The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-24 00:00:00

THE SUW, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 24, 185 3.

SHARE MARK TS.-(THIS DAY.

LITERATUBE.

BRITISH RAILWAYS.

THE QUARTERLIES.

The EcUnburgh. No. CC. _ Longman and Co.

Closing Prices
Saturday.

Business done
this day.

An entertainingaccount of " The Arctic Regions"
lends a charm to the newly-published number of the
"Edinburgh "—a charm which the reviewer could
hardly have anticipated would be so speedily and
considerably enhanced, as it has been by the re-
turn of Captain M'Clure to this country with in-
telligence that thelong-desired North-WestPassage
has at length been discovered. An attractive but
rather confused, and in its deductions, a decidedly
unsatisfactory estimate of the position occupied by
" Mahometanism in Western Asia," will be found
worthy of perusal in the shape of a contribution
immediately following that having reference to our
arctic navigators. Its interest again will prove
on examination to have been materially increased
by events subsequent to the moment of its publi-
cation. The development of the Eastern Difficulty
has rendered a subject of double importance, the
situation, at the present crisis, of the vast multi-
tudes of the Mussulman population. It cannot be
doubted, therefore, that many will turn to these
particular pages of our Whig contemporary : though
we question very much whether their researches
into the lucubration will be rewarded by any
accession of enlightenment. Blame is cast by the
reviewer upon the unsatisfactory nature of the
argument advanced by Mr. Crowe in relation to
this Oriental Question—while the critic himself
cannot possibly be allowed to have acquitted him-
self in that argument to admiration. No argu-
ment indeed-could possibly be more loose in its ar-
rangement, as assuredly no deduction could be
more inexact or more inconclusive. Another re-
viewer in a chapter dedicated to the consideration
of " Our National Defences," accords high praise
to Mr. James Fergusson's novel and remarkable
system of fortifications. The aid yielded to that '
these
time, gentleman's
pageswe
ee
olt
fh
te
ho
assured,er y Ebdyi
bt
thoue r
pgmhr aown
will
y nst uso pt
ip require
mo p
or t r ot
af
ni
et
e muchia
sn
another means of securing to the new system the
advantages of a popular and practical appreciation.
The subjoined elccerpt from the opening article for
the quarter, that relating to " Ohurch Parties,"
will be recognised, we are confident, as one fraught
with a really startling significance

" As another mode of obtaining an approximation to
the proportion of parties, we have gone through the
Clergy List, marking the names of sll clergymen whose
opinions we knew, to the number of about 500. The
result of this examination has been, that supposing
those unknown to us to be in the same proportions with
those known, we should be led to classify the 18,000
clergy of the Church of England as follows :
Anglican 3,500
Tractarian
High and Dry' 2,500
Evangelical 3,300
Recordite 2,500
'Low and Slow' 7OO
Broad Church
Theoretical .
and about 1,000 peisai4 clergy in the mountain districts,
who must be classed apart."

High Church

Low Church

So much for the balance of " Church Parties " in
the estimation of the Edinburgh—the new confu-
sion of tongues—the contention of broad church,
low church, and high church, of high and dry, low
and slow, of tractarian and recordite, of Anglican,
evangelical, and theoretical. Mr. George Grote
obtains from •ur Whig contemporary higher com-
mendations than. ever, in consideration of the merits
discoverable in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh, the
three latest volumes of his " History of Greece"
just published. Upon this subject the Edinburgh
observes:

" Wherever the facts, authentically known, allow a
consecutive stream of narrative to be kept up, the story
is told in a more interesting manner than it has any-
where been told before, except in the finest passages of
Thucydides.

" We are indeed disposed to assign to this history
almost as high a rank in narrative as in thought. It is
open, no doubt, to minute criticism ; and many writers
are superior to Mr. Grote in rapidity, grace, and pic-
turesqueness of style. But even in these respects there
is no such deficiency as amounts to a fault, while in two
qualities, far more important to the interest, not to say
the value of his recitals, he has few equals and probably
no superior."

