The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-02 00:00:00

1146

interesting bit. It is not much safer balanced on the
double top of the towel-horse. The best arrangement, on
experience, is a long drawer, pulled out and turned up on
its edge. With respect to the book, it is my own negli-
gence to blame if I have not got one ; but I have been so
destitute of anything to read that I have even unfolded
pieces of newspapers, in which different things in my
portmanteau have been wrapped up, and studied the
Gazette of weeks ago ; or an honourable member's speech,
whose name had been torn off ; or the list of distinguished
personages whose corns had been cured; or sonic unim-
portant French news—" the greater portion of which ap-
peared in our impression of yesterday "—until heavy eyelids
warned me to put out the candle.
I had no book this Christmas-eve night. I could have
gone down to the book shelves, but I did not care to disturb
the house creaking up and down stairs ; and so I hunted
about the room, and at last in the drawer of the dressing-
table I found • local railway guide. It was not a very
promising pamphlet. Even Bradshaw flags in sustained
interest if you read it through continuously : unless it be
that you marvel at that wonderful map, occasionally intro-
duced amongst the advertisements, of the position of a
particular London hotel, where you turn round to the right
into Oxford-street, and to the left into Cheapside, and cross
over the way to the London-bridge terminus, and walk
out at the back-door into the Regent's-park.
On Christmas night he had to perform a rail-
way journey, and had to undergo that greatest
of all modern nuisances the waiting some
hours in dead of night at a station for a
train
could not settle down well to my hooks. I took up
Dumas' charming story, and thought of the alliance, and
what a fool Margot's husband must have been not to have
suspected the real state of affairs with La Mole ; and then
I turned to the " Life of Grimaldi," and felt great sympathy
with " the painted mountebank," as my worthy old friend
H. sometimes calls me when he wants to pull down my
public conceit. The book put me in mind of London, and
what a to-do was in all probability then going on at the
theatres, for there is not much rest the night before Boxing-
day. The scene-painter was eating his plum-pudding—
if he got any—in the painting-room, served up with spots
of tinsel and dabs of Dutch metal ; the " property-man "
was revelling in piles of roast beef, salmon, geese, carrots,
sausages, and sucking-pigs, but they were all made of
canvass and sawdust, and papiermitche ; and the car-
penters were sawing and tacki og, and swearing on the stage,
amidst such a shower from above of hammers, and gas-
tongs, and ripping-chisels, and centre-bits, that a rain of
cats and dogs would have fallen as soft as a Scotch mist by
comparison.
Our wag, like the needy knifegrinder, has no
story to tell, but has written a clever graphic
paper from experience of a very common-
place incident. A "Second Chapter on Auto-
graphs," by Mr. Charles Hervey, supplies
some curious passages of literary anecdote.
The following notice of a letter from Foote to
Garrick deserves the notice of all collectors of
anecdote --
I pass on to an interesting letter addressed by Foote to
Garrick from. Dublin. In it he alludes to his having been
nearly "reduced to ashes by reading in bed, that cursed
custom ;" adding " so you see, my dear sir, no man can
foresee the great ends for which he was born. Macklin,
tho' a blockhead in his manhood and youth, turns out a
Wit and a Writer on the brink of his grave ; and Foote,
never very remarkable for his personal graces, in the
decline of his life was very near becoming a toast."
This amusing epistle concludes with the following pretty
compliment to his correspondent's wife: " Yon may assure
Mrs. Garrick that flattery is not one of my failings, anti
that she has the merit of making me constant and uniform
in perhaps the only part of my life—my esteem and venera-
tion for her.
Among the best of the tales we are inclined
to place " My Sister's New Governess," by Mrs.
Abdy, an admirable example of the nouvellette.
Miss Power has shown much taste in her selec-
tion of literature, and proved herself a fitting
successor to her gifted and accomplished rela-
tive, the Countess of Blessington. The plates
are pretty but the animated and graceful
portraits will, we fancy, be generally esteemed
as most acceptable.
3 The " Court Album" contains the por-
traits of eleven distinguished ladies of our
aristocracy. Many of the faces in this gallery
serve admirably to show the superiority of
truth to fancy in portraiture. The radiant
sweetness of Lady Bertha Hastings, the hand-
some good-temper of Miss Goodlake in her
riding-hat, the serene intellectual beauty of
Lady Harriet Hamilton, the finely-sculptured
beauty of Miss Heneage, and the bewitching
pleasantry of Mrs. Gardiner, are among those
expressions which no invention could hope to
rival. Most of the portraits are from drawings
by Hayter. The book is bound to form a hand-
some ornament for the drawing room table.

