The Sun.
London, England, 1847-05-03 00:00:00

THE MAGAZINES.

BLACKWOOD.
Jsolicil ous is Blackwood t, , r ward i's peeuliar polillcel
'that it stem. titm-s perils its rtput .tion in literary
iriticism by undeserved attacks and extravagant patieg."
ries. In the punabor just published the latter failing Is
particularly visible. M. de Tocqueville has so depreciated
the system of republicanism as applied to modern gec";
vernment, that Maga feels bound to him by the
gratitude: and, in acknowledgment of the kindness
done to the cause of Conservatism by M. de Tacque
" Democratic en Amerique," the reviewer has the cab'
city to place him on an equality, as a political philoo:
pher, with—Machiavelli and Bacon!' With
saclav' 114
the astutest, wiliest, craftiest, shrewdest, an west sc.
with 13.,c0n,
complished ot all political philosophers!
eith Bacon,
" the wisest and the brightest of Mankind!"
at once the creator and the high priest ot rational
byhilo-
sophy! with Bacon, of whom no eulogium could e et;
tered too fervid, no expression too reverential- 11° evi
donee of awe too extraordinary! But Blackwood is not
satisfied with merely once drawing this abets' Our
parison; it enlarges anti dilates upon it. " Less caustic
illa's
and condensed than Tacitus," says the magazine writer
of De Tocqueville, " less imaginative and eloquent Os?
netting eye,
Burke, he possesses the calm judgment, the disci
and the just reflection,
immortalised the Florentine statesman and the
English philosopher." Was ever flattell ;a-,
,wordy and egregious! But we have IV. 1,-,-,e
means elven this flattery in its totality. At the risk its
tautology, Christopher tells us again, with his prise self'
cemplaeency, that M. de rocqueville "is e fillies
without Ins imagination,—a meeetteselli without
bi
crimes." We
.bad hoped, by the way, that wendtheau
which liars
never hear from such lips as those of Cnristop
old cant allusions to the crimes of the iusraoraal eat*
of the" Prince." We presumed that Mr. MatitaleY 1
thoroughly exploded that popular delusion. But' -las
a the
for the whirlwinds
of the logic, and the tempe'r' blown
rhetoric of' the eloquent essayist,—they hoe ,g.
through the " talking oak," without terring a swig ici
the stubborn leaves still go ou prattling as thel• sas
heretofore, and they have now mingled these allot'
mast
to the criminality of the Florentine with theete
fulsome praise of a Parisian philosophe 1 M. Le (mite,
clever de Tocqueville is doubtless a marvellously T,t he
bat we protest he is no Machiavelli; and we a that
is as far removed in point of genius from the glee' due'
Bacon as one of Madame Tassaud's tve%.,Thetes.
mies is removed from the Jupiter of .1,;"-lan
M. de Tocqueville has the worst vice with wr"r".:i et •
ambitious author can be cursed—the vice of.ef;:"s-ts,ire'
witness the title of his latest lucubration, the " .it,,,i'eg
Philosophique du Regne de Louis XV." Even the 'elet r
Blackwood cannot help acknowledging tha‘ IT eo'r
Robertson, nor Guizot, nor Sismoudi, nor Solliege 'self.
Bossuet, had the hardihood to parade their elitece a
esteem in so flagrant and impertinent a manner logo-
title-page 1 Beyond this, as was evinced in the
-003
machy between M. de Tocqueville and Lord Elr'll,f the ,
a few years back, the former is utterly destitute lig
first requisite of a true philosopher—equanitniel• r to
a Machiavelli, forsooth! he a Bacon!—slack, hoesvf,:tel-
we dissent from Blackwood in its opinion of ihe 1-.014
lectual eminence of this Frenchman. we are Prey tee
to admit the justice, and sometimes the saeacitY,:igctioo
less personal observations in the opening e"litl. mph',
for May. We coincide in a great measure, for eile-hich
in the opinion that " there is not an intellect which
rises to a certain level now in France--not a erlll3° Iv,
ler
will be known a hundred years hence—which I.
