The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-08 00:00:00

itatraturr.

NEW Et)ES

Ate :it a year ago Mrs. Et.e.ei;ile Lott t we believe
we are correct in giving her the inerried title) pub-
lished a work entitled " Harem 11fe in Egypt and
Turkey." She had been g ;et a t his Highness
Ibrahim the G mud Pasha, son •f the Vict•roy of
Egypt. mid lcni therefore set o 'teething of the
',lift' el it:, -1 life which she -;•• ;:it to depict.
Her I.• %ewer, was written I a very aid style,
and abound:A ineletails 441 respect to
which ludic- Are generally more t• icelit when they
canoe before the public. Never sews she boasts
of having Achieved a great sack', SS, re:,l she now
favours %%eels another dish eoesie • miler the
title of ,`.'ite the Moo, .111. y•; hive in
th • Pablo, of • (Chapman .0.1 ILI:). A Mo-
holt rye is a Remy-teller. and the story-teller
in the pneent vol a i na e.id Abyssi-
nian snores: in attendants II the youthful
Pasha, who undertakes, 1,.1 the entertain-
ment of that young pentle.ean, to relate
some of his reminiscences of act •• • • :ervice. How
his highness a ill like being teeenated with all this
fic!;.in —for fiction, of course, it is in ties main--we
do not know but a more impeet.ee ipe /otlolll for •
the critic is, how the public will ,I:•,Te•stel to re-
gard this attempt to give us ..: sort of modern
" Arabian Nights' Entertainue nes.- Unfortu-
nately Mrs. L. :es style is not At all :1 for such
a purpose—nor, indeed, rafar ps se can see,for any
other purpose, unless, perhaps. that of writing long
letteie full of feminine contideeees to lady corre-
spondents. The ideas of literal, e•miseition pos-
sessed by Mrs. Lott are those of a lady's meld who
bas picked up a few fine phrases A smattering
of I. rench and Italian while i^ .tee ndance on her
mistress—to which, owing to her re .elence in the
Nast, she has been enabled to Ad a sprinkle of
Turkish and Arabic. In her pref ice she makes an
excuse for writing a polyglot, a the g.,nod that
the persons forming the ceurt f Egypt do really
talk in a stranee sort of pit.; , :icitle up of that
scattered members of various laetemees, oriental
and European. But as she was wt- tmg her book in
English, there was no necessity imitating the
jargoi sof a people who have re der:: I :mg mtge. Itan-
ewers no conceivable purpose (siege Mrs. Lott was
not compiling a phrase-book for convenience of
English visitors to Cairo) to leefaee the words
" fin be it ! So be it ! Yon are the master ; you
know best," by the equivalent expressions in
Arabic or Turkish : " Hipsi birdie! Hipsi hirdir !
Stu ektiar der Agent ! lieu biersin !" Yet Mrs.
Lott constently insists on making us swallow such
pills as these, and seems to think they give local
colour to her writing. It is only those who lack
the power of giving the true loud tint who
indulge in this sort of cheep vandsli. Mr.
Lane, who can reproduce an Eastern story
from its perent source ao that yoa appear to
see and feel the many-coloured orient glow and
burn around you, effects this result. Ly the use of
pure and masterly English. only resorting to
Arabic in the designation of i,it:cvs, or of things
peculiar to the East. But Mrs, Lott likes to show
her learning, and simply bores us in se doing. In
other respects, too, her style is vexatious and
vulgar. Hew can we get on with a work bristling
with feminine italics and weak inuendo, after
this fashion ? "My little p:.pil, 11. H. the
Grand Pasha Ibrahim, the heitieuee son of the
Viceroy of Zgypt, and now, through the erai•iiiiis
Erman of Sultan Abdul Aziz, heir presumptive to
the Viceroyalty of Egypt." . . . "To me the
practice became a perfect
powerless to check it." . . . " Such delights are
little in vogue among the houris of Ismail Pasha's
earthly pant-lige." . . . "Hap any danger me-
naced me f- on any of the attendants of his high-
ness, I fel: assured that my own speriot Prince
would have aterfered in my behalf. I have since
learned tha , had I been 'spirited crime,' which
iu all probability would have been my kismet, had
not Allah pr itected me from the tricks and manners
of a clique, would have required a considerable
amount of o.:teeted pressure in the highest quarter
of a certain circumlocution office to have roused
elfreiat inquiry." We hope the Foreign-office will
feel duly crushed by these italicised sarcasms;
also Mrs. Lott's " special Prince," whoever he may
