The Express.
London, England, 1858-07-17 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY MIMING, JULY 17, 1868.

LITERATURE.

HISTORY.

History of Bragland during the Reign Eff George
the Third. By WILLIAM Mement, M.P. Vol.
11. John W. Parker and Son.
History of the Life of Arthur Duke of Wellington.
From the French of M. Brialmont, with emenda-
tions and addition.. By the Rev. 0. R. Outto,
M.A. In 3 vols. Longman..
History of Wesleyan Methodism. By GEORGE
SMITII, LL.D. VOI. 11. Longman'.
History is the oldest of the Muses, and apparently
lis destined to a longer existence than the rest. In
all times and season.--as well in the decay as in the
rise of nations—when war sounds its clarion or peace
sheds her golden blessings round, it remains the true
interpreter of the put and the best exponent of the
future. By means of it

In our halls are hong
Armoury of the invincible knights of old.
It teaches us a way of escape from present
danger. Why fear the confessional, when we call to
mind how our fathers burst the spell of " hireling
priests whose conscience is their snare ?" The very
memories of Crecy and Agincourt and Pefetiers, of
the Armada or the battle of the Nile, of Blenheim
sad Waterloo, are a tower of strength. What are
the belles letiree or mathetics—or music, or pickaxes,
compared with the grand realities of history, the
bare recital of which affects the heart, as a trumpet
might wake us up from dream and sham. It
may not be true, we believe it is not, that
the cos populi is always the oar Dei, but this
is certain, that in the long run the voice of
history is, with more or leas distinctness, the
voice of truth. Let us descend to parti-
culars. We begin with Mr. Massey, M.P. Though
a statesman and an official, he does not, likes greater
statesman and official, believe history to be false. In
this second volume the history of England is carried
from 1770 to 1780 ; but, besides, we have a sketch of
89 pages devoted to the state of society in England,
and the development of modern manners, here and
there • little too much framed upon the model of
Macaulay. When Herodotus recited his history,
the youthful Thucydides was present, and received
thatimpulse which in after years led to the writing
his account of the Peloponnesian war ; but he did
not copy his master. Mr. Mussy, nevertheless,
has told what he has to tell in a very pleasant and
readable manner. His philosophy does not seem
very profound, but his history will be none the less
popular. We do not think he does quite justice to
George 111., who was an honest man, though not a
very enlightened one—and who, in all his acts, even
to the freeing of himself from the whig lords, who
had come to look upon government as their special
prerogative, was aided and backed up by the English
people, of whom at that time, in all their weakness
and their strength, their honesty and their igno-
rince, he was an admirable representative. The
principal events here discussed are the decline
of the whir, the rims of the American
Revolution, Parliamentary Privilege, the Partition of
Poland, the Royal Marriage Act, and the Gordon
Riots. Mr. Massey in very strong and proper lan-
guage condemns the Royal Marriage Act, to which
he says George HI. sacrificed the happiness and
respectability of his own children. He terms the
partition of Poland an act of audacious rapine; but
he tells us, " it was accomplished by regular com-
pact, without any resistance on the part of the help-
less victim, and with the passive assent of Europe."
He blames the infatuated policy of the English go-
vernment which led to the ultimate independence
of America; but he is compelled to confess that in
this instance "the obstinate pride of the Eng-
Ualij people coincided with that of their
sovereign.' One thing is very clear, that the country
is under great obligations to the parliamentary rs-
portere. In those days the excitement of the de-
bates was heightened by bitter and frequent per-
' sonalities. On one occasion, Mr. Massey writes,
the Speaker interposed several times to stem the
torrent of invective, bat io a style very different
from that to which the parliaments of Victoria have
been accustomed. " I am heartily tired," said he,
" of this business, and should be glad to put an end
to it." Again, he endeavours to stop the quarrel be-
tween Conway and Burke, by exclaiming, when it
was at the height of its fury, ' For God's sake, let
