The Express.
London, England, 1849-01-18 00:00:00

SCOTLAND.

whim he left his Wiling% about the mast
this, sided le the sermat gigi that he would not re-
test. eaWb ineening. This stench Ae girl as Wag some-
I Bing singsler, and the siterwards saantiesed the circus-
elms to bar MAW • bat Wylie, lints; been rather
irregular is his habits of late, it did not wake
say particular impression an his Edna. Oa Satur-
day, however, Mr. Gilchrist celled at Dr. Hopkins's to
inquire die his clerk, he that
.maning having
received a letter, signed " Sossatervill ,e but without a
date, intimating hat Ms friend Wylie lad received as sod
dent—sprained his ankle, or something of that kind—os the
writer's stair, bet that he would be able to be at the bank on
Saturday evening in time to have the busks balanced for the
beak ea Monday. The receipt of the letter, combined with
the aorrimeit m to Dr. Dookless's servant, whoa Wylie left
ea the morning, excited a suspicion that something
might wrong, and on Mr. (Maria going to the bank he
found that a tin boa, pieced is the sate on Thursday night,
had bees rifled of its contents, to the amount of between
7001 sad 800'. The money taken away cosset@ of Bank of
Licked sews for 61., 101., and 201. ; sail gold to the amount
of 1001. It r also summed that he way have notes with
him of the British Lines Company's Bank, and that he may
have ere or more associates with hies.

Inniscrnou. JAN. 16
The cause of financial reform is quietly but steadily
advancing. The questicn could not be fought on
better ground than in Scotland, we have no lord
lieutenant, or governor, a vessel of war is scarcely
ever seen on our coasts ; we have only a handful of
artillery and cavalry, and even of infantry, putting all
the stations together, we rarely have more than a
complete regiment in the whole country. The prac-
ticability of doing away with many of the expensive
establishments complained of by Mr. Cobden and his
friends, is, therefore, clearly exemplified, and as we
contrive to be peaceable and industrious at little cost,
we do not see how other places should not be the
same. Mr. *Gregor calculates that of the revenue
collected in Scotland, three-fourths finds its way to
the imperial exchequer, while only one-fourth is ex-
pended for purely national. Ireland, he says,
costs from ree to four millions more per annum than
she is worth to Britain.
It is understood that the Lord Advocate intends
introducing, next session, a general sanitary measure
for Scotland. The ravages of cholera, wherever it
has made its appearance, has impressed a wholesome
dread, and raised a general opinion here that a good
health of towns bill would, it brought on at once,
excite little opp. sition ; bat if allowed to lie over for
some time, the recollections of the scourge will be so
weakened, that clans interests will assert their influ-
ence as potently as ever. It is also understood that his
lordship will introduce a measure for the uniform
regulation in Scotland of the hours for public-houses.
The clause of the Edinburgh police act, providing for
the closing of ale-houses at eleven in the evening,
has been attended with good results, and will, in all
probability, be made general.
Decided symptoms of revived trade are reported
from Glasgow and Aberdeen, and bating the preva-
knee of cholera and typhus, there are general indica-
tions over the whole country of increased employment
and prosperity. At Greenock, the customs for IMO
exceeced those of 1847 by 29,9011. In Glasgow, the
brandy entered during November and December,
1848, exceeded the quantity of the corresponding
months in 1847 by 5,468 gallons.
The Anti-Oath Association is pushing its came
vigorously in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. The
parliamentary petitions hay, teceived 1,200 signa-
tures in Edinburgh, and have been very generally
signed in Leith, Musselburgh, and Dalkeith.
A quantity of base copper money has been issued
at Glasgow. The punishment for this currency offence
is seven years' transportation, and the authorities are
to issue a proclamation intimating the penalty, with a
view to deter the vendors from farther roguery. A
worth of the illegal coinage costa lls. 6d.

Fly. lICNDRED FORMAI 111TOLRA THOM THU UNION
BARR, OLAIOOW.-04 Saturday forenoon, • very daring
act of theft was perpetrated in the Union Bank. Shortly
before that time, it 'ppm, that D. Campbell, the porter of
the establishment, bad been sent to the Clydesdale Bank to
payment of • bill for 5001., which he received, the mousy
consisting of five 1001. notes of the Clydesdale Banking Com-
pany. Oa returning to the bank with the money, he went
into a side•roons, and, after enclosing the notes in a passbook,
he wen: into the principal room, and threw the book across the
counter to Mr. M'Arthur, an of the tellen,who was at the time
natively engaged with some other business ; 10 or 15 minutes
an said to have elapsed from tie time of the pus-book being
thrown apes the counter until it was taken up by the teller,
when, singular to relate, the pun-book eau found to contain
no money of any description. It is supposed that the notes
mast have been dropped from the pass-book before it was
thrown upon the counter, but the porter hu no doubt what-
ever that they went safely out of his hands. Whether the
notes were picked up from the doer, or abstracted from tie
book while upon the counter, mast rennin, in the meantime,
• gunny. There were • great number of persons in the
bank when the money was mimed.
BANK CLARK ARSCONDID WITH RETRAIN 7001. AND
9001 —ln the village of Carluke, LanalSibire, there has
been for a number of years past a branch of the British
Linea Company's Bank. The menage? is Mr. J. Gilchrist,
of Oilioet, and for some time past he has had for his assistant
and clerk•• yosuag man, named Robert Wlie, from Edin-
burgh. Wylie lodged in the house of Dr. Baokless, and on

