The Sun.
London, England, 1849-08-07 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 7, 1849

to sell his horse, which he valued at 1,000 piastres, or
a little over forty dollars. But,
The course of true love did never yet run smooth;'
and unfortunately his horse died, which reduced hire to
stair. Shortly after, the girl's uncle claimed her for
his son, then five years old, offering to give his daughter
to her brother. According to an immemorial custom of
the Arabs, such a claim took precedence of all others,
and the beautiful girl, just ripening into womanhood,
was betrothed to the child. With the philosophy of his
race, however, 'Awad subsequently consoled himself with
a wife; but, true to his first love, never sees its object
without violent emotion."
The above extracts form but an inadequate idea of the
varied riches of this delightful work. It is illustrated
with numerous sketches of scenes and individuals
described in its pages, and contains also an elaborate
sketch map of the river Jordan and the Dead Sea.
Before taking leave of Captain Lynch, let us not
forget to mention the characteristic account
he has given of his interview with the
Sultan—an interview which had nearly never
taken place owing to the American's refusal to
give up his sword before entering the Royal presence.
This breach of etiquette was ultimately connived at,
and Captain Lynch retained his sword. During
his progress to the royal apartment he was disgusted
with the abject servility of the Sultan's attendants.
Speaking of the secretary, who conducted him to
the royal chamber, he says, " His countenance and
his manner exhibited more awe than I had ever seen
depicted in the human face. He seemed to hold his
breath, and his step was so soft and stealthy that once
or twice I stopped under the impression that I had
left him behind, but found him ever beside' me.
There were three of us in close proximity, and the.
stair• way was lined with officers and attendants ; but
such was the death-like stillness that I could dis-
tinctly hear my own footfall, which, unaccustomed to
palace regulations, fell with untutored republican
firmness upon the royal floor. If it had been a wild
beast in his lair that we were about to visit there
could not have been a silence more deeply hushed."
The Sultan received the American with great cor-
diality. He conversed with him through an inter-
preter. Some prints illustrative of the North Ame-
rican Indians (the work of American artit.tc) wet e
presented to the Sultan. He looked to fet-41
said he considered them evidences of the tidvance of
the United States in civilization, and he would tre:,
sure them as a souvenir of the good feeling of it
Government towards himself. "At the word civili-
zation, pronounced in French," writes Captain
Lynch, " I started, for it seemed singular coming
from the lips of a Turk and applied to our country.
I have since learned that he is but a student of
French, and presume that by the word
he meant the arts and sciences." This little incident
is as natural as it is amusing. We can conceive the
indignation of the representative of Republican Ame-
rica on hearing his country's civilization patronisingly
commended by a Turk !

