The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-05 00:00:00

LITERATURE

The Valley of Tears. By John Croker Barrow.
One Vol. pp. 154. Longman and Company.
Inscribing upon his title-page as upon a banner
the exquisite device In hac lachrymarum valle, Mr.
Barrow has in this little volume--his maiden work
we presume—accomplished, as it appears to us,
very successfully, two noble designs, each of them
worthy of having been selected as the theme for
a Poem far more ambitious than " The Valley
of Tears" in its general character. To begin with
he has here given us, through the medium of a
pathetic reverie the epitome of a Human Life ! And,
beyond that and far above that, he has through that
same medium of a poetic and pathetic reverie,
essayed, quite as distinctly as ever Milton did
through the medium of his sublime epic, "to vin-
dicate the ways of God to man." A more compre-
hensive scheme a poet could hardly kave sketched
out for himself than the one here unfolded to our
contemplation. It almost, one might say, em-
braces within its compass the double scheme of
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Its retro-
spective range is cast back—beyond the Creation,
beyond the fall of Lucifer and the rebel angels—
back into the bygone eternities. Its anticipative
glance extends onward—beyond the Millenium,
beyond the Day of Judgment—onward
into the eternities to come. And—inter-
mediately between the two eternities, between
the Past Eternity and the Future Eternity—it sur-
veys the whole range of the sacred annals of the
human race. It comprises within it thus the scheme
of Pollok's " Course of Time" in a compacter form.
It is the resume of the salient epochs and events of
Holy Writ. It is not so much Biblical, however, as
it is intensely Christian in its character throughout.
It breathes all through it, in a manner, the very aroma
of religion. It glows at moments with a very rap-
ture of faith, of hope, of tender and overflowing
charity. As a literary performance it is marred not
infrequently with errors of judgment, with errors
of taste, with errors of rhetoric, even, be it said,
here and there, with errors of prosody. It is
flawed, now with a solecism, now with a paradox,
now with a platitude. Grant all this grant
even more than this—and yet there is apparent
throughout the whole rhythmical passion and fer-
vour of the poem, from the first stanza of it to the
last, in spite of the blemishes that are therein
easily enough to be detected a heart-beating
soul-born devotion that is absolutely refreshing
in these days of cynical unbelief and cold-blooded
soi-disant philosophies. The author writes through-
out his poem, in the fullest sense of the word,
unaffectedly. So unaffectedly that he stumbles,
time and again, into the very blemishes 'we have
enumerated. Hence platitude, solecism, and para-
dox—hence errors of judgment, of taste, of rhe-
toric, even of prosody. His emotions, his thoughts,
his doubts and dreamings--he enumerates them
all just as they chance to recur to his remem-
brance—and he jots them down precisely as they
do recur to his remembrance, no matter how
vagae, half-formed, or fugitive their outlines.
And it is simply because of its being thus
with him, because of his indulging in no
reticence whatever, that, all through the
book, there runs like a refrain, " I know not why"
—" I know not where"—" I know not what"—with
various other phrases of kindred vagueness or uncer-
tainty. By reason, again, simply of that same
voluble outspeaking, as it may be termed, of all the
various thoughts and fancies that flow out to his
own recognition upon the rapid current of his
reverie—Mr. Barrow allows himself, time and again,
to be carried away by some metaphor that ought at
once, from its very nature, to have been disdainfully
rejected; and yet that so far from disdaining or
rejecting, he carefully elaborates and sustains by
every conceivable application of it to the thought
he is enforcing. A single instance of this will
suffice : as, for example, where at page 126 Mr.
Barrow thus writes :

