The Sun.
London, England, 1846-04-17 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

rag LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE
easVAING. By Robelt Bell, Author of " The His-
lery of Ruvsiu," &e.
Pew public men have furnished_ better topics for an
interesting biography than George Canning. He was
t °me of a good family, but brought up in very straitened
circumstances: His father, who appears to have been
one of the most reckless of Irishmen, died in great po-
verty when he was one year old; his mother who had to
shift for herself and her son in the best way she could;
leek to the stage, and married twice after the death of
her first husband, neither marriage being fortunate.
The childhood of Cunning was passed under the in-
auspicious guardianship of Mr. Reddish (her second
husband) whose disorderly habits excluded the possi-
bility of moral or intellectual training. The profligacy
of his life communicated its reckless tone to his house-
-bold, and even the material wants of his family were
frequently neglected to feed his wants elsewhere. Yet
under these inauspicious circumstances the talents of
the child attracted notice. Fortunately, they attracted
the notice of his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, who
procured him from a family estate in Ireland an annuity
of *Oa, which possibly saved the child from ruin. The
history of the youth of this celebrated orator would
have been remarkable, independent of the eminence
which he afterwards attained, for, though :exposed to
the worst example—though his mother for years led the
life of a strolling actress, and her vicissitudes and hard-
ships were of no ordinary kind, her son, from the very
'dawn of childhood, exhibited the most amiable dispo-
sitions and a love for older, moral principle, industry,
and domestic virtues which distinguished him to the
lasts His lot, too, was cast in a period the most re-
markable in the history of England for great events and
illustrious men. From the commencement of the French
revolution, or, rather, the execution of the French king,
to his death, in 1827, Mr. Canning was a public cha-
racter, end engaged more or less in the important
transactions that occurred during that long and eventful
period. He was admitted by common consent to be the
most finished and eloquent debater in Parliament. His
conduct as foreign secretary, with one remarkable ex-
Caption, met with the admiration of all parties. His
connexion with Pitt, Wellesley, Wellington, &c., and
his persevering and often successful opposition to Fox,
and the other great leaders of the Whig party, gave a lustre
to his name not equalled by that of any modern orator or
statesman. Mr. Bell, therefore, had one of the finest
sabjects for a biography that could have been selected,
and we must say, that he has done it ample justice. His
remarks in general are sound, and accord with historical
facts. His style is chaste, vigorous, and impressive. He
rarely displays any strong political bias, and seems
anxious to render justice not only to the subject of his
memoir but to the great men, his foes as well as his
friends, that figured during the war with France. He
rarely or never allows the attention to flag, for the dry his-
tory of facts is constantly enlivened by some little episodes
respecting such men as Wilberforce, and Windham, and
Sheridan, and Fox, and all told in brief and becoming
language. We give a specimen of his style and powers
of description from a short account of Canning's manner
of speaking and appearance when he began to emerge
into public life. After leaving college he had chain!), r> in
Lincoln's Inn, and, like m )st young men of the day, was
in the habit of attending clubs, where the pelities, and
especially the crowding events cf the French Revolution
were discussed. Here is a picture of him in his twenty-
second year:—
" Amongst them was a student of pale and thoughtful
aspect, who brought to the nightly contests unusual
fluency and grace of elocution. He, teo, along with the
rest,, had been inspired by the heroic spectacle, had
pondered upon its causes, and exulted over its prospects.
'dis head was full of constitutions ; for his studies lay
amongst the elementary writers, rather than the special
pleaders and torm-mongers of the law. And after a
Morning of close reading and severe reflection, he would
wend his way in the evening to one of these debating-
rooms, and taking up his place unobserved, watch the
vicissitudes of the discussion, noting well its effect upon
the miscellaneous listeners • then, seizing upon a moment
when the argument failed from lack of resources, or ran
into sophistry or exaggeration, he would present himself
to the meeting. A figure slight, but of elegant propor-
tions ; a face poetical in repose, but fleetuating in its
expression with every fugitive emotion ; a voice low,
clear, and rich in modulation ; and an air of perfect
breeding, prepares his hearers for one who possesses
superior powers, and is not unconscious of them. He
Opens calmly—strips his topic of all extraneous matter—
distributes it under separate heads—disposes of objec-
tions with a playful humour—rebukes the dangerous
excesses of preceding speakers—carries his auditors
through a eomelete syllogism—establishes the propo-
sition with which he set out—and sit, down amidst the
acclamations of the little senate. Night after night
witnesses similar feats ; at length his name gets out; he
is talked of, and speculated upon ; and people begin to
ask questions about the stripling who has so suddenly
appeared amongst them, as if he had fallen from the
sk."
His fame at Eton as well as at Oxford, his agreeable
manners and literary attainments, soon introduced him
to higher society, and made him a great favourite with
the Whig party ; but in reality he never declared for
them. For aught we know he was as good a Tory at
twenty-three as at fifty-seven ; and therefore, though
he had associated from accident with the Whigs more
than the Tories, there was no dereliction of principle in
joining Pitt, who made the first overtures on the sub-
ject. He entered Parliament in 1793, as member for
Newport, in the Isle of Wight, and was soon found of
the greatest service in debate. After filling various
offices, he was appointed Foreign Secretary on the re-
tirement of " All the Talents ;" and then he distin-
guished himself . by one of the most daring, prompt,
masterly, and successful acts.performed during the war.
On the best authority, he had learned that, immediately
after the treaty of Tilsit, Bonaparte had resolved to
make the king of Denmark yield to his imperious will
by joining with the other northern powers in a mari-
time attack upon England. No time was to be lost.
In a few weeks the powerful and well-appointed fleet of
Denmark might have been in the hands of the French,
but Canning anticipts'ed them. An English fleet en-
tered the Sound, bombarded Copenhagen, and gallantly
captured the whole navy of Denmark. A loud outcry .
was raised against this " atroe'ous breach of neutrality,"
this " whoh sale piracy," but Canning heard all the
charges with the greatest composure, lie knew he was
justified in sending out this expedition, and time would
make his justification known to the world. Pouch& in
his political confessions, admits that, "by tale of the
secret stipulations of the treaty of Tilsit, the Danish
fleet, was to be placed at the disposal of France," and
asserts that on the arrival of the intelligence that the
whole of the ships at Copenhagen had surrendered to
Admiral Gambier, he never, since the death of Paul,
saw the Emperor give himself up to such violent trans-
ports of passion. But Canning did not learn the secret
from Pouch& nor from any agent of Russia—he learned
it from the Prince Regent, to whom it had been com-
municated by the Regent of Portugal ; and the Foreign
Minister nobly kept concealed the source of' his intelli-
gence, notwithstanding every taunt, and reproach, and
execration. This was a set-oil for the miserable expe-
dition to Walcheren, the entire blame of which Mr.
Bell lays on the shoulders of Castlereagh, to whom we
think he shows less fairness and leniency; han to any
other public character. Castlereagh was not a whit more
to blame than any other member of the Cabinet, who
gave his consent to the hazardous undertaking. It was
in fact a great national undertaking—a Government
measure, and Canning, as well as the rest must come in
for his share of the blame. If he was so confident of
its ruinous consequences as is reported, he should not
have dallied with the Duke of Portland, or the King, or
any
.other personage—he should have resigned at once,
and thereby declared to Castlereagh, as well as the pub-
lic, his reasons. And, if he did not deserve to be
" winged" for concealing his sentiments from a colleague
so deeply interested, he deserved his fate richly for
sanctioning, by his silence, an expedition the most ex-
pensive, the a orst appointed, and the most disgraceful
that ever left the shores of England. He paid the
penalty, however, to the full
amount. He resigned
his appointment as Foreign Alinister, and was out of
oifeffic till the close of the war' The rest of his political
ls rapidly but graphically
11 sketched by his bio-
grapher, and some interestingivei detail., us well as occa-
Minai
sionster for Folly new facrets, are
g a
Affairs o d
during the his
plans as
g n i
tlae invasion of,
Spin by the French under the Dukeof
his recognition of the South American RepAnbglincus,leinhis'
attacks on the Holy Alliance, sea the strange plots
formed agairst him by his old friende when he
Prime Minister. :n one part of the work it is statedmaes
a matter of Let that the appointment of Sir Arthur
Wellesley to the c,minand of the army in Portugal was
the sole act of Canning. We could almost a the
statement to be unfounded for the sake of Wellingtet
himself. Another. statement is here made, which shows'
how much Wellington and Peel raved to canning in
being able to carry the Catholic Relief Bill:
"The sacrifices he made for the sake of this question
were great. Office was the least of them, He sacrificed
for it all prospect of representing in Parliament that
university in which he had been educated, the crowning
object of all the dreams of his youthful ambition. Every-
thing was against him on this question ; his own party,
the -Xing, the Duke of York, the Premier, the Chan-
cellor, the House of. Lords ; and, for many years the
House of C mirnons, and even popular prejudices in
'lngliti3d- He persevered against thew all. Lie brought