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ; a Manual of Sacred
Verse. By the Rev. Robert Montgomery.
[SECOND NOTICE.]
Twenty years have expired since the author of
this volume first published any of his efforts in versi-
fication—seven since his name last appeared from the
press, coupled with a new poetical composition.
Long as those intervals may seem to be, respectively,
Mr. Montgomery has, nevertheless, been evidently
endeavouring throughout to enhance and elevate his
reputation. His sedulous efforts have been thus
directed, to our thinking, for two paramount reasons
—first, with the intention of dissipating the ridicule
attached to his earlier productions by several in-
different, and by one remarkable and influential
reviewer; secondly, from a solicitude to justify the
generous and earnest encomiums which had been
(strangely enough) pronounced upon those very same
productions not merely by an extraordinary number
of persons known under the generic title of the
" reading public," but also, and in a particular
manner, by men whose works had acquired celebrity,
and whose genius has rendered them illustrious. For
it is a circumstance not sufficiently borne in remem•
brance with regard to Mr. Montgomery, that while Ise
has been derided by one man of distinguished eminence
in letters, he has been eulogised as emphatically by
many individuals of extraordinary capacities, both in
poetry, history, and criticism—authors whose virtues
are the honour and whose names are the glory of our
national literature. If the more crude effusions of
his imagination have been ridiculed in the pages of
the Edinburgh, they have received the most earnest
and cordial commendations in those of Blockwood.
If the "Omnipresence of the Deity" has been analyzed
in the language
.of scorn and derision by Mr. Ma-
caulay, it has elicited also the plaudits of Robert
Southey—the encouraging praise of George Crabbe
—the graceful approbation of Lisle Bowles—the
emphatic panegyrics of Professor Wilson—the un-
stinted applause of Archibald Alison—the elevating
approval of Sharon Turner—and the genial and heart-
born encouragement of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Is not that a wreath of bay-leaves for the young
aspirant for a poetical reputation ? Is not that a
chorus sufficient to show that the effort of
the stripling, although in several points weak
and ineffective, was not wholly futile, or wholly
contemptible ? When the author of the " Sybilline
Leaves" can be moved to enthusiasm, would it have
been altogether irrational or hazardous to predict
better things from the object of that enthusiasm ?
When the creator of Christopher North, when the
historian of Europe, when the bard of Kehama, when
the annalist of England, and the commentator of the
" Dunciad," and the poet of rural simplicity, unite
in asserting the existence of merit in a " first volume,"
are those either rash or frivolous who presume to
admire its versification ? We leave the answer to
these questions to the candour of the unimpassioned.
Sufficient for us, and for Mr. Montgomery, is it to
couple his own acknowledgment, that " at the age of
eighteen or nineteen (the period in which his intro-
ductory work was penned) the mind is crude and
the taste imperfect, (p. vii.) with that energetic
and almost pathetic assertion of John Keats
(pathetic, as occurring in his introduction to
his " Endymion"), that " the imagination of
a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy; but there is," says Keats in a
tone of sombre self-consolation, " a space of life be-
tween, in which the soul is in a ferment, the charac-
ter undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition
t h
iihnocfafkeeesldsstisbgie
nehsbetyttnehhda,datcl
Christian
a.rne.
oife declaration Montgomery
poem,
toc
whenothn
e.
confesses
effect that the " Omnipresence," as now published,
compared with the earlier editions." Referringto
this fact with a manly and ingenuous composure, the
author remarks, that the sarcastic criticism o Mr.
he
prefaceellt hasctetoer wd
ofea truexilm,ep l
lot
rshitiete thatnibncc
yteho.is, we have most of
Macaulay " only serves to perpetuate verbal errors
and defective lines, which no longer exist, except in
his criticism." "Doubtless," he continues, in a dignified
tone of remonstrance," as one who professes, truth, can-
dour, and open manliness of disposition, that successful
writer will not republish his assault without some re-
ference to the circumstance here stated." For our-
selves we cannot say how immeasurably better that
gentle yet direct rebuke is, in our estimation, than the
peevish and spiteful vituperations which out of u
mistaken spirit of friendship were directed against
Mr. Macaulay in an essay penned some time back by
Mr. Archer Gurney. Mr. Gurney should have
known that a great writer, a writer illustrious by the
combination in himself of the qualities of a brilliant
rhetorician, a ripe scholar, an erudite historian, a
graceful essayist, a poet of no inconsiderable forceful-
ness, an orator of no narrow renown, a statesman
of no meagre reputation—is not exactly the fittest
mark for every paper Tenet of every adventurous
apologist, in any moment of petulance and irritability.
Mr. Montgomery, in a very different mood, with
the dignity becoming a scholar, the self-pos-
session of a gentleman, and the suavity of a
Christian, remonstrates with -Mr. All4eaulay
in a manner such as, to the generous and enlarged
intellect of that eminent man,
prove wholly irresistible; the -more so as the remon-
strance is accompanied wi'..fe a declaration that the
" verbal errors and defective must, we are satisfied,
lines," to which he ori-
ginally directed public
attention, have by this time
been entirely expunr
,-ed. One thing in regard to
Mr. —rend it is an impression forced
upon
nMonour tcgoenmveiertyir
by
y the very circumstance of his
eultaneously admired and ridiculed by
ens of the community—appears to us to
be altogetle
having
different been
sects sihr
er incontestable. We allude to an opinion
which vt? e have now for a considerable time enter-
tained, tbat Mr. Montgomery does anything but
justice tee those intellectual faculties with which he is
unquestionably gifted, and some of them even to a
very remarkable extent—that, in short, he has written
toe, rapidly—that his verses have been rather too
unpremeditated." His facility of composition has
been so exhilarating to his fancy, that it has tempted
him to throw the reins to his Pegasus, and to traverse
the realms of his imagination with what we cannot
but regard as a very reprehensible precipitation.
Endowed with a marvellous fund of language, he
has coined that bullion of the mind into thoughts of
every fantastic proportion; be has treated that intel-
lectual treasure as a spendthrift does his gold—
squandering it with a blind and lavish profusion upon
every subject that chanced for the moment to present
to him an aspect of fascination. Sometimes, indeed,
he has arrayed the veriest scarecrow of a conceit in
the gorgeous apparel of his peculiarly rich and ornate
diction. At others, carried away by the cestrum, or
E7r17:1101o5 of his meditations, be has uttered phrases
that might be stigmatised as plagiarisms but for the
distortion which proved them to be involuntary. In
proof of which, we might mention, in particular, se-
veral of the passages referred to by Mr. Macaulay,
and since erased from the " Omnipresence." While
these errors of judgment and violations of taste suffi-
ciently account for the unmitigated abuse showered
by some critics upon the writings of Mr.
Montgomery, t' Pey are, nevertheless, blunders

