The Sun.
London, England, 1854-08-03 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON; THURSDAY IatENING, AUGUST 3, 1854.

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THE QUARTERLIES.

(THIS DAY.)

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The Quarterly Review. No. CLXXXIX,

BRITISH RAILWAYS.

It has frequently been our gratifying duty to
commend, and seldom with more reason than of
late years, the ability, sometimes the remarkable,
always at least the respectable, ability with which
the old Tory Quarterly sustains its high literary.
reputation. Whatever is said by us in commenda-
tion of our contemporary in this respect will have
possibly to some the superior advantage of being
said simply en debito justitice—certainly not in any
way from our being enamoured with, or infatuated
by, the general principles with which the very name
of the Quarterly has long since come to be popularly
identified. However this may be, our praise is
impartial praise—a praise rather extorted from
our sense of justice than spontaneous by bloom-
ing from our prepossession. In this way we
are fain at once to commend with all earnest-
ness the very excellent number now lying be-
fore us for cursory allusion to the contents—
contents amounting by the way to no more
than eight articles altogether, but almost each one
of which is of a kind calculated to allure the reader
to a perusal by the interest of the subject selected,
and during perusal to win his admiration. Our
opinion of the new number of the Quarterly, as a
whole, is perhaps the more amiable, seeing that the
political article for once is of a nature exactly in
accordance with our own sentiments. The argu-
ment here referred to we have already men-
tioned in our leading columns in what we con-
ceived to be merited terms of panegyric, the argu-
ment relating to " Lord Lyndhurst's Speech
on the War," a paper especially condemnatory
of the shortcomings in regard to the present
struggle with Russia, the notorious and mon-
strous shortcomings of the Aberdeenite portion
of her Majesty's Government. Apart from the
complacency inspired by the circumstance of this
brilliant political chapter, being precisely accordant
with our own oft-expressed opinions upon the
Russian war and the Coalition Government, we
cannot but think that the Quarterly affords us
ample reason for words of encomium in reference
to some at least of the nine remaining contribu-
tions. The paper descriptive, for example, of
" The House of Commons" is as pleasantly and
sparklingly written throughout as if it had been
penned by the author of the "Faggot of French
Sticks." Every Ingenuus previously unacquainted
with the subject may from its pages alone become
delightfully familiarised with the internal organisa-
tion of the English house of representatives, the
lower chamber of the Imperial Parliament. Thus
speaks the writer by the way of the oratorical
powers of the Leader of the Opposition :
"Of Mr. Disraeli's masterly, passionless, finished delivery
we have already spoken. Like the warrior to whom Norna
chants her witch-song, seldom
`Lies he still, through sloth or fear,
When point and edge are glittering near.'
An ever-ready speaker, his premeditated orations, that is
to say, these over which he has had some time—no matter
how short—to ponder, are nevertheless infinitely better
than those prompted by the exigency of the moment. He
will sometimes from this cause reply better to the earlier
part of an antagonist's argument than to its close ; and
his own peroration is seldom so effective as what, in dra-
matic language, may be sailed the crisis of his speech.
Unprepared, he has a tendency to verbiage, and to a repe-
tition of the same idea, without a sufficient variety of
treatment : prepared, and not a blow misses ; not a plati-
tude irritates ; not, a sarcasm is impeded by a weakening
phrase. The arrow, stripped of all plumage except that which
aids and steadies its flight, strikes within a hair's breadth
of the archer's aim ; whether it finds the joint of the har-
ness, or shivers on the shield, is occasionally matter of
opinion ; but that it often wounds deeply would seem to
be proved by the exceeding ferocity with which, out of
the house, Mr. Disraeli is assailed."
Thus of Mr. Disraeli's chief antagonist, the present
Chancellor of the Exchequer :
" Mr. Gladstone is the most polished speaker in the
House of Commons. His verbal resources are as remark-
able as his management of them; and his manner is inva-
riably that of a gentleman. He is charged with 'subtlety'
by coarser minds, but we fancy that the English intellect,
which is not distinguished for its analytical power, treats
the subject in a somewhat jumbling fashion. Mr. Glad-
stone inclines to the Tractarian party—Tractarians are no
better than Jesuits—Jesuits are proverbially subtle—and,
therefore, when Mr. Gladstone is defining, very elaborately,
the difference between long annuities and deferred annui-
ties, he is talking Jesuitically. We believe that Mr.
Gladstone would be a more popular orator if he would bo
less explicit ; but, while.he exhausts the subject, he some-
times exhausts the listener. His refined and scholarly
periods, the creation of the moment, but as elegantly
balanced and as keenly pointed as if they had been written
and studied, are always marvels of fluency, and often spe-
,
mens of eloquence."
Of another conspicuous man of the time, the
Crichton of his age, the reviewer has previously ob-
served :
" Sir Bulwer Lytton, who early won reputation by his
speeches in Parliament, has distinguished himself since his
recent return to the House in the Conservative ranks; and
has more than once been appointed to the post of honour,
and shown himself worthy of it. His trained intellect,
great energy, and command of language, make him for-
midable, both in attack and in defence ; and we presume
that as there are few other achievements be has not accom-
plished, that we shall one day see him holding the Castle
Dangerous of office."
A criticism on Dean Milman's new work pre-
sents to the reader, in the subsequent paper, a
clever, and, just at this moment, a timely and
valuable argument upon what is termed " Latin
Christianity." From the brief, but thoughtful and
suggestive, article on the "Drama," the article
which comes immediately afterwards, we extract
the following genial tribute to some of the " pick"
among our many delightful, and some of them glo-
rious, actors of nowadays. The critic has been
declaiming against those who depreciate the Pre-
sent, out of an infatuated preference for the Past.
He observes :
." We have, however, said already that we distrust the
alleged superiority of the actors of former days, and of the
general decline of acting at the present moment. We be-
lieve, on the contrary, that with a better system of co-
operation a single English theatre would rival, in the re-
finement and effectiveness of its corps dramatiqne, any
single Parisian house. We have seen no French comedians
in the same line better than our incomparable pair of
Keeleys. The St. James's theatre has hitherto imported
no performer, with the single exception of Regnier, more
variously accomplished or more consummate in skill than
Mr. Alfred Wigan; and Mr. Charles Matthews, even in
parts more exacting than the usual repertoire of the Ly-
ceum vaudeville, has few equals—we aro inclined to add
no superior. It is rarely found that actors excel alike in
the lighter humours and the more earnest passions. Gar-
rick and Henderson are perhaps almost solitary exceptions
of equal and transcendent merit in Hamlet and Benedick,
in Macbeth and Megrim, in Richard and Abel Drugger.
John Kemble in comedy, in spite of Lamb's eulogy, was
recorded in his day among `the miseries of human life,'
and the elder Kean was absolutely intolerable in the few
attempts he made in the service of Thalia. The present
stage, however. affords an actor who combines passion with
humour in a remarkable degree, and, in the midst of the
ludicrous embarrassments of comedy, presents us with fer-
vent tragic pathos. No one can have witnessed the per-
formances of Mr. F. Robson at the Olympic theatre, with-
out being struck with the narrowness of the bounds bo-
tween sport and earnest. His farce has a pathetic depth,
a grave earnestness, that touch, at one and the same mo-
ment, the sources of tears and laughter. He is partly Lis-
ton and partly Kean. With less than a cubit added to his
stature, Mr. Robson would be the first Shakapearian actor
of the day. It is unfortunate both for himself and the
spectators that his physical qualifications are not in better
accordance with his dramatic genius. He lacks presence
only to mate Kean in Shylock and Overreach, or Macready
in Virginius and Lear."

