The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-01 00:00:00

LITERATU.aE

THE QUARTERLIES.
The Edinburgh Review. No. 269. Long,mans,

The last article will be turned to the first by the majo-
rity of the readers of the Edinburgh. For is it not the
review of Mr. Disraeli's "Lothair" by the old blue and
buff Whig organ, the publishers of which are nevertheless
Mr. Disraeli's publishers as well, the publishers through
whose hands that very "Lothair" has run helter-skelter,
over dedges and ditches, into a sixth edition, or a tenth
thousand? After Blackwood's onslaught and Fraser's irony,
the placability of the Edinburgh to the political-novelist,
the leader of her Majesty's Opposition, will be some-
thing refreshing, we should imagine, to the latter. It is
here said, and said very justly, that "Lothair," in com-
mon with the rest of Mr. Disraeli's political
works, has some of the merits and some of
the defects of a fairy tale. The world we live
in, while reading them, is wildly unreal, not to say
utterly unnatural and impossible in its extravagance.
Instance in this last specimen, Mr. Ruby, the jeweller,
that Rundell-and•Bridge and Storr-and-Mortimer rolled
into one, with his strings of pearls large and plentiful as.
the ropes of onions sold by Whitechapel greengrocers.
Yet full justice is done by the reviewer to the surface
wit and latent irony of Mr. Disraeli's fantastic lucubra-
tion. Besides this article there are among the contents
of the current number of the Edinburgh two
noble tributes offered to the memory of two great
men not long since lost respectively to France
and to England—there Auguste Sainte-Beuve, the
greatest of modern critics, here Michael Faraday, the
greatest of modern experimental philosophers. " Postal
Telegraphs " is the title of a paper in which a masterly
epitome is given of the history of that marvellous inven-
tion, by the aid of which the ends of the earth are brought
together, and time itself, in one sense, annihilated.
Other contributions there are of great interest, such as the
one relating to the adventures of Audubon, the natu-
ralist. But, while fully realising all the merits,
combined so conspicuously in the papers of
the great Whig quarterly, it is impossible
not to regret that, in the selection of its themes, greater
care could not be had systematically for their including
among their number those subjects more immediately
affecting the great mass of their readers generally.
,The
Quarterlies, as a rule, we would insist, should be more
upon a level with their contemporaries. The com-
plications of the European war, which have just
commenced, were, no doubt of it, of too recent
an origin altogether to admit of any paper, on the subject,
being included in the current number of the Edinburgh.
But one might reasonably have looked, for example, in
this number for a biographical and critical paper on the
life and genius of Charles Dickens, in preference to
either of the papers, already specified, relating to St.
Beuve, and to Faraday. Education, Land Tenure,Reform
of the Criminal Laws—subjects like these would surely in
another way be far more acceptable than comments like
those appearing in the present issue of the Whig quarterly
namely on the Text of Chaucer and the Baltic Provinces of
Russia. Readers of the Edinburgh would prefer topics
more appropriate to the time and more suitable to the
occasion.