The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-06 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.
THE EDIABURGII REVIEW. No. CYCIV.
. Although there are no less than ten contributions
in the current number of the Edinburgh, we doubt
touch whether a single article amongst thEnt will
•attain even a temporary amount of popularity. Not
that the papers in the April instalment are altogether
devoid of talent, or that they are without being suf-
ficiently diversified, but that the talent displayed is
throughout (for the most part) dull and scholastic,
... tedious and dogmatical. Suggested by the Nou-
velles Causes Celebres, the opening article, is a kind
• of biographical sketch of " Tronson du Coudray,
Whose name we should rather have seen among the
46 1.1-nsuccTssful Great tiler," who are celebrated
in such a very congenial spirit by Pro-
fessor Creasy. The argument upon "National
Educati!)n" which follows is a dry and
didactic repetition of facts already again and
eßatn reiterated—'rom the laborious volume of Mr.
"Pei now her Majesty's Ambassador to Greece,
down to the most secent number of some of our pro,
vincial contemporaries. To some extent, however,
in this article we can forgive the repetition for the sake
of the philanthropy, by which it is no less glaringly
distinguished. A review of " Parini's State Romano,"
is followed by a chapter on "Athenian Architecture,"
and this again, by—the most important contribution
in the present number of the Edinburgh—the paver
on " Investments for the Working Classes." The
introductory sentence& of the article here particu.
larized, are, unhappily, of almost universal applies-
tots:—
We have often had occasion to remark on the ob-

atacles and perplexitie?, the hidden perils, the opposing
risk., the surprising sod untorese(n dilemmas, which
beset the path of active beneficence, esreciagy when
attempted on a great scale. The difficulty of doing good
is at least equal to its luxury. To the conscientious and
the thoughttul the path of philanthropy is one of briars
and thorns. On the one band lies toe shame and re•
preach of witnessing a vast accumulation of misery
without an effort to relieve it: on the other the danger
—even more clearly apprehended in proportion as our
.experience is wide and our inquiries deep—of aggra-
rating the evil we attempt to mitigate. On the one side
See the sin of the Levite who looks upon the wounded and
bleeding victim, and passes by, either in shrinking sensi-
bility or in sheer despair: on the other lies the risk,
from ignorance or incaution, of pouring in oil which shall
cause the wounds to fester, and wine which shall stimu-
late the fever. It is no easy matter to steer between
Scylla and Charybdis; and we should deal gently with
the pilot—if only he be cautious and mod.st-,who, in
shunning one reril, incurs shipwreck from the other."
- Poor Feargua O'Connor's involvment with reference
to his land scheme, is, in the course of the argument,
accounted for in a manner which is clear, without, of
.• course, being satisfactory. After an estimate of
"John Knox's Liturgy," comes a criticism of M.
Bayous' biography of " Mallet du Pan." Strangely
graceful is the opening of what, at a first glance, seems
to be very drily suggestive, namely, the review of
"Roebuck's Whig Ministry of 1830.' In the course
'* • of these preliminery remarks to a political review it
is exquisitely said, in reference to the respect and gra-
titude in which the venerable Simnel Rogers—
(decidedly rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno,
for inasmuch as he is both a Poet and a 13,inker)—is
1,, held by the public up to this very moment—" It
•r: Would, indeed, have been extraordinary if the poet of
,t, Memory should not live in our recollections." A
notice of " Squier's Nicaragua" is succeeded by a
- Paper on "Lord Derby's Ministry and Protection"—
At-Paper unquestionably free trade, but also unques
.
tionable Whig—as Whig as might have been expected
°' Under the livery of buff and blue. And so the num-
: bet. of the Edinburgh is brought to a conclusion.

