The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858.

,‘ at all changed since it was built by Sir Thos.
yavasor in 1610," and that the other is
gi a good Elizabethan house," having been built
in 1577. At p. xv., among the " art-collec-
tions" of the county, we are not reminded of the
one at Ham-house, which, however, as we learn
from p. 125, possesses a great number of valuable
historical portraits. At p. 12 we find, "the
" Kentish border is crossed immediately beyond
Addington, and soon appears Wickham-park
(Lord Overstone, whose fine collection of pic-
" tures is however in London)." This would
lead a reader to suppose that Wickham-park was
in Kent, whereas it is really in Surrey. Nor
does it belong to Lord Overstone, having been
some years since sold to ',a relative of his, Mr.
Lewis Lloyd. In the third place, the name of
the demesne is not Wickham-park, but Monk's
Orchard, having been rebaptized by Mr. Lloyd,
who pulled down the former mansion, and re-
built it on a more extensive scale. We are also
inclined to doubt whether any of Lord Over-
stone's pictures were ever at Wickham • at all
events, the former house must have been too
small to contain anything like the whole collec-
tion. At p. 34, Ashurst Warren is stated to be-
long to " Wm. Strahan, Esq.," and Denbies to
T. Cubitt, Esq." Ashurst was sold after the
catastrophe of the well-known firm, and Mr.
Cubitt died about two years ago.—" B. Gosling,
Esq.," of I3urbridge-hall (p. 133), has long been
dead; and " J. Gordon, Esq.," mentioned below,
should be "J. Godman " (the well-known
brewer). At p. 134, "Pepperharrow "—which
should be Peperharow, as the writer's own deri-
vation shows—is wrongly assigned to Lord Mid-
dleton, instead of Lord Midleton. The former
is of quite a different family, and has, we believe,
no property in the south of England. "The
" park is well stocked with deer. There have
been no deer for many years, and the principal
attractions of the place, the pleasure-gardens and
views, are not mentioned.—At Penshurst (which
we lately visited in company with the Handbook)
the information is not quite so commodiously
assorted, in one respect, as it might be. The visitor
is supposed to enter the park opposite Itedleaf,
as he naturally will do if he comes from the rail-
way-station ; and the Handbook takes him at
once to the house. After he has seen it, he will
naturally be disposed to see the church and vil-
lage which lie beyond, and are close at hand ;
and, after seeing these, will probably desire to
return by some other road. But if he now in-
quires for " Bear's Oak " (the tree said to have
been planted by Sir Philip Sidney, and an ob-
ject which no ore, of course, would wish to leave
unseen), he finds that he has passed near it on
his way to the house, and that he has to retrace
his steps almost as far as the end of the park by
which he entered. This is not well managed,
though all the rest of the information about the
house is full and neatly arranged.

In looking through these guides we have been
struck with a certain deficiency of information
on the subject of English domestic architecture.
Front the description of Penshurst, for instance,
it would be impossible to tell whether its style
Was classical or Gothic. There may be " grey-
ness" and "venerable antiquity" about a
Palladian house, or indeed about a house that
has no style at all. The same remark applies to
the descriptions of some other places. High-
clere (Hants), for example. which is a striking,
though modernized, edifice, surely demands a
line or two to inform the connoisseur of its cha-
racteristics. From the section on " Antiqui-
t!es " in the Introduction we learn that hosely is
Elizabethan ; but, from the description in the
route, that fact could only be gathered by im-
plication. (By the way, is the editor quite sure
of the authenticity of his story of the key of the
1014 muniment-room having boen lost for two
kundred years ? It seems to be derived from
l‘elnPe ; but we have lately heard that it is
apocryphal.) It may of course be said, " what
"is the use of describing the aspect of a place
4t you are going to sec ? "—to which we reply,
first, that persons who have no architectural
knowledge cannot tell Elizabethan from Jacobean
architecture, and therefore should be told what
it is they are looking at; secondly, that there
are others with tastes so exclusively archi-
tectural as to roam about the country more for
the purpose of viewing the outsides of buildings,
than for their associations or artistic treasures,
and that they would be much obliged

who would warn them of the existence and
character of houses possessing any such attractive
features. With the scanty information given in
the handbook on this head, the architectural
student would in many cases not know whether
to turn out of his path or not.
By the general tourist, however, who has no
special object except that of seeing whatever is
curious of any kind, these books will be found
admirable helps ; and those inhabitants of
London, who have not many holidays, and who
like to make the most of what they have, will
feel especially grateful to Mr. Murray for having
so speedily taken up four counties so near to the
metropolis, and thus enabled all who love to visit
scenes of antiquity, historic interest, or natural
beauty, to do so in the readiest manner, and
furnished them with a stock of information which
is, on the whole, not less usefully selected than
it is agreeably conveyed.

