The Express.
London, England, 1850-12-28 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, SATURDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 28, 1850.

reeently had • novel about the Deaa's love affairs;
Croker is editing Pope ; only the other day all Eng-
land was listening to the Earl of Carlisle quoting the
little man with equal gusto and taste. Be.
fore us lies a radiant volume, coloured like
the " tiger-moth's deep &masked wings," that
Raab talk. about, which contain time papers is
the • Blestator " which tell the story of Sir Roger de
Oiroubtr. This happy idea we owe to Mr. Wine.
wits Ms written an agreeable preface, and added notes
aid alutrations, that admiration may want nothing
which literary industry can supply. He has done
bx Addison somethinr6estlike what Lord Elgin did for
Pleidies—brought the and greatest figure out of
the somparative obscurity of the temple into better
quarters. He seems to regret having to observe
that Sir Roger's conception and execution were
not all Addison's. For ourselves we are most
fully persuaded that he furnished the heart and
soul of the old gentleman. Steele had great
knowledge of " the world," and inexhaustible
liveliness, as so much of the gaiety and all the " ques-
tionable " gaiety of the famous old journal shows.
We can sully fancy that he suggested mach of what
is merely comic in Sir Anger—much of what depends
on contrast—a good deal of that whMh we laugh
(though very tenderly) at in him. But it is to Addi-
son that we owe the eternity of the individual. We
order it in our minds somewhat thus : that Steele
gave much of what was amusing then—Addison
what is living and loveable now. We remem-
ber, too, an anecdote which marks how subtle
and delicate was Addison's discrimination, when
compared even with such men es hie compeers. When
Pope sent to the Guardian that essay which Byron
cilia a "model of irony," wherein he with exquisite
ingenuity, affects to set Philippe' Pastorals above his
own while admirably demonstrating their inferiority,
Addison alone saw through the stratagem. Steele was
hoaxed, and the rest puzzled.
Sir Roger, though only set in the framework of an
essayist—and sometimes brought out just tobe preached
upon (u Thackeray thinks some very different old
fellows of our day ought to be), is as real, distinct,
and living a character as the drama or fiction
can supply. His unfortunate attachment to "the
perverse, beautiful widow of the next county,"
is really as melancholy as Otway, or as
' Keats's " Isabella." Romantic young gentlemen will
I laugh at this, but really we can easily fancy old Sir
Roger wandering in the cypress grove with the
• " youths who died for love." Addison's delicious hil-
-1 moor, to be sure, wraps a haze of sunlight round him,
, that blinds us to his melancholy, but think you a
saint may not be sorrowful though with an aureole
' round his head ? We thoroughly agree with Dr.
Johnson, that friend Addison should not have killed
Sir linger is order that he might have some "very
fine writing " about his death. This kind of thing is
very much as if the Greek actor who stimulated his
tragic powers by bringing his son's ashes in an urn
on the stage—had previously killed him to have him
ready for the effect !
Nevertheli as, Sir Roger still Huth, and in this
volume of Mr. Will. • will continue to charm many.
The book is beautifully printed, and in every way a
credit to those who have brought it out.

The Inaleman's Adventures us Me SostAorta Oooan.
Edited by the it.,, W. 8 , D.D , FAIL Samp-
son Low.
Peter the Whaler. By WILLIAM H. O. KINGSTON, BEI.,
Author of " How to Emigrate," " TM Albatross," Ike. ,
Great and Griffiths.
Here we have two contributions to " whaling
literature." There being now-a•days a literature of
everything, the whale himself has his own. He has
long been chronicled in corthern song ; and now his
history is edited by a doctor of divinity, and a
halo of romance thrown round him by a nautical
novelist.
The first of the above works contains the narrative
of an American missionary who embarked,. for the
sake of his health, in a whaling voyage in the South
Seas and Pacific Ocean. The Heir. Mr. Cheever, in a
voyage of 236 % from the Sandwich Islands to