not by any means incompatible with ex-
cellences of a very peculiar description. That
some such excellences must have existed in those pro-
ductions is demonstrated incontestably by two results
of their publication. First, by the applause elicited by
them from the gifted authors whose names we have
enumerated; and, secondly, by the extraordinary popu-
larity which they attained at once, and which several
of them have since, up to the present moment, sus-
tained with an enormous portion of the educated
multitude. In short, the eulogistic analysis of the
" first work" in Blachwood—the cordial friendship of
Sharon Turner—and the remarkable circumstance
that the " Omnipresence" has passed through five-
and-twenty editions—would constitute alone conclu-
sive testimony that there was much in this new
aspirant for celebrity to justify the panegyrics of his
admirers. I' I,:ee the unprejudiced and discern-
ing could riot fail to recognise this truth through the
hew of caricature end misrepresentation, Mr. Mont-
gomery himself afforded the utmost assistance to
Woo who carped at his books and scoffed at his
pepuiterity, by his besetting sin, the disease of
writing, or caceethen scribendi. Whether it
arose from an insatiable yearning after appro-
bation or from an unconquerable impulse of his nature,
or from any other innate or extraneous incitement,
be wrote and published, wrote and published, wrote
and published, with the most reckless rapidity.
Volume after volume issued from the press,
and that moreover, so to speak, with scarcely
;any perceptible intermission. There was the
long poem On the " Omnipresence ;" and another
long poem on " Satan ;" and another long poem on,
the " Messiah;" and another long poem on "Woman;
and another bang poem on " Luther ;" and another
lung poem on "Death ;" and another long poem on
" Oxford." Add to all these a multiplicity of smaller
pieces of versification, together with his different
volumes of poetic-prose, such as his "Christ our All
in All," his " Reflective Discourses," and his " Gospel
hefere the Age," and we may at a glance form some
soeceptiou of the tendency such hasty composition
would necessarily engender in a mind naturally dis-
pesed to les diffuse and discursive—a tendency to
hitter awed the riches of the imagination—to di-
lute the Ile your of the hippocrene. At
length there has been a wholesome lull
efter thie eoetinuous and unnatural activity. Seven
seers have elapsed, and Mr. Montgomery again pre-
elite himself More the bar of criticism with a new
volume of verses, verses moreover inspired by a mo-
tive the neer purifying because the most benevolent.
" Christian Litt-"--the circulation of which is intended
to aid not the least attractive of all the eleemosynary
institutions of the metropolis—is a book containing
some five hundred pages, and one hundred and twenty-
four separate fragments. It is conceived throughout
in the same strain which has been conspicuous in Mr.
Montgomery's previous compositions, with this ad-
vantage, that the present effusions are more reflected,
the thoughts comprised in each more harmoniously
compacted together, and there is no longer that dis-
tressing consciousness in the mind of the reader that
the author is striving to be " effective" even though
it occasionally be at the expense of rhythm or of
rhetoric. In the " Christian Life," unlike se-
veral of its predecessors, the phraseology is
nowhere tawdry from an exaggerated effort
at verbal magnificence—and the graces of the
imageries are no where marred by incongru-
ous affectations. On the contrary, in several of the
pieces, there is considerable elegance, as well as force-
fulness of diction, and considerable appropriateness
as well as novelty of illustration. Thus, it is beau-
tifully said in one part (p. 29)
" Eternity familiar reads
To faith's perusing eye,
As spirit after spirit speeds
To populate the sky.'
In an admirable poem, called " The Religion of
Solitude," and beginning with the couplet—
" Lone Nature is no loneliness to me,
liar solituie makes my society,"
there occurs a metaphor which, although anticipated
in wine mew tee:. by the American poet, Professor
Lone;feilow, is to our thinking much more felici-
tously rendered by Mr. Montgomery. Longfellow,
in depletive the pr.xirie in his " Evangeline,' closes
his description thus—
" And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of
the desert.
Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the
brook
Arid nee, all is the sky, time clear and crystalline heaven,
Like the pi oteetaar hand of God inverted above them."
Here the " figure" is half odd, half solemn. Re-
peated by Mr. Montgomery, it is the latter alone ;
his lines reading thus—
" Serenely e.wful o'er my tranefel soul
I hear the music of th' Almighty roll,
And each deep cadence doth appear to tell—
' My band o'crsilades thee though invisible!'"
With the same perception of the solemnity produced
by the dim articulation of an austere thought, he
depicts in another page (69) the emotions produced
" when we know that Adam's fall
O'er bright creation drew a pall,
And over man and nature cast
The shadow of a ruin'd past."
That Mr. Montgomery knows the force of a single word
when rightly introduced is shown, we think, repeatedly
and conspicuously in a tender and pensive sketch,
headed " Infancy in Heaven," a sketch coloured by
the sadness as of a personal affliction. We feel this
when he is appostrophizing the dead child, now
" dreaming of its unborn days,"
now of its

