The Sun.
London, England, 1854-05-22 00:00:00

LITBRATURE.

Ristory of Europe : from the Fall of Napoleon in
1815 to the Accession of Louis Napoleon in 1852.
By Sir Archibald Alison, Bart., D.C.L. Vol.
111. Blackwood and Sons.
Our distinguished annalist is indeed indefatigable.
His daring design is now rapidly approaching the
term of its complete accomplishment. That extra-
ordinary and apparently most hazardous enterprise,
it will be remembered, was nothing less than the
continuation of his voluminous and brilliant nar-
rative of the History of Europe since the outbreak
of the French Revolution in 1789, from the period
at which it closed, namely, from 1815, the date of
the Battle of Waterloo, down to a time almost im-
mediately contemporary. In these supple-
mentary volumes Sir Archibald Alison pro-
posed to recount the different events of note
which have occurred in Europe during the
interval of nearly four decades, extending
back from the accession of Napoleon 111. to the
downfall of the mighty founder of his dynasty, the
Caesar of Gaul, the modern Charlemagne, the later
and greater Alexander, the Sesostris o civilisation.
It was an undertaking, the astonishing difficulties
of which might well have deterred any man
gifted even with a more than ordinary amount of
courage, industry, and determination. They were
altogether insufficient, however, to repel Sir
Archibald Alison from an enterprise so peculiarly
vast and adventurous. The intention of the his-
torian was scarcely intimated to the world through
advertisement when the first volume of his work
was announced for publication. It had barely
made its appearance when it was followed by
another more ample in theme and more mi-
nute in elaboration. The project was forth-
with recognised as at once making speedy '
progress towards its satisfactory realisation. In-
somuch that we have already arrived at the
third instalment—five, if we recollect rightly, being
the proposed limit of the undertaking. In this
volume, a substantial book of 754 pages octavo,
divided into seven chapters, and these again sub-
divided into no less than 803 sections, each section
with an explanatory heading, the dates and autho-
rities throughout being given, moreover, with
scrupulous exactitude by marginal reference—in
this volume the annals of Europe are brought
down to the close of the first quarter of the present
century. The portion relating to Turkey, indeed,
is carried on as far as to 1829, namely, to the rati-
fication of the treaty of Adrianople. While that
referring to the domestic history of France, con-
ducts us even to the summer of 1830, to the final
expulsion of the elder branch of the House of
Bourbon by the Revolution. But, saving with
exceptions like these, the volume before us may
be said to be restricted on the whole in point of
time to the first five Wares of the nineteenth
century—the account here given of the progress
of events in England, for example, ending in 1825
with the monetary crisis of December. Perhaps
of all the volumes yet given to the public from
the pen of Alison, the one actually under consider-
ation is the most timely in regard to the coinci-
dence of the date of its original appearance. For
to it we are indebted at this wonderful juncture,
when the great nations of the earth are becoming
again embroiled with each other in a war that
threatens to be terrible beyond example, either in
its rapid violence or in its disastrous prolongation
—to this singularly apposite addition to our his-
toric literature we are indebted for a timely record
of the last notable struggle between Russia and
Turkey. The fifteenth chapter, in fact, is alto-
gether so curious as a reference to scenes and
localities, with the names of which the masses
generally are just now becoming once more
strangely familiarised, that we cannot but think it
would be a boon to the community at large
if it were issued from the press by the Messrs.