his influence and his eloquence to bear upon all these
masses of resistance. He k pt 0.160 f fiOm all. Personal
intercourse with Catholic delegates, that he might stand
clear of suspiciob, and that the purity and independence
of his motives should be above impeachment. He bore
down these antagonist forces one •by one—weakened
their powers of hostility, and effectually succeeded in
winning over the most influential and indispensable
opinions. What actual steps he took in the Cabinet
cannot be known, but they may be readily surmised. It
was quite evident that, under his influence, the tone of
the Cr:billet became slowly liberalised ; and that he had
secured the right to propound the Catholic question for
discussion amongst his colleagues, and to communicate
with his Majesty upon it, whenever he saw fit. To his
judicious and unwearied labours in this cause, must be
mainly attributed its early settlement. He prepared the
way for it; he overcame the greatest obstacle of all, the
reluctance of George IV. If he had not done wonders
with the servile bigotry of that monarch, the Duke of
Wellington and Sir Robert Peel would have been power-
less in his hands in 1829."
There are scattered throughout the work sketches of
some of the leading characters that flourished in the
time of Canning, and in general they are drawn fairly,
and without unnecessary severity. The sketch of Wil-
berforce is perhaps a little over-coloured, but no one can
mistake the original ; and in another place, all honour
is done to him for the inestimable services he rendered
to the cause of abJlition
Wilberforce was the Parliamentary apostle of aboli-
tion. He worked at it day and night, and prayed for it
with his daily bread. Honour to him for that, in spite
of all his crochetty little ways and eccentricities I But
he was a sad bore to Pitt, always popping in his fears
and misgivings at the most inopportune moments ; a
sort of philanthropic Paul Pry, perpetually forgetting
his umbrella, and hoping he didn't intrude. Nobody
ever had such an inobtrusive way of obtruding his ad-
vice upon everybody. No matter what the question
was, or who the person, or how slight the acquaintance,
Wilberforce was sure to find some excuse for a hint or a
warning, with such excellent intentions, that it was im-
possible to give vent to the vexation he occasioned. He
ha•l no suspicion of the possibility of doing mischief ;
but went blundering on with the most amiable sincerity
of purpose, good naturedly setting all his friends right,
and knocking his head against everybody's business
with a simplicity of character upon which experience
was wasted in vain."