" baby wiles and winsome ways."
When (he exclaitus very touchingly)—
" To heaven return'd thine infant breath,
Like a dead lily wert thou laid,
Ere sin had cast its poison'd shade
Around thee, white in lovely death."
With the same delicate appreciation of true pathos he
speaks, in the same page (76), of standing in the
child's death chamber—
" And all was breathless in thy room!"

It is but natural to find one dilating upon the charms
of infancy, who had already termed little children—
" Those incarnations of maternal dreams I"
Perhaps the gems of the present volume, as they
should be, are the poems dedicated to the most beau-
tiful, but most mournful, of all diseases—that dread
disease which, as Charles Dickens has exquisitely ,
said, " throws around familiar looks unearthly indi-
cations of the coming change, a disease in which
death and life are so strangely blended, that death
takes the glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and
grisly form of death"—consumption. _That Mr.
Montgomery could throw around the young girl
whom he delineates as the victim of this terrible
malady, so gentle and angelic an aspect of evanescent
lovliness, is ..no matter of surprise, remembering, as
we do, so vividly, that portraiture which recurs
somewhere in one of his former productions: It is
where he is speaking of a youth lamenting over the
death of his betrothed—
" —OllO, the battings of whose heart were his
Re-echoed!—she who walk'd with angel's step,
Der ko As the living sunshine of his soul,
Ber tones the ine'ic of his memory."
Generally theie is perceptible in the verses of Mr.
Montgotnery the agreeable sadness pervading the
whole of the poem on " Consumption," though at
some moments the key-note of his song is of such
prt6utA melancholy that, to quote one of his own
expre!sions, he seems "darkly girdled by a zone of
thought." Yet the principal portion of his effusions
cannot he said to have other than an elevating and
consoling influence—appealing as they perpetually do
to our sense of the grandeur of religion and of the
omniscience of the Divinity. In the "Christian
Life," more than in any other of his writings—if we
may ipe an expression admissible in Art—the "vanish-
ing point "of his picture is always in the Hereafter.
He evinces the ever-present, solicitude that his reader
thould—
" The Past revolve, and o'er the Future pray."