Leaves from the Diary of an Officer of the Guaras.
London : Chapman and Hall.
THEsz sketches of the Peninsular war (from
W 1812) have already appeared in the

THE PRESS.

pages of a magazine, and are now offered to
the public in a collective form. They ar•e
dedicated, we see, to the brigade of Guards
now serving with Lord Raglan, and, as they
describe some of the past achievements of this
glorious corps, they will probably prove accept-
able, not only to those younger heroes who
are anxious to share the hardships and the
honours of the Crimea war, but to all whose
enthusiasm is roused by the fresh glories
which have so lately encircled our gallant
Guards at Alma and Inkermann. Written in
a lively, graphic, entertaining style, a capital
idea of campaigning life is obtained from them,
and although there is perhaps but little novelty
in the description of events which so many
able military men and historians have fully
narrated, yet there is a freshness in personal
recollections which is at all times welcome.
Some of the anecdotes ar•e new. Here is one
about an amateur that shows how little Lord
Wellington valued such gentlemen :
During this campaign we had many amateurs, or T.G.s
as they would be called in modern phraseology, whose
curiosity far exceeded their cognisance of military position ;
one of these found himself suddenly one fine morning in
the midst of a French instead of an English out-picket.
Although arriving early, and quite unexpectedly, he was
politely requested to remain and make a sojourn with
them ; he pleaded his non-combative qualities, protested
"qu'il n'etait pas du tout, du tout militaire," laid great
stress upon his love of the peaceful, the beautiful, the pic-
turesque ; that he was a mere wanderer to see the country
and the war, and assured the French officer he was
" purement un amateur." He who had charge of the
Gallic outpost, ho waver, was incredulous and uninfluenced
by such sophistry, and could not understand such a fine-
drawn distinction in so doubtful a predicament ; besides,
our unlucky countryman had adopted a military costume,—
a blue coat, cocked hat, and sword,—which rendered his
belligerent appearance more complete, and his peaceable
pretensions less credible. Although later in life (tempura
mutantur !) he might have declared himself one of " Bright
and Cobden's own," at the time all his protestations were
in vain. To the head-quarters of the enemy's army he was
sent a prisoner.
Not long previous to this a French lieutenant-colonel
had been taken by some of our people. When our unfor-
tunate traveller reached his destination a flag of truce was
sent to Lord Wellington from the French marshal, saying
that they had taken a prisoner, calling himself an amateur ;
that the marshal did not clearly comprehend what that
name implied, as they had none such in their army ;
but if Lord Wellington would exchange him for the
lieutenant-colonel lately taken from them, the marshal
would return the amateur. Lord Wellington is stated to
have answered that he was " much obliged to the French
commander for the proposition, but he begged he would
keep him."
There has lately been a great outcry about
the barbarity of the Russians in firing upon
the mêlée of British and Russian after our
light cavalry charge at Balaklava. Though
the fire of artillery upon friend and foe alike
cannot be excused, yet that such occasionally
is the fortune—or rather the " accident "—of
war we read here in the account of the battle
of Fuentes d'Onor. A sudden dash of the
French cavalry had taken a picket of Guards
(about a hundred rank and file) in flank and
rear, and were cutting them down in detail
when " Lawson's guns came up and, opening
" with grape on the French cavalry, mowed
" them down, destroying at the same time
" many of our own infantry, mixed up as they
" were in the mêlée with the French cavalry."
A characteristic anecdote is related of Wel-
lington which we do not recollect to have seen
before :
One day I met there Mr. Sydenham, a friend of Lord
Wellington, lately arrived on a visit to him. In the
course of conversation at table, this gentleman expressed
his satisfaction at Lord Wellington's apparent good looks
and health, and added : " With the details you have to
think of, the numerous affairs, both political and diplo-
matic, you have to provide for, added to the military
responsibility yon have to bear, I cannot conceive how you
can sleep in your bed ?"—" When I throw off my clothes I
throw off my cares, and when I turn in my bed it is time
to turn out," was Lord Wellington's short and characteristic
reply.
" Our Veteran " " fights his battles o'er
again" with energy and clearness, and des
tribes the accidents and incidents of his
experience with considerable skill. Hence
his " Sketches of Campaigning Life" will be
read with interest, more especially as in many
respects they curiously contrast with the
events which up to this time have distin-
guished the great military enterprise of 1851.