An eulogium that (coming from so established an
authority) must gratify, we doubt not, the heart of
the laborious annalist of antiquity. The next ar-
ticle in the number, that referring to the subject
of " Military Bridges," will be found by the more
curious class of readers eminently well deserving
examination, what though it may in title appear
unattractive to the generality of the unprofes-
sional. The closing passages of the subsequent con-
, tribution having reference to the long-agitated ques-
tion of " The Newspaper Stamp," are too excellent
in every way to allow of our passing them over
without quotation.
" It would surely be superfluous to enter on argu-
ments showing that the British newspaper press, such
as it is, free, copious, and able in discussion, has long
been, is now, and probably will be for ever, the very
life-blood of our political system ; and that those pro-
pose the infliction of a national calamity,—a violence to
the national tastes, habits, and interests—who thus pro-
pose to destroy the press as an engine of discussion,
and to relegate political speech and power solely to the
platform and the inverted tub. If that fact admitted of
doubt, or required discussion, it would not be necessary
to range over a larger period than that embraced in Mr.
Cobden's own not very protracted public life, to find
that, without the press, the platform sometimes could
not exist at all, and sometimes would exist only for evil.
There was a time, not long ago (though Mr. Cobden
seems to have forgotten it) before the platform could come
into play, and when the press was the only means of
keeping alive and advancing the great cause with which
his name is for ever associated—when League lecturers
were pumped upon in the agricultural districts, and even
in manufacturing towns Mr. Cobden himself could
scarcely hold a meeting without a protection, by tickets,
from Chartist and Protectionist inroads - and, for thirty
years previously, this use of the press had been exem-
plified in the history of the whole class of questions of
reform. There is a time at present—and Mr. Cobden seems
to know it too sensitively—after the platform has begun to
run riot, and when the press makes a stand against
crudities and quackeries. The platform is good, though
not better than the press, when public attention is
aroused and public favour gained, but in evil days the
platform sinks away. It is in a discussional press, as
in an ark, that good causes are preserved when in ad-
versity, and from it, as from an entrenchment, that bad
ones are assailed when they are prosperous. All this is
known to every man that has kept his eyes and
understanding open these thirty years. The press
as it is —as contradistinguished from what Mr.
Cobden would have it to be—is the chief engine
through which during this generation political re-
forms have been wrought in a country where po-
litical reforms have been more numerous, peace-
ful, and beneficial than in any other ; and—now that
the object is' avowed—there may, perhaps, be fewer
persons disposed to aid any change which tends to sub-
stitute for an engine so safe and so effective either the
French barricade or the American stump.' "
Added to the contributions already particularised,
the Edinburgh for the quarter just commenced has
an elaborate literary criticism on Taylor's " Life of
Haydon," and an equally elaborate, though by no
means equally entertaining, political criticism on
the subject of "Parliamentary Purification."

The Quarterly Review. No. CLXXXVI. Murray
A more attractive number of the Quarterly has
not for a long time appeared. There are in it only
seven contributions, but the subject of each will be
found even by the generality of readers to be
fraught with fascination. A peculiar interest,
moreover, has been attached to the introductory
article, the one relating to " The Institute of
France," at the very moment of its publication.
It was indeed " almost needless" for the writer to
add in a note to the current number of the
Quarterly, that the paper in question was
the"in m
lamented death of M. Arago, one of the
most illustrious of modern philosophers. "If we
could have foreseen the event," says the Quarterly
reviewer, " we could hardly have spoken with
greater warmth of his genius, though," he adds,
c 4 we certainly should not have selected such an
occasion to comment upon what we thought his
injurious importation of political feeling into the
regions of science." His admirers will accept that
satisfactorycm
remark t en de
is
wi
tt with
honorable.this
efl e
eetPu
latigtaii
that
tuiwleahr
illye observation—coup
any
coupled
party as,
,h
Ie ttahti ess
into which he may have been led have expired with
himself, his discoveries and writings will always
survive, to attest his right to be ranked among the
most brilliant savans of the age." After all it can-
not be surpriing that the Quarterly should lack sym-
pathy for the patriotism of M. Arago, however
much it admires his genius as a philosopher—his
patriotism having identified him in a remarkable
manner with the interests of democracy. Au elabo-
rately minute and detailed account of the "Murderso
of Thomas a'Becket," is the next contribution.
carefully are the different statements authenticated,.th
that almost every page is minutely soill-dn foot-cii.,,,rii.,
n
notes—referring the reader to Roger
Pthe recent
paper was avowedly .
suggested
the subsequent one
labours of Dr. Giles, just as
uchesne. For
Gamier, and Benedict, andeteditezrhsayte hen. This
the Q tarterly relates the history
the third article
ill-fatedinn
ofl children, "King Louis
of that most immediately afterwards we
the Seventeenth.
was suggested by those of M. Bea
ynew delcrus adventured
onya
not by steel-clad knights .
but by black-coated
upon
An excellent review of the "Diary
• diplomatists., .
th .
of Casaubon is en given by another contributor
have
n es
essay
yv very
recounting curious essay ae
4 c Electro-Biology and Mesmerism"—
, to the Quarterly. Afterwards comes an admirable
chapter upon