nil(' ' 104
roughly Christian in its principles. Chateaubriand, ts elsi,_
Lamartine, Vilmain, De Tocqueville, Michele': es. to
mondi, Amat'ie Thierry, Beratiger, Bitrante, he,reif"ths
this bright band." With one exception, we think the
1
catalogue tolerably correct, that exception bung,
course, M. Michelet. In like manner, we eurie"veeeten
Adolphe Thiers is, with all submission to the --le of
rather likely to go down to posterity to the dig:sac,i le
a hundred years and more too I A very flipiNT' article
follows about "Real' Ghosts and Second Sig" ;' Cites
the con verse of the calm, staid, and even philoso%\phic !salt!
of Sir Walter Scott. on " Demonology and the far
Thanks to Blackwood, a thousandiold, for d the
Sonnets upon—Life, Love, Heaven, and Earth, en, are
Prospect—by Elizsbe!h Barrett Browning. 'lshe;',. chi
s
sunbeams of poetry gilding the murky tits very
work-a-day life. The first sonnet is quaie4 een' ;soy of
quaintness is ennobled by the grandeur and reer d'iels
its tone. After asking whether there be not a "_e ja
sympathy thrilling from all points of the univers
vibration and rebound—
" Life answering life across the vast profound,
In full antiphony by a common grace ;''-•"'
The poet continues—
° I think this suddenPyaunce which ;limes
A child's month sleeping, unaware may run
From some s,ul breaking new the bond of tombs:
I think this passionate sigh, which, half bego*
I stifle back, may reach and stir the plumes
Of God's calm angel standing in the sun."
e Rosaura; a Tale of Madrid," is sufficient in
even
way
of romance, and interest, arid animation, for eve° t—
most laded reader of the feuilleons. Those'
who metalde :
,sirous of plunging into a • a weisP
thicket may do so in the very
Bptriel e The -Visible
'and the Tangible." The tphaicpkerPt ebas the advantage of
ter
being a delightfully intricate labyrinth, and the wri .
has the advantage of being perfectly well the
with the clue, leading into the very core of the mystel..
end out again. Both reader and writer—as ie almost.i _
variably the ease with the least profound nitaPl;
sical investigations being about as wil A
emerging as they were on entering :
_live
very pleasant dissertation follows upon the tesPers,
merits and demerits Qf medern French rotnance writ' 4,.
From Honor4 de Balzac with his Pere Goriot awl Eugent:,
Grandit, to Eugene Sue with his Mysteres de 1'617'4 t''ter6l
Alf Errant, and on to Alexandre Dumas. Of thelgd ~
the Marquis de Is Pailleterie, - a most facetious seeceii
eol,
is narrated. M. Damns, as is generally known, is gawks.
coon—his veins are tinctured with the blood of the seas
His father, the republican general of the same name' inns
a mulatto, born in St. Domingo, the son of a neg6to
and of the white Marquis de la Pailleterie. -BBt. „di,
to the anecdote :—A person .more remarkable for Inf.:10,
sitiveness than for correct breeding—one of those;ry„
devoid of delicacy Dam
and reckless of rebuff, pry int°
rather
thing—took the liberty to question M. DUai
closely, concerning his genealo7ical tree.
's 'You are a quadroon, M. Dumas ?' he began' oegb
4" I am, Sir,' quietly replied Dumas, who has sense en
not to be ashamed of a descent he cannot concea. .
"'And your father?'
" ' Was a mulatto.'
" 4 And your grandfather?' whose pat'elice
" 4 A negro,' hastily answered the dramatist,
was waning fast. andfather was?
at
'And may I inquire what your great-gr a
"' An are, Sir!' thundered -Dumas with fiercenesstesm,'"et
made his impertinent interrogator shrink into ha
_me.-1:70
possible compass. 'An ape, Sir—my pedigree ow
where yours terminates.' " this
The gin' of the entire contribution from which
more PrT,
humourous incident is extracted, is to bring Fleece
mineral), before the English readers one of the ohs, les
romanci. rs who is less known than he deserses--'' 00'
& B.rnard, the clever author of the " Gent/11100e Grant
pagnard.” " Belisarius—was he blind?" is a really 14911.-0-
paper, endeavouring to prove that the B e esius o'. Tr
mance and the Belisarius of history e oisdi-tinet Pee
Sontag s, and not, as Lord are two .. ,liticai,
Mahon presumes, ineitobitt
Men have undertaken before now to maintain Shiite, el
flood never.