u go on with the debate." Men whose speeches are
printed and circulated all over England are compelled
to a greater decency of language than would otherwise
be the case. In the preliminary sketch our author
exults at oar national progress in intelligence and
virtue, and yet quotes Miss Berry. who refers to the
evidence on the trial of the celebrated action of
crim. eon. by the Duke of Norfolk against Sir John
Germaine, in the reign of William 111., as showing
the difficulty in those days of finding a place of
assignation. Again, we read—" The middle classes
in London vied with their superiors in luxury and
profligacy of every description. The more ambi-
tious citizens, with their wives and daughters, clad
in the costly fashion of the day, enjoyed the pleasure
of jostling lords and ladies at Vauxhall ;" but in these
days the lords and ladies deny the middle classes
even that poor consolation, and appropriate Cre-
morne to themselves under the mock plea of charity;
but these trifles are scarce worth mentioning. We
recommend Mr. Massey's work to our readers. It
is by far the best history we have of the reign of
George 111., and we look forward to its speedy com-
pletion. Somehow or other Mr. Massey will have
to compress its concluding pages rather more, sr he
will find he has composed a work which is too
bulky for general circulation. Our historians must
avoid digression and expansion. Young England
has but little time to " mark, learn, and inwardly
digest."
The new life of the late Duke of Wellington,
written by M. Brialmont, contain on the staff of the
Belgian army, and translated, with emendations and
additions, by the Rev. 0. R. Gleig, M.A., is a work
of great ability and interest. To both gentlemen it
has been a labour of love.' M. Brialmont writes of
the Duke of Wellington as if the public+ and private
character of that illustrious man bad been with him a
life study ; especially does he seem to have mastered
the Duke's military operations io India and Europe,
and forcible is his protest against the injustice done
by the French to our hero of Waterloo. The only
excitations we can take are to the description of
the Duke's army, which M. Brialmont occasionally
speaks of in very severe terms, and to his strictures
on the East India Company, to which he attributes
a systematic plan of conquest, of which the Company
had no idea. With respect to Mr. Gleig we must
remark that he has performed his part in • manner
most materially calculated to add to the value of the
original work. There was a time, he confesses,
when the thought of becoming, sooner or later, the
biographer of the great Duke haunted him like •
passion. Indeed he even went so far as to open the
subject to his Grace himself in his lifetime. Bat
the proposal was declined. It was he adds, impos-
sible " to fence with arguments which turned upon
a generous respect for the reputation of others, or to
doubt the Stun of postponing to some future ago
revelations which could not be made in the present,
except at the cost of much private suffering and no
small amount of public inconvenience." Under
these circumstances Mr. Gleig has acted wisely in
taking Brialmont's work as his text book, and in
adding to it what he knew of Wellington personally,
or from the peculiar sources of information to
which he had access. We await the comple-
tion of this work with great anxiety, as it
promises to be without exception the best memoir
we have in our language of its illustriois subject.
In the concluding volume we shall have less of M.
Brialmont and more of Mr. Gleig. The latter gentle-
mu says, " Seeing that the history of the Doke of
Wellington divides itself naturally into two portions,
I content myself for the present with describing,
chiefly in the words of M. Brialmont, his military
career alone. What remains to be said of him as a
statesman and a member of society shall be said as
soon as time and reflection enable me to digest

to my own satisfaction the matter which I
have been able to collect." In this section
of the work we must not expect much
novelty, yet we think the following aneodote is
new. M. Brialmont has been referring to the
duke's gaiety, when barely twenty-one he became a
captain of cavalry and aide•de-camp to the Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland, and to consequent pecuniary
embarrassment. Mr. Gleig gives this illustration of
the sagacity of

