The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-24 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The _History of Europe ; from the Fall of Napoleon
to the Accession of Louis Napoleon. Vol. IV.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart. Blackwood.
The extraordinary undertaking upon which Sir
Archibald Alison adventured, almost simultane-
ously with the first announcement of this addition
to his great history is, even now, hastening to-
wards ita completion with a rapidity for which
those moat intimately acquainted with his facile
hand, and fluent style, and indomitable persever-
ance could scarcely have been prepared. Already
two-thirds of the " Continuation ' to the original
work, descriptive of Europe, from the outbreak of
the French Revolution in 1789, to the last great
battle in the " war of giants," variously known
lamong the victors and the vanquished as that of
Waterloo or of Mont St. Jean, are at this moment
in our possession. Four out of the six promised
volumes, delineative of the events which trans-
pired in the comparatively tranquil but still sin-
gularly momentous interval of thirty-seven years,
extending from 1815 to 1852 ; from the downfall
of the Great Napoleon to the accession of his Im-
perial successor, have already made their appear-
ance. The fourteen volumes of the finest (the
library) edition of " Alison's History of Europe,"
have multiplied to eighteen upon our bookshelves.
At this rate of advance on the part of our annalist,
the score must very speedily be ranged together in
that familiar and frequented portion of our trea-
sury of literature. Sixty-three years; such as the
world has no record of, humanly speaking, com-
parable in their mighty influences upon the
destinies of the race of man, and upon the
growth of his wondrous scheme of civilisation, will
then have been portrayed by one master hand
through the medium of one homogeneous composi-
tion. The mere labour required to this end from
our author, in the way of preliminary research is of
itself somewhat bewildering in the mere contem-
plation. A cursory glance at the catalogae of the
principal works referred to by him in the original
enterprise will illustrate the fact here implied with
sufficient distinctness. That catalogue—prefixed
to the initial volume of every recent edition of the
" History of Europe"—numbers within itself, as
will doubtless be remembered by the majority of
observant readers, a library of no inconsiderable di-
mensions—a voluminous mass of memoirs, diaries,
letters, and autobiographies, to say nothing of
state papers, public journals, political pamphlets,
parliamentary shorthand reports, official corres-
pondence, and diplomatic despatches altogether
beyond the limits of ordinary calculation. Sir Ar-
chibald Alison, it must not be forgotten by those
who would estimate aright the value of his literary
enterprise, had to read these, to study them piece-
meal, to weigh one authority against another, to
eliminate from the chaos of evidence whatever was
simply supposititious or purely hypothetical, and
then, after all this enormous trial by way of prepa-
ration, to draw out a distinct thread of narrative (if
any metaphor so seemingly affected, but in reality
so literally truthful in its elucidation, may be
allowed) to draw out, we say, a distinct thread of
narrative from the tangled mass of crud facts,
dates, and memorabilia accumulated by his re-
searches, as the fibrous flax is collected upon the
shaft of the revolving spindle. That thread of the
wonderful narrative has not only been evolved by
him from the original jumble of the raw materials
required in its fabrication, but it has, in the fabric
of this " strange, eventful history," been woven
afterwards through weft and woof, in a rhetorical
broidery of singular and exquisite elaboration. The
opening of each additional volume is like the un-
folding of a new division of some extended tapestry.
, The latest portion of these grand historical "hang-
ings" of the Walhalla spread before us for our
contemplation, discloses to view the varying spec-
tacle presented by the chief nations of Europe be-
tween 1822 and 1832—a decade fraught with so
many momentous consequences. It describes, for
example among other things the deplorable condi-
tion of Ireland during the earlier agitations, caused
on one side by the Orange lodges and on the othe-
by the Secret Societies, such as those of the Rib-
bonmen, up to 1825, the year of the monetary
crisis, and ultimately to the March of 1829, the
ever-memorable date of Catholic Emancipation.