THE EXPRESS, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 18, 1849.

to will last as hog as the language. But
it=
defects of many of these compost ions as phi
criticisms, only make them the more abound in that
display of individual taste, and that vehemence of
personal predilection, the study of which is such an
invaluable aid to the historian of literature. The

absence of any paramount code Co: sistin,
in criti-
cism or philosophy, gave unlimited scope to the fine
fancies, the subtle analysis, the protiond reflections,
the over-reined distinctions, instruetive even when
pushed to the very verge, or sheer over the precipice
of erne., in which Coleridge, Hsslitt, Utah, Wilson,
Hunt, and though last, not least, 'Ando', delighted to
indulge. The criticisms of Jeffrey and Campbell are
of a soberer, more practical oast; whhhillle those
of Macaulay and Carlyle, men of a younger
generation, have a cosmopolitan range and rich-
ness of historical illustration, which comes aptly
in to correct the error, abate the local prejudices, and
moderate the extreme opinions,to which the logicians
of the school of Jeffrey and the idealists of the school
of Coleridge had with equal rashness committed them-
selves. Altogether it would be dillicalt to imagine
richer or more suggestive materials for the literary
historian than are accumulated in the productions of
the writers above-named • and of a few others, per-
haps, the paucity of whose labours, or the want of
individuality in whose speculations, has made their
names less familiar to the world.

- --
The great difficulty for-the literary historian in
such a ease is to use his materials with sufficient

moderation ; rather stimulating by their suggestion.
his own powers of appreciation, than adopting whole-
sale, or apportioning piecemeal, any of their opinions.
In this respect, the absence from a library of reference,
of which Mr. Shaw complains, and by which he ex-
cuses some trifling erroes of dates and facts which
occur in his work, was possibly on the whole of special
service to him. Sufficiently familiar with the best
speculations of English and German critics, he has
not been overlaid ;by them, or deterred from giving
forcible expression to his own tastes and feelings. He
has evidently • hearty literary appetite, u well as a
discriminating palate ; and be commends his favourite
dainties to the taste of his readers with an earnest-