The character of Lord Liverpool, also, is well de-

*.crthed

" In Lord Liverpool, now lost to the public service for
ever, Mr. Canning had to mourn the deprivation of a
steadfast and honourable personal friend ; the Mr. Jen-
kinson of Christ Church, whom he remembered so well
in his brown coat end the buttons with the initials of
the great orators ; the Lord Haakesbury of the young
days of Parliamentary strife and exptrimental.diplo-
macy, who used to make such gallant prophecies about
the war in France, and whose empty seriousness used to
give such offence to George 111. ; and, finally, that Lord
Liverpool who, by mere respectability of character, kept
together for fifteen years a cabinet composed of the most
incongruous materials that had probably ever been as-
sembled. The secret of Lord Liverpool's success in re-
taining so long a lease of power lay in the fact that he
did not possess a single quality calculated to provoke
the jealousy or excite the insubordination of his col-
leagues. His control was purely nominal. Slow, up-
right, practical—he never interfered with others, and
was suffered to go on in his track without check or inter-
ruption. Nobody feared him, nobody disliked him,
nobody doubted his probity. His good qualities were
all of a negative kind—the safest for a Minister who
seeks strength in combination. And this was Lord Li-
verpool's pre-eminent merit."
Before parting with Mr. Bell, we are bound to tell
him, that he is guilty of a most unpardonable propensity,
which soars in a great measure his qualities as a
biographer.. We never remember to have seen any book
so encumbered with foot-notes as this ; they become ab-
solutely insufferable. The attention of the reader is
eternally distracted from the text to the notes, some-
times five deep in one page, and occasionally of great
length. The first half of the volume, which contains
altogether 368 pages, is disfigured by not fewer than 127
notes, independent of references to authorities. This
shows either great carelessness or hurry, or a want of
the "bump" of arrangement. Four-fifths of them might
have been embodied in the text, or omitted altogether.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.
By Frederick Von Schlegel

A book of such a world-wide celebrity as this master-
piece of the great Schlegel, requires no commendation at
our hands ; in recommending it to the public we might
almost subject ourselves to the imputation of arrogance.
Its perusal is as necessary to every one who is desirous
of comprehending his position as a member of the human
family, as the perusal of Adam Smith's Wealth of Na-