It delineates, again, England as she appeared in
her domestic history from the last-mentioned period
—that of Catholic Emancipation—down to the fall
of the Wellington Administration in 1830, and
subsequently to the passing of the famous Reform
Bill in 1832. While in reference to France the
annals of the period extend from the accession of
Louis Philippe, in the July of 1830, to the abolition
of the hereditary peerage in the September of 1831;
the other great continental occurrences including in
their number the oYerthrow of the kingdom of the
Netherlands, and the rise and fall of the Polish
Revolution. The daring of the enterprise adven-
tured upon by Sir Archibald, when he resolved
upon continuing the History of Europe, from the,
Battle of Waterloo, down to a time almost im-
mediately contemporaneous, has become, we fancy,
in the present volume, oven to the least divining,
signally apparent. In the twenty-third chapter,
for example, we find our annalist beginning witl;
page 280, and ending with page 293, each inclu-
sively, taking into consideration one by one the
characters of the chief statesmen of his time, sketch-
ing off, in this manner, with a few master touches,
the distinguishing features of the late Earl Grey,
of Lord Brougham, of Lord Melbourne, of Lord
John Russell, and of Sir James Graham—as in
other portions of this same volume we find him
pencilling the salient points in the genius and cha-
racters of such men as Robert Peel, George Can-
ning, Daniel O'Connell, and William Huskisson.
However much Sir Archibald may endeavour to
write at these times from the serene altitude of his-
torical impartiality, he cannot for the life of him
help blurting out that vitriolic partisanship which
has constituted so long the principal cautery in the
political correctives of Mag,a ! It is evidently
with a kind of exulting gusto that he tiansc...ribes
the diatribe indulged in by Miss HarrietMartineau,
when that free-thinking bas b'eu undertakes to re-
prehend, in a kindred strain of high-flown
scurrility, what she calls " the atrocity of
the language" indulged in by the late liberator.
We are glad to observe our author, when he is
speaking of Lord Brougham, not only combatting
i.n absurd popular delusion in his regard, when he
says of the great law-lord "it is a mistake to
imagine that he proved a failure on the bench,"
but paying to his genius and his career that full
weed of panegyric which will be his indubitably in
the hereafter. It is amusing, by the way, after we
have scanned the few sentences of feeble commen-
dation vouchsafed to Lord John Russell by our
honest, plain-spoken Tory annalist, to meditate for
an instant over the position perversely assumed by
the noble lord since this estimate of his character
was written by Sir Archibald—and then to remem-
ber the almost miraculous exactitude with which
that position was in a manner foreseen by a writer
of fiction several long years ago, we mean by the
late W. H. Maxwell, who, in his " Stories of
Waterloo," thus unconsciously sketched out the
career of Lord John Russell, when he spoke in
these words of his imaginary Earl of Enstonby,
" For many years the Earl had held a leading situa-
lion in the Cabinet ; but owing to causes not rele-
vant to this story, he had failed in a diplomatic
mission, fallen into disgrace, and been, obliged to
retire from office." See the tale of " Sarsfleld" in
the "Stories of Waterloo," vol. 1, p. 62. A sen-
tence that, we take it, to the very T, descriptive
of the position arrived at very recently by Lord
John Russell. Not thus prophetic in regard to
Lord John are the words of the historian of
Europe, who says of him, mal 'apropos enough,
"In one respect his conduct has always been
worthy of the very highest admiration—
he never shirks responsibility"—saying this,
observe, on the very eve of that return from
Vienna, where the responsibility, exAusively in-
curred by himself, of recommending the Cabinet
to accede to the terms proposed by Austria, was
shirked altogether by the noble lord in that speech
which cannot very easily be either forgiven or
forgotten, in which, by a daring reticence, he
shamefully concealed the truth from the knowledge
of the Imperial Parliament. Returning to the consi-
deration of the work before us; however, it will be
enough for us to add that it constitutes an accurate
record of the more memorable facts which trans-
pired in Europe, principally as already intimated
in England, and France, and Poland, and the
Netherlands, during ten of the nearly forty years'
peace which succeeded the last deadly European
struggle on the plains of Waterloo. As a scrupulous
record of facts, indeed,gwe have all along conceived
Sir Archibald's great work to be as solidly reliable
as we cannot but regard it to be directly the re-
verse—namely, both fallacious and illusory—in the
vast majority of its political deductions. Ho de-
duces as a partisan, but he recounts as an annalist.