1 saw new pilgrims on their way
Towards the terminus of truth
Some drawn along the rails of youth,
And some along the lines of age,
And some along the narrow gauge
Where youth and ago unite,
Till multitudes of souls were brought
From doubt's condensity of mist
Through tunnels, tunnel'd out by thought
Into the centre of the light
Illumining the Church of Christ.
Here, too, at the close of this very excerpt, we
are reminded of the inadequate melody of rhyme
occasionally noticeable, as in the faulty echo there
of " mist" and " Christ." Another discord of a
very different kind, but also of frequent occurrence
in the poem, arises out of the author's apparent
notion that " loyal" and " royal" are mono-
syllables, instead of being, as they are, of course,
distinctly dissyllables. Utterly insignificant, how-
ever, are the blemishes of the book, as compared
with the beauties of it. Besides which, those beauties
are not only fresh and radiant in themselves, but
are as abundant as they are spontaneous. They
flow from the writer's heart rather than from his
imagination—from his soul rather than from his
intellect. His search—the quest of his life—is
after truth. His instinct is adoration. Yearn-
ing with the intensity of his whole na-
ture for the selection among all the
meandering and intricately interwoven paths that
cross and re-cross each other like the network of a
very labyrinth of roads—yearning, we say, with
the intensity of his whole nature, for the discovery
amongst them all of what he can himself recognise
in his own conscience to be the right one, he sings
here a very paean of exultation at its discovery. It
is hardly possible, we should imagine, for even the
most cynical or the least demonstrative, to be other-
wise than affected by so rapt and pro-
found an enthusiasm. The author's heart
seems glowing within him with the words he here
utters, or rather indites. And—appropriately
in a poem so entitled, in a poem bearing upon its front
the device already intimated—he sings emotionally
throughout—he sings, as the tender phrase has it,
with the tears in his voice ! In his wanderings
about Christendom he passes through Jerusalem—

" Once red with Deicidal Blood! "•

he passes through Rome, crowned with the great
Cathedral Dome—

" That Dome so like a Papal Crown ! "

Ile returns homewards, to his own village, to his
own familiar haunts, within the shadow of his own
church ! He marries—loses the partner of his life,
the mother of his children—dies, himself, at last and
enters upo n another existence ! It is the strangest close
to a fictitious autobiographic poem that can well be
conceived—haunting in the pathetic tenderness of
it, haunting the reader's imagination thus, almost
as affectingly and profoundly in its way as that
saddest song of dying love, of dead and all but
buried love ever penned, those lovely lines by
poor Edgar Poe, entitled simply "To Annie."
Only—that, better far, immeasurably better, than
the love thus agonizingly expressed by the American
poet—the love, here commemorated is sublimated,
is merged from its earthly aspect into the diviner
love of heaven ! Altogether, this poem of " The
Valley of Tears" is singularly beautiful, and one
that it has been impossible for us to read consecu-
tively from cover to cover without our having expe-
rienced a sense of refined and exquisite grati-
fication.

PARISII OF ST. PAUL, COVENT-GARDEN.—Some
weeks since the rectory of the metropolitan parish
of St. Paul, Covent-garden, became vacant by the death of
the Rev. Charles Edward Oakley, M.A., 8.C.L., who con-
tracted what turned out to be a fatal fever, in the discharge
of his clerical duties among his poorer parishioners. The
living fell to the gift of the Duke of Bedford, who is the
patron, and his grace has presented to the rectory the Rev.
Bcrdmore Compton, M.A., rector of Barford, Warwickshire.
Mr. Compton was educated at Merton Collego, Oxford,
where he took his B.A. degreo in 1841, being first class in
mathematics and third class in classics. In the same year
he was elected to a fellowship at Merton College. In 1851
ho was appointed to a mastership in Rugby School, and in
1853 was admitted into holy orders by Dr. Henry Pepys,
the then Bishop of Worcester. In 1857 ho resigned his
Rugby mastership, on being presented by Mr. John Mills
to the rectory of Barford, which he has held up to the pre-
sent time. Tho living he resigns is worth £l,OOO a-year,
with a house, 'and a population of 754. That upon which
he is about entering is worth only £5OO a-year, with a
house close upon Covent-garden-market, and a population
of 5,150. The new rector of St. Paul's belongs to the
Evangelical party in the Church.

(rfurL. Cady

HER MAJESTY.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Monday.