. existed. We prefer—we esee° se
to acknowledge it—we pref. are not
,s 0 ter;
point:; rather than havin
prefer being in errpr,tresee
visions so beautiful orAjoier°
' hen ignorance is bl'g
isst" &c. "Ancient Gijia pre'
Ballad Poet '"
'
lis a pleasant jumble of 1• *c tid•bits, eel
. 4 til
faced with
a very churl. h
is and sardonic steer Li vete
who are still struggling to acquire poetic fame- f sei l'
is likewise a gallant epitaph from the German ° It*
i Pe
helm Muller , some dainty Scottish melodies b' reci,
and s marvellously dry, barren, tooth-breaking 1:0111
on the " Scotch Marriage Bill." May, " the riiii-g Ar
rosy beauty," as Leigh Hunt calls it, has a pleasoll
seasonable accompaniment in Blackwood.

====■•••---
FRASER'S.
- . a AC'
Thepresent number. opens with an interet`ti°,7eic
count of the siege of Ragland Castle (the 0105",,(0'
taresqiie ruin in Monmouthshire), by the
CeolsooB
wealth men, under Fairfax. Ample justice 55„eiri
of
the high and chivalrous (but utterly useles'-'l,''s 14
and
fndthe Marquis of Worcester, the friend of Char'e the
is pooh-pooh'd off as a nobody. Certfavbry s the
the defender of the castle, while his %)11,0'.ery
matter of
Marquis of Worcester, the inventor of the StCly the
gainteh,
u or of " The Century of Inventions° tiof the
greatersteam-e man , of the two, and the invention
~,. ofd
he
portancengine was
a
to the world than the d t tit tionof z,,i
Castle eS I' .
..,iiituri, f
, ; but as the stea '
useful,andlia la 1 'll1-engine is merely ur"
nornento.'
g in Castle is romanticallY ° 101.40°
the
,opicturesque Charles I. and the chivalrous
periodic
infinitely grev-,,,,,,,a
apoiiicseiot,Wtohecanpansott
131utir
albeit
are the heroes of the high T(LIII-rri s the
31,Senatir elf
we ~..- r
.etit,
If
hen
rogues tall out honest men come v.). i, 00t
aargre eceonwcei trhn eFdr, °se'
rights, and in thepresent break' u honestrtie4 it find
surprising that honestP teriee,,,cl.
radicals andn Kr''' and
themselves • uniting on the same coolie°
.40), se
Sales populi suprema lex is a received enli'ott the
severy. honest man seeks the salus
.popui, an° 1:0, 0,
sales populi is to be found in the Irish 11001-,_,oeteu
nowould desire no better proof than that it is aovc,ster/
tonly
by radicals but by honest and disirhiter:bid,
tories, among whom we reckon Fraser its t
Hear what Fraser says on this subject 'aye in the 0/
" And here, as is fitting, we turn our gaze ill whiebi
instance towards the Amended Irish l'oor'lliouse °
while we write, is still in progress through the „,,ht, 00.
Commons, That it mast be considered in the ob r aoll;
very bold experim,nt, we agree aitb all clsfsro v..'
..,r,cio
ticiatts in admitting. IL cannot fail to effect such I,3;eret
ieNolution it. the sister country us tilts CO't in v. O'll
itimes, been accomlished any where under the 3° re, l'i!,
• t work tor good ? Honestly, and without rese y
~, oa
believe that it will : not suddenly, perhaps, nor ri:vas
a sort 0: crisis shall have arrived, and been surei:oljtbors
but in the end. and.that. too, so as to I,erroit it9otoerVe'
to enjoy the triumph of their own success. took
that we z..ee distinctly before us resistance even t°l4o
boa
shed, when first the rates come to he codected- r he het
in Ireland has money, or will acknowledge 1131Z,„te be
ever thills of pa) jog a debt to tbe St tor; 110
long as he can help it ; and as to the rte-col abet
will be a fortunate man if, in his first cadtavour.t
ecorill
m the cess, lie escape assassination. 13ut tlCl3the perg
change with the change which is sure to occur in
).1 . ao.
sons of the proprietors and occupants a the eidlo'te'r
WI this occur, the police end the soldiers trust eva, set
du;
To•, yeays hence w. •;111.11 have an entirely 11 g oil'
l 'ken,- -in t,ory It f,ll ..0.:;at..,. ilv fp!.1'11.:: oa
have broken up and gone, w, csunot tell svoe'-erjah
with them will depart something that was 400d,..,,P oat 0
but, we write it deliberately, a great was too"
/lir A'
i