessly. " Oh, now I remem-
ber, you took possession of Lanee's pony, and quite spoiltd
its mouth."
Robert tried another subject. " I suppose, Dora, there
is no chance of my meeting you at Lady Wentworth's ball,
on Thursday?"
" Not the slighest."
" I►o you never intend to go out at all ?"
" Yes ; I intend to go out riding at half-past ten to'.
morrow.'•

" You know what I mean, Don. Do you never intend
to go into society ? "
'• I suppose we are in society now," said Dorothy.
" Yes, and /am very happy," said Robert, venturing to
move one step nearer. His cousin drew back, with an air
of proud disdain.
"Are you?—then I recommend you to go to Lady
Wentworth's ball. by all means I ant not so much grati-
fied with this taste of society as to feel inclined to repeat
the attempt."

Alfred Leslie (3) is written with considerable
spirit, and is, we daresay, a faithful portraiture of
Glasgow university life. A few blunders on the
subject of universities in general we can fairly over-
look, as it is not likely a student of Gla.sgow should
know more of Oxford and Cambridge than students
of the latter would know of Glasgow. We think
there is great promise about "Alfred Leslie"; and if
the author would learn to modify a certain prone
ness to flippancy, be would be qualified to rank
high among the storytellers of the day.. We should
add that the illustrations are excellent, and the
female faces remarkably pretty.

The Chronicles of Camber Castle (4) is a
mediaeval tale, in which romantic adventures form
the staple of interest., rather than description of
character or views of society. There is no very
glaring improbability in it. There are the usual
materials of romance, the foundling hero (p. 12),
the beautiful heroine (p. :24), the villain (p. 43), the
dungeon (p. 99, the escape (p. 101), and the happy
marriage (p. 111). Considering that Camber Castle
is a ruin, for the sake of which we believe few
travellers turn from their route, the author has suc-
ceeded in investing it with some degree of interest,
and those who are still in what may be called "the
G. P. It. James phase" of fiction will pass a plea-
sant enough hour in turning over its pages.

(2.) Doi Gay. A'f ale. London :J. W. Parker and Sou.
rs.) Alfred Leslie. A Story of t.laz.gow Life. Glasgow
Thomas Murray.
(4.) The Chronicles of Camber Castle. A Tale of the Reforma-
tion. London; liatchard.

Olympia in the Crimea (5) belorgs to an obsolete
school, formerly known by its productions from the
Minerva Press of A. K. Newman.

Family Interests (6) is a pretty affecting tale,
written to show the injustice of the law which de-
prives a mother of the guardianship of her children,
however dissolute or worthless the father may be.

The Spirit of the Holly (7) is an animated
Christmas tale, with plates illustrative of fairy
doings ; and
Jeanne de Vaudreuil (8) is a well-done translation
of an interesting and serious French story.
Passing on from our batch of stories we come to
The Eventful Life of a Soldier (0), containing a nar-
rative of campaigns in the Peninsular war, and
scenes and sketches in Ireland. All military adven-
tures are interesting at this period; and though its
author has the disadvantage of going over ground
already trodden by so many distinguished writers,
yet he in no respect fails to arrest and retain our
attention. He recounts his own share in the various
actions of the war in a graphic but unpretending
manner, telling us just as much as he saw himself,
and no more. His remarks on army discipline are
sensible and moderate, and his scenes in Ireland very
graphic.

A Day at Nimes (10) is a guide-book thrown into
the form of a tale. Though the authoress hardly
expects readers " beyond the narrow circle of private
acquaintance," the little book will be an agreeable
companion to the places described. Its size will
not be its least recommendation to the tourist., when
he is tired of feeling his fat " Murray " dragging
down his coat-pocket on a long day at the Pont-du-
gard.

Sir Thomas (11) is a tale in which African
scenery, manners, and adventures, are interwoven
with a slender thread of fiction. The incidents are
probable and amusing enough. The style is straight-
forward and simple, and occasionally not without a
degree of humour. There are a few illustrations,
of average merit.