The Queen, accompanied by her Royal High-
ness Princess Louise, and attended by the Hon.
Harriet Phipps, drove out this morning in a carriage
and four.

Her Royal Highness Princess Helena also went
out driving.
his Royal Highness Prince Arthur, attended by
Major Elphinstone, left the Castle for Greenwich-
park.

Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein went to
London and returned in the afternoon, attended
by Count de Rantzau.

The Prince and Princess of Wales.
EAST DEREIIAM, Monday.
Their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess
of Wales passed through this town this afternoon,
on their way to Gunton Hall, where they intend to

pass the remainder of the week with Lord and Lady
Suffield. The weather was very unfavourable early
in the day, but improved as the hours wore on.

The inhabitants of Dereham were from an early
period in the morning actively engaged in making
preparations for the reception of their royal visitors,
of whom they appeared determined—Dereham never
having been favoured with the presence of royalty
—to make the most. Three triumphal arches were
erected—one on the Norwich-road, another (a cas-

tellated one) near the entrance to the market-place,

and the third at the other end of the market. The
last was decorated with the prince's plume and some
tastefully grouped flags, and a somewhat similar or-
namentation was employed in the other cases.
Evergreens formed, as usual, the staple feature in
each arch, and the general effect was very good.
The principal tradesmen of the town also made
loyal demonstrations. Mr. Greenacre, on the Nor-
wich-road, erected a balcony, with a crown, and the
letters "A. A." beneath. M. Elvin, coachmaker, in
the same road, displayed the Order of the Danne-
brog, with the motto "Og Gud Kon Gen." Mr.
Elvin, who exhibited quite an elaborate knowledge
of heraldry, added to this device the badges of the
Princes of Wales from the reign of Henry VII. to
the present date. Mr. Warren of the Market-place,
erected a balcony draped with red cloth, and bear-
ing the motto, " God bless the Prince and Princess
of Wales, England's hope," with portraits of the
royal pair. Mr. Gidney, of the-Market-place, erected
a transparency, which was illuminated at night, in-
dicating the royal arms. Mr. Gidney also displayed
a large blue standard and a number of bannerets.
Mr. Smith, of the Market-place, provided a bal-
cony and a star, which was illuminated in the
evening. The King's Arms Hotel had a gas de-
vice representing the prince's plume, with the
motto " Ich Dien." Other establishments also
made more or less similar displays appropriate to the
occasion, and the streets were thronged with visi-
tors from the surrounding country, the trains from
Norwich, Wymondham, &c., also pouring in con-
siderable contingents. Order was maintained by
about 30 of the Norfolk police ou foot and five
mounted constables ; Colonel Black, chief con-
stable, and Mr. Otthill, deputy chief constable,
being also present.
The royal visitors travelled from Sandringham
via Lynn and Swaffham, leaving Lynn by the ordi-
nary train starting from that place at 12.2 p.m.,
and due at Dereham at 1.10 p.m. The platform
at the Dereham Station was covered with scarlet
cloth and new ballast was laid down ; no further
decorations were, however, attempted. The 15th
Norfolk Volunteer Corps, a neatly equipped body
about 50 strong, and under the command of Capt.
Bulwer, served as a guard of honour. Punctual
to the minute the train arrived, Lord Suffield having
come down to the station shortly before in a drag
drawn by four horses. Two other handsome
open carriages, drawn by four horses, were also in
attendance. Lord Suffield, who was accompanied
by the Hon. Harbord Harbord, Viscount Hamilton,
Lord Sondes, &c., passed at once to the platform.
The Prince and Princess (who had come by a spe-
cial train from Wolferton to Lynn) occupied an
elegant saloon carriage, in which were also the Mar-
chioness of Carmarthen, the Earl of Dunmore, Vis-
count and Viscountess Royston, and Col. Keppel.
Lord Suffield, on stepping forward, was warmly
greeted by the Prince and Princess, who also shook

