The Sun.
London, England, 1848-01-21 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

T'T DEVP, URGr" REVIEW. No. Cr.:7X r'
TIIE QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. CLXIII.
THE WES7'MINSTER REVIEW. No. XCV.
THE DUBLIN REVIEW. No. XLVI.

As we have already commented upon the principal
political article in the Edihburgh Review—namely,
the paper in which " the State of the Nation" is
considered in its relation to the Ministry and the
New Parliament—we shall restrict ourselves to the
contributions which partake more of the character of
general literature. We are especially induced to do
so, moreover, because we have reserved until another
opportunity our remarks upon the most able and
elaborate political treatise which has anywhere ap-
peared for a very considerable time, and cer-
tainly the most valuable article in the new number
of' our contemporary. We mean the concluding
disquisition upon the difficulties of Ireland—a dis-
quisition which is entitled " The Irish Crisis," and
which is a comprehensive review of the problem so
long discussed in the Parliament of the United King-
dom. Foremost among the critical papers is the
notice of Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins,"
foremost, we mean by position, for we cannot
but think the criticism inferior to several of
its successors, seeing that it is eminently super-
ficial and discursive. It can scarcely be considered,
indeed, a substantial criticism ; it is rather
a rennin.- commentary. A running commentary
too, of a kind singularly dry, prosaic, barren, and
unsuggestive—upon an original which is as singularly
attractive in manner, poetical in composition, fruit-
ful in ideas and language, and suggestive of the
loftiest principles and the most thrilling analogies.
Ready, as we are, to coincide with the reviewer in
regretting that the splendid " History," by Alphonse
Lamartine, can scarcely claim for itself, with pos-
terity, that severe and exalted definition—seeing that
it is rather biographic than historic, rather anecdotal
than purely descriptive—we cannot, by any means,
agree with him in lamenting the extraordinary rapidity
with which it has been written. Instead of mourning
over that rapidity we exult over it—we exult over it,
because the eight volumes which it has produced bear
upon themselves, for that very reason, the impress of
spontaniety, and because, bearing upon themselves
that impress, the opinions of which those volumes are
the embodiment are ripe rather than ephemeral. La-
martine penned his immortal work from one conti-
nuous and vivid inspiration. Every sentence is
kindled by enthusiasm—every section glitters with
passion—every book reverberates with the elo-
quence of poetic oratory. Sometimes the page
seems to blaze with the glorious utterances
of Vergniaud, sometimes it is suffused with
the pathos of Antoinette, sometimes it is
lurid with the crimes of Marat, sometimes it is
swimming with the tears of Roland. Lamartine, in
inditing the " History of the Girondists," beginning
with the death of Mirabeau, and ending with the
death of Robespierre, manifestly did not intend to
write a regular history or a regular series of biogra-
phies ;he wrote what he wrote—a work that will be
for ever a phenomenon of eloquence—a book which
may more truly than the moon-dreams of Hans
Christian Andersen be called " A picture-book with-
out pictures"—a narrative as fervid as Demosthenes
and as rhetorical as Burke, as gloomy as Dante and
as bewitching as Petrarch, as vividly in relief ae the
sculpture of Roubilliac and as gorgeous in colouring
as the pencil of Paulo Veronese. It is scarcely pos-
sible to close the " History of the Girondists" without
acknowledging with the Edinburgh Reviewer that
the author's explanation of the character of Maxi-
milian Robespierre is, on the whole, satisfactory. As
the same writer happily observes—" Historical truth,
and a knowledge of human nature, gain by reducing
the distorted and exaggerated traits of the monster
into the features of te man actuated by the or-
dinary passions of humanity, gifted with many
noble and even amiable qualities, and plunged into
eternal infamy by common human weaknesses, tried
in fearful times by most extraordinary emergencies."
After the review of Lamartine, comes a well-natured
notice of the writings of Thackeray—William Make-
peace Thackeray—better known by his pseudonyms
in Punch Fraser's Magazine, Cruilishank's Omnibus,
Sco. &c. Everybody has heard of Michael Angelo
Titmarsh, of Jeames, of Fitz-boodle, of Yellowplush,
of the Fat Contributor and the Snob Contributor to
the " London Charivari." The real man is rising out
of his masquerade, and assuming that position in the
light literature of the age to which his abilities, his
wit, his humour, his bon hommie, his sarcasm, and his
naturalness peculiarly entitle Mm. For " Vanity Fair"
is revealing the true powers of Mr. Thackeray. We
had recently to condemn the frivolity of his Christ Mas
" Our Street"—a production altogether un-
worthy of him. In doing so, however, we cordially
coincide with his reviewer in the Edinburgh, that by
his other books he has proved himself to be " an
acquisition of real and high value to our literature."
