The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-28 00:00:00

TIM SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, JANUARY 28, 1864.

position of those strange measures which in foreign
countries have convulsed States, and rendered all
popular representations a sham and a delusion.
The chief aim and object put before those who
come forward and represent the interests of their
country, ought not to be the setting up or the
pulling down of any party, but the real good of
the State and the welfare of the community. Let
these be secured, and all else is secondary, while if
they are disregarded nothing can atone for
their absence, or compensate for their loss.

The meeting of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce is an event of some public interest in
the present condition of the cotton trade. The
opinion of men so closely connected with that
branch of commercial industry must certainly be
worth having, since they not only give us the
present aspect of the trade as it appears to them,
but they represent also the estimate formed of
the promises and prospects of the future. Cotton,
of course, was the grand subject of debate, as
well as the prominent feature in the Report.
It is satisfactory to find that the general tone of
the meeting was sanguine as to the revival of the
trade, and that no dissentient voice expressed a
doubt of the future increase of supplies, although
there was naturally some difference of opinion as
to minor particulars. Whether that increase de-
pends on the old source reopening, or the new ones
developing their powers, is really a matter of less
moment than the question of sufficient supplies,
although it is very fervently to be hoped that never
again will one country be allowed the virtual
monopoly of the raw material. That such depen-
dence was necessitated by no special peculiarity of
soil or climate was sufficiently evidenced by the
statistics given by the Chairman of the assembly on
Tuesday. "In a short time," he said, " they might
hope for enough cotton to serve the wants of the
consumer, and to employ all hands who still re-
mained in the district, though it might be longer
before all the idle spindles were employed. In 1861
our imports of cotton from Egypt were 97,800
bales; last year they were 284,700, the increase
in the money value being nearly £12,000,000. The
increase in Indian produce is by no means propor-
tionate. According to Mr. ASIIWORTH'S statement,
in 1861 the amount furnished by India was 986,000
bales, while last year it rose to 1,223,000 bales; the
value having risen from £12,000,000 to £43,000,000,
an increase which, as he justly observed, must have
exercised a sensible effect on the industry of India.
Still the difference in the quantity supplied is not
at all commensurate with the rapid development of
the trade in Egypt, Turkey, Africa, and other
places. Remembering the effect of British capital
and enterprise in other quarters, the vast impor-
tance to this country of obtaining a speedy and
sufficient supply ; remembering, too, the uncon-
trolled authority we exercise in India, the public
will be tempted to ask with Mr. PENDER, M.P.,
who was one of the speakers at this meeting, what
is the cause of this discrepancy. "Looking," he
said, "at the production of cotton in other countries,
and at the rapid increase which had taken place in
the production of Turkish and Egyptian, looking
also at the very small increase in India (taking into
consideration the immense area covered by the
cotton field, for India had been for centuries a cotton
growing country) it might naturally be asked
What is the reason of this slow increase of pro-
duction in India ?' " The answer has hitherto been
that the price required was high, but this
is no longer acceptable, since manufac-
turers are unable to obtain the quantity they
want, although the price of Indian cotton is now as
high as 23d. per lb. The real answer to the query
was readily supplied from all parts of the Chamber
by the successive speakers, who lamented the negli-

gence and mismanagement of the Indian Govern-
ment. Complaints were made that the roads were
neglected, and no efforts made to stimulate or en-
courage the trade. In the annual report it was
stated that Sir CHARLES WOOD'S explanations with
respect to the occupation of waste lends, and the
measures to be adopted for increasing the Indian
cotton supply were far from satisfactory. The
right hon. baronet's self-glorifications at Halifax
were received at Manchester cum grano salis. The
President demurely remarking that had his consti-
tuents at Halifax been dependent upon cotton in-
stead of wool for their staple manufacture, they
would have been less easily satisfied with his state-
ments. At a great crisis like the present, when
thousands of our industrial population have been
suddenly thrown out of employment, and one of
our chief branches of trade and commerce has been
abruptly paralysed, it would have seemed to an im-
partial observer that the first duty of an English
Minister who had the direction of affairs in a
country which had the power to supply in some
measure the defection of the old source, wtrzila be
to stimulate the cultivation by every means in his
reach. It might have been expee.rai that he would
use his authority, would exert his influence, would
empty his treasury, would stretch his powers to
the very fullest extent in the endeavour to obtain
the largest possible quantity of raw material for the
English market. Road-making and canals into the
interior should have been hurried forward to sup-
ply the means of communication—liberal advances
should have been made, prizes offered on the part
of the Government for the best specimens of Indian
grown cotton, first-rate seed should have been ob-
tained and distributed, waste lands reclaimed and
let or sold for the express purpose of cotton culti-
vation, and all those means which have proved so
eminently successful in the hands of the rulers of
Egypt, of Syria, of Southern America, and other
places, should have been tried with unremitting

