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

LITERAT URE.

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 fro-u 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 Blackwood—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. Yet, while the unprejudiced and discern-
ing could not fail to recognise this truth through the
haze of caricature and misrepresentation, Mr. Mont-
gomery himself afforded the utmost assistance to
those who carped at his books and scoffed at his
popularity, by his besetting sin, the disease of
writing, or cacoethes 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,
he wrote and published, wrote and published, wrote
and published, with the most reckless rapidity.
Volume after volume issued from tne 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 01;1,
the " Messiah ;" and another long poem on "Woman;"-
and another long poem on " Luther ;" and another
long poem on " Death ;" and 'another long poem on
" Oxford." Add to all these a multiplicity of smaller
'pieces of versification, together with bis different
volumes of poetic-prose, such as his " Christ our All
in All," his "Reflective Discourses," and his " Gospel
before tp#,Age," and we may at a glance form some
conception- of the tendency such hasty composition
would necessarily engender in a mind naturally dis-
posed to be diffuse and discursive—a tendency to
fritter away the riches of the imagination—to di-
lute the flavour of the hippocrene. At
length there has been a wholesome lull
after this continuous and unnatural activity. Seven
years have elapsed, and Mr. Montgomery again pre-
sents himself before the bar of criticism with a new
volume of verses, verses moreover inspired by a mo-
tive the most purifying because the most benevolent.
" Christian Life"—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 onebundred 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—

NARRATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES
EXPEDITION TO THE RIVER JOR
DAN AND THE DEAD SEA. By W. F.
Lynch, U.S.N., Commander of the Expedition.
Narratives of travels in the Holy Land are pos-
sessed of a peculiar and universal charm, occasioned
in part by their sacred associations, and in part, pro-
bably, by the fact of the names and places to which
they relate having been from our childhood familiar
to us as household words. Hence, although that at-
tractive region has been celebrated by the genies of
Chateaubriand and Lamartine, both especially qua•
lified to chronicle such a pilgrimage, we turn with
interest to every new account of the most interesting
portion of the globe. The narrative before us differs
in some respects from all its predecessors; it describes
a hitherto unexplored region, and, moreover, it—this
record of the world of bygone times—is written by
an American. Lieutenant or Captain Lynch has
treated the subject, as it should be treated, con amore.
His remarks exhibit the intelligence of ap educated
man together with the enthusiasm of a true believer.
This visit to the Holy Land had it seems been for
years one of his favourite daydreams. When, em-
barked on the expedition, the land of America had
disappeared from sight, he writes with exultation—.
" The yearnings of twenty years were about to be gra-
tified. When a young midshipman, almost the very
least in the escort of the good Lafayette across the ocean,
my heart was prepared for its subsequent aspirations.
In truth, in our route across the Atlantic, in the silent
watches of the night, my mind, lost in contemplation,
soared from the deep through which we ploughed our
way, to that upper deep, gemmed with stars, revolving
in their ceaseless round, and from them to the Mighty
Hand that made them ; and my previous desire to visit
the land of the Iliad, of Alexander and of Caesar, became
merged in an insatiate yearning to look upon the
country which was the cradle of the human race, and the
theatre of the accomplishment of that race's mysterious
destiny; the soil hallowed by the footsteps, fertilized by
the blood, and consecrated by the tomb, of the Saviour.
Twice, since, at distant intervals, I contemplated making
the desired visit. But the imperative calls of duty in the
first instance, and a domestic calamity in the second,
prevented me. As I have before said, in the spring of
the present year I asked permission to visit the lands of
the Bible, with the special purpose of thoroughly ex-
ploring the Dead Sea; the extent, configuration, and de-
pression of which are as much desiderata to science as
its miraculous formation, its mysterious existence and
the wondrous traditions respecting it. are of thrilling
interest to the Christian. The same liberal spirit which
decided that the expedition should be undertaken, di-
cted ample means to be furnished for its equipment.
With our boats, therefore, and arms, ammunition, and in-
struments, I telt well prepared for the arduous but de-
lightful task before me."
The same sentiments pervade the entire work ; its
composition, like the expedition to which it relates,
has evidently been a labour of love. The expedition
was eminently successful. The following passage
gives the result of its labours :
" Before retiring we bathed in the Dead Sea, pre-
paratory to spending our twenty-second and last night
upon it. We have carefully sounded this sea, determined
its geographical position, taken the exact topography of
its shores, ascertained the temperature, width, depth,
and velocity of its tributaries, collected specimens of
every kind, and noted the winds, currents, changes of the
weather, and all atmospheric phenomena. These, with
a faithful narrative of events, will give a correct idea of
this wondrous body of water, as it appeared to us.
"From the summit of these cliffs, in a line a little north
of west, about sixteen miles distant, is Hebron, a short
distance from which Dr. Robinson found the dividing
ridge between the Mediterranean and this sea. From
Beni Na'im, the reputed tomb of Lot, upon that ridge,
it is supposed that Abraham looked " towards all the
land of the plain," and beheld the smoke, " as the smoke
of a furnace." The inference from the Bible, that this
entire chasm was a plain sunk and "overwhelmed" by the
wrath of God, seems to be sustained by the extraordi-
nary character of our soundings. The bottom of this
sea consists of two submerged plains, an elevated and a
depressed one; the last averaging thirteen, the former
about thirteen hundred feet below the surface. Through
the northern, and largest and deepest one, in a line cor-
responding with the bed of the Jordan, is a ravine,
which again seems to correspond with the Wady el Jeib,
or ravine within a ravine, at the south end of the sea.
"Between the Jabok and this sea, we unexpectedly
found a sudden breakdown in the bed of the Jordan. If
there be a similar break in the water-courses to the south
of the sea, accompanied with like volcanic characters,
there can scarce be a doubt that the whole Ghor has
sunk from some extraordinary convulsion; pre ceded,
most probably, by an eruption of fire, and a general con-
flagration of the bitumen which abounded in the plain.
I shall ever regret that we were not authorized to explore
the southern Gher to the Red Sea.
"All our observations have impressed me forcibly with
the conviction that the mountains are older than the sea.
Had their relative levels been the same at first, the tor-
rents would have worn their beds in a gradual and cor-
relative sloop;—whereas, in the northern section, the
part supposed to have been so deeply engulphed, al-
though a soft, bituminous limestone prevails, the torrents
plunge down several hundred feet, while on both sides of
the southern portion, the ravines come down without
abruptness, although the head of Wady Kerak is more
than a thousand feet higher than the head of Wady
Ghuweir. Most of the ravines, too, as reference to the
map will show, have a southwardainclination near their
outlets, that of Zerka Maine or Callirohoe especeially,
which, next to the Jordan, must pour down the greatest
volume of water in the rainy season. But even if they
had not that ch fltction, the argument which has been
based on this supposition would be untenable; for tribu-
taries, like all other streams, seek the greatest declivities
without regard to angular inciination. The Yerman
flews into the Jordan at a right angle, and the Jabok
with an acute one to its descending course.
"There are many other things tending to the same
conclusion, among them the isolation of the mountain of
Usdum; its difference of contour and of range, and its
consisting entirely of a volcanic produce
" But it is for the learned to comment on the facts we
have laboriously collected. Upon ourselves, the result
is a decided one. We entered upon this sea with conflict-
ing opinions. One of the parties was sceptical, end
another, I think, a professed unbeliever of the Mosaic
account. After twenty-two days' close investigation, if
I am not mistaken, we are unanimous in the conviction
of the truth of the Scriptural account of the destruction
of the cities of the plain. I record with diffidence the
conclusion we have reached, simply as a protest against
the shallow deductions of would be. unbelievers."
Interesting as the narration of the travellers' adven-
tures may be, those adventures were not always quite
agreeable to the travellers themselves. At times they
suffered intensely from heat and thirst, e.
In the early part of the night, there was scarcely a
moment that some one was not at the water-breakers;
but the parching thirst could not be allayed, for, al-
though there was no perceptible perspiration, the fluid
was carried off as fast as it was received into the system.
At 9, the breakers were exhausted, and our last waking
thought was water. In our disturbed and feverish slum-
bers, we fancied the cool beverage purling down our
parched and burning throats. The mosquitoes, as if
their stings were envenomed by the heat, tormented us
almost to madness, and we spent a miserable night,
throughout which we were compelled to lie encumbered
with our arms, while, by turns, we kept vigilant watch.
" We had spent the day in the glare of a Syrian sun,
by tle salt mountain of Usdum, in the hot blast of the
sirocco, and were now bivouacked under the calcined
cliffs of Moab. When the water was exhausted, all too
weary to go for more, even if there were no danger of
a surprise, we threw ourselves upon the ground—eyes
smarting, skin burning, lips, and tongue, and throat
parched and dry; and wrapped the first garment we
could find around our heads to keep off the stifling
blast; and, in our brief and broken slumbers, drank
from ideal fountains.
" Those who have never felt thirst, never suffered in a
simoom in the wilderness, or been far off at sea, with
"'Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink,'
can form no idea of our sensations."
In another place we find the commander of the ex-
pedition making the following rather unsatisfactory
observation :—" Thus far all, with one exception,
had enjoyed good health, but there were symptoms
which caused us some uneasiness. The figure of each
one had assum, d a dropsical appearance. The lean
had become stout, and the stout almost corpulent;
the pale faces had become florid, and those which
were florid ruddy ; moreover the slightest scratch
festered, and the bodies of many of us were covered
with small pustules. The men complained bitterly of
the irritation of their sores whenever the acrid water
of the sea touched them. Still all had good appetites,
and I hoped for the best; there could be nothing
pestilential in the atmosphere of the sea." " Where-
ever there is an evil," adds Captain Lynch, " there
is usually its antidote near at hand ; and perhaps the
remedy for these cutaneous diseases (above-men-
tioned) is to be found in the acrid juices of the
ocher, which grows here and upon the southron shores
of this sea." This " osher' is no other than the
celebrated apple of Sodom—
" All gold and ruddy on the rind,
And ashes at the core."
"This fruit," says Captain Lynch, "is doubtless the
genuine apple of "8 odorn, for it is fair to the eye and
bitter to the taste, and, when ripe, is filled with fibre
and dust. We have succeeded in bringing safely
home some of the green and the dried fruit, and also
the leaves and blossoms of the osber, put up in spirits
of wine." Among the numerous interesting anecdotes
scattered throughout the narrative, the following is
singularly sad, and might have formed the ground-
work of one of Moore's or Byron's Eastern poems :
" Towards noon it became very warm, and we were
thirsty. Meeting an old Arab woman, we dispatched
her to the Subeih for some leban. We noticed that
'Awed, our Ta'emirah guide, was exceedingly polite to
her. But when she returned, accompanied by her
daughter, a young and pretty fellaha, he became sad,
and scarce said a word while they remained. On being
asked the reason of his sudden sadness, he confessed
that he had once spent twelve months with that tribe,
sleeping, according to the custom of Arab courtship,
every night outside of the young girl's tent, in the hope
of winning her for his wile. He said that they were
mutually attached, but that the mother was opposed to
him, and the father demanded 4,000 piastres, about 170
dollars. 'Awed bad 2,000 piastres, the earnings of his
whole life, and in the hope of buying her (tor such
is the true Dunn of An Arab marriage), he determined