" Let the public give him encouragement," says the
same critic, " and let him give himself
time, and we fearlessly prophecy that he will
soon become one of the acknowledged heads of his
own peculiar walk of literature." Mr. Thackeray
and the public must settle this matter between them-
selves, and may they realise the prediction S There
is afterwards a very copious examination of the ques-
tion as to whether Watt or Cavendish was " The
Discoverer of the Composition of Water." It is one
of the moot points in the history of chemical analysis,
and for that reason alone, apart from the sagacity of
the present inquirer and the importance of the disco-
very, the paper will be perused with extraordinary
curiosity. In conclusion the Reviewerrernarks—" We
think it plain that, though Cavendish may have had
floating visions of the discovery at an earlier period,
be had no clear revelation of it till it was announced
by Watt ; and that, even if his conception of the
theory could be traced to a prior date, it is evident
that he never would have been delivered' of it, had not
Watt assisted at the birth." Like many other scien-
tific disclosures—such as the one of the differential
calculus by Newton and Leibnitz, of the electrotyping
system by Jacobi and Spencer, and of the new
planet by Leverrier and Adams—this one of
the composition of waters appears to have been a
sort of Siamese revelation. The other article, not
yet mentioned, is a profound and beautiful criticism
upon the " Kosmos of Alexander Von Humboldt.
" Kosmos," exclaims the Reviewer, " the adornment,
the orderly arrangement, the ideal beauty, harmony,
and grace of the universe ! Is there, or is there not,
in the mind of man a conception answering to those
magnificent, those magical words ? Is their sound an
empty clang, a hollow ringing in our ears, or does it
stir up in the depths of our inward being a sentiment
of something interwoven in our nature of which we
cannot divest ourselves, and which thrills within us
as in answer to a spell whispering more than words
can interpret ?" The answers to these inquiries are
contained in the paper of which they are :the com-
mencement. Such are the component parts of the
175th Number. Be it observed, before we pass on-
wards, that in consequence of the death of Professor
Napier, the late editor, new arrangements have been
entered into, which have led to a transference of the
Review from one capital to another—the Edinburgh
is now published in London, so that it will continue
_henceforth to be a practical " bull" in blue-and-
buff. A more than readable paper, a paper indeed of
remarkable interest, opens the Quarterly Review. It is
entitled " The Last Years of Frederick the Second,"
and has been suggested by the presentation of a copy
of the splendid edition of the works of the great
Prussian conqueror (printed at the royal press at
Berlin, in 1846), by King Frederick Wilhelm IV. to
the University of Oxford. We do not propose, says
the reviewer, " to descant either upon the freaks ° f‘his
(Frederick the Great's) youth, or the glories of his
wars; both are sufficiently well known—the former
through his own sister, the Margravine of Bareith,
and his favourite, Voltaire ; the latter through the
pages of more than one historian. But it seems to
us that his system of administration in peace has by
no means received the same degree of attention as his
Military exploits. Nor are the habits of his declining
age so familiar to us as those of his early manhood.'
These habits and this system, therefore, are taken as
the themes of the disquisition, and from it may be ob-
tained a rapid, though detailed, description of "the
life of Frederick, public and private, since the peace
of Hubertsburg." Beyond his vast, and indeed
sublime capacities as a warrior, and his extraordinary
F,enius it? military and political administration, there
is very little fascination to us in the career or cha-
racter of this renowned monarch. The poverty of his
personal habits, the eccentricity of his manners, the
cidity of his disposition, his uncleanliness, his
eideeeaspticisin, and the depressing looseness of his
upon religion, form a most unwin-
Ain
piafn,i__,a_ most unprepossessing,. and, to speak
.a very repulsive individuality. Alluding to
the Justice with which the character of this sovereign
is now viewed in Prussia, the writer observes with
very felicitous brevity—" On the one hand there
and there ought to be, the greatest admiration for his
militarthere is•
y genius and renown ; on the other hand,
iron
despotism,
no leaning to his infidel philosophy, or to his
Toespotism, or to his fantastic notions of finance."
ourselves it appears that there was something
grand and colossal in' the intellect of Frederick the
Great, but then there was nothing in it sound or whole-
acme. A long but rather scrambling notice of the
"ncluding series of the important historico-legal
work just completed by Lord Campbell—" The Lives
of the Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of
ngland "—follows. The notice is principally de-
rd to an enumeration of some of the more singu-
t
ii
Passages in that erudite and voluminous compile-
One suggestion made by the reviewer appears
" to be excellent • it is that the noble and learned
author
might advantageously have given in a sum-
way a
pedigree
eer
the holders of the Great Seal ever since that office
kwas exclusively occupied by laymen—namely, after
ee retirement, in 1625, of the last clerical Lord
Per) Bishop Williams. jJaving made the sugges-