1
2 Aar,
3
4

This is very fine—very encouraging—very de-
served. A feather in the cap of many an old
favourite—of the Keeleys, of Alfred Wigan, of
Charles Mathews—and a whole bunch of plumes
for F. Robson, of the Olympic ! A careful and
learned criticism on " Classical Dictionaries" gives
the merited meed of praise to the masterly compi-
lations edited by Dr. William Smith. Without
militating in his remarks against the repute won
by Lempriere, the reviewer writes thus of Dr.
Smith's Classical Dictionaries :
" We are not disposed in this, or any similar case, to
risk our credit by an unqualified expression of opinion,
that these volumes have so excludively occupied the ground
as to leave no arena whatever to future competitors. Such
pretensions to permanent popularity have probably been
advanced in their day in favour of other works which have
long since been laid on the shelf. But with the best wishes
for the future progress of critical archaeology, we see little
reason to apprehend a similar fate for Dr. Smith's volumes.
In their present integrity, they are about as complete and
critical a digest of the whole range of subjects which they
treat, as could reasonably be expected from even the
strong phalanx of able contributors which the learned and
accomplished editor has united for his undertaking.
Room, no doubt, has been left for change or improvement;
but the basis of the compilation appears sufficiently broad
r and firm to admit of its easily incorporating the results of
future researches in the subsequent editions which will in
the progress of years be required."
The essay descriptive of " The Electric Tele-
graph" might almost have been written by Sir
Francis Head, so full and complete is it in its in-
formation. It traces this most wonderful of all
discoveries up from its earliest glimmering of a
commencement—from the discovery of the " bat-
tery " in 1800 by Volta, to that of the deflection of
the magnetic needle in 1819 by Oersted, on to that
of the multiplication of the deflecting powers of
the needle (by means of the coiled wire) by
Schweigger, on again to that of the liquid's
power of magnetising steel or iron, detected (also in
1819) by Arago—down to the completion of
the whole series of marvels, somewhere about
the years 1837 and 1838, by the almost simul-
taneous inventions of telegraphs worked by elec-
tricity in New York by Morse, in Munich by Stein-
hod, but, above all, in London by our own illus-
trious Professor Wheatstone. Let the reader con
over the following paragraph, quoted from the new
number of the Quarterly, descriptive of the first
evening's working of the electric telegraph (between
Euston Station and Camden ToWn) by Wheat-
stone :