days,
Bata, had various opportunities of seeing whaling
pea ice, and has recorded them in a bock which oon-
, tains a great deal of information on the subject gene-
Ally. Our readers know that the whale fishers have
boss geadually driving the whales to the poles. Oar
esbeol friend, the bakena Britannia; has long since
disappeared. Shoal after shoal has been consumed.
But the trade goes on merrily. We learn from Mr.
Cheever's first chapter that " the average yearly
quantity of sperm oil taken for the last nine years has
been 142,242 barrels; of right-whale oil, 255,4361
barrels; of whalebone, 2,324,0001b*. ;"and also that the
" imports of oil to foreign parts in 1848 from New
Bedford, were 17,093 barrels." It is a most airlift-
eant fact, which will sufficiently show how much the
Americans cultivate this trade, that nearly one-tenth
sf their whole navigation is employed is it.
Some interesting extracts from the volume will
IlikeW the bard and perilous hfe which many mast
had before we at home can light our domestic lamp
for household purposes.
One of a ship's company or officers in the North Pacific.,
' near the close of a day that had been rather Moray, says that
• school of young bell whales made 11:::tosipesranos close

1. 0, rhea the ham of a beaker ma roared over him, sad
esseal him to Abappear be ever I The boat wee rowed
rowed eel mead the lira spot spats sad span, until sight
fell, sad them the was slowly and reluctantly pulled to the
ship by her wriemeholy drew. At they returned, the turbu-
lent waves limed them about es if la maize the
boat ',broth front the Warn and dashing warts whisk
flew weird her bow.
The moment the aanttunate tram= disappeared, a Lugo
bird of the abattoir hied caste careerist along, mad alighted
ore the era* at the very spot whets the poor know was lest
set a. It was a MOONS einamstaam, and slily served to
heighten war honer, whin we Am the earesporotes bird
art *fedi Penal, twat the hood of our 000spolios ; sad
whirl also wired to ranted are of the number of sharks
that we hod so throned, seem of late, and of the horrible
propeasidee of which we read not dare to think.
In 'rodent 'Whistle betanco, whoa a boat was shrine
• whale, he stadasely tamed to windward, and made di-
reedy tor his pumas, who were so excited by the ahem as
to be algid to Amager. Oa, therefore they madly rushed,
without h7ing to avoid the infatiated imam, so seem were
they to please into kin their item, till the boat streak with
*ash term upon the whale's head, a. to throw the ears-
men hem their thwarts. At the same moment the boa-
t:Metes let Ay his two harpoons into the airmail, whisk thee
rolled over at its beak, sad before the boat could get clear of
the danger, being to windward, a heavy sea struck it, end
threw boat and nen into the whale's mouth' All, of mane,
=for their UM an , d they had bar to rly time throw
Ives clear of the boat, before it woe crushed to piton
by Mom imosedoroods jews, and its ejected mew were providen-
tially all picked up by another boat.
----- - - - -

A terrible little particular that last about the alba-
tross ! We ones heard a similar story from a naval
friend, which has ever sines diminished the horror
which we used to feel at Coleridge's " Ancient Mari-
ner" for killing his famous bird.
Mr. Cneever's book, u we hays said above, will be
found interesting and instructive, but it is decidedly
liable to some literary objections. When he urge, the
necessity of preserving the Sabbath, afloat we agree
with him. When he indulges in pious reflection, we
honour him. tWhen be quota; Coleridge and Cowper,
we sympathise with him. But we are bound to say
that there is too much in his work of that kind of
morbid methodisin which Sydney Smith used to lash in
the Edinburgh Review. Once he takes an opportunity,
apropos of the grave of a Tahitian, to have a fling at
the memory of Byron ; and once he suddenly diverges
from the subject of whales tothstof " suicide r—wben
he recommends, to prevent that melancholy crime
"the enacting • law, as they once did in ancient
Rome, to expose the body of every suicide naked in
the marketplace after death," (p. 81). The editor,
Dr. Scoresby, would have done well to strike out this
recommendation of a heathen custom by • Christian
minister: the sentiment is thoroughly contrary to the
humanity of the present age, and to the good feeling
of all ages. Mr. Cheever must have written it under
the influence of some maudlin feeling akin to sea-
sicknei.s.

