The Press.
London, England, 1854-10-21 00:00:00

100'2

M. Bunsen's honourable toils must be re-
spected by every Egyptologer, even when his
opinions cannot be accepted. They are not so
readable as the brilliant exercitations of the
Vicomte Bongo (in the " Annales de Philoso-
phic Chretienne," not sufficiently known in
this country, and deserving a translation), but
their research is deep, their animating senti-
ment inspired with a noble love of the lofty
mission of letters, and a generous faith in the
sublime and enduring interests of humanity.
We cannot close these remarks without
bringing under the notice of our readers the
following account of the splendid monumental
work of the Prussian expedition to Egypt
The chevalier says
We may venture to say on the whole that it is a work
second to none yet published upon archceology and
ethnology. We will, therefore, first offer some remarks on
the lithographic tables or the monuments, and then on the
text by which they are illustrated.
They will consist of six parts, in imperial folio, and con-
tain more than 800 lithographed plates, many of them
coloured, in ten volumes.
The first part is geographical, topographical, and archi•
tectural ; arranged from north to south, of course in strictly
topographical order. Theirobject is to give a general view
of the monuments, according to their geographical position.
The first six plates accordingly contain maps of Egypt,
Ethiopia, and the peninsula of Sinai, referring throughout
to the hieroglyphical names and drawings. This part
occupies the first two volumes, and contains about 140
pages. More than half of it appeared in 1852 ; but the
preparation of some of the geographical and topographical
maps required more time than the subsequent parts. The
publication of the six maps has been deferred on account
of some points which require new astronomical determina-
tions. They and the text of the whole first part will
follow in the course of the year.
• The second, third, and fourth parts give the historical
monuments in chronological order. The second contains
the monuments of the old empire, in two volumes, already
published, as vol. iii. (plates 1-81, with a duplicate of
plate 04), and vol. iv. (plates 82-153). The third part,
which contains the monuments of the new empire, in three
volumes (v., vi., vii.), goes down to Ramses the Second.
It will conclude with Alexander. The fourth part will re-
present the monuments of the Ptolemies and Roman
emperors vol. viii. ).
The fifth part is to contain the Ethiopian monuments
(from Sabako downwards), and forms the ninth volume.
The sixth part (vol. x.) will contain the inscriptions,
with the exception, of course, of the hieroglyphical
inscriptions, because these are given in the preceding
volumes with the monuments to which they belong.
The others, here published complete, are the Hieratic,
Phoenician, and Sinaic, and lastly the Greek and Roman

inscriptions.
These ten volumes of monuments, with the text in addi-
tion, are published at the mere cost price, which is an un•
paralleled low one. The work was undertaken by the
command of the King of Prussia, and the expenses pro-
vided for by a grant made for that purpose.

When completed this great work of the
Prussian expedition will be sought for with
avidity, not merely by Egyptologers, but
by that class of English book-buyers who
can afford to gratify a love of the sumptuous
in books.

Lights and Shadows of Australian Life. By
Mrs. Clacy. London : Hurst and Blackett.
WE must confess that we are disappointed in
these volumes. After the lively and amusing
" Visit to the Gold Fields " we expected some-
thing better from the pen of Mrs. Clacy than
a poor collection of love tales, and bygone
legends of bushrangers and aborigines. Aus-
tralia is one of the most ill -used countries (by
authors) in the world. Every one who writes a
hook upon this unfortunate colony thinks it
necessary either to invest the country with
attributes which it does not possess, or to
draw pictures of a state of society which does
not exist. If such authors would merely
favour the world with the literal facts of their
experience, their publications would be of
much more value, and would enable us to get
a much clearer idea of the country and its
social economy than any such trifling books as
these " Lights and Shadows "—books which,
in combining so much fiction with so little
fact, give about as correct an idea of Australian
life as Pepys' " Diary" would give us of a
London season in the present day.
Mrs. Clacy's book consists of a series of love
stories, murders and attacks by bushrangers
and blacks, spearings and burnings, and all
sorts of horrors that were in vogue many years
ago, but which by no means belong to the
existing state of order and police. No such
events as the attack by bushrangers on
Mr. Mortitner's station in the populous dis-
trict of Illawarra, near Sydney (vol. i., p.

