The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-08 00:00:00

LOWE'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

" Lowe's Review," we opine, would have been a much
more applicable and significant title to this periodical,
as the major portion of its contents partake more of the
critical character than of the didactic. And we must
candidly assure its editor that in this distribution of
articles he does not act very judiciously, the original
essays or disquisitions contained in the number for
June being of considerable ability, while the criticisms
are, on the average, feeble and flippant to a painful
extent. "Sir Tristram and Sir Galahad" is a very
agreeable reminiscence of the chivalric era; the con-
tribution on "John Knox " possesses an interest quite
its own ; while " Solitude and Intercourse" contains
many novel and startling reflexions. Take, for ex-
ample, these upon solitude
Thinking men of any real nobleness have ever been men
of brotherly heart; yet trey have loved solitude, Lonely often
by necessity of nature, they have in solitude perfected love;
they have been social solitaries. Whoever strenuously seeks
to live spiritually, will need and desire times of solicitude,
and to these he will be sometimes drawn, sometimes driven.
Within him he will find a wild, pathless hill country,'
within him, also, plmant and sacred groves, with trees
flower-garlanded, and dropping honey. He will have both
griefs and joys. True thought has ever its pains and throes,
but there will be often the dull agony that cannot think.
There will be sometimes a composed peace of mind, when
truth will reveal itself in its two-fold solemnity, as to one
floating on a still sea Heaven is disclosed, alternately as a fir-
mament of star-L,arnished darkness, and as a firmament of
radiant, invigova,jne: sunshine. But there will also be times
of fear, when a horror of great loneliness overspreads the heart
a. a storm-darkness on a sultry day, and when winds of thought
whisper no more sweetly as the voices of angels, but sound
strangely, like the distant cry and wailing of evil spirits
drawing nearer. Loneliness may be indeed a bitter and
chilling imprisonment—a bondage in ' darkness that may be
felt'—an Egyptian bondage, in Egyptian darkness. Many a
man who has loved his times of solitariness as the evening
twilight, when that twilight has deepened into a continuing
night, has cried unto God, and said—' My Father, I am afraid
in this great darkness. Where art Thou f' There cannot
be right action without thoughtful solitude, bnt there
cannot be a blessed solitude without right action; neither
has power of itself, they are joined of God.'"

"When, then, we retire from the outward, we go not into
an unillumined darkness; the light of our own spirit is, in its
brightness, more and more revealed to us, and we are
wholly filled with its steady shining. But within us, we have
not only a country, to walkin which we need light, but, as it
were, a dwelling- house with chambers; and, having with-
drawn from the world, and kindled a lamp in some quiet
chamber, earthly noises may be to us as winter rain, patter-
ing drearily tigaint the cloyed casement of our spit it, whilst
we sit within, cheered with the light of our thoughts, and
warmed with the fire of our musings. It is then that
to our heart speaks the sttll small voice' of God. No man
hears this, if ever surrounded with the tumult and contradic-
tion of other voices. This sacred voice speaks not to us alene
new things,- but often thrills us with its utterance of t!tings
well known. Then, specially if it be ours to represent truth
to our brethren, the spirit of searching comes upon us. If
truth believed be not in silence pondered, there is danger that
we get a defiled conscience—knowing that we seek to make
others feel what we feel not ourselves, and affirm that to be
obligatory upon all men which has not full control over us.
As our outward life widens, our inward one must deepen."

In all this there may be something mysterious, but
reason and our innate emotion tell us that it contain.,
nothing aosolutcly chimerical. As a specimen of the
flimsy style of reviewing introduced in this Magazine,
we may be allowed especially, to instance the one upon
the " New Timon." It is of course, allowable for
every one to form a diffarent opinion as to the
merits of a particular poem, the more so,
as some poetical productions address themselves in a
peculiar manner to the idiosyncracy of some individuals,
and consequently find no sympathy from readers of a
perfectly opposite idiosyncracy. We are not, therefore,
cavilling at the fact of that Edinburgh critic finding
little more than ordinary neatness in the remarkable
work which he has failed in appreciating, much as we
are astonished at the indifference with which he regards
it. It is the manner he has adopted for the expression
of his disappointment to which we object—how shall we
designate that manner ? The dictionary supplies us
with no epithet precisely applicable to it, excepting of a
coarse and vulgar kind. We shall not, therefore, at-
tempt its definition, We will allow the reader to judge
of the elegant style and refined feelings visible through-
out the criticism in question by a quotation. What
does he think, then, of a man presuming to understand a
poetical idealism, who writes such a sentence as the fol-