" Feter the Whaler" is rather long. but we find it
full of true and animated painting. We have the less
hesitation in not quoting it, es moat readers of fiction
will be likely to peruse it. Bu: we have, besides, ex-
hausted our space, and our readers would find too-
juurs whale worse than even the proverbial Couleur'
perdrix.

.etcher of the English Landscape Piiiritees. By L. liaavy.
With Short Notice', by W. M. THACKIRAY. Bogue.
The revolutions of 1848 teat upset one throne and
shook so many others, drove from France, it seems,
one Monsieur Louis Marry, a landscape painter. But
in his exile be found the solitudes of Leicester-Kuhre
ekvered by one fact—M. Louis Marry had had, in
by-gone times, the pleasure of making the acquaint-
ance of the author of " Vanity Fair," in days
it would seem when the now popular novelist found
his chief companions and chief occupation amongst
artists and works of art in Paris, M. Marry, with
the eye of a painter, and with a zealous admir►tls
for excellence, found in London another source
of gratification in the abundance and excellence of its
paintings in water-colours. To admire was the lag
step, the second was to study, the third to espy 1111
stone, and the fourth to seek a publisher and profit
But publishers, as Mr. Theckeray explains in his
preface, would not hear of M. Marvy's appearance
before ` the --- of

_.,.ore the English pablio without _ name a
friend who should introduce him in due form, and
so M. Marvy's needs were kindly considered and
generously met by Michael Angelo Titmarsh himself.
Hence the appearance of this thin folio amongst the
crowd that offer themselves as gift books for New
ltsar's Dey.
"There are no incidents in our show," says the
editor in his preface " upon which the showman can
dilate ; in most caws he bout to introduce his audience
to the sight of a simple and quiet landscape, over
which ideal pleasure is ever the best commentary,
Slid concerning which it is as hard to explain one's
own emotions as to cause another to share in them."
TM sketches thus introduced are twenty in number,
selected from the works of Calloott, Turner, Holland,
Denby, Creswiek, Collins, Hedgrave, Lee, Ca-
-1 ter mole, W. J. Muller, Harding, Nasmyth,
Richard Wilson, E. W. Cooke, John CAI..
stable, I'. de Wint, Cox, Gainsborough, Roberts,
end Stanfield. Many of the selections Irom these
masters will be at once recognised as old fa-
mullet. Some may be remembered by the habituis
let oar water-colour exhibitions as amongst the gems
all

I avoiding al modern innovations. He was married to
164111. and WM his triad and early emanate.