THE DUKE ON XONLY MATTIia.
The writes of these sentences enjoyed, on several occasions,
the greet privilege of spending da” together with the illus-
trious duke, in the retirement of ilner Castle. At such
times his grace did not hesitate to mousse huh about him-
self, and the subject of subscriptions sad of ott happen-
ing to ariee, be once produced his well-kept account-book for
the year. It appeared from that document that he had given
away, between January and December, tionsidersbly more
then 4,0001. " I make a point nee," he used to say, "of
paying my own bills, and I advise everybody to do the came.
Formerly I used to trust a confidential servant to pay them ;
but I was cured of that folly by receiving one morning. to
my great surprise, dune of a year or two standing. The
fellow had speculated with my money, and left my bill. un-
paid." Talkies of debt, his remark was, "It makes a slave
of a man. I have often known what it was to be in want of
money, but I never got into debt."
From Wellington to Wesley is en abrupt transi-
tion: bat the tnumpha of Peace are no leas legiti-
mate matters of history than the triumphs of War.
Wesleyan methodism, in its rise and progress,
must ever be considered as one of the most singular
chapters in the religious history of this oonntry.
Oar readers may remember that last year we an-
nounced the fact that thin movement had found in
Dr. George Smith a fitting historian. We have
now the second volume of his work before us. It
is devoted to what he calls the middle age. As we
might expect, when Wesley died, when the one
ruling mind was withdrawn, many were the muters
who rose up, and great and fierce were the subse-
quent controversies. The principal were those rela-
tive to the administration of the sacraments; those
raised by Mr. Kilham—who appears to have been
that bugbear in the eyes of Dr. Smith and the Con-
ference, a methodist reformer; and those relating to
discipline, all to our mind attributable to the fact
that Mr. Wesley, a churchman in theory, had made
a large section of the religious public dissenters, and
yet had withheld from them that principle of self.
government which is the very essence of dissent.
But Dr. Smith will not agree with us, for he is a
very warm adherent of Wesleyaniam, as founded by
Wesley and built up by the Conference ; and the
reader must not, therefore, be surprised at a minute-
ness which at times is apt to prove not a little weari-
some. We get occasionally carious illustrations of
facts, mode of thought, and feeling. In 1798 we find
"a judicious senior preacher " gravely advising that
"no more preachers should come to the Conference of
1798 than were absolutely necessary for the transac-
tion of the requisite business, lest the price of pro-
visions should be raised still higher, and both them-
selves and their chapels fall a sacrifice to the
popular prejudice and fury." Our author enters at
some length into the subject of what are called re-
ligious revivals, and defends the noise and violence
in which penitents indulge in such oases. He men-
tions some singular cases which had come under
his own knowledge. In one case a prize-fighter
became affected—kneeling, he prayed in agony of
spirit. " His straggle continued for some two or
three hours, and during that time he beat his knees
through the flooring boards on which they rested.
This was done so completely that both boards were
fairly broken, and had to be replaced immediately."
We have another case of a Cornish miner, who
prayed for six hours without rising from
his knees. Another owe is almost amusing from
its simple earnestness. A stalwart miner, hay-
ing • thick woollen jacket on his arm, such as
I miners wear when engaged at the surface of the
mine in the depth of winter, during a revival was
met by a local preacher, who asked him where he
was going, " I am going," replied the man, " over
to 'Croon Chapel ; I have been there twice before for
some hours, praying to God to pardon my sins, but I
have found no relief yet, but I am determined now
to find mercy before I return." " But," said the
preacher, " if you are going to chapel what are you
about to do with your flannel jacket P" " Why,"
said the man, " kneeling upon the bard
floor so many hours makes one very sore,
and as I am determined to find merely
this time I take my jacket to kneel
on." No wonder Methodism prospered when
its rank and file were made of each indomit-
able stuff. In conclasion, we may add that Dr.
Smith, with natural pride, records the names of
Samuel Drew and Dr. Adam Clarke—that if he
refers to the libels cut upon the methodists by
various writers connected with the established
church, from whom they had a right to expect better
things, it is not with a view to create ill-will—and
that the rejection of Lord Sidmonth's measure of
1811, affecting protestant dissenting ministers, is
considered ea a mighty triumph, as in reality it was.
" If that bill had passed," says Dr. Smith, " Me-
thodism, which had flourished amid brutal persecu-
tion, and increased in numbers and influence although
opposed by the pride of power and the most bitter
denunciations and invectives of the press, would
have been crushed by an unjust and persecuting
penal law."