hands with some of the ladies on the platform--
among others with Lady Sondes, the Countess of
Kinnoul and the Misses Moncreiffe, the Hon. Misses
lles, &c. The royal visitors then passed through
the station to one of the open carriages (drawn by
four greys) and drove off, the Hon. Harbord Har-
bord accompanying them. Lord Suffield soon fol-
lowed his visitors in the drag, and the cortege,
which was closed by the other open car-
riage, passed at once into the town, amidst
the cheers of the crowd. Their Royal High-
nesses repeatedly acknowledged the cordial recep-
tion which they experienced. They passed up the
Norwich-road, through the Market-place, and then
down the Swanton-road. Their route lay through
Swanton, Bylaugh, Bawdeswell, Reepham, Aylsham,
&c., to Gunton. The entire distance from Dere-
ham to Gunton is about 18 miles, and was expected
to be traversed by 3 p.m.
The visit of the Prince and Princess to Gunton is
strictly of a private character, and there will be no
public demonstration of any kind in connection
with it. To-morrow evening, however, a ball takes
place, to which a number of the local elite have been
invited. The Prince will also shoot each day in
the well-stocked covers of the estate. On Thursday
or Friday the Prince and Princess will pay a flying
visit to Lord and Lady Sondes at Elmham.
It has been observed that the weather was very
unfavourable during the morning, but when the
Prince and Princess passed through the town the
rain clouds had dispersed, and the scene was one of
much animation and brilliancy.
The train by which the royal visitors travelled
from Lynn to Dereham was under the charge of Mr
Sproul, district superintendent at Cambridge, who
was met at Dereham by Mr. Stevenson, district
superintendent at Norwich. Mr. Kent and a num-
ber of the company's police were also in attendance.
The journey from Wolferton to Dercham passed off
without any noteworthy incident.

His Excellency the Prussian Ambassador and the
Countess Bernstorff leave the Prussian Embassy to-day
on a visit to the Marquis and Marchioness of Salisbury, at
Hatfield House.
The Princes Mina Syed Hussun Ali, Mirza Syed
Hoosein AU, and Mirza Syed Mahomed Ali, with their
friends, Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs. Herbert, have arrive"
at the Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone.

A FEMALE SAILO R.—Captain Lane, of the E%-
pedient, now lying in the Victoria Dock, Hartle-
pool, furnishes the following facts relative to the eccentri-
cities and waywardness of a woman who had abandoned
her home for the roving life of a sailor. Her statement, made
at Palermo, is as follows :—" My name is Charlotte Petrie,
born at Aberdeen in 1846. After the death of my grand"
father I went to reside at Newcastle with my uncle, but
shortly afterwards returned to Aberdeen, where I resided
as servant in two or three places. The mate of the ship
Mary Gardiner, of Cape Town (named David Roberts),
took me from a factcry where I was working, and placed
me aboard a vessel which sailed for Newcastle, dressed in
boy's apparel, and shipped me as cook's mate. On arriving
at Newcastle I left the vessel and worked as a boy is
Haggie and Co.'s establishment under the name of
Bruce. After this I lived for three weeks in a shoe (o'3;
blishment with Mr. Pilburn, late Collinson. I thou shiPPe,
aboard the Mary Ann, of Berwick, bonnd for Dundee and
back to Newcastle. I then shipped aboard the Expedient,
of Poole, Captain Lane, as ordinary seaman, at 408. per
month, and cashed my advance note at Mr. J. Kettle's, °lit;
fitter, 20, Quayside, Newcastle. The Expedient in'
Shields July 6, 1864, and arrived at Palermo on the 17111
of August. During the passage I performed my duties nO
an ordinary seaman, not the least suspicion having ari6e!
among my mates' during the whole voyage ; but 101°1'
,
in the harbour my sex was discovered, and the captain
kindly took me to the British Consul. I expressed
urgent wish to perform the voyage according to the ship
articles, which was sanctioned by the British Consul
then proceeded to Alicante (?) to load sulphur, thenc°.
London, where I was paid off." Such is the episode of
life of Charlotte Petrie. Captain Lane has been recettlY_
informed that " Bruce" is at present working in
lead factory near Newcastle,—Northern Daily Express,