Ills chief anxiety is to depreciate the importance of
the present as contraaed with the days to come, feel-
ing as he has emphatically said already, that—
" All the ages of unreckoned Time
lses i
of
greatE telrensisioyn." he has many
In the enfoArcreembeunltthoefput
obstructions of style to overcome, prominent among
which are his reduplication of epithets and the casual
bathos of his too idiomatic vocabulary. Instance in
the former
says--
se the lines in which, describing
e
" Behold their gambols, and the shooting gleams
Of mirth which sparkle from their restless eyes."

anendoeuxs tragedy of the
example his mention,
%Oil:gee lraeteteorunbilienmgishoteaksetuaps
wcer,angholwinegver, to the author,
for the parted
Crucifixion, of " The errands of celestial love,"
av
esdt" onf ;
C‘h.
rtihset. solldniejrussti
it must be remembered that these exceptions to his
manner of composition have reference almost exclu-
sively to his preceding volumes—the " Christian Life"
being almost entirely relieved from their intrusion.
In the poem inscribed " The Wandering Dove," there
is a passage beginning—
" Man was not made for finite good,"
which bears a startling resemblance to a charming
poem, very little known, by Maurice O'Connell (de-
ceased) ; yet we are far from regarding the coinci-
dence as indicative of a plagiarism, for we would
almost wager that Mr. Montgomery never encoun-
tered the verses in question, called " Man was not
made for this !" One couplet—before we abruptly
draw our remarks to a conclusion—must not be
overlooked. It is where the author has finely ex-
claimed—
" A transient grief glib tongues can tell,
. But cloister'd Anguish keeps her cell."
Such are some few of the touching and melodious
verses scattered through this volume of poetic gene-
rosity—the intellectual alms of a sensitive and highly
intelligent nature. The purpose of the work is its
Own !post gentle yet moat forcible commendation.

As a graceful offering of charity it wins our enco-
miums, and as a book containing the noblest thouohts
and the least perishable effusions of Robert Mont-
mery it demands the attention of the reflective mul-
titude.

MAGA ZIN ES, &c.—(CON TIN UED).

THE JOURNAL OF DESIGN.

This, the sixth monthly number of the Journal of
Design, completes the first volume of that very excellent
publication, which is dedicated by special permission to
Prince Albert, as a very appropriate acknowledg-
ment " of the uniform and successful endeavours of
his Royal Highness to aid the progress of the arts
and manufactures in his adopted country." In the
preface to this first volume the directors of the work
congratulate themselves on the great, and, we may add,
deserved success which has attended their efforts.
Independent of the services which it renders to de-
signers and manufacturers, the Journal of Design, by
tending to cultivate and develop a popular love of
the Beautiful, is a most welcome and most valuable
addition to our periodical literature. The present
number contains, among other things, some exquisite
samples of paper•hangings.

MEMORANDA OF A 1% lUSICIAN.