The Scouring of the White Horse. By the
Author of " Toni Brown's School Days."
London : Macmillan and Co.
Wm has not heard of the Vale of White Horse ?
and what passenger by the luxuriously rolling
Great Western has not wondered what was the
origin and meaning of that great awkward-
looking similitude of the White Horse which
gives a name to the fertile and sporting district
on the borders of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire,
of which the author of " Tom Brown's School-
days " writes with so much knowledge, so much
verve, and so much geniality of spirit ? It is a
magnificent country, full of interest for men of
all kinds, full of legends and historic remem-
brances, of liberal and enlightened landowners,
of enterprizing and jolly farmers, of first-rate
sportsmen, of sturdy men, and handsome women.
The author is evidently not only a Vale of White
Horse-man by birth, but thoroughly and enthu-
siastically so by strong local affection and local
associations, which he retains with a freshness
and heartiness that do one good, and carry all the
reader's sympathies irresistibly along with the
writer.

The book is got up with every incident of
attractiveness which can be imagined—elegant
binding, admirable clear type, and illustratio.ls by
that greatest delineator of characteristics, Mr.
Richard Doyle. The beauty on the surface,
nevertheless, is its least recommendation. There
is under that surface a high tone of thought and
earnest purpose, which engages our strongest
interest, and to which we most heartily say, God
speed it. We trust it may find a place on the
table of every mechanics' institute, and every
village reading-room. Far more good will it do
there than the hard, purely intellectual books
with which it is still the fashion to load them,
with its kindly and genial feeling, its neighbourly
and hearty spirit, its sympathy with the Homes
of England and those ties which used to bind
Englishmen to them, and its cheerful Chris-
tianity. Would that there were more like the
author of " Tom Brown's School Days " and
" The Scouring of the White Horse" to supply
antidotes to those cosmopolitan theories which
are so falsely supposed to raise the intellects and
advance the social views of the People.
The plot of the book is slight enough, and the
principal use of the London clerk on his vacation
tour is to conduct the reader through the locali-
ties and scenes which give the author his oppor-
tunities for impressing his views and feelings
upon the public mind. Slight as it is, however,
the little plot carries interest along with it on its
path ; and sketchy as the characters of the
dramatis personae may be, it is impossible to help
becoming attached to them, so great, so effective
are the touches with which they arc dashed in,
and so great is the charm of the author's style.
The London clerk goes to spend his long vaca-
tion with a jolly yeoman in the Vale, and his
visit happens to fall at the same time as the great
festival of the West, which is known as the
Scouring of the White Horse. The last, we be-
lieve, was in September, 1857. Joe the Farmer,
his mother, his sister, and their pursuits and
habits are delightfully sketched; and the language
in which the life and the sports of the Vale are
depicted has not been surpassed by any. writer
whom we can call to mind fiir originality and
effect.
The following passages, extracted almost at
random, will show upon what we found our

1189

When he had done his story, I asked him about tho
White Horse, and he pointed me out the highest of the
hills which ran along on our left hand a mile or two away.
There, sure enough, I saw the figure quite plain ; but he
did'nt know much about it. Only, he said, he had always
heard tell that it was cut out by King Alfred the Great,
who lived in those parts ; and ' there was a main sight of
strange old things up there on the hill, besides the White
Horse; and though he did'nt know much abut how they
got there, he was sort of proud of them, and was glad to
pay his pound or two, or double that if it was wanted, to
keep them as they should be ; ' " for, you see," said Joe,
" we've lived about here, father and son, pretty nigh ever
since King Alfred's time, which I reckon is a smartish
time ago, though I forget how long." And though I think
Joe, and parties in the counties generally, set too much
store by such things, and hold their noses much higher
than they've any need to do, because their families have
never eared to move about, and push on the world, and so
they know where their grest•grandfathers were born, I
couldn't help feeling there was something in it after all.
And again :