ness and a gusto which we do not often meet
with in works of such an elementary character. This
is obviously a rfreat recommendation in a work in-
tended as a guide and stimulus to the young in the
study and appreciation of a manly literature. We
may not always coincide with Mr. Shaw's judgments.
We could point out not a few instances in which, in
our opinion, he has been hasty and unjust. The fo-
reign audience, too, for whom his work was com-
posed, compelled him to notice some writers of tem-
porary and merely fashionable celebrity, whom writ-
ing in England and for an English audience, we
trust he would have had the good taste
and discrimination to over altogether.
His partialities lead him Irwin to devote to the
praise, rather than to the critical ezamination,of some
favourite authors, a space which the narrow limits of
Es work can ill afford. But, on the whole, his predi-
lections are mar ly and wholesome. He is not afraid
—as many a mealy-mouthed precision, writing a book
in England with the same purpose, would have been
—cordially to dilate upon the merits of Fielding and
Smollett. Nor is the Held of his sympathies a narrow
one : Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker,
Bacon, Milton, Clarendon, Jeremy Tavlor, Dryden,
and Pope, are all dear to him, and their most striking,
as well as most opposite merits, set forth with a
warmth and sincerity which are calculated to bars
the best effects in a work intended for college mm.
The principal events of their lives are likewise re-
counted, and the connexion between their productions
aid the general characteristics of the age in which
they lived, is not forgotten. So that, on the whole,
we are bound to say that the inexperienced reader
will find in this volume an intelligent and trust-
worthy guide to the selection and profitable perusal
of the most valuable works of our greatest authors.
It is difficult to make selections from a work of this
nature containing sufficient novelty to warrant our
presenting them to our readers. The following pas-
sages from Mr. S ,aw's character of Ben Jonson will
afford a fair specimen of the discriminating spirit, as
well as the warm and lively, bat rather florid, style,
in which the work is written :
The peculiar excelenee of this great writer lay in the re-
presentation of the weaknesses sad aff. nations of common
and domestic life —in the delineation of what were then
called the " humours," a word which may be explained to
mean those innate and peculiar di toetions and deformities of
moral physiognomy with which nature has stamped the cha-
racter of individual, in every highly artificial and civilised
state of society, and which are afterwards exaggerated and
reodered inveterate by vanity and affectation. In delineating
these obliquities of character, Jonson proceeded philosophi-
cally, we may even say scientifically: he appears to have
carefully end minutely anatomised the follies and foibles of
humanity, and to have accumulated in his comic and satiric
pictures (tor his comedy is of the satiric kind) every trait end
little stroke of the peculiar folly in question, with a most
(*newsman skill and industry ; frequently cncentrating in
one chancier not only all the moral phenomena which his
own vast and accurate observation could supply, aided as
that was by a systematic and elaborate classification, but,
often exhausting all the touches lift us in the morel portraits
of the historians and satirists of antiquity. • • • •
The language of this great dramatist is in the highest degree
vigorous, picturesque, and lively ; it possesses, it is true,
little or none of that sweet and glowing oarmony, that living
and transparent grace, which makes the golden verses of our
Bhakepear• absolutely superior to the far-famed diction of the
Greek poets; but it is an admirably strong and flexible
medium for his acne and masterly exhibition of character;
and though in general not much elevated above the level of
weighty and powerful pram, sometimes rises to a consider-
able pitch of rhetorical splendour. It must be confessed that
Jonson wants that deep sympathy with human nature which
is the true source of grace of language, as it is of tenderness
of thought ; but there is often to be found in him a gallant
bravery of language, a splendour of imagery recalling to us
the dusky glow of his great prototype, J I, with whose
pains the literary character of bonson has many points of
resemblance. Both writers describe the follies of their kind
in a contemptuous and sarcastic spirit, and their crimes
with a powerful, but somewhat too declamatory invective ;
and both appear to have bad less sympathy with virtee than
detestation of vice : they were both, too, inclined to treat
with indifference, if not with contempt, the virtues and
grams of the female character—a sure sign of hardness
s 1 Rind.
• • • •
In spite of his faults, both as a man and as an author—
his arrogance, his intemperance, his sanest* and sometimes
coarse, humour, his pedantry, and his pride—we must ever
hold him to have been a great and a good man •, grateful,
generous, valiant, free-spoken, with something of the old
Roman spirit in him, a mighty artist, and a man of gigantic
and cultivated genius ; and we may reverently echo the
beautiful words of the epitaph which long! remained inscribed
upon his grave—" 0 rare Ben Joann.
The whole sketch, of which the above are only
detached fragments, is highly creditable to Mr. Shaw's
abilities. The characters of Chaucer, Spenser, Shak-
swore, Milton, Hooker, and several others, might be
pointed out as written with equal judgment and
greater geniality. We are less satisfied with Mr.
Shaw's decisions when we come down to more modern
writers, some of whom we think he greatly over-
estimates ; while, as regards others, he has too hastily
adopted the prejudices of critics whose authority is
less now than it wu twenty years ago. We are also
surprised at finding no mention whatever of such a
dialogist and critic as Landor, or of such an historian
as Thirlwall, rashly indeed, and yet not altogether an-
warrantably, declared by John Sterling tobe " as greats'
Thncydides or Tacitus. Tennyson, too, is barely named,
while writers of such unquestionable genius as Carlyle
and Robert Browning are not once alluded to. The
influence of all these men on their generation has been
very considerable ; and it is not the quaint and capri-
cious form in which some of them have too often
embodied their idea, that can justify Mr. Shaw in
excluding them altogether from even so cursory a re-
view of our living writers, as the limits of his volume
allowed him to undertake.
These, however, are errors and omissions which
can be readily repaired is subsequent editions.
Meantime, we can cordially recommend the work to
all heads of colleges and schools, as well as to parents
who are anxious to give a right and healthy direction
to the literary tastes of their children.

f Sm.
MK. STEEL'S EQUOTRLiti STATUE OP THE DIME
or WELLINGTON, which ham been rio long in progress, is
now, we learn from Edinburgh, in such a state of forward-
ness, that it may be expected to be set rip on the next
Waterloo annireresry. The wort itself does not give pro-
mise of sock a speedy completion, sad the only thing that
gives probability to the on dit is that alterations have
been comma n at the Register-office for the reception of
the statue; but whether they are premature or not remains
to be seen.
THE STATUE OF SIR MICHAEL O'IsPrOHLEN) mays
oar Dublin correspondent) woe placed on its pedestal on
Monday, and obtained much adrairatior,, though it is not
exactly what was anticipated. It is a graceful and finely
opacity/1d work of art, executed with watch skill and judg-
ment. The judge is represented in r. sitting posture, and
the drapery of his robs falls see* ntly about his person,
which is easy in its pose. As a Per.rait the work is not of so
much value, as the artist has not acme justice to the intellec-
tual and loft} brow of Sir Weasel O'Logblen. But then