The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-09 00:00:00

THE rilESg, JANUARY 9,1858.

at pages 70 and 84, the lady writes as
follows :
And here comes in the old warfare, which began worthily
enough, in the respect due to mind over matter, headwork
over handwork, bat has deteriorated by custom into a
ridiculous and contemptible tvranny—the battle between
professions and trades. I shah not enter into it here.
Happily, men are now waking up—women more slowly
still—to a perception of the truth, that honour is an in-
trinsic and not extrinsic profession ; that one means of
livelihood is not of itself one whit more " respectable "
than another; that credit or discredit can attach in no
degree to the work done, but to the manner of doing it,
and to the individual who does it.
And then, p. 84, the " line between tradesfolk
and gentlefolk now fast vanishing." Now, we beg
to inform ourauthoress that this is a line which
cannot vanish ; for it is not a social distinction,
hut a natural one. Aslong as certain different
occupations exercise certain different influ-
ences upon the human mind and character,
so long will that distinction last. And they
will continue to exercise those influences until
He who made human nature what it is shall
see fit in His wisdom to alter it. If the lady,
however, only means that we do not despise
men on account of their occupations, tahe is
only tilting at an error into which none but
vulgar-minded people ever fell, and merely
repeating with unnecessary circumlocution
the famous couplet of Pope, " Honour and
shame," &c.
Again, we presume by way of carrying out
the same idea, she asks at page 131 :
Would you be less amiable in your husband's eyes by
the discovery that it was you yourself who cooked, and
then taught Betty to cook, his comfortable dinner?
We reply that undoubtedly "you" would. Our
authoress allows nothing for the force of ima-
gination. Cobbet's celebrated comparison
between a duchess and a cottager is not so
true to human nature as Dr. Johnson's on a
similar subject. We can do no more than
allude to this question, but we assure the lady
that she has made a grand mistake.
On the subject of prudent and imprudent
marriages, the authoress writes so well that
we could wish she had not stopped short
just where her observations would begin to be
of use. That the objections of the world to
early marriages bring about much wretched-
ness, in the shape of pining old maids and
selfish old bachelors, we very readily admit ;
but they entail consequences far more serious
than these. And as the present writer has
thought it her duty to go into the subject of
" lost women," we shall take the opportunity
of carrying her own suggestions a little further ;
and as she advocates plain speaking, we will
speak a little more plainly than is the custom
concerning this great social cancer, whereof
she has touched only the mitigation, not the
origin or the prevention.
In this country, in the present day, the pro-
vocatives to passion and the means of grati-
fying it legitimately progress in an inverse
ratio. The more luxury increases the more
are our animal propensities stimulated, and
the more is the possibility of early marriages
diminished. By luxury we do not mean
simply fine clothes, rich food, and expensive
pleasures—all these have ere now coexisted
with hardy and comparatively rude habits of
life. It is the cat-like comfort which is so
studied at the present day—the soft, warm
railway-carriage—the delicious easy-chair—
the effeminacy which has even crept into our
manliest sports—the carriage to the cover-
side—the sportsman's hot lunch, &c.—and a
hundred other such indulgences to which the
frame of mind and body we allude to is spe-
cially attributable. This kind of life is calcu-
lated to despiritualiso our natures and stimu-
late the sensual emotions far more than all
the rough-riding, hard swearing, deep p'ay,
and three-bottle bouts of our ancestors. In fact
it is notorious, as was lately acknowledged by
the Times, that this latter vice casts out the
other one ; and we do not hesitate to assert
that the comparative temperance of the pro-
sent ago is one additional reason why that
worse vice is so prevalent We cannot have
unmixed good in this world, and half the mis-
takes that are made arise from people sup-
posing that we can. But luxury grows with
commerce—from Commerce springs competi-
tion—and with competition comes that state
of society which is fatal to early marriages.
Like the hero in Mr. Trollope's excellent

41

new novel, every class cries to itself " excel-
sior ;" no man will endure the thought of his
children beginning life in a lower position
than he has attained when he leaves it. Mar-
riages without money are therefore impos-
sible; and if a young man does not marry,
nine times out of ten he does worse. As
a natural consequence of this state of things,
aggravated, perhaps, by increased intercourse
with the Continent, it is undeniable that the
sin of " unl'twful connections" is not regarded
by the public with the same horror as it was
only five-and-twenty years ago. And lastly,
we would add that the spread of superficial
education among the female sex has done
much to give them tastes above their rank in
life, and to expose them more readily to the
temptations of a wealthy lover. This opinion
is indeed corroborated by our present autho-
ress, who tells us " she has heard it affirmel
"by more than one lady—by one in particular,
" whose experience is as large as her benevo-
" lenee—that some of her most promising vit.
" lage girls were the first to come to harm ;"
and the same lady thinks it quite possible that
" their very superiority makes them dissatis-
" fled with their own rank."
Why, here is the whole pith and marrow of
the question. If chastity is to women what
truth is to men, it is very probable that the
same conditions will affect them both; and if
a jealousy of social distinctions and excessive
anxiety to be rich has of late years under-
mined our national honesty, may we not fear
that they will exercise a similar influence
upon an analogous virtue ? In times of great
excitement we do not stop to calculate. This
is an age of great excitement, and nobody
stops to calculate.
It is not until we frankly and fairly acknow-
ledge that progress, however beneficial in the
long run, has dangers peculiar to itself—ot
which a laxity of public morals is one—that
we shall be in a position either to deal with
this terrible evil, or to draw all the good we
otherwise might from this " wondrous mother
age."
With one more specimen of this lady's
faulty ways of expressing her views we must
conclude. At p. 344 she writes—" Every girl
" ought to be taught that a hasty, loveless
" union stamps upon her as foul dishonour as
" one of those connections which omit the legal
" ceremony altogether." Now this is truly a
most mischievous sentence. It confounds the
distinction between transgression of a natural
law and transgression of a positive law, and
the moment we do this we open the door to
license of every description. It is saying, in
fact, that a good concubine is no worse than
a bad wife—and we need not tell the authoress
the use to which such implied sanction can be
converted.
As we believe the author of " John Halifax"
to be an earnest and conscientious person, we
sincerely itrust that the above observations
will be taken in good part. We have not in-
tended them to be bitter, and we hope they
will not be so felt. But a writer so calculated
to be useful in her generation will be watched
with peculiar solicitude--any false step will
be clamorously exposed—any symptoms of
decline most grievously deplored; and such
must be our excuse for having written of so
gifted an authoress in terms we would give
much to be able to modify.