" Lone Nature is no loneliness to me,
Her solitude makes my society,"

there occurs a metaphor which, although anticipated
in some measure by the American poet, Professor
Longfellow, is to our thinking much more felici-
tously rendered by Mr. Montgomery. Longfellow,
in depicting the prairie 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 side,
And over all is the sky, the clear and crystalline heaven,
Like the protecting 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 awful o'er my trancil soul
1 hear the music of th! Almighty roll,
And each deep cadence cloth appear to tell—
' My hand o'ershades thee though invisible!'"

With the same perception of the solemnify 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 be is appostrophizing the dead child, now
" - dreaming of its unborn days,"
now of its

" baby wiles and winsome ways."
When (he exclaims very touchingly)—

" To heaven return'd thine infant breath,
Like a dead lily wert thou laid,
Ere sin had cast its poieon'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 l"
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 angeliF- an -aspect' of evanescent.)lovliness, is
..no matter orsurpriie, 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—

" —One, the beatings of whose heart were his
Be-echoed ! —she who walk'd with angel's step,
Her looks the living sunshine of his soul,
Her tones the MOW of his memory."
Generally there is perceptible in the verses of Mr.
Montgomery the agreeable sadness pervading the
whole of the poem on " Consumption," though at
some moments the key-note of his song is of such
profound melancholy that, to quote one of his own
expressions, he seems "darkly girdled by a zone of
thought." Yet the principal portion of his effusions
cannot be 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 use 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
should—

" The Past revolve, and o'er the Future pray."
His chief anxiety is to depreciate the importance of
the present as contrasted with the days to come, feel-
ing as he has emphatically said already, that—
" All the ages of unreckoned Time
Are but the pulses of Eternity."

In the enforcement of this great lesson he has many
obstructions of style to overcome, prominent among
which are his reduplication of epithets and the casual
the bathos
fo
former erhisootoseo idthioerna htiocee in which, describingvocabulary. Instance in
children, he says—
" Behold their gambols, and the shooting gleams
Of mirth which sparkle from their restless eyes."
Of the latter blemish take as an example his mention,
while recounting the stupendous tragedy of the
Crucifixion, of " The errands of celestial love,"
and of " the soldiers wrangling for the parted
vest" of Christ. In justice, however, to the author,
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 most gentle yet most forcible commendation.

THE SUN. LONDON, VUESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 7, 1849.

As a graceful offering of charity it wins our enco-
miums, and as a book containing the noblest thon2hts
and the least perishable effusions of Robert Mont-
mery it demands the attention of the reflective mul-
titude.

MAGAZINES, &c.—(CONTINUED).
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 pre:ent
number contains, among other things, some exquisite
samples of paper hangings.

TILE SPORTING REVIEW.
The Sporting Review is this month embellished
with a portrait of " Lady Evelyn," the winner of
the Oaks, 1849. Among the literary contents are
an essay on the " Science of the Rod," by Ramrod
(who anticipates that every one noticing the signature
will inquire, " What can Ramrod know about the
rod ?"); "Sketches from the Cape of Good Hope ;"
' Otter Hunting ;" " Sporting Clubs ;" " Racing in
July," and other papers of a similar character.

-
THE FARMER'S.
The Farmer's Magazine for August is of more
than average excellence. The first article is an in-
teresting inquiry into the impurity and purification
of water. Among the rest of the contents are arti-
cles on " Manure from House-fed Animals," " Ad-
vantageous Grazing of Sheep and Cattle," " Hay-
making," " Forcing Strawberries," a report of the
lecture on the " Anatomy, &c., of the Organs of
Respiration, with particular reference to pleuro-
pneumonia in the Ox," delivered at the recent agri-
cultural meeting at Norwich, by Professor Simonds,
&c. The various proceedings of the great Norwich
meeting are, of course, amply detailed in the Farmer's
Magazine.