Blackwood in the form of a separate pub-
lication. As a pamphlet printed at a cheap rate
it could not but be peculiarly acceptable to
the multitude. This would not, moreover, militate
in any way from the interest of the more costly
work from which the chapter here specified, would
be, for an occasion and a purpose, excerpted. Prof-
ferred to the reading public in the manner we have
indicated, it would acquaint the population with
matters especially interesting and especially in-
structive also, everything considered—the chief
incidents here recounted being discovered at this
critical moment to be in a most wonderful way re-
peating themselves. To understand this on the
instant, as it were, and at a merely superficial
glance, it is only necessary to revert foe a while to
the description given by Sir A. Alison of the con-
temporary history of Russia and Turkey, from
1825 to 1829, from the accession of Nicholas to the
Peace of Adrianople. It will there be perceived
how the rupture between the Muscovites and
the Mussulmans began simultaneously with the
commencement of the reign of the brother and
successor of Alexander. Starting from the date of
that rupture and from the earlier successes gained
by Russia over the Persians immediately afterwards
it will be perceived how oddly the subsequent an-
nals read to a certain extent like the annals of
events now transpiring in the same quarter of the
globe—along the banks of the Danube, between
the forces of the Sultan and the forces of the Au-
tocrat—with this immense difference, however,
that all the while, in the former war, for the most
part, England and France looked on from a dis-
tance as mere spectators, or interfered only be-
tween the belligerents diplomatically through their
plenipotentiaries. If the ruler of the Ottoman
Empire in 1828 and 1829 was other than the
one at present reigning over 35,350,000
souls, as Commander of the Faithful, if the
Sultan was then the father Mahmoud and not
the son Abd-ul-Medjid the Czar of all the
Russias was still the same daring and audacious
potentate, against whose lawless aggressions on his
weaker neighbours the chief nations of the earth
are rising from London to Ispahan. Examine the
narrative of his earlier and somewhat similar pro-
ceedings towards the Sublime Porte—turn over the
pages of this luminous and impartial record of the
former war adventured upon against Turkey by
the Emperor Nicholas—and the very cities and per-
sons, the very provinces and commanders men-
tioned in it, sound like echoes from the diurnal
annals of our current newspapers. Read this
fifteenth chapter in the third volume of the " His-
tory of Europe," penned by Sir Archibald Ali-
son in continuation of his former masterpiece,
and you might almost imagine at times—[wo do not
presume to arrogate the notion of any resemblance
in "style," but simply refer to an obvious similarity
in " fact"]—you might almost imagine that you are
reading the latest news in The Sun, or in
La Patric, in the Times, or in the Moniteur,
and not of events long past and now inscribed upon
imperishable tablets with the fluent hand, but the
weighty authority, of the annalist of the Europeans.
Read—and you will hear of the passage of the
Pruth, p. 265 ; of the advance of the Russians
beyond the Danube, p. 270 ; of the fall of Kus-
tendji, p. 271 ; of the blockade of Sohumla, p.
279 ; of the warlike measures adopted at Odessa,
p. 280 ; of the siege of Varna, p. 287 ; of the
operations before Widdin, p. 292 ; of the retreat
from Silistria, p. 293 ; or, again, at p. 302, of the
plan of attack proposed by Prince Paskiewitch.
The whole of this portion of the narrative, in truth,
is a political curiosity—a curiosity which will be
found, particularly nowadays, at once instructive
and interesting.
Altogether Sir Archibald Alison's narrative fur-
nishes about the most lucid and dispassionate ac-
count yet (riven to the world of the campaigns of
1828 and 1829 in the principalities, and, beyond all
manner of doubt, gives, of it, an account the most
masterly in condensation.
Elsewhere, moreover, in the present volume, our
historian has recounted events scarcely less attrac-
tive than those we have just particularised, scarcely
less attractive, we repeat, during the momentous
period recently arrived at by his immediate contem-
poraries. Alison relates, for instance, in one chapter,
the nature of the progress made by Asia Minor and
Greece, socially, politically, and statistically, and,
in another, gives a detailed record of the Greek
Revolution, including a description of the battle of
Navarino, and a statement of the circumstances
under which Hellenic independence became estab-
lished under a quadruple protectorate. What is
here said by our historian, in especial reference to
the internal course of events in France, brings us
down to the fall of Charles X., as we have already
taken occasion to observe. It extends over the
16th and 17th chapters, the former dating from
the death of Louis XVIII. to the accession of the
Polignac Administration, the latter from the ac-
cession of the Polignac Ministry to the July Re-
volution. In one we read of the coronation of the
King at Rheims, in the other of his flight through
Cherbourg. It is, as ever with France during
the lives and reigns of the later Bourbous—a series
of dazzling and affecting vicissitudes. A mos
moving and attractive tale when told by any one,
even by those least gifted with sensibility or im-
agination, but one which, as here recounted with
all the pictorial vividness and oratorical eloquence
of Alison, becomes invested with an irresistible and
pathetic fascination.
A subsequent chapter in the volume before us
should be particularly referred to as among the
most remarkable criticisms penned by Sir Archi-
bald Alison—a writer already almost as dis-
tinguished as an essayist as an historian. It re-
lates to, and indeed is entitled, " Literature of
France during and after the Restoration." Treat-
ing successively of annalists, military histo-
rians, memoir writers, travellers, philosophers,
poets, and novelists, Alison takes an ample and com-
prehensive survey of the whole of modern French

The London. Pulpit. By James Ewing Ritchie
Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.