And surely we may concede to him the right to his
own opinions, if only in gratitude for his profound
researches—researches enabling him, as the Genius
of Fact, to emulate (with an especial emphasis on
the participle—an emphasis readily appreciable on
a glance at the eighteen large octavo volumes al-
ready contributed by Alison to our national store
of historic literature)—enabling him, we say, to
emulate the Genius of Fancy, as described by the
poet—
" Pouring from the pictured urn,
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."

---
The Principles and Practice of the Water Cure,
and Household Medical Science • in Conversa-
tions, the. By James Wilson, NI.D. Second
Edition. John Churchill.
It would have surprised us had these remarkable
Coversations on rlaysielogy and pathology not

attained the honours of a second edition--big
book" though the work is comically confessed to
be, through the pleasant medium of that prefatort
chat which takes place between the author himself
e
arid his alter ego, his patient, his lay figure, b'
Fadladeen. Those honours of a second edition hard
already—as we anticipated would prove to bo the
case very speedily—stamped these seven hundred
o
and odd pages of scientific exposition as with the
" timbre" of a recognised popularity. The secret
of this success may be readily enough exPlain.l
Our author has spoken out of the fullness of Pi;
own belief and out of the amplitude of his ripened
and estimable knowledge. It would be a grie"_
tio
misapprehension to suppose for an instant that the
reader of this singular volume has nothing for 1 %
during the course of its perusal, but to listen
the crotchets of some practitioner inspiredthrough_
out by one all-absorbing enthusiasm—a supreln,,e
and dominant faith in the efficiency of a favour!?
scheme of treatment, one of those universally
applicable systems taking the place in these latt_er,
days of the old-fashioned nostrums vended to
squeak of the Jack Pudding's penny trumpet DI
the wandering quack-salver, half-physician, lisof
mountebank. The production under notice half-physician,,
0,0
merely explanatory, as its title intimates, of
.tilo
principles and practice of the " Water Cure''--IZer
something more than that ; it is elucidatory, s"..
the most delightful manner imaginable, of all th;
lofty truths in regard to our animal economy wie
which every thinking man ought in reason to beccult;
in some degree, familiarised. Dr. Wilson speaks, to
us, no doubt authoritatively, as he has the rig to
do, upon a subject he is known, far and wide' o 0
have so completely mastered in his capacity Off e.
of the most eminent of living Hydropathists.
beyond this, he disanurses to us also through the;
extraordinarily lucid, and yet, at the same On;
no less extraordinarily elaborated, conversatiogeil
with the wisdom of one whose judgment is vr
grounded in the philosophy of the physiolot.
and of the pathologist, with one whose researe;
have sounded most of the depths of human suctDbo
ings in an anxious scrutiny after the simple y
discoverable among the intricate mysteries
t?a
therapeutics. "Le style c'est l'homme,” A.
Buffon. And estimating Dr. Wilson's I",'
cyncracy by that particular standard f","
should assuredly accord to him the merits
really 'marvellous precision of logic, and of
equally surprising faculty for clearness of
tion. In the unfolding of his physiological or
,ct
thological knowledge to his hypothetical natrcit
there is no reservation whatsoever. He is exklii
to a degree. In his hands the dissecting knife 'tilto
hare every fibre of his subject. Moreover, it in d.
be said he popularises the recondite while expecno,
ing to the unscientific hearer the wonders of acor
tomical structure, and of physiological organ,".l4,
tion, and of pathological development, as elhe
tually as ever the abstruse was popularised by .4
philosophic philanthropist. Formerly the Big rbiro
of medicine used to imagine, obviously, that to,
vulgar could alone be effectually awed into a Poo
mage for their abilities by an indulgence in of
incomprehensible jargon, such as might leave 914.
