The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-17 00:00:00

LITERATUTie:- -
ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE.
Vols. V. and VI. Illustrated"-Edili-On. - -
Portraits of a great Russian and eq.rkat Auitrian
General grace the volumes just issued iee:the illusiated - )
rov.
edition of Alison's " History of EueteK=-Atifer
.1 ''''',..
timely mockery of a Prince Windischgrat isle
Prince Paskewitch. Neither one nor other o the
imperialist captains represented in the first book before
us is of a very prepossessing appearance—Suwarraff
being rather crabbed in aspect than heroic, and the
Archduke Charles of Austria betraying in his somewhat
dull and unintellectual countenance no indication what-
ever of those brilliant talents and that skilful general-
ship which rendered him not unworthy of being a
competitor of the Emperor Napoleon. In the subse-
quent, namely, the sixth volume, we have represented
two of the greatest men England ever produced,
William Pitt, the great statesman, and that man who
has been very happily termed by one of our contem-
porarif s " the darling hero of England"—the im-
mortal Nelson. Those who have heard the mire-
culousß performancts of Paganini on the violin
are ready to assert that his face, to them, though
grotesque in its general contour and bizarre in every
separate feature, was so illumined by the glory of his
genius, was so lit up by the rapid inspirations of his
fancy, that at times it appeared actually beautiful.
So it certainly is to us with reference to the counte-
nance of Nelson. Although without a single vestige
of grace or symmetry, the face of Nelson, from the
incomparable expression of daring which pervades
every line of it, is to us always beautiful to look upon.
It reveals the prevailing characteristic of the daunt-
less soul by which it was animated. It is the aspect
not only of the unconquered but of the unconquer-
able. And haughty as the curl of its lip appears
withal, the mouth breathes that gentleness of dispo-
sition which is ever the godlike accompaniment of
true greatness. Of late the injustice with which the
matchless achievements of Lord Nelson have been
acknowledged or recompensed by his country has
begun to agitate the public mind, and to
prompt the multitude to expiate its foregoing
ingratitude. We remember now, after forty-
four years have elapsed, that the dying
request of the hero of Trafalgar has been disregarded,
and that while those relatives for whom he requested
no attention were covered with the honours of the
State, were admitted to the ranks of the peerage,
were endowed with pensions, and treated as the
legatees of the glorious civism f Horatio Nelson, the
daugter of Nelson, the one being whose veins are
warm with his life's blood, has been overlooked al-
together. Suddenly the people wake from their
apathy and ingratitude, and find to their amazement
that Huratia Nelson, the child of 'the darling hero
of England," is living now in honourable obscurity,
the wife of a clergyman (the Rev. Ward) without
having received that assistance of the nation which is
due to her and to her eight children—the assistance
which will enable herself and her offspring to live as
lecomes the descendants of one who has helped to raise
England to its present greatness. Unhappily, we feel
when it is too late that a cruel and execrable disregard
has been shown to the eminent services done to her
country by Lady Hamilton. The nation calls to re-
collection, when all such reminiscences are worse than
useless, how that celebrated woman enabled the British
fleet to fight the battle of the Nile, and consequently af-
forded Nelson the opportunity to gain that astonishing
victory—and how, in compensation for that patriotic
proceeding, Lady Hamilton was permitted to die of
poverty and starvation on a foreign territory. The
remorse with whickthis circumstance must be called to
remembrance by.the population of these islands should
act as a wholesome stimulant to the national justice,
we will not say the national generosity, towards the
daughter of the greatest warrior England ever pro-
duced. " There is your English Napoleon !" said a
foreigner to his companion—pointing as he spoke to
the statue on the summit of the column in Trafalgar-
square. Eminently judicious as the phrase was as
indicating the pre-eminent glory of this one among all
the other captains of England—its irony was exqui-
sitely bitter as hinting the contrast of the homage
paid by the two countries to the memory of their two
heroes—by England to Nelson, by France to Napo-
leon. France has pronounced her homage in six
million voices, raising the representative of the
family of Napoleon to the highest post in her do-
minions, making him the first President of the new-
born Republic. England has expressed her homage
by allowing Lady Hamilton to expire from extreme
want in a distant town on the continent, and by
permitting the daughter of Nelson to live as she best
can, and to bring up eight children on the little
pittance of her husband, a simple country clergyman.
Even the monument erected to commemorate the
wonderful career of Nelson in the metropolis
of the wealthiest empire in the world
is allowed to remain month after month
year after year, incomplete—one of the disgraces of
the capital, and a perpetual subject of ridicule to the
Government. All this, however, is only in keeping
with the treatment of this great man during the
time of his existence. While Sir John Jervis was
invested with an Earldom for that victory of St.
Vincent, which was gained for him by Captain
Nelson's disobedience of his orders, Nelson himself
was only created a Baron for that unparalleled victory
gained by him near Aboukir—a battle fought at
midnight, and at anchor. And, as if this were not
enough, thegreatest sea captain whose name is recorded
in the history of the world, the victor of St. Vincent
and of the Nile, was insulted by being sent as
second in command to fight the battle of Coren-
agen. Nelson second in command to Sir Hyde
parker ! The fact is one of the most
significant, one of the most painful, one of the most
pitiable in our national annals. Can the period have
arrived for the expiation of so much injustice and in-
gratitude ? Earnestly and fervently do we hope so.
Earnestly and fervently do we hope that England
will, in her treatment of the daughter of her " darling
hero," endeavour to obliterate the remembrance of her
short- comings in regard to that hero himself and to
Lady, Hamilton. In commenting upon the little
homage paid to the memory of Lord Nelson, we have
been so far carried away by our sorrow and indigna-
tion as to have lost sight for a time of the work
which should have been under consideration. Yet
not so. For how could we pen a more appropriate
commentary on this portion of Alison's "History of
Europe"—this portion in which the eloquence
of the annalist has been lavished upon the
record of Nelson's wonderful and ever-
memorable achievements than by insisting
with the utmost emphasis upon the necessity of a
national tribute of love, of homage, and of gratitude
to the memory of the conqueror of Trafalgar ? This
tribute may best be offered, not in bronze or in
marble, not in the shaft of a pillar or in the chiselling
of a statue, not in inscription or in basso relievo, but
in the substantial evidences of affection which the
people of England should pay to the daughter of
Horatio Nelson.