And su the time wore on, till a stout lass in a blue cotton
print carne out, and called the cows in to milking; and they
all went trooping slowly by into the farmyard, some of
them just stopping to stare at me with their mild eyes, and
smelling so sweet, that I hadn't the heart to go on smoking,
and let my pipe out. And after a bit I followed into the
line of sheds where they were being milked by the lass and
a man, who balanced himself on two legs of the milking.
stool, and drove his head into the cow's side ; and I
thought I had never heard a sweeter sound than the
tinkling sound which the milk made in the bright tin
pails.

Can there be more enticing, more true, more
healthy pictures of country life ?
We wish we could give the description of the
great battle fought by Alfred the Great., in
which the Banner of the White Horse, after
many fluctuations, floated triumphantly monarch
of the war, but our space will not permit it ;
and we must content ourselves with quoting the
account of the Crimean Vale Hero. The song
we can't omit, and a very little bit of the
sermon with which it closes :

There was one man amongst them who struck me par-
ticularly, I suppose because he wore a Crimean medal
with tour clasps, and went quite lame on a crutch.
I found out his history. Old Mattingly, the blacksmith of
Uffington, had three sons when the Russian war broke out.
They all went for soldiers. The first was shot through the
hand, as that grey deadly dawn broke over Inkermann, on
the sth of November, Had he gone to the rear he
would probably have lived. He fought till the last Russian
vanished along the distant road, and over the bridge
heaped with slain, like a gallant Berkshire lad—and then
went to hospital and died of his wounds within a week.
The second lies before Sebastopol in the advanced trenches
of the right attack. The third, the young artilleryman,
went through the whole war, and after escaping bayonet
and shot an.l shell, was kicked by the horse of a wounded
officer, and probably lamed for life. According to the rules
of the service, my informant seemed to think, he was not
entitled to a pension for life, " but they had given him one
for eighteen mouths after his discharge, so that lie had
almost a year of it to run ; and perhaps he might learn
blacksmith-work in that time, if he could stand at all, for
that was mostly arm-work."
I didn't know what the regulations as to pensions were,
or how long young Mattingly would take to learn black-
smith-work, but 1 did feel rather ashamed that England
couldn't afford to do a little more for such as he ; and
should be glad for my part to pay something towards it, if
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or somebody, would find
out a way to set this right. Or perhaps if this should ever
meet the eye of the Commander-in-chief, or of any of the
gentlemen who were made 1i.C.14.'s in the a ar-time, or of
any other person who has interest in the army, they may
see whether anything more can be done for young
Mattingly.

THE ZONO OF THE ZUMMEDZETSHIRE OWLD GEAMSTER.
Chem a Zummerzetshire man
Coom here to hey a bit o'vun.
Oo'lt try a bout ? I be'sot 'meant
Ov any man or mother's zun.
Chem a geamater owld and tough,
Well knowed drop all the country zide,
And many a luay 'Berkshire man
To break my yead hey often tried.
Who's vor a bout o vriendly plaay,
As never should to anger move?

'Lich spwoorts were only menned vor dimly
As likes their ranzzards broke for love.
And finally, at page 209, of the Sermon on
Country Feasts, our readers will find these re-
markable observations :

Then there are the sports for which prizes are giiitt.
There is no need to specify them all, and I shall therefbie
only speak of the one which is considered the most (*Jac-
tionable—which many people think should be stopped
altogether--I mean wrestling. Whatever I may say on this
will apply to all the rest. Now, my brethren, are wrest tug
matches a proper way of keeping God's feasts? TIM la
the question we have to answer.
The object of wrestling and of all other athletic opals
is to strengthen men's bodies, and to teach them Muse
their strength teadily, to keep their tempers, to endure
fatigue and pain. These are all noble ends, my brethren.
God gives us few more valuable gilts than strength of body,
and courage, and endurance—to you labouring men they
are beyond all price. We ought to cultivate them in all
right wAys, for they are given us to protect the weak.