sense as to the exten4pf their learning unreserveu4
to the conjectures :he popular imagination. °ill
cording to their notion, as with men, so Lyile,,
things—onine igneturn pro magnifica Nowal'he
a wiser spirit is happily abroad—now while to'
masses are drinking in exoteric draughts of
sophy, upon chemistry through the interposition 11
Liehig, upon optics through that of Brewster, neve
electricity through Faraday, upon comparatiji
anatomy throng' Owen, upon astronomy threngeo
Hind, upon geoogy through Murchison. Tile Ago
of the schools have not disdained to descend Ago
the porch into the market-place, there to sPr the
abroad the elementary stores of knowledge to
ed,
appreciation almost, we had said, of the unletterty
Dr. Wilson has here in his turn so spoken to ,es
apprehension of themasses upon those great the u,
of physiology and pathology which are of such:ol
preme and, literally, vital import to the gent,"de
multitude. Dividing his work into six corePre`:-01
sive sections, he has imparted to his reader a Ti to
sense of the mechanism and functions of the illy
frame, of the nature and origin of its variouSni
dies, and finally, of course, of the influence es
nt
cised upon those various maladies by the differs
water-cure processes. Setting altogether asteoik,
we will, the final or sixth section of the "'toil
namely, that relating to the systematic apPlie‘!„ if
and practical details of Hydropathy, we inkly
we so list, derive from the five sections 500
ceding it, a fund of information, the abstract v
of which it would be somewhat difficult, not to
absolutely idle, to attempt to estimate, calcine
by any scheme of comparison whatsoever. joc.
tion, or Part, I.—consisting of certain intro
tort' , conversations between " Patient" and 10
t ' the interlocutors throughout, peepareLfs
way for those more important themes which P:,00,
to be taken, one by one, for after considerS"lost
After impressing upon us the truth ale
professional subjects are frequently worthy °f is
attention of unprofessional people, it enlarges 7101
the duty of our acquiring, each and all among fr
a knowledge of the human constitution in iltho
lations to external-nature. It reminds us tkiio,
sources of disease are neither occult nor mystori do•
but on the contrary open and palpable. tog
closes to view by a sufficiently impressive goly,
the baneful consequences of ignorance liPentios,
subjects of organisation, health, disease, renle„
regimen, diet, air, and exercise. It descan;rj.
fine, upon the irolependent, impartial, and inor
able operation of the laws of nature, moral, Ph""ho
cal, at d physiological. Section 11. relates °ding
grand themes of life and organisation, extel/001
by a variety of ramifications through all the illplat
of Physiology. Section 111. consists of a PDPSO4
exposition of the scientific details of Nutrition rte'
Digestion. Section IV. unfolds the scientific Pti ado
ciplos of Diet and Regirren. Section V. 00°04
the general principles of Pithology ; and Secttesseti
as already related, those of the Water-Cure Pruytooti'
in their manifold application. Among the last- the
tinned are, of course, included the shallow I°,,'
sitz bath, the douche bath, the plunge bt-'oo'
swliniti.ng bath, the sweating processes, lonta'
sheet Ricking, the wet sheet rubbing, the fOll3OOlO
tions, hot and warm, and the water drinking ociiP
water cure tre itment. Finally, as an aPPgard;
we have presented to us a number of cases, ati
ing evidence of the efficiency and sided
the Water Cure, evidence authenticerrelsoo
having' been accumulated under Dr. dies
own own individual observation. It is age".,l efe
to find enumerated among this mass of
dent- cases of gout, rheumatism, 14, —O/130-'1
dvspep,ia, nervous indiges, ion, tic-4:lol°4Abronchitis,
bronchitis, neuralgia, apoplexy, sciatica, 'or ail"
conQestion, debility, chronic dysentell% the
chronic inflammation ! We glance devi„,o9:
long and varied catalogue iu dumb an3hn, sio lie
We think of Hyoeia turning out after all .dite
Naiad, and .LEsculapitis a River God. We ran- a gird
for a while, as over a fitting subject for a graoisah'ir
gorical cartoon, upon the memory of h
throwing cold water upon the ills that fin,i(l gt.,"
to. And then we revert with increase" "600
increasing pleasure to the earlier convert 0,10.,.,0►.
the volume, those in which Dr. Wilson, with
admirable lucidity, displays before us, va 1011-0
another, the marvelst both structural a.nno of ,I'of
tional, presented to us by the contempla'l,datic%.
human body when viewed under the g!itio
so skilled and gifted a physiologist. an ,to
scope discloses to view the wonders 1
imagined creation, so does this remarkaw0 000010.•
those readers who are, strictly speskingtts 009„ to
tific and unprofessional. We rise frorn"..,/
nation thankful for that labour which P7oeiglion
us a lens through which we have scrtiti.fx, f
crocosm—the labour of love by which forie;youla
has been enabled to discard from tbick "optr
abstruse studies every condite detail ''oing Phow
by possibility preclude them from beet:). apfire
larised under his guidance to the gene°
sion.