be. We hear a good deal of the " spectres " and
"phantoms" who attend on the beauties of the
harem (for that is Mrs. Lott's considerate way of
alluding to the emasculated body guard of the
Sultanas) ; and we have some account of the lowest
class of Eublic women in Cairo, who, when Mrs.
Lett inspected them, indulged, tile assures us, " in
language which might have even shucked the loosest
denizens of the paor,s of London or Paris." Cer-
tainly, upon occasion, Mrs. Lott can speak very
plainly.
A deeply interesting volume has been written by
the Rey. B. G. Johns, M.A., on Blind People,
their Works awl Intyx : with tiket-lies of the Lima of
aumle Pawners Blind Men (John Murray). As the
chaplain of the Blind School in St. George's-fields,
Mr. Johns has had many opportunities of studying
the characters and manners of blind people,their
dispositions as modified by the calamity with which
they have been visited, and their capacity for exer-
cising various crafts. He has also studied the
records of his subject in books, and has them made
a curious and valuable addition to the works already
existing on this topic. Always writing with good
sense as well as good feeling, he does not exaggerate
the achievements of the blind, but shows exactly
what they can and what they cannot do ; and
in his remarks on the proper mode of train-
ing them, he evinces a thoughtful and be-
nevolent spirit, as well as that personal acquaint-
ance with the facts of the case which can alone give
proper guidance to the judgment. Persons afflicted
an this way are particularly apt to become morose,
desponding, and selfish, if a healthy and cheerful
direction be not given to their thoughts, and if
their powers of self-help be not developed in every
possible way. Saunderson, the great mathemati-
cian of the early part of last century, was a prey to
gloomy ideas and splenetic humours, even with all
the resources of his strong intellect and high edu-
station, and his death-bed was clouded with the
most distressing doubts, not indeed of the existence,
but of the goodness, of God. Generally, however,
the culture of the mental powers, and especially the
acquisition of some manual trade, gives a tone
of cheerfulness to the blind, and often they
are quite merry and playful. But, if their
sense of isolation, of loneliness and all-in-
vesting gloom, be not corrected by judicious
training, they are very liable to dwell with
morbid persistency on their misfortune, to think
perpetually of themselves, to become suspicious,
Irritable, and antagonistic. Mr. Johns is very
emphatic in urging on the parents of blind children
the necessity of beginning very early the special train-
ing which is required to save them from an utter
blank, of developing in them a spirit of reliance on
the beneficence of the Creator, and of avoiding the
two extremes of excessive petting and cold neglect.
It appears that at present blindness is decreasing in
England, and increseing in the United States ; but
Mr. Johns thinks that It may again mount up in
our own country, as its staunchest allies, typhus
and scarlet fever, are almost as deadly as ever.
His book (which is excellently illustrated) contains
1301110 very interesting accounts of the industrial
pursuits of the blind, and memoirs of Francis
Huber, the blind naturalist ; John Metcalfe, the
blind roadmaker ; John Stanley, the blind musician ;
and Nicholas Saunderson, the blind mathematician.

In A Quiet Nook in the Jura (Edmonton and
Douglas), the author of " Doctor Antonio" has
given us, in a single volume, a charming tale of a
German-Swiss village. The story is alight, but the
writing is extremely pleasant, and the characters
are skilfully imagined and worked out. A vein of
unobtrusive humour runs through the book, and
the general effect it leaves on the mind is that of
the companionship of a bright and cheerful nature.
The first volume of Mr. Anthony Trollops s Last
Chronicle of Barset (Smith, Elder, and Co.), which
has been appearing for some months past in the
form of weekly numbers, lies bekre us. To criti-
cise half a work of the literary value of anything
proceeding from the pen of a Trollops is clearly
out of the question ; so we must postpone till the
appearance of the second and final volume such
remarks as we may have to make on the present
novel. Wo may observe, however, that it is marked