energy. How far Sir CHARLES WOOD has done all
this may be seen from the figures adduced above.
We cannot but hope that the Secretary for India
will be called upon in his place in Parliament to
give some account of what he has done and left
undone in India during the past twelve months,
and certainly neither India nor England will have
much cause to regret the substitution of an abler
and more enlightened statesman at the head of
Indian affairs.

OPERA PROPRIETIES IN PARIS.—WouId you like
to know what is the thing to do if you go to the
Grand Opera? Scoutez. First take your box three days
beforehand ; then obtain two Napoleons ; send one of these
to M. Alphonse Kars, poet and gardener at Nice, the other
to a confectioner in Paris. Addresses may be had at the
box-office, adding the number of your box. Before the
overture you will receive a bouquet of spring flowers—the
modest viJlet, lillies mired with roses; in fact, " omnis
copia narium," in a wooden box ; and after the first act, a
tin case full of iced fruits. I can assure you nobody who is
anybody—nobody of our world, you understand—now goes
withou them; and a truly 'fashionable audience has its
mouth full during the whole performance.
HEAVY GERMAN JOKING,—We learn from Ger-
man papers that the " Railway theatre which has been
instituted on the trains between Manchester and Liverpool
is a complete success, and that the performances might
serve as models for fixed stages 11'' If this be a joke, we
don't see it.

THE TREATIES OF PARIS AND VIENNA, 1814 and
1815, Dr. Abdy has chosen as the subject of the law lec-
tures at Gresham College, for the present Hilary Term.
A CALCULATION RATHER DIFFICULT TO BE
ESTIMATED,—.Professor Bischoff, of Bonn, had made some
experiments on the rate of cooling of basalt, and on these
Professor Helmholtz had founded. a calculation, by means
of which he proved that the period which a globe of basalt
of the size of the earth would take to cool from 2,000 deg.
C. to 200 deg. C. would be 350,000,000 of years.
LIVERPOOL AND BIRKENHEAD are to be con-
nected by a tunnel under the Mersey, aka coat of £400,000,

LATEST INTELLIGENCE.

LREUTER'S TELEGRAMS.]

MARCH or THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN
VANGUARD.

KIEL, JAN. 27 (Evening).

Orders have been received here for the vanguard
of the Austro-Prussian army corps to advance. It
is expected that the troops will commence their
march to morrow towards the Eider canal.

BERLIN, lAN, 28.

Advices received here from 'Warsaw to the 25th
announce that the Dziennik publishes an order of
General Berg, according to which Poland is to be
governed in future by martial law.

THE PRINCIPALITIES.

BUCHAREST, JAN. 28.

The question of the Monastic property which
has been secularised by the Government is
entirely settled, the Chamber of :Representatives
having yesterday voted an indemnity of 50 million
francs to be paid to the religious communities of
the Holy Places. This indemnity will be covered
by a loan to be issued at 88, and bearing 7 per cent.
interest.

LITERATURE.

The Rev, J. M. Bellew's Novel.