EwS PAPE it

--C7 -.air{
followed in its turn by a criticism on that " Life of may be regarded, without extratagfav_
Haydon" which for the last month or so has met rect definition of his perfo ' be:, .r
us at every tarn in our survey of periodical litera- tage of thus acquiring in : --:,k
i. ~..,_.,").Yra-:,.1
tare. really trustworthy account o t .ww-tyP L 4 , , -
from the invasion of the ' ' -(: owii'
down to the accession of Lo .- , —hi
readers are indebted once more ' the en (
Mr. Routledge—that most indefgab am
the publishers of cheap and wholesome literature.

Bipeds and Quadrupeds._ By Harry Hieover. T.

C. Newby.
The humanity which dictated this little essay is
something beautiful. Although insignificant both
in extent and elaboration when compared with the
other writings which have emanated from the same
pen, we believe that, once perused, the argument
here submitted to the public must ultimately prove
calculated to extend, and that rather considerably,
its author's reputation. It appears from the Pre-
face that the original design was to have intrusted
the composition of the treatise to one of a profes-
sion more popularly associated with the inculcation
of the sentiments of benevolence. From the ambigu-
ous phraseology employed in this part of the writer's
explanation we are led to conjecture that the au-
thor at first proposed must perforce have been an
ecclesiastic. However this may be, that earlier
intention was abandoned, and the responsibility of
Bringing the projected volume before the commu-
nity was thereupon intrusted—the reader cannot
but feel (after a glance through the pages of this
unpretending production) most judiciously—to
Harry Hieover, the Nimrod of Now-a-days ! It
is as if Martin's Act were enforced by an illustra-

WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

The African screw mail steamer the Hope, Com-
mander Bowen, arrived at the Motherbank, Ports-
mouth, on Saturday night, from the west coast of
Africa.

It appears that when off Gibraltar an accident
happening to her air-pumps, she had to trust to
her sailing qualities. She is a very long, brig-
rigged vessel, both masts and spars apparently of
the same dimensions. She bore up for this port in
consequence of the heavy weather preventing her
making Plymouth ; her mails and passengers were
quickly landed, and proceeded to London ; she
met with tremendous weather in the bay.
Her dates are—Fernado Po, Sept. 11 ; Largos,
Sept. 14 ; Accra, Sept. 10 ; Cape Coast Castle,
Sept. 17 ; Monrovia, Sept. 22 ; Sierra Leono,
Sept. 27 ; Bathurst, Oct. 1 ; Goree, Oct. 1 ; Tene-
rife, Oct. 8 ; and Maderia, Oct. 11.
She brings intelligence that war has again broken
out at Lagos, which commenced on the sth of
August, between King Akatoi and the pretender
Kosako. This, however, after a little bloodshed,
was put a stop to by Admiral Bruce, who landed a
body of marines and blue jackets from the squa-
dron, and drove the pretender's forces before them.
The boat operations were under the direction of
Commander Philips, of the Polyphemus. The only
casualties on the part of the British were a marine
wounded and a Kroeman killed. Lieutenant
Strickland superintended the field operations ashore.
On the 3d September King Akatoi died suddenly,
and his son Docemo was placed on the throne.
It will be heard with regret that the Admiralty
agent in charge (Lieutenant Charles Weatherhead
Pears) died from decline on his passage home.
Admiral Brace, is the Penelope, had gone to the
southward on the 3d of September. Polyphemus
off Lagos; Volcano ordered to Cape Coast ; Brito-
mart was at Sierra Leone ; squadron reported
generally m being in good health.
The American frigate Constitution was at Cape
Coast Castle, and the Marion frigate at Monrovia.
A French squadron was collecting at Grand Basam
to redress some grievance. The French ship
Louisiana was wrecked off the Gambier. The
American brig Clara had been wrecked off Sierra
Leone, in a tornado.
The Liberian Government had received a pre-
sent of arms and military accoutrements from the
French Emperor.
Since the last advices from Cape Coast Castle
commerce had considerably increased. At Mon-
rovia trade was wonderfully on the increase,
although the season was generally dull, owing to
the break out of the Lagos war.