,unary more IUL emu. .
Les of buildings, The following passages, extracted almost at trod gives us fewi more valuable guts than strength of body,
and co nige, ndurance—to you labouring men they
7tistie treasures, random, will show upon what we found our are beyond all price. We ought to cultivate them in all
lilted to any one views:— right w for they are given us to protect the weak,

1190 THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858.
of
-4Qtely
'II" heti, ,

to subdue the earth, to fight for our homes and country
if necessary.
Therefore I say that wrestling, inasmuch as it is asevere
trial of strength, temper, and endurance, may be, and
ought to be, one of many right and proper ways of
rejoicing before God at these feasts. And I say to any
man who has strength for it, and can keep his temper,
and carries away no vain or proud thoughts if he wins, and
no angry or revengeful thoughts if he loses, play by all
means. No doubt there are men who ought nut to play,
who ought to abstain wholly fro►u these games, as some
men ought to abstain wholly from drink, who cannot use
such things temperately, which is the more worthy and
manly way—men so constituted that these sort of games
rouse all that is brutal in their natures, others who
become braggarts and bullies from success in them. To
such men (and each of you can easily find out whether be
is such a man) I say abstain wholly.

Can anything be more manly, more feeling,
more genial, or Christian-like than the principles
and sentiments evolved in these extracts ? They
are such as make a people a nation, and retain
them in their nationality. They are such as
make all men neighbours, as Christ himself de-
scribed a neighbour in the parable of the Good
Samaritan, and they contain in them the true
germ of National Greatness. We entreat our
readers to lay them to heart ; most earnestly we
trust that rich and poor will read the entire book,
and see it by the light of the same spirit which
has prompted ourselves in reviewing it.

Eric; or, Little by Little. A Tale of Roslyn
School. By Frederick W. Farrar, Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge.

Edinburgh :

Black.
This book has been a disappointment to us. Mr.
Farrar s talents are evidently good, and they have
been carefully trained. He left Cambridge with
a high reputation for classical scholarship, and he
has gained more than one prize there ior histori-
cal and philosophical compositions in English.
Knowing this, we expected from him a book of
more masculine character than that before us.
He has given a shock to some of the impressions
of the peculiar excellence of a Cambridge training
which we had derived from the report of some
Cambridge men. Mr. Kingsley, for example, is fond
of claiming for the members of his own university
a superiority in manliness to men educated at
Oxford, and of charging these with dilettantism
and a want of intellectual robustness. A stranger
to both Universities, if he compared the studies
pursued at the two seats of learning, might be
disposed to adopt this opinion. Ile would find
Cambridge prescribing a Spartan diet of rigid
mathematics and rigid philology—Oxford, a more
indulgent mother, spreading her table with belles
lettres. Or if he judged that Cambridge sacri-
ficed too much to a pedantic completeness and
accuracy,—if he regarded Oxford as wiser in her
indulgence than Cambridge in her strictness,—
still he would not probably deny that these are
the characteristics of the two Universities re-
spectively. When you have an opportunity of
comparing an Oxonian and a Cantab, you find, if
they are good specimens, that the former has
wide knowledge, the latter accurate knowledge ;
if they are bad specimens, that the latter is dull,
the former is superficial.
We do not care to decide which University is
the wiser, but we think that of the besetting sins
of the two systems that which besets the Oxford
system is the more mischievous. Dulness does
not always do much harm ; superficiality generally
does. Besides, dulness is out of fashion now ;
while superficiality is the great vice of the age.
It is for this reason that we are sorry to see Mr.
Farrar sliding into it, who, with his talents, and
trained as he has been at the University which
more than any other abhors this vice, ought
rather to be found entering his protest against it.
We have called superficiality the great vice of
the literature of the age. It has grown up of
necessity with the growth of literature. When
books were few and read by few, the temptation
to write books was not great ; and when a man
became an author, it was, in a considerable num-
ber of cases, because he had something to say.
When reading was not reckoned among the ordi-
nary and principal occupations of life, authorship
could not be a lucrative profession. But now
that everybody reads, a large number writes, and
a book does not, as once, make itself a public, but
the public makes the book. Made now for a
temporary purpose, books are composed of brittle
mat A-ids ; it requires less merit to meet a demand
thati to create one. The bad effect upon litera-
ture of the immense demand for it is visible in