lowing :
" After Daniel O'Connell then passes Lord Stanley ; but as
we do not care fur Lord Stanley so much as the poet does,
we will take the opportunity to blow our nose; and by tee tune we
rave returned our handkerchief to our pocket, some other notable
will be passing."
What delicacy of sentiment I What a capacity for
reciprocating the purest emotions of the human heart 1
Bah It only serves to remind one of the adage
" throwing pearls to swine." The treatment of this
anonymous poem in other quarters, while in substance it
hcs shown the diversity of opinion, has also in many
instances disclosed the degradation of humanity. Wc
say again—t're degradation of humon:tj— for these sages
in nature and books have absolutely maligned the "New
Timon" as a poem of an immoral ten,lencv. Surely,
after that, we should have little hesitation in
wagering that these men would see an indelicacy
in tha naked figures of Canova's Graces, would
vilify as licentious the divine purity of the
recumbent Ariadne, and would look only with
lascivious eyes upon the Venus de Medici. Out
upon such literary prudes I They turn from a block of
white and unsullied marble, thinking it flawed and
spotted, because they look through cracked spectacles
grimmed with smoke.
" The blue ,ky seems flecked with blood ;
The sun,hine oo the floor looks blacks ;"
cries Beatrice, in the " Ce•nci :" Let these stieklers for
propriety take those words as their motto. They can
scarcely discover one more appropriate.

THE KNIGHT OF G IVVNJVE. No, VI., By
Charles Lever.

We must acknowledo ourselves chagrined at the
hurried manner in which Mr. Lever finishes off the
episode of Glecson's departure : after so much dramatic
preparation in the preceding chapters—after mustering
all the wrath of the .lements and painting the commence-
ment of a pursuit by Bagenal Daly, which promised such
scenes of excitement in the channel, the matter is quietly
dropped by the return of the pursuer with the intelli-
gence of the suicide of the pursued. Nevertheless, our
disappointment in one regard is compensated by our
satisfaction in another. The love passages between
Helen Darcy and Forester, are most tenderly and truth-
fully pourtrayed. Apropos of the latter, his lady-mother
writes him one scrap of inimitable advice; she warns
him, if he would render himself agreeable in society, to
abstain from telling anecdotes. There is not in
truth a more incorrigible nuisance in :private life
than your prcfessed anecdote-monger ; and we would
ourselves prefer the infliction of hearing the stereotyped
edition of " Joe Miller's Jest Book" recited, from the
title-page down to the finis, rather than undergo a single
hours' tete.a.tete with any conversationalist of this des-
cription. Besides monopolising the time and at-
tentioß of everybody else upon subjects of intense fri-
volity, these social delinquents, instead of entertaining,
are guilty of the most inexcusable egoism. Written
anecdotes, like those introduced by Charles Lever, are
allowable enough, seeing that they can readily be
" skipped" (as young ladies have it) whenever the
reader is disinclined- for their perusal. From the
destruction impending the generous-hearted Knight of
Gwynne we anticipate no little entertainment. Mr.
Lever possesses such a mastery over the conventional
details of a fiction, and writes with such a spontaneous
glitter, that he cannot fail of sustaining his popularity.

KNIGHTS WEEKLY VOLUME.
Vets. C, CI., and CII.
The variety of literary materials employed in thbleis
admirable series is extraordinary ; and considera
taste is displayed in the alternation of the different sub-
jects introduced. For example, in the three volumes
under consideration, we have a fanciful and not unlovely
hypothesis about "Flowers and their Associations," by
Anne Pratt ; then we have some animated letters de-
scriptive of " The Backwoods of Canada," embellished
with a multiplicity of woodcuts ; and, finally, the eighth
volume of the " Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British
Worthies," comprising biographies and engraved like-
nesses of Sir Mathew Hale, Andrew Marvell, Isaac
arrow, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Butler, and Lord
to
Thean estimation for the last-
mentio7
frojksam Russell. Whatever the partiality may arise
succinct,
ed
confess
volume.memoirs are agreeably
.v file the y
some, likewise afford many interest-
ingat)rt amongstcu.la
particulars,
et h
emo more
most
curremarkcurious,
particth
Of these able characters, r 3 of
are unquestionabi, ppertituung to the domestic