LITBRATURE.
TAE JESUIT IN INDIA. One Volume. Burns
and Lambert.
A curious volume, in some respects really extra-
ordinary in its revelations, is the one here published.
It recounts the progress made by the Jesuit mission-
aries in Southern India during the last few years,
the writer—evidently a man of singular intelligence—
. having qualified himself for the task of inditing the
narrative by four years spent in the midat of the
labours he enumerates. Sir Harcourt Lees is dead,
it is true, but we have still amongst us men interested
eeiri Watching the movements nearer borne than the
Madura mission of the disciples of St. Ignatius de
146Y0.13. Indeed, the development of the Society of
Jesus
in England is amongst the number of those
remarkable events which arrest, by the force of
their very singularity and importance, the atten-
tion of the most indifferent spectator. During
several years the Jesuits have extended,
- - Unobserved, it may be, but none the less securely
en that account, the wondrous influence exercised by
: them now-a-days scarcely less effectually amongst
the people of these islands than amongst any other of
the various races of Christendom. It behoves every
one, therefore, really solicitous to forward the cause
of truth in religion to scrutinies keenly the course
Pursued by this unassuming but dominant association.
Spreading their ranks over the whole of the habitable
regions of the glebe, the Jesuits are everywhere ac-
tuated by the same motives, swayed by the same
laws, struggling towards the same achievements.
They are differently clad, it is true, in different re-
gions, speaking in those difbrent regions a different
language, and adopting towards their different inhabi-
tants very different kinds of demeanour. But in all
other respects the Jesuit is still the Jesuit, nothing
more and nothing less than the Jesuit, be he in
the train of his General at Rom., be ha a resident at
, • the College of S:ony hurst, be he in the streets of
Paris, or in the solitudes of Hindostan, floating over
the oriental seas, or threading the forests of America,
Passing under the luxuriant foliage of the south or
over the sterility of the northern snows. it is, con-
sequently, not waste of toil to pore over the pages
Which let us into the secret movements of the Society,
even when these movements are so far removed from
our own observation as the southern portions of the
Asiatic continent. We remember the almost awe-
inspiring effect of that scene in the Juif Errant, in
which Eugene Sue described M. Rodin as bending
over a globe representing the earth, the surface of
Which was marked in red dotted lines, with the
track of the footsteps of these übiquitous
Jesuit missionaries. Here, at any rate, is a
volume which enables us to trace those
footsteps somewhat more comprehensibly in one
direction, namely, into the southern quarters of our
Indian territory. Toe scene of the missionary la-
bours there, described by the anonymous traveller,
embraces part of the Carnatic, the province of Tan-
jore, and the country down to Cape Comorin, Cons
prising, in fact, the southernmost extremity of Hin-
dostan, and being designated the Vicariate of Madura.
Situated at from about 7.51 to 11.50 north latitude,
the climate is very relaxing, from the perpetual heat
reachiog sometimes 100 Fahrenheit in the day time,
and falling only
12 degrees by midnight—cholera
prevalent, and almost invariably in its most dan-
g.erous intensity, by reason of theprevious exhaus-
tion. Here it is that the missionaries are described as
battling
Om, or the Trimoutsiiva,
idolatry believing not merely in
with an
rahar.a the Creator, Visbnou
the Preserver, end oc but, besides these, orSichem, the Destroyer
but,
Y 1 thip log the symbols
selected by the most
sometimes, as in the instance of
grovellingP fetichism.
the petrified
t .fied
shell
called Salagranan, this idolatry descendse evenri to the
deification of the freaks of Nature, branching off
into a mythology altogether so intricate as to render
all other mythologies numerically insignificant b
Comparison. According to the
account glven by this
little volume, the temptations to adventure upon the
labours of Christianizing the ilindoos—ft,r the Mug-
sultrier], in the present state of things seem to be
but Persuasive hopeless—are anything
the advent:l-veer ihne'a worldly
sense; the dwelling ofi mud-
leave., his bed slug a
hut, tbatcheil with pti m mat spread
on planks, his food rice, occasionally accompanied by
the flesh of some lean and tough poultry. Yet, by
means such as these, it is de.fared that -
upwards off
the globe alone
-.have been redeemed to
150 000 idolaters in that quarter o
a belief in Christianity.
liowever, the matter here considered is one demand-
ing the serious attention of the public—aiding them,
as these statements cannot fail to do, in their effort
to comprehend the progress of the Jesuit party
in
England by watching the movements of their brethren
in Hindostan.

BLEAK HO USE. No. 111. By Charles Dickens.
Matured and mellowed in style, ``Boa"
ever in originality. Bleak Rouse,
the- two first numbers to commence in a subdued
whichis seemedas in
fresh as
tone, such as even filled our mind with disqpoint-
tnent, has alryady in the third number developed it-
self with A vigour and rapidity that promise to ren-
der it not unworthy of the pen of our incomparable
novelist—one who, without extravagance, may b'
- called the Le Sage of his generation. Exercising
during his lifetime an influence that Le Sage never
obtained—read by thousands and thousands almo't
on the instant of publication—his green nunaters
lying simultaneously on the tables of the artiz in end
0 the patrician—we exult to find a genius possess,ng
a power in some respects so very solemn in its re-
sponsibility, always displaying itself in the indult a-
. tion or the worship of the good, the gentle, and the
b-autiful. Seldom has the large heart of Charles
Dickens revealed this tendency inure conspicuously
tian in the May instalment of his new fiction.
Esther becomes more loveable than ever (uncon-
sciously to herself) in the writing of her autobio-
graphy. Mr. J arndyce himself, capital fellow
though he is, with his perpetual terror of the east
wind, and his uncomfortable liability to be "floored
again," has his nose put out of joint by his friend
-and former aohool-fellow, Lawrence althorn, who
literally bursts into the narrativs, tckes Ur! zo:rice:,
partiality by storm, and gives promise of being one
of the most glorious creations of the author, to whom
• • the world is already indented for such beings as Old
Weller,
and Tom Pinch, ar.d Captain Cuttle, and
Traddles, and•Jolna Willott And
pdr Agntellinis and