every department, but in works of fiction perhaps
most of all. There arc far too many works of
fiction, far too many indifferent writers of fiction.
Nothing injures an art more than the ambition
of incompetent men to excel in it, as no one
injures religion more than the Pharisee. The
incompetent artist injures art first by producing
bad and lifeless works, secondly by blunting the
public appreciation of good ones. Satiated with
mediocrity, men have little notice to spare for
excellence. The public makes itself ill with the
unwholesome novels which constitute the chief
intellectual food of a large section of it, as chil-
dren make themselves ill with the sugar round a
twclfthcake. Unwholesome we call these novels,
though they arc generally very moral, often very
religious, because they are for the most part false
and hollow, dictated, not by a genuine inspira-
tion, but by a vain ambition, which of necessity
runs into excess and extravagance, misses the
tranquillity of true genius, and betrays its insin-
cerity by its bad acting. This description applies
to the greater number of second-rate novels.
There is, however, a section of the second class in
which faults of this sort are avoided and faults of
another sort committed. To this section belong
the novels of ladies, who have commonly good
taste enough to avoid extravagance, but then,
partly from ignorance of the world, and partly
because they are women, they fall as far short
of Nature as the others go beyond her. There
is thus a mediocrity which is violent and spas-
modic, and a mediocrity which is tame and
sentimental. After the ladies, we think that the
clergy furnish the greatest number of specimens
of tame mediocrity in novels.
Concerning the utility of novels in general,
high authorities have pronounced various
opinions. We think total abstinence from novels
as irrational as total abstinence from wine. To
abstain from Thackeray, George Elliot, or the
late Charles Dickens, is indeed to be ungrateful
for the good creatures of God. But from second-
rate novels—that is, from indistinct and untrue
pictures of things which the novelist has never
seen, from descriptions of adventures of which he
has really no clearer conception than his reader,
from random dicta about art, literature, and
politics, from a facile, inexhaustible flow of hazy
and rhapsodical eloquence—we at least shall
always pray to be delivered. We cannot but
believe, however little such a doctrine may be in
fashion, that such productions must tend to the
ruin of creative art amongst us, forming as they
do the principal intellectual nutriment of the
community.
We cannot see another fine and accomplished
mind entering on this too broad and well-trodden
road without a protest. Mr. Farrar, a scholar
and a thinker, possessing the leisure and the in-
clination to write books, gifted too with no mean
literary talent, should produce something less
flimsy, something a little more sterling and sub-
stantial than this " Erie." We do not complain
of it as crude, immature, imperfect ; imperfec-
tions we could pardon, if we found them, but we
do not much remark these in " Eric," though it is
a first attempt. We complain of it as a feeble
conception, a paltry performance. We do not
wish it mended ; we wish it had never been
written.

is just now the model of a boy's book, „Tom
Brown " was most appropriately written by
an
" Old Boy." If the author had not really been
a
boy in spirit he could not have written his book,
and he would have done well not to have
attempted it. Mr. Farrar, on the contrary, has
indeed the spirit of a most conscientious and
fatherly schoolmaster, but the spirit of a boy he
most manifestly has not. His book may therefore
be called " Tom Brown's School-days, with Tom
Brown left out,"—the most unfortunate attempt
to mend a good book that ever ended in the
marring of it. There is in " Eric" as much
sensible and valuable information upon the prin-
cipal temptations of a public school as would
make a good essay upon the subject. There is
as much fervid declamation as would make one
or two impressive sermons. There are, besides,
some passages of graceful description. But the
characters are drawn with a feeble hand; the
incidents are trite and not related with much
vivacity. Orchards are robbed and boys birched;
dishonest actions are done in class by the baser
boys and disdained by the more magnanimous:
boys are overtaken by the tide, and one of them
dies with much melodramatic effect, and goes, in
all probability, to heaven ; disgraceful actions
are imputed to the wrong party, and the true
culprit, after a period of thrilling suspense, is
detected and expelled with great triumph ; by the
impressive example of a virtuous boy gradually
corrupted, and finally sinking, to the despair of
his parents, into an untimely grave, we are taught
the grave lesson that facilis desceusus Avenel.
Really we have heard all this a hundred times
before ; no story of school life was ever written
which did not contain most of these incidents.
Nothing but superior vivacity of narrative or
description could have made it worth Mr.
Farrar's while to repeat them to us; and, as we
have said, vivacity of narrative is precluded by
his point of view, which is always the school-
master's desk, and not the schoolboy's form. The
interest of the story is completely subordinated
throughout to the moral platitudes which it is
intended to inculcate. The book is in short a
sermon,_ a good sermon no doubt, and one which
it would do boys good to lay to heart, but not, we
think, one which they are at all likely to lay to
heart. But that our readers may judge for them-
selves we will give them what seems to us the
most eloquent passage in the sermon :