The last on our list is a book that does not come
under either of the above heads. A spirit of deli-
cate and minute observation, extensive knowledge,
and a healthy, moral, anti religious feeling, make
May Flowers (12) a pleasant book. Acheta, one of
the most welcome of the numerous (literary) pro-
geny of the Rev. Gilbert White, has not in this
work fallen below the high standard by which her
previous efforts have caused her to be judged.

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride,
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,

is one of the lessons most earnestly taught in the
present volume ; and the chapter especially devoted
to the subject of "cruelty" is one which might
awake a conscience, even in a boy (the most cruel of
animals), if the elegant and spirituel tone of the
book in general did not appropriate it to a more ad-
vanced age. The ethics of keeping cage-birds are
nowhere better set forth than in the following ex-
tract :

They lose the range of earth, and the use, for cutting
air, of their aire•cutting wings."
They gain in the frequent freedom of a room, a measure
of resembling pleasure, rendered by comparison with
greater thraldom a greater joy.
They lose a fickle February mate,
They gain, or ought to, for a bird should not be caged
alone, a fast fri-nd for all the changing seasons of the year.
They lose ( generally) the pleasant exercise of their in-
stinctive skill in fabrication of a nest, with that of their
instinctive affection in tending on their nestlings.
They gain exemption from the frequent misery of finding
nest invaded and nestlings gone.
They lose, from spring to winter, the pleasures of reap-
ing and gleaning of their self-sown harvests for them.
selves.

They gain, from winter to spring, protection from win-
ter's icy arrows, and feast within, while winter in his white
cloak may be locking their granaries without.
They lose, as regards their instincts, dimmed or oblite-
rate through want of use.
They gain, as regards their higher faculties of intelligence
and affection, brighteued and brought out by intercourse
with creatures higher than themselves.
We must not forget the illustrations. They are well
drawn and engraved, and are remarkable for a fine
symbolical fancy, united to a prseter-pre-Raphaelite

(b.) Olympia in the Crimea; or. the Care of Inkernsan Lon-
don; Saunders and Otley.
(G.) Family Interests. A Story taken from Life. London ;
Rope and Co.
(7.) The Spirit of the Holly. By Mrs. Octavius Freire Owen.
London; Routledge and Co.
(8.) Jeanne de rendre-ail. Translated from the French.
London: Jame* Nisbet and Co
(9.) Eeensfui Life era soldier. By the late Joseph Donaldson,
Sergeant in the Scots Brigade. London and Glasgow•
Griffin and Co.

(10.) A Day at NiA111(8. A Sketch. By Beata Elizabeth Macau-
lay. London: Masters.
(ll.) Sir Mows: or. the Adventures qf a Cornish Baronet in
Western Afriza. By Mrs. R. Lee. London: Grant and Griffith.
p(111.) May Flowers: being Notes and Notion. on a few Created
77stney. 13y Acheta. London: Reeve.

THE PRESS.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE Quarterly Review opens with a careful and
most agreeable article upon "'fable talk." The
text-nooks are the " Table-talk of John Selden," the
" Table-talk of Samuel Coleridge," and the " Table-
talk of Martin Luther." But the writer leads us as
far back as the " Memorabilia" of Xenophon, which
he supposes to be the first specimen of table talk on
record, coming down again through the witticisms of
Cicero and Cgesar, and the parasites and buffoons of
the Empire. Luther's talk is happily characterised—
" It glows with the fire which burned the Pope's
" Bull." The description of Johnson's conversation
is so excellent that we select it as a specimen of the
whole:—

