The Press.
London, England, 1857-08-01 00:00:00

THE PRESS, AUGUST 1,1851.

taught the field services of the Royal
Engineers' Department. A final chapter to
the second volume gives a large amount of
blue-book knowledge about the present state
and position of this excellent corps.
Interspersed throughout those volumes are
many curious anecdotes. We find the follow-
ing refereneds to the famous song, " The Bay
of Biscay." The text says:—

Several recruits having enlisted in Scotland for the com-
panies at Gibraltar, passage was provided for them on
board a ship—the name of which cannot be confidently
traced—and they landed or "joined" at the fortress on
the 16th April, 1791. When in the Bay of Biscay the
vessel encountered a white squall, accompanied by terrific
thunder and lightning, which carried away her main and
fore masts. Each moment, indeed, her final plunge was
expected, and the passengers and crew, clinging to spars
and boxes, shreds of sails, and fragments of the dismantled
bulwarks, as the last and only chance for their lives,
awaited in suspense the time when the dread alternat►ve
must be taken. With the appearance of the morning,
providentially came the desired calm. All hands imme-
diately set to work to right the vessel; the jury mast was
rigged, and the shivered ship, once more under weigh,
wore on with struggling throes, and made good her pas.
sage to the Rock. The wreck and its circumstances gave
rise to a song, called " The Bay of Biscay, 0 !"
And there is appended the following note :

There exists two ballads with this title, one justly
celebrated in the royal navy, written by Andrew Cherry,
and embodied in Dibdin's " Naval and National Songs,"
and the other by a homely mariner, named, it is said,
John Williams. Both songs may have taken their origin
from the vessel spoken of above. Be this as it may,
without doubt, one or the other was written to record
the distiess and struggles of the ship which conveyed the
artificers to Gibraltar.
The incidents of the affair related in the first edition
of this history were made to correspond with the seaman's
effusion, as there were reasons at the time for believing
it referred to the vessel with the recruits on board ; but
as, on a closer review, there are doubts about its application,
the details given in the former edition are omitted in this,
leaving the question to be solved at a future day.
If the ballad of the seaman have reference to the ship
in which the artificers sailed to the Bock, it differs in
two known points from the facts of its voyage. The
Caroline is the ship of the song, and she is said to have
sidled from Spithead on the fourteenth day of April,
whereas the party of recruits sailed apparently from
Scotland, and positively landed, or, to use the official word,
" joined," at Gibraltar on the pith April.
The seaman's " Bay of Biscay, 0!" is worked up in
pure Grub street doggrel ; but bad at it is, it has been
rendered worse, particularly in the last verse, by the
tampering of some grossly vulgar hand. In the lapse of
years the precise wording of that Catnach composition
has probably been lost, and the version that exists, tilled
up by the imperfections of tradition, may have had its
dates and places disturbed. In a printed form the ballad,
seemingly, cannot he obtained.
If the differences just shown be considered fatal to
the relationship between the sailor's song and the vessel ,
noticed in the n.Arrative, then Cherry's very popular ballad
belongs to the history of the Sappers and Miners.
We cannot undertake to give a decided
opinion on this point, but our impression is
that the song of " The Bay of Biscay " is
older in date than 1791, when the wreck took
place mentioned in Mr. Connolly's text. It
seems strange that the song should be identi-
fied with a ship whose name is not recollected.
Charles Dibdin's capital piece of The Water-
man was produced in 1774, ani " The Bay of
Biscay, 0 ! " enjoys much of its popularity
to the fact of every famous Tom Tug singing it
in that musical oneretta after " Farewell, my
trim-built wherry." The song is thus often
ignorantly ascribed to Dibdin, instead of
Andrew Cherry.

The Irish Sketch-book. 1842. By M. A.
Titmarsh. London: Chapman and Hall.
IRELAND has always been one of Mr.
Thackeray's pet subjects of satire. He does
not sympathise with the grievances of an
imaginative people, and for the results of
long cherished traditions and hereditary cus-
toms he makes DO allowance. His view of
Ireland is much that of the unromantic Canon
of St. Paul's,—" Erin go bragh ! Stuff! Erin
"go shoes without holes in them. Erin go
" roast mutton," and so forth. For the beauty
and grace that are to be found mingled with
all these objectionable peculiarities Mr.
Thackeray has a keen cye. TJ the social
amenities, the feminine grace, the natural wit,
which the stranger everywhere encounters, ho
is fully alive; but they do not awake a mo-
ment's compassion in the bosom of the pitiless
satirist. He passes from some description of
a hospitable host or a fascinating landlady,
only to drive his goad deeper into the sonsi-
tiye of the Triob people, AO to ?Num

753

their foibles with unnecessary minuteness
and severity. And what. after all, do these
weaknesses amount top Simply to the absence
of those business habits which are almost
peculiar to the Saxon race, and which Mr.
Thackeray himself has not been slow to depre-
ciate elsewhere. A race cannot change its
character. The Celt will be gay, warmhearted,
careless, and contemptuous of the useful, the
Saxon slow, frigid, calculating, and contemp-
tuous of the beautiful, to the end of the world.
Each temperament produces results ridiculous,
or respectable, or worthless, or valuable, accord-
ing to the point of view from which it is regarded.
And even if "the greatest happiness of the
" greatest number" be taken as the end of
government, the smiling content which Mr.
That keray witnessed throughout Ireland would
present formidable contrast to the revelations
of Mrs. Gaskell, or the agony of the " Song
of the Shirt."