"Late in the evening of the 25th of that month, in a
dingy little room near the booking-office at Eustou-square,
by the light of a flaring dip-candle, which only illuminated
the surrounding darkness, sat the inventor, with a beating
pulse and a heart full of hope. In an equally small room
St the Cattideg•tewia station, where the wires torminated,

sat Mr. Cooke, his co-patentee, and among others two wit-
nesses well known to fame, Mr. Charles Fox and Mr. Ste-
phenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelt
by that trembling tongue of steel which will only cease to
discourse with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke
in his turn touched the keys and returned the answer.
Never did I feel such a tumultuous sensation before,'
said the Professor, 'as when all alone in the still room I
heard the needles click, and as I spelled the words I felt
all the magnitude of the invention, now proved to be prac-
tical beyond cavil or dispute.' The telegraph thencefor-
ward, as far as its mechanism was concerned, went on
without a check, and the modifications of this instrument
which is still in use have been made for the purpose of
rendering it more economical in its construction and work-
ing, two wires at present being employed, and in some
cases only one."
" A short time after this he insulated four miles of wire
in the vaults of King's College, on which he performed
most of his subsequent experiments.* Thus in the silence
of that gloomy vault as early as 1836, the lightning that
was to flash with intelligence round the world—the ner-
vous system so shortly destined to spread itself through
two hemispheres, string together continents and islands;
and carry human thought under the wide-spreading seas,
was slowly being trained to the service of man by one of
the most distinguished of the many philosophers who have
contributed to the development of this branch of science.
The following note from the previous page of
the Quarterly is also particularly deserving of quo-
tation :

"It may interest our readers to reproduce the first pub-
lished notice we can find of Professor Wheatstone's Experi-
ments relating to the Electric Telegraph, and which appeared
anterior to his connection with Mr. Cooke • During the
mouth of June last year (1836), in a course of lectures de-
livered at King's College, London, Professor Wheatstone re-
peated his experiments on the velocity of electricity which
were published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1834,
but with an insulated circuit of copper wire, the length of
which was now increased to nearly four miles ; the thickness
of the wire was 1-16th of an inch. When machine-electri-
city was employed, an electrometer placed on any point of
the circuit diverged, and, wherever the continuity of the cir-
cuit was broken, bright sparks were visible. With a voltaic
battery, or with a magneto-electric machine, water was decom-
posed, the needle of a galvanometer was deflected, itc., in the
middle of the circuit. But, which has a more direct reference
to the subject of our esteemed correspondent's communication
from Munich, Professor Wheatstone gave a sketch of the
means by which he proposes to convert his apparatus into an
electrical telegraph, which, by the aid of a few finger stops,
will instantaneously and distinctly convey communications
between the most distant points. These experiments are,
we understand, still in progress, and the apparatus, as it is
at present constructed, is capable of conveying thirty simple
signals, which, combined in various manners, will be fully
sufficient for the purposes of telegraphic communiriation.' "
From the Magazine of Popular Science (Parker,-Strand) for
March 1, 1837.

, The whole article merits a very close examina-
tion. A paper on " Christianity in Milanesia and
New Zealand" is followed by an elegant historic
treatise on the very enthralling theme of " Queen
Elizabeth and her Favourites." Dr. Lingard, the
great historian of England, has called them
" Her Paramours." The Quarterly Reviewer
contents himself with speaking of them as
" Her Favourites." Conspicuous among them,
of course, are—Thomas Seymour, brother of the
Lord Protector Robert Dudley, - Earl of
Leicester— Walter Raleigh, the great poet, anna-
list, courtier, and navigator—Christopher Hatton,
the dancing chancellor—and Robert Devereux, Earl
of Essex—cum muftis aliis, though not cum cceteris
paribus ! The style of the article, though good in
the mt. ',I, and sometimes eloquent in its senten-
tiously balanced sentences, is occasionally flawed
with slips of syntax, and even of etymology. At
page 238 we have it said of Essex, " He is one of
those persons who just miss of being truly great."
Previously, at page 223, we find the writer remark-
ing of the noble house of Courtenay—
" A branch of the house of Capet was content to merge
its royalty in their name and inheritance; they have filled
the throne of Constantine, and intermingled their blood
with that of Plantagenet ; and their Decline and Fall has
been recorded by the same hand and in the same volumes as
that of the Roman Empire itself."
A sentence without grammatical symmetry, and
certainly by no means euphonious. These, how-
ever, are minor faults. And from what we have
here already said and quoted, it will have been
rendered obvious that the new number of the
Quarterly is one in all respects worthy of the repu-
tation of our distinguished contemporary.