Johnson's conversation is the perfection of the talk of a
man of letters; and if, as we believe, the test of Table-
Talk be its worthiness to take a place as literature after
its immediate effect has been produced, where shall we
look for its match? It has a style of its own, and cannot
be imitated without absurdity. It is an intermediate some-
thing between literature and conversation, in which it is
impossible to separate the share of the man or letters from
the share of the man of the world. He sometimes said
things which might have been transferred unaltered to
his " Lives of the Poets," and he sometimes wrote things
which only required the preliminary " Why, Sir," as wings
to send them dying through the dining-room of Sir Joshua
or the drawing-room at Streatham ; bit while in his study
he was always more or less the scholar, in society he was
often a man of the world : and his whole life was such an
union of " Town and Gown " as was perhaps never before
exhibited by an individual.
Coleridge is very briefly passed over—treatment
which we do not altogether regret, as we fully agree
with the reviewer's description of his conversation.
The article upon Lawrence's "Life of Fielding " is
substantial and well written—it is a subject of never-
ending interest. It is a curious thing, by-the bye,
that neither Mr. Lawrence himself nor any of his
critics have mentioned that Fielding once undet took
a translation of Aristophanes, conjointly with the
Rev. William Young. It was very badly done, and
never got beyond one play, "The Pintas." The
" Neology of the Cloister " is a severe and well-
written attack upon the school of which Mr. Jowett
is just now the most prominent representative. In
the opening paragraph we find a well known Oxford
anecdote, which, as it is very current in the erroneous
shape here given to it, we may as well take the op-
purtunity of setting right:—

Some twenty years ago, the members of an Oxford
Common-room were shocked and scandalised by the reply
of a German professor, whom they were hospitably enter-
taining, to a theological argument adduced by one of his
hosts. The Oxonian had enforced his views by an appeal
to the writings of St. Paul; the Prussian rejoined, not by
denying the relevancy of the citation, but be questioning
the autnolity of the writer. " Paul !" he exclaimed,
" Paul was a clayver man, but he had his fancies. His
letters 1 have read, but not often 1 agree with him." The
dead silence which followed the speech expressed the
horror and amazement which it excited, and brought a
blush of confusion to the cheek of the perplexed professor,
who could not conceive what he had said to shock the
company.

The truth is, that the professor in question under-
stood the reference to be made to a certain German
writer, one " Poulus," and in no way intended to
speak disrespectfully of St. Paul. We subjoin an
example of the style in which Messrs. Jowett and
Williams are treated :
But we must not ignore another argument which is
brought in defence of the free criticism of our modern
teachers. " You admit," they say, " that the Apostles
declared the teaching of the Ohl Testament to be imper-
fect, and its ethics to be superseded by a higher morality ;
why may not we claim the same liberty of judging the
teaching of the Apostolic age, which that age itself exercised
respecting the inspired teachers of their fathers ? We
answer that, if our new instructors possess the same Divine
authority as the Apostles, then, but not otherwise, they
have the right to supersede the Apostolic teaching by
their own. When St. Paul announced that the law was
done away in Christ, he claimed to speak with the voice
and in the power of God. When our Lord passed sen-
tence of imperfection on the moral precepts of Moses, it
was because He was greater than Moses. But as that
sentence which pronounced the law imperfect virtually
abolished Judaism, so would the revelation of religious
error in the Gospel virtually abolish Christianity.
Another literary article is on " Menander," an author
on whom M. Guizot's work has had the effect of
directing a considerable degree of attention. To
those accustomed only to the Athens of Thucydides
and Pericles, the Athens of Menander is a curious
study. The article on " The Results and Prospects
of the War," though a little out of date, will be read
with interest. The writer appears not wholly devoid
of that unreasoning hostility to, and distrust of,

Russia which is unhappily prevalent in this country.
Articles on landscape gardening, the Zoological
Gardens. and reformatory schools, complete the
number.

The New Quarterly Review proceeds in its excel•
lent plan of reviewing the literature of the current
quarter, avoiding mere essays. Its critical talent,
however, is not always equal to its position. Th•

SATURDAY,

editor is sometimes at fault. The contributors
are permitted to contradict each other—as, for in-
stance, in one page we are told of Mr. Browning's
" tortuous versification—each line hke the snake in
the otter's mouth "; and a little further on that the
said Mr. Browning's " Men and Women " is "a pro-
" foundly thoughtful and vigorously-written book. .
" alive with a bold and vivid beauty." In the
review of Mr. Hughes's " Log of the Pet" it is
said : _ _