However, between the Ireland of to-day and
the Ireland of 1842, the date of these sketches,
so wide a gulf is fixed, that they are already
nearly antiquated as evidence of the state of
the country. As specimens of Mr. Thackeray's
literary powers they are still fresh and charm-
ing, and form a welcome addition to the
present issue of his works. Though Mr.
Thackeray is continually insisting on his own
inability to describe the beauties of scenery,
there are some little bits of description every
here and there which combine deep feeling
with a most happy 111614 of expression. As
at page 115 :
For almost half the way from Kenmare, this wild, beau.
tiful road commands views of the famous lake and vast
blue mountains about Killarney. Turk, TomieA, and
Mangerton, were clothed in purple, like kings in mourn.
ing ; great, heavy clouds were gathered round :heir heads,
parting away every now and then, and leaving their noble
features bare. The lake lay for some time underneath us,
dark and blue, with dark misty islands in the midst. Ou
the rtght•hand side of the road, would be a precipice
covered with a thousand trees, on a green rocky flat, with
a reetivnere in the midst, and other mountains rising as
far as vre could see.

Again, at page 317 :
The grounds are beautiful, and excellently kept; the
trees in their autumn livery of red, yellow, and brown,
except some stout ones, that keep to their green summer
clothes, and the laurels and their like, who wear pretty
much the same dress all the year round. The birds were
singing with most astonishing vehemence in the dark
glistening shrubberies; but the only sound in the walks
was that of the rakes pulling together the falling leaves.
There was of these walks one especially, flanked towards
the river by a turreted wall covered with ivy, and having
on the one side a row of lime trees that had turned quite
yellow, while opposite them was a green slope, and a
quaint tortace•stair, and a long range of fantastic gables,
towers, and chimneys ;—there was, I say, one of these
walks which Mr. Catermole would hit off with a few strokes
of his gallant pencil, and which I could fancy to be fre•
quented by some of those long•trained, tender, gen►le.
looking, young beauties, whom Mr. Stone loves to design.
—Here they come, talking of love in a tone that is between
a sigh and a whisper, and gliding in rustling shot-silks
over the fallen leaves.

That this volume contains plenty of humour
the reader may be certain. It is, indeed, so
thoroughly and evenly diffused through the
whole composition that it is difficult to find
any passage more highly flavoured than an-
other. The following are perhaps as good as
any :

went to buy some of the pretty Limerick gloves (they
are chiefly made, as I have since discovered, at Cork.)
I think the man who sold them had a patent from the
Queen, or his Excellency, or both, in his window ; but,
seeing a friend pass just as I entered the shop, he brushed
passed, and held his friend in conversation tor some
minutes in the street,—abont the Killarney races, no
doubt, or the fun going on at Kilkee. I might have swept
away a bagful of walnut shells, containing the flimsy
gloves ; but instead walked out, making him a low bow, and
saying I would call next week. Ile said, wouldn't I wait?
and resumed his conversation ; and, no doubt, by this
way of doing business, is making a handsome indepen•
dence. I asked one of the ten thousand fruit women the
price of her green pears. " Twopence apiece," she said ;
and there were two little ragged beggars standing by, who
were munching the fruit; a bookshop•woman made me
pay threepence for a bottle of ink which usually costs a
penny; a potato•woman told me that her potatoes cost
fourteen•pence a stone; and all these ladies treated the
stranger with a leering, wheedling servility, which made
me long to box their ears, were it not that the man who
lays his hand upon a woman is an—, &c., shom 'twere
gross flattery to call a what•d'ye•call•em.
Here is a coffee-room sketch :
The speaker was dressed in deep black, worn however
with that dogagii air peculiar to the votaries of liaeohus,
or that nameless god--.oftl3pring of Ilaciohus and Ceres,
who may have invented the noble liquor called whisky, 11
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Nobody can read this volume without being
greatly amused. We may even entertain a
persuasion that Mr. Thackeray's style of re-
monstrance, when not conceived in a sneering
spirit, may be beneficial to the Irish people.
But he is nevertheless an unconscious in-
structor. He sees the outsides of things
clearly, remembers them accurately, and de-
scribes them with distinctness. But we doubt
if he would not feel a little embarrassed if
called upon for any generalisation of what
passed before him. As long as he has illus-
tration and anecdote at his service he can
enable us to utilise his writings for ourselves ;
but when deprived of these he would, we
fancy, be as helpless as a man used to swim
with corks if suddenly stripped of them. This
is of course a matter of habit, and not of
natural deficiency ; but the more inveterate
the habit the more difficult its correction.
And we greatly doubt if Mr. Thackeray will
ever improve his position by abandoning the
sphere of letters.

The Sister of Charity; or, from Belgravia to
Ber►xiondsey. By Mrs. Chalice. Three
Vols. London : Bentley.