THE PRESS.

110), and that of the blacks upon Mrs.
Allingford's station (vol. ii., p. 10), have
occurred in New South Wales for many

years; and it is no excuse to say that the
stories are dated a dozen years ago, because
we are nevertheless led to infer from the pre-
face that such occurrences are common, and
that their relation is intended to give us " a
" few useful hints as well as amusement."

And on one important though minor point
we must differ from Mrs. Clacy. Few, if
any, of the squatters who own out-stations
and reside on them are married men; on tha

contrary, they are mostly young men, but
lately arrived in the colony, and just come into
the district, or pushing out beyond the boun-
daries with their sheep or cattle to form new
stations, and make a little money before they
take unto themselves a wife, so that these

harrowing pictures of dying husbands, burn-
ing wives, and massacred children, are, in the
main point, incorrect.
The book, too, is carelessly written. At every
description of colonial scenery " a winding
stream," or " rippling creek," figures conspi-
cuously. Now, any one who knows Australia is
aware that winding streams and rippling creeks
do not so generally exist throughout the coun-
try; that the whole water supply of square miles
of land is but too frequently confined to a single
water-hole, which a ten weeks' drought will
evaporate ; that many of the large rivers which
appear on the maps, marked by broad lines,
are mere chains of water-holes. In winter,
during the heavy rains, when swelled with the
drainage of the ranges, these rivers may flow
continuously here and there, but in general
they are dry for miles, with scarce water
enough in any one part for half a score of
cattle. If this is the case with some of the
main drains of the country, it is not likely that
we should often find " winding streams," with
their concomitant " green meadows," as a corn
mon feature in a country so sadly deficient of
water and verdure as Australia. In another
page we find the gum-trees described as rising
to the majestic height of two or three hundred
feet, as if a hundred feet or so was a trifle in the
height of an Australian gum-tree, which, by the
way, we may be allowed to observe, are lofty,
compared to English trees, but seldom or ever
reach beyond 120 to 150 feet in height.
To excite wonder Mrs. Clacy relates that in
Australia " eagles are white," that " the trees
" keep their leaves on and shed their bark,"
that " the owl hoots in the daytime " and
" the cuckoo sings of a night," that " the north
" winds are hot ' and " the south winds are
" cold," that "the flowers possess no perfume,"
and " the cherries grow their stone outside."
Now, in remarking these generalisations and
errors, we do not wish to impute more blame
to Mrs. Clay than to any other author who has
written upon Australia. She has merely trodden
in their steps and followed in their errors ;
but nevertheless some of the assertions are
gross errors, and all of them incorrect in a
general sense.
A white eagle in Australia is as great a rarity
as a white eagle in England. It is only a few
of the eucalyptus that shed the outer bark.
The owl is as rarely heard in the daytime as
the cuckoo is at night. Some of the indigenous
flowers scarcely possess a perfume, but all the
imported varieties flourish as perfectly as thay
do in Europe. The wild cherry, a mere in-
digenous berry, and no larger than a pea, has
a small pip growing out of the top, similar to
the " navel oranges" of Brazil; but it must
not be believed that every species of
cherry, when planted at the antipodes,
grows with the stone outside ! And, indeed,
" cherry " is quite a misnomer for this indige-
nous plant. And, lastly, why it should be a
matter of wonder that the north winds are hot
and south winds cold, considering the position
of the South Pole, we are quite at a loss to de-
termine. In excuse it may be said that all these
are but trifling errors ; but they are errors,
and the sum of such errors is to create in the
minds of readers a very fiLlse, and in some
instances unfavourable, impression of the
country and its productions.
That Mrs. Clacy's sketches are lively, and
will prove entertaining to young readers, we
do not dispute; but they are assuredly not
the true lights and shadows of Australian
life. We should have thought that a lady