Travel Thoughts and Travel Fancies. By Henry
Strickland. London : J. W. Barker and Sons.
"Ir is it very ensy thing to write a book," Mr. Strick-
land tells us in his preface, and, after stiidying thii

SATURDAY,

ease with which Mr. Strickland has filled 160 odd
pages, we are inclined to wish that he had found it a
somewhat more difficult matter. The journal reads
like an attempt to carry out the burlesque style of
Charles Lamb, but the imitation, as South said of
extempore preaching, contains "little wit and no
learning at all." There is a wide distinction between
what Southey called " pure, involuntary, unconscious
nonsense," and what the late Charles Mathews used
to extol as "clever nonsense," but of this distinction
Mr. Strickland, perhaps happily for himself, has
evidently not the slightest conception.

Useful Hints to Young Men holding Government
or Mercantile Appointments. By John Vanden-
bergh. . . .

MR. VANDENBERGH lays down RS a rule that integrity,
industry, and perseverance are the true virtues of a
mercantile life. Our success in life depends, he
tells us, chiefly on ourselves. " Those will mostly
" meet with encouragement who mostly deserve it.
" No one will be interested in your welfare unless ha
" finds that you are interested in his—none would
" be so mad as to invest you with fresh responsibili-
" ties if your listlessness and inactivity proclaim yuu
" unequal to probationary duties." The sixteen
pages of this tract are full of good precepts and
sound advice—none the less valuable for having, for
ages past, been stamped as sterling sense—adapted
for general circulation.

The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien. London :

Routledge.
AN animated story of the time of James IL, detailing
the general adventures and misfortunes of that un-
happy monarch in Ireland, but more particularly
the roving life of a colonel of one of his dragoon
regiments. As a historical romance it has the merit
of sustained interest and a bold style of portraiture.

Mirth and Metre. By Two Merry Men, Frank E.
Smedley and Edmund H. Gates. London:
Routledge and Co.
A SERIES of ballads and legends written in the
Ingoldsby style, and although inferior to those
famous compositions in power an'l versification, yet
not without some considerable merit of their own.
The parodies upon " Locksley-hall," "Evangeline,"
and Poe's "Raven," are cleverly and closely written,

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

BOOKS.

Howse of Baby. Chapman and Hall
Manua! of Civil Lair. E. R. Humphreys.
Longman and Co,
First Steps in Economic Botany. T. C. Archer. Reeve.
Popular British Conelwloyy. U. B. Sowerby. Do.
Popular History of English Mosses. R. M. Stark, Do.
Annotated Edition of the British Poets.—Cluracce.
J. W. Parker and Son.
The Quiet Heart. Blackwood and Sons.
The Rise and Progress of Christianity. lt. W. MaCh
ryas.a

PedruLETS

A Nation Iratching for Tidings. C. J. Vaughan, 1).1).
J. W. Parker and Son.
Balloons for Warfare. H. Co.rwell. Wesle3.
The Colonial Almanac Black.
Educational Prospects of St. Thomas Charterhouse.
Longman and Co.

Sonnets of Cambridge Life. . Mud.
Macmillan and Co.
Harbours and Towns of the Crimea. M. Gore. Ridgway.
Common Schools of Massachusetts. Do.

A PAPER-MANUFACTURING COMPANY has been es-
tablished in Western India with respect to which the
Bombay Telegraph, after alluding to a recent meeting
of the shareholdors, says :—" A gentlemen of con-
siderable chemical attainments is to be engaged for
the purpose of testing the pulp-producing properties
of both the aloe and the plantain tree ; and we learn
that Government has taken a warm interest in the
enterprise, and will most probably grant a site for
the works either at Callian or Tauna. There can
be no doubt as to the ultimate realisation of this
scheme."
Tag STOWE ESTATES are to be sold by auction in
January next, the annual rental on the faxnis being
about 10,0001. Five hundred trees in the gardens
and park are condemned, and will soon be felled.
The house property in the town of Buckingham will
also be sold. l'he mayor and a deputation from the
council have waited un Lord Chandos, at Wootton,
to arrange about the purchase of the Town-hall and
its appurtenances, when it was offered at 1,2001. As
the council have no funds they may possibly raise it
on security of the borough rate, or a few speculative
persons may purchase it as a profitable investment.
THE GOVERNMENT on Tuesday purchased 18,009.
buffalo robes from the Hudson's Bay Company fog
die lire of the army in the East: