The Express.
London, England, 1846-10-09 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Thc: Qulrterly Review. No. CLVI. October, 1816. John

Murray.
In a literary point of view this is a fair average
number of the Quarterly. The ' Fortifications of
Paris' are reviewed by one who appears competent
to review the troops that may one day garrison them.
It is a neat popular exposition of the rise and progress,
of the nature and probable effects, of " these stu-
pendous works, greater than the fabled wall of
Babylon." ' Constantinople in the fourth century'
may take its place beside Schlosser's famous article
on the Grecian Universities in the time of Julian
the Apostate. ' The Cathedral of Cologne' evinces
almost as much technical knowledge (in its depart-
ment) as the Fortifications of Paris ; but is got up
with less artistical taste and skill. Lord Nugentrs
Travels,' General Nott in Affghaaistan,' and ' Roche-
lags and the Emigrant,' belong to the class of reviews
which convey a satisfactory notion of the style and
contents of the work reviewed. In the Quarterly
these have been always well done. The proem
f the first of the three is, it is true, rather ,

harming : in the tone of a George Robins' adver-
sement, recommending Athens as preferable winter-
quarters to Rome. ' The Spanish Ladyea Love' is
a pleasing piece of antiquarian gossip: a make-believe
critique of Lady Dalmcny's illustrations.
The articles of the present number, however, at
lead in so far as public curiosity may warrantably
be excited to know all about them, are, ' The
Close of Sir Robert Peel's Administration,' and
' Education of the People.' There is a natural desire
to catch omens of the Conservative future from the
Ilterary organ of Conservatism.
The paper devoted to the requiem of Sir Robert
Pool's administration commences with an amusing
ass umptisn. " We presume that the great majority
of t hose who honour this journal with their coun-
tens.'ice and any share of confidence, will expect,"
&c. AC. The great principle of Conservatism is
simple and .easy of apprehension : it is to support
walls bed institutions. The character or tendency
of the :actilation is immaterial: only let it be esta-
blished. Adherence to this broad and Catholic princi-
ple comet isms exposes its votaries to the charge of
inconsistent 7, when they defend as established what
they oppose d before it was unablishcd; but in truth
there is no in. we inconsistency in them than there was
in Cobbett or in Southey, each of whom clung with
martyr-like p ertinacity to the faith that his opinions
for the time boing were sure to be right. After this
explanation the reader will not be surprised to learn
that the Quarterly adopts, aqd intimates its intention
to abide by, this " new line of policy, which far
brevity's sake we cull Sir Robert Peel's.
" We believe that Sir R 'Alert Peel has convinood himself that the
Reform Rill has as entirely shamed the practical scastittition of this
country that it can no longer he toothed in the old abialaidar ad by Ida
former means—that the anima balooreot gararmag Vas dr so-
ul= of parties is obsolete and iagraebaaW bag% dm bade
Do doubt, that the popular ;co monad/ °team'
is supreme, sad that it la wafer to ) irk* to DO arod lboa Walt
to be overthrown by its compressed, but, trilla at fat It Mad till°,
irresistible, force. had there is, no t• f, WM truth is watt elms.
If if whet we ramp expected front t.'wß4br,. Bill, OW what ice
still Mira wad be the )6,11 entail orthlt twasewre ; bat that danger
had not, in our opinion, yet arrived.
So the Quarterly only differs from Sir Robert Peel
on a question of time. It is angry with him because
he, for a quiet life, gave up in 1848, what it admits
must have been given up after a hard fight in 1850,
at farthest. But since Sir Robert has moved on, the
Quarterly will not go beck. It advances a whole
host of arguments to show that Peel's corn-law hav-
ing become the law of the land, one of our established
institutions, it is true Conservatism to support it.
The Conservatives are reminded that the Quarterly
advised them to make the measure permanent. " In

our last number we urged the Protectionist party, in
both the Commons and the Lords, to direct their most
strenuous efforts to throwing out the limitation of !
the act to three years." The Quarterly's reasons
for giving this advice arc curious. Providence, it
piously thinks, has caused the failure of the potato
crop to prevent the farmer suffering by the machi-
nations of the free-traders; and besides, the actual
duty under Sir Robert Peel's law is higher than it
would have been under the old. Sir Robert has giren
them more instead alms protection.
" Thayere other coma Mss may ex this year, and perhaps Mr
lowdeti tadlowest, the Mir= a the expereeenc The renewed sad
IMO ildinive fawn sr the pine seep soda very considerable dad-
away awe raw UK at Insley, estie. sad di Prins crops, IrM
Mama the enelleapdas sad mime, the priee what.
Ike eadinenta bawl/she/ekes gesereilly shark sad setae
fawn have not bed tine ter any eateries et eakiviiint tby wilt
haw !has to export. But above all it man he zsvasnissera that the
Bad& farmer has now, and will for three yeaglases lea prethestion
what very low prices, and • 4s. protection spina say gains, Infra
awe groteetson than under either of the forums, men-laws, M4cA
lbendoilmess dutr now 4s. was only Is. It is as additional proof atlas
fey and heedlessness with which this measure was peaked
Mat, professing to operate a reduction of duty to neat an
scarcity, it has—lf corn should really rae to madly
=e —1 quadrupled the duty that would here been payable
under the termer act The effect of this will be exemplified try the
fact that, of 16,000,000 quarters of wheat imported between 1,28 and
1842- meet' whet was thought the high protection own-1m above
6,000,000 quarters came in at la, and near 4.000,000 more at Is Oki.
per quarter; and, though from four plentifal harvests:he duty under
the late law had not fallen so law, it would cerbenly, under any real
pressure, have done so. The new wale of corn duties will, thezefore,
we expect, be found to afford a considerable degree of protection."
If this is the Quarterly's sincere opinion, it would
have done wisely to keep the secret; for, if once
" the popular power, commonly called public opinion,"
which the Quarterly thinks was made irresistible by
the Reform Bill, get hold of the notion, we will not
guarantee this increased protection its three years',
nor oven erne year's, oristenee. But the Quarterly has
no faith in what it says. This talk Is simply meant to
keep up the flagging spirit of the Tories, and encou-
rage them to protract a struggle which can only end
in defeat. The inveterate hostility displayed to Sir
Robert Peel throughout the article is only accounta-
ble on the ground that the reviewer knows Sir
Robert hes irretrievably broken up the party a few
years sooner than was necessary. Four years of
place and pay, four years of protected corn, have been
wantonly thrown away.
How far the writer is prepared to go, in sacrificing
everything to keep up the price of corn, appears from
what he says in reference to Irish destitution. After
admitting that Government did well in introducing
Indian corn, he adds, "but we must think ;that it
would have been still better if more active measures
had been taken to supply the people with oatmeal,
a food of their own growth, and the use
of
which would have had the double advantage
of feeding the destitute poor and benefiting
the farmer himself almost as poor and desti-
tute." And again: " Opening the Irish ports !
Why, the real remedy, had any interference
been necessary, would have been to close them—the
torrent of food was running outwards." In the eyes
of this writer, Ministers made quite a wrong use of the
scarcity. By keeping the Irish ports shut against the
entrance of foreign grain, they would have enabled
the Irish farmer to get famine prices for his corn at
home ; by shutting the Irish ports against the export
of Irish grain, they would have enabled the English
farmer to get famine prices for his grain in England.
What a chance was here thrown away of raising the
price of corn (and the rate of rents) on both sides of
the channel, by one master-stroke.
Into the fallacies of figures (arithmetical, not rheto-
rical), with which this article abounds, we are not
going to enter. They have no novelty to recommend
them. The article's feature of novelty and interest, is
the admission, that if the Conservative party
(with Peel cut off) can get into power again,
they are ready to uphold Peel's corn-law 0.8 one of
our established institutions.
The article on 'The Education of the People' is an
equally striking illustration of the readiness of con-
servatism to adopt any article into its creed as soon as
it is established. The principles avowed and defended
in this paper, would have made every hair on every
head of the orthodox readers of the Quarterly stand
on end, twenty years ago.
" With the most respectful and grateful confidence in the exertion'
of the Church—with the most frank and cordial sdnilasion of the
rights; and of the services of Dbeenters—the State must deliberately
determine no longer to look on ; and while the two parties are dis-
puting whether the people shall be brought up as churchmen or dis-
salters, leave them, in met accumulating numbers, heathens, or
worse than hettisessi. • • • The State, according to the ethane
constitution of the reams, car, make no exclusive grants from the
public pure. Her lidaWisthe sovereign of her whole people, what-
• their relaktillanisd.Pstrai,ment representsalike the Churchman,
theltanien Oathedis.thebdsgendent, the Vnitarian. Resenue raised
kW the Pinfiless ef edimaillan, whether from the Consolidated Fund
or by local innemern. Is paid alike by the Archbishop 01 Canterbury
and the follower se Alma. Soutbeote. • • • We hold it the
duty of the Chestier& asts hs provide for every poor man who cannot
provide it for hlnesU, a thumb, in which he may worship God; a
teacher who rosy •mt him in the revelation of God. Bet the
sing Ye a mingled function • not merely does a considerable pat
of lb assift bear so relation to religion, or even to morallAgt
eves Its lint assanshay protease" of all kinds (though sound morals
and netlike shisald et anew be their ultimate aim' are not essentially
religious. calm @malign not necessarily to read the bible, but to
read, In order that they may read the bible. Profane books teach epelling
as was se religious tracts; there in no test of religious opinion in the
rule of three. • • • The state then being absolutely precluded
from all partial assignment of its funds for the benefit of one religious
conun unity, in framing a plan of popular education, must take one of two
courses. Either it must leave the whole province of religion on.
touched, unbroken to the religious teacher during the afternoons of
Weshiesclays and Fridays or the whole of Sunday; or It mud ad
some neutral ground, scene conciliatory plan, on which the Mate
teacher may inculcate certain points of religion without giving °M ass
to any. • • • lithe State school does not teach religion, may it metes&
religiousness? We go further, conscious of our rashness ; —can the
religious school, or does It, ordinarily and effeetirely do more! • • •
In all good modern national schools the religiose instruction, which,
with sane scanty arithmetic, once formed the whole teaching, has
gradually receded, and receded till it tills but a still contracting peace.
Profane history, geography, grammar, etymology, the higher arith-
metic, tome elementary mem, have crept in on what was con-
sidered not only the dominant but the sole and exclusive study.
What was the old national school! The lowest clamps began to
read and ePell in Scriptural lessons ; they rose to the parablea
and miracles of our Lord ; then through Mrs. Trimmer's successive
selections; then to the Bible. It war the same with the Catechism:
first came the broken Catechism ; then some Catechism in question
and answer learned by rote; then the Catechism itself. Day alter
day, year after year, the same unvaricd Imoons in the same unvaried
forum. Did the wise friends of education, did the clergy find it asu
tiefactory system! Did it make the children intelligent ! Did It make
them, icligimm I • • • That we may restore its majesty, its authority,
its sanctity to the Bible, we must not withdraw it from general circu-
lation among the mature, but from its place as a common school book,
• • • We Mead guilty to something of a shudder when the lips of
YOung Wile. in well-regulated surday-aehoola, pronounce as coutidently
and dogmatically on the moat inscrutable articles of our faith, as they
do on the simplest elements of Chrietian duty. • • • We confess that
we have great sympathy with those who object to the Sun-
day being the hardest whole school.dav in the week. As
play-ground should, if possible, be inseparable from the schooi—st
least tne infant school ; so the innocent recreations of the
cowl not be lost sight of in the education of the people. Whoa=
seen the green-award of St. James's Park alive with joyous, taglelb
lag, tumbling children, on a line Sunday afternoon (blest he la
memory of poor Nash, therefore, and may his architectural ales Ile
light on his soul • whoever remembers the dull, straight es
stagnating through rank an/ needy grass, with a few
cows, the only subjects of the king which derived any tinsiltklett
may judge how much beto r it is for the bodies sal Ile en swab
those' little one.' (and for their parents too, if they 1110
than if they had been shut up in the best-managed Sunday
conning the most pious lessons."