'Comm By ALSIANDIS. vox Buissonor. Bsetioa 111.
VeL 8. Cone, Watteau.
This long-expeoted Third Part of the Emma has
,just appeared at Stuttgart.
Goethe said, To the Germans belongs the peculiar
gift of making the soleness inaccessible." It seems
me week of Alexander von Humboldt's life to repeal
His maitim. Kosmos, the erowning work of his fang
and arduous life exhibits him to us as the avast
isesser ot scienoe, summing up, before he gaits this
all that the conscious human soul his
learned of the universe, around, beneath, MA
above it.
Adore Humboldt, physical science had variety
IONIV, but its impressive influence was
and frittered away in detail. We had
if.t
botany, geology, Bre., artificial names
from the restrictions imposed on the excursivean
intellect, but the vision of one symmetrical harmo-
' Moos whole, a structure of perfect grandeur and
fair proportions was seen only by the poetic eye.
Men there were of excursive genius who directed
their attention to many sciences ; bat their number
was small, and this very quality was generally the
proof of an erratic, unstable, not to say frivolous
mind. Alexander von Humboldt tells us that an
Irresistible propensity to pumas science of various kinds
W Ma through many years to devote himself to
rmikerelar branches, to descriptive botany, geology,
ebemistry, astreselmisal observations, and terrestrial
meginilem. A .knewisdge of these things had been
W nest use the all of study, to him it was bat a
mum a preplasaion to emyrehend the phenomena
of Moss in their goosed seamection, to embrace na-
ture as a whole, ostosted ar animated by. eternal
kW& The discipline of special study was indispen-
Sltiezel has proved how for want of this the
general views of nature became but airy
This thorough indoctrination in pardon-
lam gained. Humboldt sallied out to observe,
as so man had ever done before him, the
vieible phenomena of the universe. He vi-
sited the interior of two great continents, and
marked the most striking contrasts of outward na-
tare—the Alpine landscapes of tropical America and
the dreary steppe-lands of Northern Asia. He
studied botany amidst the luxurious vegetation of
the New World—amidst the palm, the bananas, the
eyeadeas of the plain, the cinchona of the hills, m-
hos thilandias of still higher regions, and yet higher
in the stormy regioas of the Parmas he saw whole
meadows of glumaceous monocotyledons. Chemistry
and geology were applied as he watched the cauldron-
shaped throats of the hollow white mountains, sending
forth, above the line ot perpetual snow, carbonic acid,
kydro-aulphurets, and hot vapours. Amidst the gran-
deur of this magnificent scenery his idess expanded,
he felt that he had seen Nature face to face, and
henceforward the language in which he spoke f her
was distinguished by clearness, directnese, and confi-
dence. Now the scenes began to expand. Descrip-
tive betas'', for example, no Imre circumscribed to
mere clasefication, and the determination of goner&
and species, advanced to the doctrine of the geographi-
cal distribution of plants over the surface of the globe,
according to distance from the equator and height
above the level of the sea. Again, to illustrate the
causes of this distribution, the laws of climatic differ-
ence in respect of temperature, and the metemegitial
processes of the atmosphere, were to be investigated.
By following out this process, Humboldt has shows
that the beauty, the grandeur of Nature, thus re-
I girded:as a whole, were greater far than any with
which the most dreamy enthusiast, the most gifted
child of mere imagination, had ever dared to invest
his ideal worlds. Poetry, he maintains, is not some-
thing different from fact. It exists in the letter, and
to reveal this in-dwelling, so far as the framework of
the universe is concerned, is the peculiar task of the
modern cosmologist.
Having considered, in his two first volumes, the
history and phenomena of the land, the water, and
the air of this lower earth, the venerable author, in
' this, the first section of the third volume, just pub-
lished at Stuttgart, carries his readers upward to the
starry heavens—a welcome journey to most of his
countrymen, distracted by the loss of freedom, con-
stitutions, and almost of hope. It is one of the most
remarkable circumstances connected with the book
that it has been written in the very echo of the
neighing of war horses, the tramp of soldiers, and all
the bustle of impending strife. Humboldt seems re
solved to believe that a people which builds itself up
in knowledge and civilisation may defy the machina-
tions of Warsaw and retrieve the looses of Olmises,
and lot ns partake in his confidence. Know-
ledge, science, in Germany have been straggling
far two hundred Jeers to get away from a
Moe and barren method. Prom the alchemist to
Mesmer, and from him to the transcendental phy-
sicists, was no doubt a great step ; but before science
could confer material benefits upon society and
strengthen civilisation, it was necessary to throw off
the merely deductive, ideal process of inquiry, and
come out into the world of practice and experiment.
The Germans have been the lest to do this, and
Oken is • living proof that the old spirit is still strong.
Nevertheless, the discoveries of Liebig, Oersted,
Ehrenberg, and, above all, the grand generalisations
of Humboldt, demonstrate that the greatest physicists
of the age thoroughly understand the conditions
under which alone the natural sciences can be suc-
cessfully cultivated. Like the knight in the legend,
science in Germany has watched through the long
night of purification, and will now rise to battle
with the barbarism which menaces the land from the
east. If any one man has contributed more than
another to develope this new power in the minds of
the mass of the population in Germany, it is Hum-
boldt, who has freed knowledge from its cambrims
farms, and offered to all the fruit of science without
its leaves. In this last gift of the great philosopher,
any reader of average information will find an intel-
ligible account of every memorable astronomical fact
since the invention of the telescope. Such a work
does not offer facilities for quotation, which is the
less to be regretted as the English public is sure
of at least two translations from competent hands.