For Ever: A Story of English Country Life. By
a Clergyman. Three vols. Hurst and Blackett.
iAlthough
. the real authorship of " For Ever
appears to be only half anonymously hinted upon its
own title page, in the words, " By a Clergyman,"
we believe there is no reason for affecting any
mystery whatever about it. In point of fact, the
name of the Rev. J. M. Bellew as the writer of this
new three-volumed novel, or, as it modestly calls
itself, simply, this Story of English Country Life,
was actually advertised for some time by the pub-
lishers in their preliminary announcements of its
proximate appearance. And, now that we heli,e
ourselves read the book, we certainly can-
not see any reason whatever for the conceal-
ment (even supposing that concealment were any
longer possible) of the author's identity—for
the withdrawal of his name (supposing it to
be yet in any way practicable) behind the mask
of the anonymous. The cat, now several weeks
since, was let slip out of the bag. And were it
capable, even yet, of being caught and popped in
again—yourquoi?—we should still know all about
it. Vaguely By a Clergyman, therefore, means
specifically By the Rev. J. M. Bellew. As
was, in fact—W6 repeat—first announced to
us through advertisement. And wherefore
not ? After Rabellais, with his Gargantua
and Pantagruel--after Swift, with his
Tale of a Tub, and his Travels of Gulliver—after
Sterne with his Uncle Toby and his Corporal
Trim in Tristram Shandy—after Maturin with his
Pour et Contre, and his Melmoth the Wanderer!
And, not only may we say after these and other cleri-
cal fictionists, but—now-a-days—when among Mr.
Bellew's.immediate eon temporaries,we behold a popu-
lar novelist in the person of one of her Majesty's
own Chaplains, to wit, the Rev, Charles Kingsley,

the leader of what is grossly entitled the
school of Muscular Christianity, author, among
other well-known contributions' to imaginative
literature, of that hot-blooded, highly spiced, almost
wholly voluptuous " Hypatta." Remembering
all which, it is surely the most natural circumstance,
all things considered, that so very " strong-minded"
a clergyman as the Rev. J. M. Bellew—Popular
Preacher, Public Lecturer, Theatiical Critic, Elocu-
tionist, Journalist, and what not (he already having

in each of those characters acquired for himself a
certain recognisable reputation in London circles)—
should add yet another feather (the feather end of
another goosequill) to those upon which he already
may (and with some show of reason) plume himself.
Dropping the name, however, of the individual
clergyman, to whose lively imagination novel
readers are now indebted for this Story of English
Country Life—a story entitled for no conceivable
reason whatever, saving that the two words are
the last two words of the narrative, " For Ever"

—we may henceforth drop into the half anony-
mous manner of the revised title page of the

book, referring to its author as A Clergyman. As
stories go, then, "For Ever" will be found to pos-
sess that most welcome attraction among all to the
devourers of fiction—interest ! Without being at

any time in the course of the whole story what one
could go so far as to designate actually en-
thralling—the book is, for the most part, deeply
interesting. Before saying another word about
it, however, it may be as well at once to
give a taste 'of our author's quality in regard to
his mere manner as a Novelist. And no better
illustrations of his manner could hardly be ad-

duced, we imagine, than those we shall here give
forthwith, by way of companion quotations. The;
will serve two purposes, moreover, the particular
extracts we have thus selected for quotation. They
will indicate, not unfavourably, the mannerism of

our clerical novelist a 3 a narrator. And, while

doing this, they will serve to introduce the reader,
in one sense directly, in another indirectly, to the
young hero and the young heroine of the love
story, or rather of the lova part of this same story of
English country life. Noscitur a sociis, says the
proverb. But, know them from the mere " sur-
roundings," even though these latter be what artists

term " still life," says our new novelist clergyman.
Taking this axiom of his as our guide, let us now
turn at 0.00 to an examination of this pretty little
peep into—

MARY LEE'S HOME." NEST."

Now,'because "the nest" owed its peculiar beauty entirely
to Mary Lee--for her elder sister seemed naturally too
indolent and undemonstrative to care about the matter—and
that Mary Lee's inner life has much to do with my story, I
must be allowed to delay the progress of events by a brief
description of the scene of many future incidents—of much
thought, much joy, and much sorrow—all of which, to my
eyes, are dimly shadowed out in the ensemble of that little
room as we enter it unseen by the side of Mrs. Lee.
Like all the rooms in the rectory, it was wainscoted half
way up the walls, with black oak in panel. Above the
panelling, which might have had a sombre effect had it not
shone by dint of age and labour as though it had been a
skilfully arranged series of steel mirrors, was a warm crim-
son and gold paper, on which hung some half dozen artists'
proofs of pictures by old masters. Murillo's heavenly
Madonna was there, and the "Madonna Colle Stelle," and
Raphael's " Holy Family," and " The Three Marks" of
Annibal Caracci. The west end was taken up by a large bay
window looking out across the garden on the opposite tor,
with the sea for an everchanging background. Opposite
the white granite fireplace was an oriel window deeply
recessed, and set round with crimson seats. Here was
Mary Lee's peculiar abode. The window ledges were a
blaze of geranium and verbena, and perfumed with the
sweet odour of mignionette and heliotrope. The window,
she herself, having an artistic talent, had filled with quarrys
bearing all kinds of quaint devices and embleme, and sur-
rounded with a bolder of bright colours.