Here be truths! In justice to the writer of this ad-
mirable paper, it must be observed that he is evidently
no mere conformer, though the party from among
which he speaks are mere conformers on this theme.
He has been allowed to bring his own opinions into
the circle, in order to induce him to join it. There
are marks of earnestness and sincerity in every part
of his views and arguments. And herein lies one
great mistake of such writers as of the article on the
close of Sir Robert Peel's administration. In that
article such men as this writer on education are
counted among a supposed parliamentary party of
310, who are expected to turn, and wind, and conform
like the old high and dry Tories. But this is a mis-
take. Of the 310, at least one half scout the doctrine
that institutions are good or bad simply as they are
established or otherwise.

"Rusk.
DRURY-LAlSE.—Madame Anna Bishop made her
&grid on the English state last evening, in Belle's opera,
" The Maid of Artois." The note of preparation for her
appearance had been sounded too long and too loudly, so
much having been said about the extent of her powers, that
it became a very difficult matter indeed to satisfy the
expectations which had been excited. That her perfor-
mance has not realised our anticipations we must
frankly say ; though her merits are such that
she deferred the very favourable reception she met with.
" The Maid of Artois," as our musical readers will re-
member, was produced about eleven years ago, with
Malibran for the heroine. She threw her whole ener-
gies into the part, and not only made a wonderful display of
genius in her own person, but breathed something of her I
spirit into poor Templeton, who, benefited by her instruc-
tions, and inspired by her example, acted and sang in a
manner of which nobody had imagined him capable, and which
he was never able to equal either before or since. The opera
had a run while Malibran performed in it, but it has been
ever since laid on the shelf, and it certainly owed its tempo-
rary success almost entirely to her. It was generally coin-
dered at the time to be a falling off from his previous opera,
" The Siege of Rochelle,",being inferior in freshness of style.
Balfe's peculiarities of manner, in the coinstruction and in-
strumentation of his music, when they wens new, had some-
thing of the effect of originality ; but, unfortunately, all his
subsequent works have been so strongly marked with the
self-same peculiarities, that a powerful impression of mono-
tony and sameness has been the result. In " The Maid of
Artois," it will be remembered, the heroine is a Ywne
country girl, who has been carried off from her friends and
her lover by a noble courtier of Louis XV. Her lover follows
her to Pans, and, finding her living (though innocently)
under the Marquis's roof, believes her faithless. He
obtains access to her apartment, and they are sur-

prised together the Marquis. A reneontre ensues,
in which the Marquis is wounded, and Jules, the
lover (who, in his despair, bad enlisted into a regi-
ment commanded by the Marquis) is tried for assaulting
his colonel, and transported to a French penal settlement in
Guiana. Isoline, the heroine, follows him disguised in male
attire, and finds him treated as a slave. They escape together,
and reach the sandy desert, where they are on the point of
perishing from exhaustion and thirst, when they are re-
lieved by the approach of the governor of the colony with
his cortege. The governor is no other than the Marquis,
who, touched aith the distress of the lovers, d elates him-
self no longer their enemy, and joins their hands. The
story is full of improbable and unaccountable incidents; but
it contains some good situation' especially the scene of the
lovers in the desert, which idalibmn represented with such
tenderness and pathos; bat it demands an actress of Mali-
bran's powers to give it effect. Madame Bishop's first ap.