Bull had been to school before, and of this school be
often bragged as the acme of desirability and wickedness.
He was always telling boys what they did at "his old
school," and he quite inflamed the minds of such is fell
under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and
wilful things which he and his former school-tellows had
done. Many and many a scheme of sin and mischief at
Roslyn was suggested, planned, and carried out on the
model of Bull's reminiscences of his previous life.
He had tasted more largely of the tree of the knowledge
of evil than nny other boy, and, strange to say, this
was the secret why the general odium was never et
pressed. He claimed his guilty experience so often as
a ground of superiority, that at last the claim was silently
allowed. He spoke from the platform of more advanced
iniquity, and the others listened first curiously, then
eagerly to his words.
"Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Such
was the temptation which assailed the other boys in dor-
mitory No. 7 ; and Eric among the number. Bull was the
tempter. Secretly, gradually, he dropped into their too
willing ears the poison of his polluting acquirements.
In brief, Bull was cursed with a degraded and corrupt-
ing mind.
hurry over a part of my subject inconceivably painful ;
I hurry over it, but if I am to perform my
self-imposed
duty of giving a true picture of what school life sometimes
is, I must not pass it by altogether.
The first time that Eric heard indecent words in dormi-
tory No. 7, he was shocked beyond bound or measure.
Dark though it was, he felt himself blushing scarlet to the
roots of his hair, and then growing pale again, while a
hot dew was left npon his forehead. Bull was the
speaker ; but this time there was a silence, and the
subject instantly dropped. The others felt that "a new
boy " was in the room ; they did not know how he would
take it; they were unconsciously abashed.
Besides, though they had themselves joined in such
conversation before, they did not love it, and, on the con-
trary, felt ashamed of yielding to it.
Now, Eric, now or never ! Life and death, ruin and
salvation, corruption and purity, are perhaps in the balance
together, and the scale of your destiny
may hang on a
single word of yours. Speak out, boy ! Tell these fellows
that unseemly words wound your conscience; tell them
that they are ruinous, sinful, damnable ; speak out and
save yourself and the rest. Virtue is strong and besutiful,
Eric, and vice is downcast in her awful presence. Lose.
your purity of heart, Eric, and you have lost a jewel
which the whole world, if it were "ow entire and perfectl
chrysolite," cannot replace.
Good spirits guard that young boy, and give hi:u rice
in this his hour of trial ! Open his eyes that he ms ee
ay
the fiery horses and the fiery chariots of the owls

Books written for boys may be of two kinds;
they many be about boys, or they may be about
men. or our own parts, we are inclined to
agree with Dr. Johnson that children do not like
to be told about children. We are inclined to
think that boys would like as well to read Pope's
Homer, or " The Lay of the Last Minstrel," as
to read " Tom Brown." It ought at least to be
remembered that a book may perhaps remind
men vividly of their school-days without strongly
interesting schoolboys. We are charmed by
" Tom Brown " because it pictures to us a state
of things which is not our own, but which once
was our own. If that state of things were actually
present the book might still have a charm, but it
would lose this particular charm. On the same
principle it is possible that the books most in-
teresting to boys are those which describe, not
their actual condition, but a condition which they
expect at a future time to be theirs. The lives of
men may have the same attraction for boys which
the example of " Tom Brown" has shown that the
lives of boys clearly described have for men. But,
be this as it may, it cannot be questioned that if
boys are to be described it should be done with a
boyish spirit. To allude once more to that which