Tuts. is a clever, sketchy, readable sort of a
light novel, in which living and dead celebri-
ties are attempted to be photographed. As a
first attempt it deserves some praise, though
many of its incidents are forced ; and the
authoress does not succeed iu composing a
dramatic tale. Miss Nightingale figures in its
pages as " Miss Lester;" and the late Sir
William Molesworth is introduced, with worse
than questionable taste, seeing the fact of the
novel being dedicated to Lady Molesworth.
The inscription to Lady Molesworth runs as
follows :

To
!Any Mottswoarn,
A Tribute
To her Sympathy in the Cause of Prowess
And a Mark of Respect to the Memory
Of her Husband,
The late Right Honourable
SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, BART., M.P.
By the Authoress.
Both the taste and grammar of the dedication
may be objected to ; but we must not be too
critical with a lady's first attempt. Here the
authoress attempts to paint Miss Lester—
alias Miss Nightingale—in her teens :

Rut not on any of these did Eustace gaze ; his wonder
and delight were rivetted to the centre of this strange place,
where, standing, bathed in prismatic hues, which tell with
beams from the stained &us above, was a Using
surpassing in its interest any of the 'Heat Four 44

In the present case, when Amy and Eustace arrived,
they felt themselves immediately honoured and expected;
and were at once marshalled to a small, inner, morning
room, the simple, nut elegant, and habitable arrangements
of which were rather in contrast to the fairyland view just
permitted by a half-closed folding•door of a suite of apart-
ments beyond.
In the pleasant nook to which they had been ushered
were a desk and easel, both having the appearance of con•
atant use ; a large supply of the newest publications on a
variety of subjects—artistic, poetic, political, and philo-
sophical ; a vase of fresh flowers; a heap of letters, of every
form and dimension, from the polisheo,perfurned missive,
to the large, clumsy appeal of business or charity ; and
some manuscript music on a stand, by an uncovered harp,
near the shaded and richly curtained window ; while the
chilliness of the late autumn morning was dispersed by
the cheerful fire, principally composed of wood emitting a
pleasant odour, burning on the hearth, before which was
stretched a large dog, instantly recognised by Mr. Seville
as that be had seen years before at the feet of Sir Richard
Lester.

There are various passages in these volumes
affecting to describe " High Life." In the
following sketch the Stafford-house Whigs
will not pretend to recognise the "Duchess of
Ayrton" :
One beautiful morning, at the beginning of the London
season of 11351, a small, but perfect carriage containing
two ladies, and drawn by thoroughbred ponies, slowly pur-
sued its pleasant way by the Serpentine in Hyde park.
A servant was in attendance, whose costume, though
plain, was as faultless as the horse be rode ; but his guard
might well have been dispensed with, as it was long before
the hour when this spot is wont to be frequented by " the
world." The lady who so cleverly, but daintily, hell the
reins of the fairy-equipage was charming•looking in the
extreme, but somewhat difficult of description, as her
fascination seemed to consist more in instiller and that
",k quoi," which is, if I remember rightly, some-
where proclaimed by Montesquieu as indispensable ; and
triumphant " over a difficulty" when the fact of regular
beauty has been denied. _ _ _

She was small, bright, and piquante. Her hair, of a
chesnut hue, was turned back from the face in the mode
so prevalent since in France, but becoin;.ng to so few. Her
eyes were dark grey, and animated; while the exquisite
figure was well displayed in the rather cl.w-fitting dress,
so quiet in its colour, so charming in its freshness, and so
exquisite, to the very delicate gloves on the small bands
which guided the spirited but docile ponies.
Her companion,though equally nice in her appointments,
was evidently a little more careless of appearance ; but not
one of the few stragglers then and there about, whether
governesses with their young charges, men lounging and
meditating on " what next and next " in their fate, or young
ladies taking their constitutional beauty-walk, but mani-
fested some sign of the attraction to be found in her
earnestly intellectual face, and unconsciously graceful
attitude.

For some time both these ladies were ( for a wonder,
perhaps) silent; at length, the fair charioteer thus
begs? :

You are Fositirely provoking, Beatrice ; to think of
another season, and you. with all your advantages—to say,
nothing of mine"—(she archly put in), " still on my
hands !"

" My dear Ductless," answered Beatrice Lester, laughing.
" What shall I do to please you?"
" Why marry, to be sure," answered her Grace, suddenly
whipping the ponies, with a silken cord that just tickled
their ears.

" marry!" ejaculated the younger lady, in playtul mock-

By innocence I swear, and by my youth,
I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth—
Nor never none
Shall master be of it, save I alone.

"Oh ! shocking!" esclaimed the Duchess of Ayrton ;
"horrible to pervert Shakspesre in that manner, Beatrice.
And then the blank, too, of your forced omission which I
shall perforce take as some sort of admission ; but,
prithee, dear friend, with all your philanthrophy, do not
meditate the masculine usurp'd attire' of the Viola you
quote, to carry out your views of single blessedness."
And so on. Some readers like books of this
kind, and if executed with real knowledge and
high finish they are often piquant ; but we
have had an over-supply of those inartistic
productions.

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