Mr. Ritchie's pen-and-ink sketches of the popular
preachers of London are as life-like as they are
brilliant and delightful—occasionally blotted with
personality and sometimes exaggerated into cari-
cature. The thought of producing them was a
happy one, and has been carried out, in the volume
before us, with much agreeable animation. The
collection of silhouettes herein presented to our
contemplation will be especially acceptable, we
conjecture, to our country cousins as a guile among
the more generally known of the metropolitan
ecclesiastics. It will be perceived at a glance that
the writer has familiarised himself with the sub-
ject before undertaking its treatment. He has
sat at the feet of more than ono Gamaliel. He has
drunk in the wisdom, and eloquence, and fervour,
and verbosity, and affectation of the Bossuets, and
Knoxes, and Irvings, and Praise-God-Bare-Bones,
of London and Westminster. And listening to
them one and all he has " taken down" each, not
in short-hand notes, as a stenographer, but rather
we might say in vivid profile, or full face, or three
quarters as a photographer. Chapter after chapter
brings the popular preachers of the capital before
our mind's eye in a sort of stately clerical proces-
sion. Here, for example, is
THE REV. THOMAS DALE.
"All eyes are turned in the direction of the pulpit. We
look there as well, and see a man rather below the average
height, with fresh complexion, mild grey eyes beneath
light-coloured eyebrows, with a common-place forehead,
and a figure presenting altogether rather a pedantic appear-
ance. This is the Rev. Thomas Dale, D.D. He looks as
if the world had gone easy with him ; and truly it has,
for he is a popular Evangelical preacher—perhaps, next
to Mr. Melville, the most popular preacher in the English
Church. He is a popular poet—he is Vicar of St. Pancras,
and Canon of St. Paul's."
Here, the expelled Professor of King's College—
THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.
" Mr. Maurice has the true appearance of the professor—
short dark hair, sallow face, precise manner ; all indicate
the man of study and thought. His voice is clear and
agreeable, though not strong. His reading is very rapid,
but, at the same time, emphatic. As to action, he has
none. He aims more at what ho says, than how he says
it ; and, if you listen, you will find food for thought in
every phrase."
Here, one of the most popular pulpit orators of all
in the metropolis—
THE REV. HENRY MELVILLE.
Tall, of dark complexion, with black hair and blue eyes,
with a face lit up with genius—the most brilliant preacher
iu the English Church : such is Henry Melville. His action
is simple and singular. When he commences scarcely
any is observable. Then as he flies along, and warms
as he proceeds, the head is dropped with a convulsive jerk,
and the right hand is raised, and the climax is ejaculated
(for so rapid is his delivery it can scarcely be called preach-
ing) with a corresponding emphasis. No sooner is the text
enunciated than ho plunges at once into his subject, deve-
loping and illustrating his meaning with a brilliancy and
rapidity unparalleled in the pulpit at the present day. You
arc kept in breathless attention."
The sketch, half critical, half biographical, given
immediately afterwards, of the Rev. Robert Mont-
gomery, is one of those portions of the volume
already alluded to as blurred by personality, and
distorted into caricature. The author depicts iu a
more genial and kindly spirit his next subject—
THE HON. AND REV. MR. VILLIERS.
" His figure is prepossessing—a great thing in a public
speaker. Weak, stunted, deformed, wretched-looking
men have no business in the pulpit. A man should have
a portly presence there. He should also have a fine voice, and
Mr. Villiers is singularly happy in this respect. In the
Church there is not a man who can read its stately service
with more effect. And that service, well read to the
hearer in a fitting mood, is a sermon itself. Nor does Mr.
Villiers' merit end here. He is no dull drone when the
service is over and the sermon has begun. With downcast
eye he reads no moral essay that touches no conscience and
fires no heart. On the contrary, he is exceedingly active
and energetic in the pulpit. He looks his congregation in
the face--ho directs his discourse to them. He takes care
that not a single word shall lose its aim."
After these five popular preachers of the Church
of England, come six of the Independent De
John Rev. Thomas Binney, the Rev. John
Campbell, the Rev. John Leifchild, the Rev.
Thomas Lynch, the Rev. Samuel Martin, and, last
of all, one from the delineation of whom we shall
indulge our readers with a brief extract—