pearance took place in the middle of the ling act. When
the curtain rote, and discovered her reclining on a couch, in
the attitude of one insensible, she was saluted with a loud
and general burst of applause. She very judiciou•ly did not
acknowledge it till she was able to chore forward without
deranging the action of the scene, when she made her curt-
seys with much grace. Her first morcents was a scene con-
sisting of a long recitative and en elaborate air, full of florid
divisions, and well calculated to show off a flexible voice and
skilful vocalizations. It was immediately apparent that
Madame Bishop possessed these qualities in an eminent
degree. We have rarely
.heard a purer tone, or more
finished delicacy of execution. Her intonation, too, was
beautifully true ; but, on the other hand, a lack of physical
powers made itself apparent. Her voice, though very
sweet, had no brilliancy ; it was somewhat thin, and had
that muffled tone which the Italians designate by the phrase,
vote relates. Her compass is that of a complete soprano, on
which account it is evident that Balfe must have re-written
a great part of the music of her part. The air which we
hare mentioned was encored, though with so much opposi-
tion, that she appeared to be fur some time in a painful state
of doubt whether she ought to obey the call. No other
morceau in the whole opera was encored, with the exception
of the well known " Light of other days," which wan ex.
eeedii.gly well sung by Bonsai. In the duet, " 0 leave me
not thus lonely,' sung by Mrs. bishop and Borrani, she
exhibited considerable power of passionate expression ; and
in the duet with Harrison,*." My bosom with hope," she was
equally happy. In the great seen in the desert, she suf-
fered by the unavoidable comparison with hfalibran. She
sang and acted with much feeling; but her physical powers
, were unequal to such an arduous effort. She was tender and
pathetic, but she could not utter those piercing cries
of agony and despair, with which (her predecessor
harrowed the very souls of the listeners. In the
spoken dialogue she was very defective. Her voice was so
weak as to be almost inaudible ; and she has no distinctness
or emphasis of elocution. It is evident that Italian recita-
tive is the only stage language with which she is conver-
t sant ; but, to be an English actress, she must learn to speak
her own language so aa to be heard and understood in a
, large theatre. In these hasty remarks we by no means wish
to convey any general opinion of her merits. We think, on
the whole, that they are great; and that, on further hear-
ing, her beauties wilt grow upon us, while, with increased
experience of the English stage, her defects will diminish ;
though we fear that her deficiency in vocal strength will be
an obstacle to her production of very powerful effects. The
opera was well got up, and, in the other parts, respectably
performed ; Harrison of course playing the lover, and 'ter-
rain the Marquis. Madame Bishop was greatly applauded
' during the piece, and received from the crowded audience
I the customary honours et its close.

'tie Drama.
LYCEUM.—" Which Mr. Smith?" a comic drama
in two acts, was produced at this theatre last evening, with
a success, to say the least, equal to its merits. The incidents
—for plot it caa scarcely be said to possess—were extra-
vagant and farcical, turnm7 wholly upon a mystification
produced by the legions of London Smiths upon one Jonas
Shedge, a rustic, who has come to town to wed a lady of
that name ; but having lost the address of her friends gets
into dire scrapes with a host of other Smiths in love. The
whsle of the subsequent action—after carrying on this sort
of imbroglio to an extent that makes even Jonas himself
exclaim, "There is too much of it"—an eetaireizsement is
effected, and Jonas finds himself minus his long-sought for
Miss Smith, who is assigned to a rival. Amidst a good deal
of what was, strictly speaking, conventional humour and
stage fun, practised from time immemorial, there was like-
wise a considerable sprinkling of racy freshnem and of hand-
over-head driving at every topic of the day in the dramatic
essay of which we now wnte, and these characteristics,
when duly tempered with judgment and experience, go far
to constitute in irodern times a successful playwright.
It is but justice to the actors in general, but more
particularly to Messrs. F. Math.ms, F. Vining, and
Emery, to say that they were equally zealous and per-
fect in their parts, and that the applause which they received
at the fall of the curtain was extremely well merited.