The Boscobel Tracts, relating to the Escape of
Charles 11. after the Battle of Worcester.
Edited by J. Hughes, Esq., A.M. Second
Edition. London : Blackwoods.

BURKE was too severe, perhaps, when he said
" that Charles IL had no qualities whatever ex•
" cept an easy temper and the pleasant man-
" ners of a gentleman." It is admitted certainly
that he had the " manners" of a gentleman : ho
was easy, affable, and courteous, with much
superficial good nature ; he presumed little on
his station, and he was familiar with his com-
panions and dependants ; but he had no self-
respect—no sense of the a
dignity of' King of
England—and, unlike Henry IV. and other
celebrated men of pleasure, Charles 11. made
no amends for his excesses ; his friendship
could not be relied on, and his enmity was not
' lofty or heroic.

If Charles had been a king of another cha-
racter, then " Boscobel Tracts " would be fami-
liar to many households ; the incidents con-
tained in their pages would be frequently dra-
matised, and " Boscobel" would be a frequent
point of pleasant summer pilgrimage. But
the character of Charles lessens the historical
interest with which we read these papers.
They were first published in this collected
form so long since as 1830, and we have now
the second edition of them. As a " passage "
of history, the escape of Charles after the
battle of Worcester is extremely curious. We
have here a " diary," made up from various
materials open to the editor; the appropriate
extracts from Clarendon are introduced, the
King's dictated notes to Pepys are also set
forth, besides pedigrees of the various persons
connected with the hiding and disguises of
the King.
The editing of these tracts is not very well
managed. The narrative of the chief incidents
in the thirteenth book of Lord Clarendon is
inaccurate in several particulars, and the
editor contents himself with putting a mark
to these parts and placing a letter " D" against
them in the margin. More exact references
should have been given, and the discrepancies
clearly pointed out. We cannot see that tew
matter has been added since the first edition.
Even the description of Boscobel-house, and
the famous Royal oak, is left to stand just as
it was printed nearly thirty years ago ; and we
are often disappointed by finding the word
" now" in the text explained with "A. D. 1830"
in the notes.

The editor is also deficient in historical
criticism of a larger kind. It is not impos-
sible but that the active part taken by so many
Roman Catholics, both gentry and humble
folk, in concealing Charles and speeding his
escape, might have biassed him towards the
Church of Rome. The King was not the only
Englishman of his generation who had a secret
liking for the Church of Rome ; and Popery
looked better then, when a number of extra-
vagant sects made many people long for some
communion which promised more fixity of
faith. Richard Penderel—" Trusty Dick"—
was a Roman Catholic ; so was Father Hodle-
ston. Major Carliss, also, was a Roman
Catholic, and it was with him that
Charles was in the tree ; and so were
Whitgreave, Sherwood, and several others
mentioned in the narrative. It was odd
enough, also, that the butler at Mr. Norton's
house, who played a part in the business,
should have been called " Pope." Those parts
of the narrative dictated by the King to Pepys
are the best in the volume. What could be
more striking in the romance of "real life"
than the following bit ?
Pope the butler took great care of me that night, I not
eating, as I should have done, with the servants, upon
account of my not being well.
The next morning I arose pretty early, having a very
good stomach, and went to the buttery hatch to get my
breakfast, where I found Pope and two or three other men
in the room, and we all fell to eating bread and batter, to
which he gave us very good ale and sack. And as I was
siting there, there was one that looked like a country
fellow sat just by me, who. talking, gave so particular an
account of the battle of Worcester to the rest of the com-
pany, that I concluded he must be one of Cromwell's
soldiers. But I asking him, how he came to give s-) good
an account of that battle ? He told me he was in the
king's regiment, by which I thought he meant one
Colonel King's regiment. But. questioning him further, I
perceived he had been in my regiment of guards, in Major
Broughton's company, that was my major in the battle.
I asked him what a kind of man I was ? To which he
answered by describing exactly both my clothes and my
home ; and then looking upon me, he told me that the
king was at least three fingers taller than I. Upon which
I male what haste I could out of the buttery, for fear he
should indeed know me, as being more afraid when I
knew he was one of our own soldiers, than when I took
him for one of the enemy's.

The following is nearly as romantic—the
King being disguised as a gentleman's ser-
vant•:—

So Frank Windham and Mrs. Coningsby and I went In
the morning, on horseback, away to Burport ; and just as
we came into the town, 1 could see the streets full of red-
coats, Cromwell's soldiers, being a regiment of Colonel
Haynes's, viz. fifteen hundred men going to embark to
take Jersey, at which Frank Windham was very much
startled, and asked me what I would do. I told him that
we must go impudently into the best inn in the town, and
take a chamber there, as the only thing to be done ;
because we should otherwise miss my Lord Wilmot, in
case we went anywhere else, and that would be very incon-
venient both to him and me. So we rode directly into
the best inn of the place, and found the yard very fall of