AUTHOR! AND MI

-Here in Paris we

have a whole clam of literary men, the lam of which I be-
Have exists not in Ragland ; men who, whilst clinging to
the dignity of belonging to the literary profession, and
actually practising the pranging', still engage largely in
commercial liminess. All Perla is for example at this
moment talking about a very sprightly, and very clever
volume, entitled " Le Roi Voltaire," by M. Amami Roue-
aye. Thin gentleman is • profemional author of high stand-
leg. and for some tiros held the eminent literary position of
director of the Tlintre Froncaie, the gnat clangsl theatre
of Paris; and he is a Stock Exchange speculator en
and has realised a good fortune by dabbling in the these per
oenta, and corsols, and mines, and railway., sod
non-literary things. The newspapers an announcing
that " a new pia, by M. Felix Solar has just
been accepted at the Vaudeville Theatre," and M. Solar
is a dramatist of some not., has written novels
not devoid of merit, *ad is of high reputation ea •
journalist; but ha is a great banker and financier too, and
know. as much about the money market as anybody. I se.
maned the advertisements la the daily newepapera that a
eirteda 111. Dowry, mansger of the bathing eetabilannent
at Cabmerg-Dives. calls a meeting of the shmeholders to
present his annual mooonts; and this bath manger is the
very ems Ramie" who writes the most enocershil melo-
drama ef the Benlevani theatres. The name of M. John
Lemehme, sametary acne of the Spanish railways, is well
known ha mareantile dales; it is known just as well in
lit circles also for it is the same M. John
Lemdeaa who writes PO brilliantly on nolitica. and
so eberatingly en literature in the letineed le. Dtbats.
U. Jourdain, one of the most remarkable philosophical
and political writers of the day, is understood to
be an active manager of a great banking and 'prow
lacing enterprise. Not long since an author, not earning so
much mosey by his pea as he wished, started an eatiag-
house, and beams wealthy. And I could same et leen a
dozen literary men of more or lass note who are directon of
tub companies or mining companies, or are engaged in scene
way or other in commercial undertakings —Unary Gazette.
LADY BI7LWER LYTTON.—" We have sincere
pleasure is stating," PST, the Mans* lMd, "that cur
recent antielparioe has been realised, and that, On • spe-
cial more by Dr. Forbes Winslow, a family arrannmelate
letlafacery to all Duties, was yesterday cowhide& and Lady
Bedew Lyttou will return to town this day."—TheLgasufay
Timm has " the very beat authority " for stating that dm
Mete are simply these It having been satisfeelarity es-
°whined that Lady Lytton was suffering from the effeete of
mental excitement, it was thought absolutely nemeary,
for her own sake, that she should nosh* proper
medical attendance daring her neelatly, end she was
therefore pieced under the eon of ea eminent pre-
tampions! man, who enjoys a high reputation far his
skill and mild treatment el mingle patimits. She has, we
sewn, lied the fullest acorn to her legal adviser, and say
he selectedto neekar; said she has been visited
Cileraalson and other Mande. The Mearabeinners appointed
by law to examine snob oases, reported her to the bond to
be in an unsound Mato of mind, and, enaoquwtl it be-
came weeeneary for her own safety, that she idle planed
tinder temporary reseraiat. It is conlidentiv anticipated, by
her Mends, that her mental excitement will yield in a her
thee to the skilful medical treatment she is now receiving,
when she will be permitted, and accompanied by an affec-
tionate son, to go wherever she may desire."