Here she was sitting at a low table as her mother en-
tered, and from the open casement could see the stately
church tower, the white cottages and homesteads bordering
on the shining fields of wind-ruffled corn, and the misty
summits of the great and mysterious moor looming heavily
in the far purple distance,
As, literally, a companion picture to which glimpse
of Mar♦ Lee's belongings at Moorcombe Rectory,
turn we now to this hurried glance through the
suite of rooms at St. Ord's, in the University of
Oxford, the suite of rooms there set apart as—

'WILLIAM ASHE'S COLLEGE CHAMBERS.
The larger room is wainscoted nearly half-way up with
dark, tawny oak, above which there is a rich flock paper of
crimson and gold ; the carpet is Turkey—we trust that our
young friend will tako it with him to Cleveborough, when
he finally rettitns thither, for the paternal dining room
carpet is less handsome, and was possibly less costly. There
is a small regiment of rather rickety mahogany chairs, evi-
dently bought in from a former tenant ; they are, however,
covered with new crimson damask and bound with
gold cord. The owner's special armchair was rather a
curiosity; it hada mechanical apparatus whereby the sitter
could raise or lower it and screw it into any conceivable
and desirable shape. There was a reading desk, candle-
sticks, and foot-stool attached, which were similarly move-
able; so that it became quite a small amusement to " put
Ashe's chair through its facings," and the reviews were
numerous enough to produce a general shakiness and creaki-
ness, which were by no means conducive to the well-work-
ing of the machine.
The walls were covered with pictures—one or two tole-
rable water-colours of the Lake district we noticed, and a
good engraving of Raphael's Holy Family, and a represen-
tation of Henley Regatta, and a rather unnecessarily un-
draped young lady reclining on a bank, and the Madonna
Colle Stelle, and Landseer's "Life in the Old Dog Yet,"
and so on. The books—all gorgeously arrayed in elaborate
bindings—are also various : Aristotle, and Adam Bede,
and Gibbon, and Buckle, and the Idylls of the Kings, and
Owen's Palaeontology, and Sant, and Hooker, and Darwin
are all to be found in that curiously-carved b
book key
There
is a piano, with a pile of songs upon it, a key bugle.
Over the chimneypiece is an armoury of whips, spurs, foils,
walking-sticks, and pipe stems. The windows are full of
flowers, and the room is a perfect museum of Spierian nick-
nacks of every conceivable variety of uselessness.
The "third room" has a low settee running round it,
end on its centre table is a chaos of books and papers.
Here the owner apparently does his " reading ;" for he
does read, and his friends put him down as a probable
" second," whilst he himself studiously disclaims all in-
tention of going in for honours.
The bedroom is merely remarkable for its smallness;
there is just room for a low truckle bed, and a washingstand,
and a chest of drawers, and a huge tin bath upreared
against the wall. How the proprietor contrives to dress
when the bath is not in that position is a waystery whi
we do not pretend to fathom.
And now, having' gos a fair general notion of our
friend's likings, dislikings, habits, and general tendencies,
let us pause awhile in our description, and allow the
actors to appear on the scene.
William Ashe and Mary Lee, of course, being—
hence, indeed, our selection of the foregoing extracts
as companion quotations—the young lovers of the
narrative. The Villain of the Book is William
Ashe's reputed father (in reality his uncle), Martin
Ashe, of AlE!ery Barton, and, before the end of the
story, M.P., for Clevehyrough. Before the eqd of the