Ana P
The Numismatic Dictionary. Edited
hailed by Peter Whelan. t °lce
The want of a numismatic diction
Ofr
concise and complete, has been long felted • sac
as we can see Mr. Whelan has succeed braces "0
plying it. The book, little as it is, °TO W.,
formation of every-day utility respectinfoot
coins from the earliest period to the Pr'

constabulary t—o At:
followingeßO elffNeoti:74ll.l7.
- THE p
egistrar-gen addressed a circolAr t
Rr__—..---ai
has
address to be
The r- •
ted in Ireland
datbniredeertt Dubliner,
"5, Henrietta-stre* t
..., 012310
"Sir,—A report,
forms for I year,srhego iiwbeiens theitge:,
,ium willem de ni required
abtte:iifysod
oa
no 6 hioiof
each
Government,en
tuotmhy7esir t
the enclosed e'l
"
sent to be accurately
Should the returns of ye ‘l.. tor hale reach
00
"It is requested that every enumera for oss r f
y iur office, you will causeaou-
ne of the forms ,utta o
l ltueei havdeeyroftyrthuooel -
exertionfindtrl ihasentrdjiscosirtabtuart:il
loctifir
at
Deti
,le:d_u
ra
;Pet . btsibtri 1 1
(i'
each enumerator. A to Pl' ";
they
ye
may
also the transmittedYAbfleaxr
Lord-Lieutenant,
ipniludrdsveritthaatudtl)e general abstract for 185 iunY be foe
B returns of tillage and stook for ciliv_to.
adnetl:a7tycannfingstahularY Office, publiu Ca
f c°l"
to me as soon as possib-.oArict,
" WILLIAM DONNELLY, Reg blip
I am,d leaiird,
ybeeeforr(e)hehdisientxossercle:;e,
“g •
The immediate attention of sub-inspecterg (:',. the
stabulary is directed to this communication I°l.-
regiatrar.general. rsaaeral.
" ' D M'GREG 08, Inmpector.v--
_ " To the Sub-Inspector of Cansta•
bulary at .......s."

Ili.

Bini
lle,
DR,

ctiti
mew

~,,

big
3ssed to
refatory
himself
,ure,
ion hard
) be the
JULldred
vith the
te secret
plained•
is of his
ripened
;rievous
that the
Y for it,
listen to
hrough-
;uprocl6
Ivourite
verselll
;e latter
I to the
[Opet bf
xi, half-
:e is not
of the
after
thowil ste
A
becomes
Peak° le
right
wide, to
r as OVe
-h thee
e tiro,
,satiool
is oil
,earcheg
9 tratil
cries
sato
rd
its
of 611
,piaor
for Pe;
atice
P explicit
3ife htio:
it 110 a,
EpOtM
Of ses
rgatesois ,
lido.ei,,
Y Wig°
hat th°
o
3 in
sa
0.1
ape ¢D9
erVe7 6,1
oD.
10 /14*-
ivadtllsl,
ile
r P o
;ition
,r,
lie .hreep
,04:
3d fr°'
SPrui
3 to ti
atter°
to tb
, thelee
nob ell
g°ll°
ri
Prehe •
aTcolvi
hti
nieji„,
„e e%°'
ifferes
;side,
b°°l
iiestio
ls
;t vol.;
t to.°
tE
ro• Se
ad
i'
Do
reo f
b
f t• l
r o
30. at
1
Ito
tj
bat
It a'
)00
nedii
lute,
in°
to t
,e
nd
,opti
on °,l
o
Po Q
oe°l
tb,
Oen,:
001
aff°l
'Ol
Od
ilsol
If 0
ure
t
a
ulei
,o
IdisaD
=a
is I'
9
O{lUi
Dee
ale
01,1
r 0
geid
tes
eD
0 /3
110
,ov
311'
0
se
15
0
si(
Ia
tc
Ili
ro
a
,•