Mr. Hughes has gone to the war, and has strewn some
fresh flowers on the path already somewhat worn.
What is the meaning of this ? Are we to suppose
that the path of war is worn by the flowers which
have been strewn upon it? Some of the notices are
written with judgment and fairness ; but the editor
must exercise a more vigilant eye over the whole, if
he wishes his Review to become, what it might easily
be made, an authority on the merits of modern pub-
lications. Sound and careful critical opinions,
avoiding both slashing sauciness and fawning
flattery, would require time to make its way, but it
would in the end gain the confidence of the public,
and give the Review a character for independent and
impartial thought—a qualification much required in
the present nay. We drop these hints in no un-
friendly spirit. The ability displayed in the Review
requires severe training and discipline; mere dash
is, in literature as in war, a poor substitute for the
judicious combination and sustained effort by which
admirable results are obtained. The most attractive
article in the number is that on " Illustrated Books,"
in which specimens are given of the designs of Mr.
Birket Foster, Mr. George Thomas, Mr. Harrison
Weir, and other well-known artists. There is no
reason why the peculiar merits of an artist should not
be explained by the quotation of his drawings. In
this instance the wood-engravings are well chosen
and carefully printed. A more critical consideration
of the artists' abilities would, however, have been
desirable.
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. No. I. We
are inclined to augur well for the success of this new
adventure in the field of periodical literature. The
essay on Tennyson is a carefully-considered paper.
One of his leading characteristics is suggested in the
following sentence :
In " The Two Voices " I shall particularise only the
union of intellect and feeling, which, as it is one of the
most essential qualifications or poetry, so it distinguishes
many of Tennyson's longer poems in the highest degree.
Indeed if I were to select that which I think most excellent
in him, I should have little hesitation in choosing this.
The three stories (nut continuations) are supe-
rior to the average of magazine- tales. With the
reviewer's opinion of Longfellow we cannot
agree, but it is well written. The essay on " The
Newcomes " is worthy of the other articles; and on
the whole we fancy that under the modest appella-
tion of "Members of the Two Universities" some
names of note in the literary world must be con-
ceale3.

Laura Gay. A Novell Two Vols. London: Hurst

and Blackett.
Ax agreeable, well-written novel, more remarkable
for social sketches, well-sustained portraiture, and
lively conversation, than for constructive skill or
narrative power. The story is commonplace : Charles
Thornton and Laura Gay are dev ted to each other;
they are as true as they are loving; but they are
separated for a time by a commercial misfortune
and an intercepted letter. The work evidently uro-
ceeds from a masculine pen, and the etherial senti-
ment, which is so charming in fiction, is subordi.
nated to the intellect which concerns itself with
material business. Publishers find that, with rare
and very illustrious exceptions, the most popular
novels are produced by ladies. Good sense and a
love story rarely harmonise well together. The
author of" Laura Gay" composes pleasingly, but seems
deficient in the imagination and passion, essential to
fiction of a high class. The doubtful merit of sin-
gularity would have indicated more promise than so
even a performance.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.—JIN. 24.
BOOKS.
Modern Painters. Vol. 111. J. Ruskin, M.A.
Smith and Elder.
Evelyn Forester. Routledge.
Notes on the late Expedition against the Russian Settlements
in Eastern Siberia. Longmans.
Obscure Nervous Diseases. E. Wilson.
Works of the Rev. Thos. M'Crie, D.D. Blackwoods.
Amberhill. A. J. Barroweliffe. Smith and Elder.

An Address Delivered at the A;;;;1 Soirée of the Hudders-
field Institute. Groornbriige.
A Review of the Evidence before the Second Court•rnartial on
Lieut. Perry. Bosworth.
4 Catalogue of School Books and Educational Works.

Versirles.

Longmans.
Bosworth.

Remarks on the Ad of Parliament for the Formation qf
Companies with Limited Liability. E. Wileon•
The British Controversialists and Self ethication. Honlianne.
An Essay on Anemology and Ombrology. Walker.
Civil Service Superannuation. Harrison and Son.