tions is to the political economist, Tully to the rhetori-
cian, or Plato to the moralist. Fredeiick Schlegel, who
here comprises all times, generations, and empires past
is his comprehensive retrospect, while he applies their
aggregate meaning to the elucidation of the present, was
born in 1769, conformed to the Catholic religion
in 1805, and expired in 1829. In those simple
dates are contained the two outer limits and
the most memorable transition of a career which
will for ever and for ever mark that period of
German literature as with the star of Adonais. William
Augustus Schlegel, for his critical acumen, and Frede-
rick Schlegel, for his analytical subtlety, have no precise
parallels or compeers on record. There is an enthusiasm
and gusto about the one, and a shrewdne(s and lucidity
about the other, almost peculiar to themselves in the
relative branches of their art. Hence the two brothers
must ever survive the mutations of science, of letters, or
of fashion, and be resorted to as authoritative in history
and the belles lettres. Mr. 13.thn evinces a very admir-
able discrimination in the selection of reprints for his
" Standard Library," nor for the nonce could he possi-
bly have selected one more acceptable to his subscribers
than the " Philosophy of History." here; for an amount
most extravagantly disproportional' to the value of the

disquisition, any one may obtain a work encyclopaedic
in its character. From its pages alone we may
derive a perspicuous knowledge of the gradations
of mankind from the darkest periods of antiquity
even to the present century—a knowledge by which
many circumstances otherwise mysterious, or utterly in-
comprehensible, become unfolded to us as links in that
sequential chain which has conducted humanity up to its
present state of civilisation. More conceivable, more
beneficial, and more compatible with revealed religion,
than the wonderful theory of Lanark in reference to the
bodily development of man, this work traces out the ma-
turing causes which have mentally ripened the social
.ystem, and from the inferences of which philosophy we
may acquire some notion of the to be of the mundane
futurity. A more glorious or elevated theme for con-
sideration could scarcely have been selected for the exer-
cise of genius; nor could it scarcely have been handled
with more inimitable sagacity. For its republication in
its present compact form, the publisher deserves every
encouragement

LIFE AND PONTIFICATE OF LEO THE
TENTH. 2 ' Vols By Thomas Roscoe.
Like the foregoing, the' mere title of this publication
deformities (if they may be so
harshly termed), have bis sufficient ; it precludes
S e
Its merits and de-
merits, its beauties andv Pl
e
uie
Imn
.0 already canvassed so re-
peatedly, that public °
n has confirmed itself in
their regard, and the ol
es consigned, with a favour-
ing and sanctif3ir.3; estimation, to the bookshelves. It is
scarcely so much with the
character of the renowned
pontiff, of whose munificence
and influence it is an impartial and learning, and grandeur
a
dispassionate tone and ele.antr
language
or even with the
record is couched by the celebrated
dnrfluage in which that
the excellence
Roscoe, that
th
our remarks have to do, as with Lexcellence of the
reprint just issued by Mr. Bohn, his " Standard
Library," and at a price which disarms competition.
If the publisher perseveres in bis really remarkable
.
undertaking, he will ultimately afford the public a serie • s
of works as sterling in their merits as they are, un(ler
his arrangement of charges, attainable by the multi-
tude. We are glad to see he purposes issuing a conti-
nuation of the literary productions of Roscoe, in the
shape of his most admirable translations; a circumstance
which, of itself, will be no inconsiderable boon to the
reading portion of the community. There is much clear-
ness in the typography, and no little taste in the general
embellishment of the " Standard Library"--adjuncts
which it would be almost unfair not to mention, as some
publications of a somewhat simihr tendency are pre-
cisely the reverse. We can, in all sincerity, congratu-
late Mr. Bohn on what he has already accomplished for
the purpose of supplying good and cheap literature to
the million, and cordially wish the series the prosperity
to which it is so fully entitled.

IMMENSE NATURAL BEEMVE.—IR a cavern on the
right batik of the Colorado, about seven miles from Austin,
there is an immense hive of wild bees. The entrance of this
cavern is situated in a ledge of limestone, forming the river
bank to the height of about 150 feet from the water's edge.
In a warm day a dark stream of bees may be constantly seen
winding out from the cavern like a long dark wreath. The
stream often appears one or two feet in diameter near the
cliff, and gradually spreads out like a fan, growing thinner at
a distance from the cavern, until it disappears. The number
of bees in this cavern must be greater than the number in a
thousand or ten thousand ordinary hives. The bees, it is said,
have never swarmed, and it is not improbable that the hive
has continued for more than a century to increase year after
year in the same ratio that swarms increase. Some of the
neighbouring settlers have repeatedly, by blasting the rocks,
opened a passage into some of these chambers, and produced
by this means many hundred pounds of honey. But the
main deposits are situated too deep in the ledge to be reached
without great difficulty. and perhaps danger. It was esti-
mated that there are many tons of honey and wax in this
immense hive, and if its treasures could be extracted readily,
they would doubtless be far more valuable than the contents of
any silver or gold mine that adventurers have been seeking
for years in that section,— Texas Taegraph,