BY GEORGE J. 0. ALL KANN

"Notes, notes, forsooth, and n oS'•"

No. XVI.
GUISEPPE TARTINI..
The greater portion of my readers mu st, have. heard of
the singular anecdote related of La Sc sada di D lava°,
but inasmuch as accounts have differed t o materially as
to wake a reasonable doubt of its veritab ility, the follow-
ing relation, which M. de Lalande infor las us he heard
from Tartini's own mouth, may accurst' be relied on.
" I dreamed one night," said the eccentric Musician, " in
1713, that I had made a compact with the Devil, who
promised to be at my service on all occasions, and,
during this vision everything succeeded tee ording to my
mind, my wishes were prevented and my .desires always
surpassed by the assistance of my new set .nt. In short,
I imagined that I presented the Devil m: r -violin, in order
to discover what kind of a musician he t rss, when, to my
great astonishment, I heard him play as, so singularly
beautiful, which he executed with such sup irior taste and
precision, that it surpassed all the mug is which I had
ever heard or conceived in my life. S ) great was my
surprise and so exquisite my delight up azi this occasion
that it deprived me of the power of brea thing. I awoke
with the violence of my sensations, and instantly seized
my violin, in hopes of expressing what I ;had just heard,
but in vain. I, however, then composed;a piece which
is,
perhaps,
the best of all my works, as id called it the
Devil's Sonata.' " Tartini was wont to se y that it was
immeasurably inferior to that which 1 ie dreamed the
illustrious Stranger" executed, and furthermore de-
clared that could he have obtained a sub siettence by other
means he would have destroyed his irustrutnent and
abandoned music for ever.

GUADAGNI
Was not only remarkable but famous for his politesse
towards the fair tex. An amusing in stance of this is
recorded. One day, while he was engaged in conversation
with a lady, a domestic, entering the ape irtiment in haste,
announced to the musician that the King .of Sardinia was
in the ante-chamber. "Is he," retu rued Guadagni
coolly, as if he were the monarch receivi vg the musician
at his levee, "is he? Then request ills : Wajesty to wait
till this lady has finithed her business v. 6th me."

PAGANINI.
Of this wonderful magician of the violin the following
interesting anecdote is related. Travellithe great artist arrived without the gate s4:oifnPrearnmkfaonryt:
where he alighted, and instead of entering the city
pro-
ceeded to a quiet and retired auberge ire the su rbs.
After having partaken of his usually s lender supper,
Paganini, absorbed in reverie, mounted the. narrow stairs
to the place assigned for his repose, a nar row and mean
looking garret. By that time the night , which was.
however, remarkably beautiful, had cot is iderably ad-
vanced, yet Paganini seated himself at the open window,
and gazing into the night saw the belt iant eyes of
heaven only through the medium of his WO n, while the
spirit of his dreamy and imaginative fairly peopled the
surrounding space with strange forms and shadows that
to the rapt musician were not phantasms, hut partook of
substantiality and real existence. Suddela!:,-.7 the clock
of some neighbouring kirche struck one, and in the space
of a moment

" A change came o'er the spirit of his d ream ;"
for instantly the remembrance of an occurn ,nce of which
he bad been an ear-witness occurred to his mind. The
Wiz ird-violinist abruptly caught up his instrument and
endeavoured to pourtray sounds that still echoed through
his cars. The moans and cues of a newly.born infant.,
the agonized sobs and shudders of the mother, were
imitated with the most consummate fidelity by his won-
derful bow. The unaccustomed sounds so on awakened
the host, who precipitately arose, marvelling through
what means such visitors could have entered his house
unknown to himself. Arousing his son also, they
hastened together to the apartment from whence the
sounds proceeded. Their astonishment may be guessed
when they perceived the tall, gaunt, almost unearthly
figure of a man—or of a disembodied spirit—for it
seemed as much like the one as the othey—strangely
gesticulating. But they were soon calm enough to be-
hold that it was a man apparently lost in intense thought,
who not even noticing their entrance caused his violin to
utter, so it appeared, distinct human sounds, while the
pale moonlight lit up his cadaverous face with an ex-
pression not of the earth. They retired immediately,
without daring to disturb the " midnight recollections"
of the performer, and it was not till some time after-
wards that they discovered their guest was the renowned
Paganini.