SATURDAY,

of Mrs. Claoy's colonial experience would.
have found some more solid and instruc-
tive mutter for relation in the various
phases of society, in the peculiarities and
wants of the country, in the question of agri-
cultural versus pastoral interests, and in the
real state of progress evinced by the colonies,—..,
points upon which there is a strong and in-
creasing interest in England, though but little
accurate information.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

THE present number of the Quarterly Review has
not a word to say on politics—a fact of some signifi-
cance, as showing the disol•ganised state of the
political world. We doubt the prudence of this
careful neutrality on the pact of what was once a
great exponent of Conservative principle. The
policy and conduct of the Government under which
we live must, we humbly opine, be deemed of more
importance by the readers of this review than Silu-
rian rocks or the career of Samuel Foote. We much

question whether the ably-compiled papers on litera-
ture and science for which the review has become
famous will compensate for the absence of those
vigcrous views on political topics which the Quarterly
was in the habit of putting forth. Were we quite
indifferent to politics, or cared for them only as a
subject of abstract speculation, we should yet regret
the retirement of the Quarterly from the arena in
which it once contended so fearlessly and well, as we
should regret the retirement from Westminster-hall
ofd. Brougham or a Follett. The contents-table of
this number presents eight articles. "The London
Commissariat," in unravelling the complicated means
by which are daily fed the two and a half millions of
human beings crowded into this metropolis, explains
from whence all the innumerable commodities are
obtained, and the various ways by which " they are
" distributed from house to house." The writer
traces the various edibles to their source—" the fish
" to its sea, the beast to its pasture, the wild animal
" to its lair, the game to its cover, and the fruit to its
" orchard"—and points out how they are severally
" netted, fattened, bagged, gathered, and conveyed
" to their ultimate destination, the great red lane of
" London." The result is, a paper written in so plea-
sant a style as to even make statistics attractive and
parliamentary returns an amusing study. "The
Present State of Architecture," in reviewing several
architectural periodicals, treats its subject fully and,
on the whole, fairly, although perhaps with too great
a regard for architectural rules, as far as our public
buildings are concerned, and too little remembrance
of climatic influence. In this country of colds and
east winds we cannot afford to exchange "solid
walls" for " square pillars, with low, open-worked
" metal gates between them," such as the writer
recommends, to impart spirit and variety—applica-
ble, for instance, to the monotonous facade of the
British Museum. But, if such alterations were made
in that building, who, except on a warm summer
day, could stop in that hall, which is now so crowded
with attendants and visitors ? No doubt the altera-
tion would materially improve the entrance, and be
strictly according to the rules of art, but in this
country we must sacrifice some of the minor beauties
of a building to absolute utility. A review of Sir
Roderick Murchison's " Siluria " treats the subject
in a pleasant, conversational style, and popularly
interprets that chaos of geological technicality which
is to be found in all abstruse geological works.
Speaking of the cambro-silurian controversy which
is at present raging between Sir Roderick and Pro-
fessor Sedgwick, the writer remarks
that after all the facts which geologists propose as a
foundation of a true classification of geological epochs are
merely local, in a greater or less degree according to cir-
cumstances, and, therefore, in their essence limited and
topographical, and, consequently, until we discover
great laws regulating the succession of life appearances in
time, provisional and empirical.
In the succeeding articles upon Goldsmith and
Foote we have the lives of these two opposite
humorists graphically sketched. The character of
Goldsmith has been so frequently elucidated that
the theme is in some danger of being thought com-
monplace. But with Samuel Foote it is different:
his jokes have survived, but the joker is almost for-
gotten ; and yet Foote was something more than a
mere wit, for his present reviewer tells us he strove
in his comedies and farces to instruct, as well as re-
prove his audience, by his keen satire, his infinite
wit, and his incomparable delineation of the charac-
teristic vices and follies of the day :
My scenes (said he) have been collected from general
nature, and are applicable to none but those who, through
consciousness, are compelled to a self-application. 10
that mark, if Comedy directs not her aim, her arrows are.
shot in the air; for by what touches no man, no man will
be amended.
The reviewer hereupon remarks :
But this plea is not admitted. Whenever he is no:
mentioned it is u a satirist of peculiarities, not as an

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