story, say we ? Rather should it be said, immediately
before the miscreant's demise, by a violent death,
through accident. It is here that we look upon the
work—exceedingly clever though it is, at its com-
mencement—as singularly and signally inartistic
and incomplete towards its conclusion. The
unravelling of the tangled skein of the plot, in
truth, is clumsy to a degree. The author is perpe-
tually, as it appears to us, stumbling upon a lost
opportunity. We will explain our meaning, while
saying this, by one solitary but perfectly sufficient
instance of its literal accuracy as an objection.
Martin Ashe is a wretch of the blackest possi-
ble dye. Ho is a wealthy country gentleman,
having a rent-roll of some £12,000 per annum, with
superb estates in Devonshire and in Cornwall, and
who—mastered solely by his own diabolical passions,
the passions of lust, of revenge, and so forth—perpe-
trates all manner of atrocities. He a murderer. He
wantonly commits arson. He is the merest animal
as a voluptuary. He is a sly and malignant tra-
ducer. Ho hesitates not one instant about perjuring
himself. In reality, as he is unmasked before us, he
excites only our uttermost abhorrence. And yet
the murder he perpetrates never once, from the
beginning to the end of the story, comes to be re-
vealed! A wretched exciseman, who seems at one
moment to be upon the trail towards its detection,
never really does detect it, but, on the contrary,
gets burnt to death in the endeavour. The Novelist
seems somehow to have, far more than
merely what one calls a sneaking liking for
his miscreant hero, Martin Ashe. He evi-
dently admires him for some inscrutable reason all
through the narrative ; and in effect some of the
closing portions of his story are in a manner bewil-
deringly apologetic for this very predilection. Some-
what as violently in opposition to all our notions
as to the social proprieties, as this unnatural predi-
lection in favour of the murderer, is the subjoined
record of the Funeral of Ailsie Adams :
Her funeral was largely attended by rich and poor, and
the mourners were not only numerous but sincere. The
coffin was carried by a party of the Moorcombe coastguard,
and was covered with a new white St. George's ensign, and
the lieutenant of the station, in his uniform, followed as
mourner, together with most of the principal farmers
around; and there was a large procession of school children
and of many of her old pupils, and a knot of weather-bronzed
sailors from the quay. And when Mr. Ashe had pronounced
the last words of the touching and beautiful church service,
the Moorcombe bells rang out a slow and solemn muffied
peal, telling all who heard them that the last scene was
over, and that the sorrowful was comforted and the weary
now at rest.

Hardly would it be conjectured by any one, merely
reading that as an extract quite apart from the
context, that the poor dead creature who is
thus buried away as reverently as though she had
breathed her last in the odour of sanctity, has been
solemnlyg and formally, declared a Suicide by
the verdict of a coroner's jury—the old burial ser-
vice for such being performed at midnight, in a
cross-road, with a stake through the carcase ! In
reality the reader knows all the while—but nobody
else, not one of the characters in the narrative
that is to say, has the faintest inkling of
it—that poor Ailsie, William Ashe's mother,
Martin Ashe's victim, has been cruelly murdered
by the latter, after a scene as revolting as any we
ever remember to have read in any fiction. The
passion of the scene is tainted with a sense of
pruriency—the voluptuousness of the description,
in fact, being only interrupted by a sudden and
startling display of unwomanly brutality on the
part of Ailsie, who pinions and horsewhips her
assailant, Martin, until he (btrong man as he is)
faints away under the agony of the castigation.
It is upon his recovery from his fainting fit that he
murders her—stealthily, surely—by means of the
most treacherous assassination. Yet it is this mur-
der that, even when we have finished reading the
last volume, never once has been brought to light !
Other characters in the story are admirably
sketched in upon the canvass, such, for example, as
the self-opinionated old Rector, Mr. Lee; his
feeble-minded helpmeet, Mrs. Lee ; their c ald-hearted
eldest daughter, Annette, who marries Martin Ashe,
the undiscovered murderer; Mr. Mouse, the gene-
ral practitioner; William Ashe's college friend and
travelling companion, Courtenay—and a variety of
other very miscellaneous personages. Altogether
though flawed here and there very conspicuouely
with blunders, blunders that might very readily, as
it appears to us, not only have been avoided,
but actually, by avoidance, transformed int o
advantages—the work is clever, even (in several
parts) if it be viewed strictly as a work of Art.,
While it should be added that—if it be the writer's
first novel, his first story of such dimensions, its
excellence in many respects is very remarkable.