LECTURES on SCIENCE and REVEALED
RELIGION. 2 Vols. By the Right Rev. .Ni-

cholas Wiseman.
The celebrity acquired by these learned and elo-
quent lectures immediately on their first publication,
arid the steady growth of that celebrity up to the
present period, constitute the worthiest panegyric on
their merits, and deprive us of the opportunity
to do more than announce the fact of their
appearance in a new and cheaper edi-
tion. Especially is criticism incapacitated from
doing more than repeat the announcement of the
fact of their republication, seeing that Dr. Wiseman
himself, in the " advertisement" prefixed to this, the
third edition, remarks that " it appears merely as a
transcript of the first. Higher duties," he intimates,
"leave him but little or no leisure for the cultivation
of literature, or the continuation of those studies
which formed the delight of his youth." Hence, no
additional matter being interpolated in the original
materials, we have nothing further to remark than
that the two volumes before us are deserving of atten-
tion, not only for the erudition and the rhetorical
beauties which mark their composition, but also, in a
subordinate degree, for the cheapness, the compact-
ness, and the typographical beauties which charac-
terise the manner of this republication. As an argu-
ment demonstrating the "connexion between science
and revealed religion," these lectures of Dr. Wise-
man have a peculiar claim upon the attention of every
one filled with love and veneration for Christianity.
Christians of all denominations, whatever their creed
or the forms of their worship, must feel a profound
and absorbing interest in a series of disquisitions
showing with the clearness of logic and the certainty
of induction that revealed religion is not, as many
have presumed to assert, incompatible with the truths
evolved in the development of the natural and the
abstract sciences; but that, on the contrary, the one
and the other are in every instance, without one soli-
tary exception, found to be consonant. The very
subject and title-page of the work will show that it
is not one jot more of a controversial character than
the " Nineveh and its Remains" of Mr. Austin
Layard. 'What Dr. Lingard's " Antiquities of the
Anglo-Saxon Church" are to the cause of Roman
Catholicism, these lectures are to the general cause
, of Christianity.

CULLODEN MONUMENT.—The foundations of this
monument were laid on IVadnesday. It covers a circle
of one hundred feet dibmeter, and. the fonndation-stone,
it is now definitively arranged, will be I.aid on Wadnes-
by thee risroevxinpeelcatledG.ranidleMasistteero,fatande
day, the 19th instant. The. stone will be laid with
eb;ssgebtliaogn of Mr. Forbes, of Culloden, is
masonic honours,
almup:oeinuyinthelaenrtag'etual battle-field,. and within a few yards of
the graves.—Caledonian Mercury.
eIIUECII-RAT ES AT SOUTIIAMPTON.—It would
seem that church rates are nearly doomed in this town.
At two different polls recently taken in the parish of St.
Lawrence, they were refused ; and in the large parish of
St. Mary, a motion for collecting the amount proposed
to be levied, by voluntary contributions, was carried by
a majority of thirty-eight to fifteen.