tive supplement. The book reads like a sermon
from the saddle. Not some dry, didactic discourse,
not - some puritanical and canting homily—but a
genial and winning enforcement of the advantages of
universal kindliness—a lecture that might (for the
most part) have fallen not inappropriately from
the lips of the gentle Yorick ; an oration
that might have been emphasised on the pulpit
cushion by the fist of dear old Parson Adams; a pre-
lection such as excellent Parson Dale might, in one
of his livelier moments, have declaimed to hishonest
parishioners of Hazledean. Understand us, we
don't wish by any means to intimate. that Harry
Hieover has donned the white surplice in lieu of
the coat of vermillion. No. If he has under-
taken, out of the most generous of motives, to
argue as it were ex cathedra about the merit of
" good nature," he may seem at times to be as-
tonishing us with a sermon, but at any rate it is,
as we have already intimated, a sermon from the
saddle. Throughout he never once attempts to
travesty the sacred eloquence of your clerical ora-
tor or clerkly rhetorician. From first to last he
never fails to remind you that it is a sportsman you
are listening to, and rot to a merely fantastic sen-
timentalist. In testimony of this, allusion may
here be made to the change in the title of the book,
an alteration effected by its author immediately
prior to its publication. Originally it would seem
that title was to have been, bluntly and going at
once to the point, without any compromise or cir-
cumlocution— " The Cause of the Quadruped."
Hear what Harry Hieover has to say about his
rejection of that title and his substitution of the one
under which the work now appears—that of
" Bipeds and Quadrupeds." He observes (p. 11)
in the preface—" I must confess the title was
altered by myself, and must solicit pardon while
stating my reason for the alteration. The
cause of the quadruped only intimated that
it was with an eye to his benefit the essay was
written, and I feared such an impression would
not be favourable to its circulation." Admirable.
Under that apologetio explanation—how much
satire ! How much deserved severity upon the
egotism that lies at the bottom of our humanity,
upon the self-seeking, that is, so to speak, the
almost invariable under-current of benevolence !
And so our essayist resolves to enforce the cogency
of his argument about kindness towards the brute
creation, by givinc, the public, even on his title-
page, a notion that he is going to prove (as he does
prove to the generality) that the system is fraught
with advantage to themselves. An excellent pro-
ject which is here in this amiable little essay car-
ried to a delightful and eminently successful con-
summation. The volume, by the way, is preferred
to his Grace the Duke of Beaufort, through the
most graceful and courtly of dedications.

The Hope's cargo consists of about 8,000 ounces
of gold dust, a large quantity of ivory, palm oil,
bees' wax, gum, ginger, &c.
Mr. Whitford, purser of the Faith, screw-
steamer, who was supposed to have been lost, to-
gether with a boat's crew, had reached Benin with-
out provisions or water ; he has come home in the
Hope.

Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a
Religion. By Thomas Moore. Dolman.
Respectful greeting is due to this remarkable and
well-timed republication. Whatever his religious
predilections, it would be impossible for any man
of conscientious sincerity as a Christian to deny to
these pages, from the hand of Thomas Moore, the
regard which should ever be the meed of a:seri-
ously minute and
i exquisitely cautious investiga-
tion. These are, n truth, the prominent and dis-
tinguishing characteristics of this singular display
of logic and erudition. Whatever our own view
as to the force of his deductions, it is altogether
impracticable to deny that Moore evidently believed
in his heart, and in his conscience, the conclusion
at which the close of the work before us intimates
that he had arrived. Its principal merit, indee I,
consists in the sincerity of that conviction—the
conviction in the author's mind of the necessity of
that tremendous alternative. Diametrically oppo-
site though the inference drawn by the reader may
be, nevertheless he must confess on laying down the
argument with the last sentence still lingering in
his recollection, that such was the serious belief of
the writer when he penned it, and that that belief
is cherished by many millions of the subjects of
our gracious Sovereign. Therefore we cannot but
hail, as an incident of some importance, the ap-
pearance of this valuable and curious repub-
lication. Hitherto, we believe, the " Travels of
an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion" have
been given to the public in two volumes, issued in
a costlier form than suited the economic tastes of
the general community. Compressed into one
portable volume, the work is at length rendered
accessible to the mass of the population. It cannot,
therefore, we feel assured, fail, for this reason, and
from other timely considerations, to command. for
itself a closer scrutiny and a more extended circu-
lation than has hitherto been accorded to it by our
fellow-countrymen. As formerly, the book is pre-
faced by its simple but earnest dedication to the
people of Ireland, while the text itself is profusely
interspersed with the author's original notes and
illustrations.
As an additional attraction, the volume opens
with a biographical and literary introduction, as
succinct as it is undoubtedly perspicuous. For this
paper the reader is indebted to the author of the
" Memoir of Moore"—a memoir of which the chap-
ter before us is the welcome epitome. Mr. Burke
has in this biographical and critical essay combined
the advantages of brevity with the apparently incon-
gruous merits of
,completeness. He has enume-
rated,with a few unimportant omissions, the diffe-
rent events which marked the career of Thomas
Moore from his birth on the 28th of May, 1780, at
Dublin, to his death in the seventy-second year of
his age, on the 26th of February, 1852, near
Devizes, in his little cottage-home at Slol) erton.
;
Moore's education at Mr. Whyte's school his
con-
tributions at the age of thirteen to theDubli
Magazine called the Anthologia Hibernia ; his
entrance in 1793 into Trinity College ; his penning
his first political satire, in 1793, on the " King of
Dalkey ;" his familiarity with the " patriots" im-
plicated in the political transactions of 1798 ; all
the principal occurrences of his childhood, are care-
fully enumerated. We are reminded after this of
the appearance, inl799'
of Moore's firstliterary
pro-
duction, his translation of "The Odes
of Anacreon"
—followed —followed at intervals by his " Irish Melodies,"
and these again, in 1817, by " Lalla Rookh."
Afterwards we observe Moore visiting Italy in
1819 with Lord John Russell penning his
" Rhymes on the Road ;" subsequently " Alci-
phron ;" then " The Loves of the Angels ;" then
the "Fables of the Holy Alliance;" "Captain Rock,"
in 1824 ; " the " Life of Sheridan," in 1825 ;
" The Epicurean," in 1827 ; the " Life of Byron,"
in 1830 ; in 1831, the " Life of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald ;" and, in 1832, these " Travels„
of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion.
So that the last-mentioned work has survivedaen
existence of just twenty-one years, and notifies the
event of its " coming of age" in this very admir-
able republication.

ILOSC.

History of France.
Rout B
ledge y Emile de Bonn
Sufficient, indeed, for an English reader to know
in regard to this " History of France," that it is
" A work approved of by the Royal Council of
Public Instruction and adopted by the Minister of
War for the Special Military, School of St. Cyr, and
all the corps of the French .Army"—sufficient, we
say, for the English reader to know this to feel per-
fectly assured of the sterling merits of the Work, of
the impartiality of its statements, of their undoubted
authenticity, and of their skilful arrangement.
Conscious of this, Mr. William Robson, the trans-
lator of the present edition, himself already well
known as the translator of cc N. ,
ilenaud's •
the Crusades," inscribes the above announcement
of
announcement
upon the very title-page. It is a remarkable
Nvcir-
cumstance that until now e
have not possessed a
single popular history
of the great nationconfrontin,
us on the other side of
the Channel. Scarcely
twenty miles of salt water roll between the two
countries, and yet, up to the present time, the
annals of France have not once been clearly re-
counted in our own tongueLby any writer of autho-
rity, to the great mass
of Englishmen. Happily,
now that the long-antagonistic races are united
cordially, and
l
of political let us hope securely, by the bonds
alliance,and the ties of social friendship
—a lucid,
low- and
reliable, and picturesque cc History
of France" has
countr at length been provided for our fel-
low-countrymen
in
.the English version, by Mr.
Robson, of admirable work by M. Emile de
Benuehose
c . The name of the author, by the way,