The Press.
London, England, 1854-05-13 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

nation, saying no other person should hold it
whilst Follett lived. Ho died Attorney-
General, and when he was borne to that " ray.
less grave," in the eastern corner of the
Temple Church, the Prime Minister, the Lord
Chancellor, and the Home Secretary, were
amongst those that held up the pall. A dozen
pages of the " Rambles" are filled with para-
graphs like these :

A name dear to the'affections of afew friends ; the waning
image of a modest and earnest speaker; and the splendid
example of success embodied in a fortune of 200,0001., ac-
quired in ten years by the labours which hastened its ex-
tinction—are all this world possesses of Sir William
Follett. The poet's anticipation, " Non omnis moriar," so
far as it indicates earthly duration, has no place in the sur-
viving vestiges of his career. To mankind, to his country,
to his profession he has left nothing; not a measure con-
ceived, not a danger averted, not a principle vindicated ;
not a speech intrinsically worthy of preservation ; not a
striking image, not an affecting sentiment; in his death
the power of mortality is supreme. How strange—how
sadly strange—that a course so splendid should end in
darkness so obscure!

No collection of the speeches of Follett has been made—
none will ever be attempted—no speech he delivered is
read, except perchance as part of an interesting trial and
essential to its story, and then the language is felt to be
poor, the cadences without music, and the composition
vapid and spiritless.

Curiously enough, it is argued further on
that this advocate, " unmised beyond his
office," deserved a statue, though not remem-
brance :

An advocate like Follett, of qualities most happily
adapted to his office and unraised beyond it, who has died
before he has invested a family with hereditary honours,
can only be manifested to another generation by a durable
effigy. I am, therefore, glad that a statue, worthy in the
felicity of its execution to manifest the personal appear.
ance of the child and conqueror of Fortune, holds a place
among the effigies of our honoured dead.
We have no information as to who is
responsible for the publication of this passage;
but, whoever that person may be, he would
have consulted Judge Talfourd's reputation if
he had asked any man wearing either stuff or
silk at Westminster whether Follett obtained
his law " out of a page of ' Harrison's Digest.' "
That Follett was only a lawyer we believe that
he himself was the last man to have denied ;
but that he was a great lawyer his profession
and his country would quite as readily admit.
Those who remember that massive forehead,
that determined mouth and speaking eye,
which (all but the last) Behnes has so well
perpetuated in stone,—those who remember the
clear and searching narrative with which his
client's tale was told, who can recal the quiet
remark by which ignorance was set down or
rodomontade demolished,—will have no diffi-
culty in finding why it was that Follett had
brilliant—almost fabulous—success. His mind,
as is commonly the ease with the highest in
tellects, was of an eminently practical cast.
It grappled with the work it had to do, and
manifested its superiority, not by extraneous
show, but by the completeness of the results
it purposed. When Justice Talfourd com-
plains that Follett " neither exalted his sub-
"ject by imagination, nor illustrated it by wit,
" nor softened its details by pathos," but
" went into the arena stripped of all incum-
" brance to win, and contended studious only
" and always of victory," he merely displays
his own littleness. For, what should intellect
aim at but the realisation of its aims ? Those
aims will be essentially distinct in different
branches of intellectual exertion. A Newton
works for the development of Nature's laws,—
a Wellington for the triumph of his country's
arms,—a barrister for the success of his client
John Noakes. If the aim seem grander in
one case than the other, we must rather blame
the accident which directs the flow of intellect
into different channels than the individual
who concentrates its power to achieve the
work set before him. But the criticism on
Follett is peculiarly ungracious, as his lofty
intellect was quenched so early. What would
Lord Hardwicke, or Lord Mansfield, or Lord
Ellenborough, or almost any great lawyer in
our history, have left in the shape of legal
principles and recorded judgments had he
died at Follett's ago of forty-eight? To that
period his life was spent in acquiring the
knowledge and maturing the ability which it
is but reasonable to assume would have shone
splendidly forth had he survived to fill high
judicial station. Those same faculties which

447

were lent to the cause of his client would then
have been devoted to the service of the publio
and the interests of justice. Had Justice Tal-
fourd lamented the " early dimming " of so
brilliant a light, and inferred that opportunity
alone was wanting to render so eminent an
advocate still more eminent as a judge, he
would have shown more discrimination and
charity than in these ill-considered remarks,
which seem intended to depreciate the ability
he could never hope to rival.
As for the rest, non °lnnis nurriar is an in-
trepid boast, and those who venture on it
should be sure that they have done the work
before they adopt the self-sufficiency of Horace.
Here we quit " Vacation Rambles," regretting
that a nature so generally amiable as Talfourd's
should have suffered its judgment to be
warped by envy or misapprehension.

The Nations of Russia and Turkey, and their
Destiny. By Ivan Golovin. London :
Triibner and Co.
Ma. IVAN GoLovIN is a refugee, and the state-
ments of such persons must always be taken
with some qualification. He writes, moreover,
for a public unusually excited by passing
events, and ready to swallow almost any fic-
tion that tells to the disadvantage of the
Russian Court or people. Hence we incline
rather to withhold our confidence from the so-
styled revelations of this work; which, in a
literary point of view, is not without merit,
being written in a pointed French style, and
containing a great deal of matter in few pages.
It is a repertory of curious anecdotes and
apocryphal statistics. When the author (p. 7)
shows himself egregiously incorrect in so
simple a calculation as that of the territorial
area of Russia, which he reduces far below the
reality—when he reviles Nicholas for having
at the commencement of his reign hanged
"five reformers," these reformers being con-
spirators taken in arms, who had attempted
to raise a mutiny in the army—when he
quotes Blanqui, the Socialist and ultra-
Democrat, as a " French Conservative "—it is
impossible not to read with distrust his vague
and sweeping incriminations of whole classes,
and the fragments of private history with
which he entertains us. They may bo true ;
they certainly cannot be refuted; but we
should like better authority. On the subject
of Turkey Mr. Golovin writes with equal show
of knowledge, and, having no personal quarrel
to avenge, with more impartiality. He seems
to believe in the regeneration of the Ottoman
empire, but after a peculiar fashion. The in
troduction of the representative systo -
(qutere, universal suffrage and the ballot ?) wm
lead to Islamism being outvoted, and to till
establishment of a Greek nationality. Russihe
ho thinks, is aware of this probability, ana,
therefore hastens to forestal it by an armed
occupation. We need not observe that thid
solution of the Eastern question is contrary is
that adopted by all the most experienced
politicians. Setting aside the question od
" pressure from without," it is exceedingly unf
likely that the Turks, having arms in their-
hands, a monopoly of power, and being backed
by a vast Mahometan population in Asia, will
consent to resign theirhold over the European
provinces without a struggle, or that in such
struggle they will be defeated.
On the future of Russia herself Mr.Golovins'
ideas seem to us yet wilder. " Siberia," he
says, " is full of the spirit of freedom," and re-
quires only an increase of numbers to separate
herself from Russia. Siberia—whose whole
population does not exceed that of London—
whose two millions aro scattered over an area
of 6,000 miles by more than 2,ooo—whose
aborigines are wild and mostly nomad
tribes—and whose whole system of govern-
ment is military and despotic ! Nor do we
place much faith in the vision of an " United
Slavonic Republic," to be balanced by a
French state similarly organised, and another
in Germany. Any man may speculate on the
destinies of mankind—the future belongs to
all—but there is something even ridiculous in
an obscure student dismembering Europe on
paper, and marking off on his map the boundary
lines of imaginary empires.
There are many interesting chapters in this
book, none more so than those which relate