The Sun.
London, England, 1848-05-02 00:00:00

f 'T
TCTES Ay
E VENI

idleness?" But, not satisfied with teaching by example,
by the moving example of Cecil, Mr. Lewes proceeds to
give some very excellent practical advice to authors and
artists who like him have worn away their lives
in inactivity, while their fancy is busy with dreams.
To these his advice may be summed up in one word,
" work He admits that unwritten poems and un-i
painted pictures are perhaps far superior to those
actually produced; "but," he adds, "the world justly
takes no account of unaceomplinhed promises, of un- )
fought victories. What it applauds is the actual'
victory won in earnest struggle with difficulty.; thei
heroes it crowns are those who have enriched them-i
selves with trophies, not those who ;night have done'
SO." Scattered over the pages of these volumes are'
many truthful and beautiful reflections, which,' apart
from the history of the story, give a value to the work ;1
as, for example, the advice to men of genius to which
we have already referred, and a very felicitous com-
parison between the rival merits of Talent and Will—
strenrrth of will, that is. In one chapter the author
has devoted many paragraphs to an attempt at
de-
fining that often-thrfined yet undefinable word, Love.
nßutand
he has, apparently with less of effort
intention, given an infinitely better definition
another place, where in a casual observation he
calls love " the most intense de f
ferry o • Our ob.
servationa on Mr. Lewes's work have, however, ex-
tended to sufficient length, we therefore take leave of
him with the hope of r,eceiving some yet better work
from him hereafter.s ,
its name
or the Queen of
the Jungle:, is, as
name implies, an Oriental
romance. Captain Ratter, in hispreface, expresses
an intention of following t
similar description, founded iou uPby other works of a
various legends which
he has collected during a residence in the East so as1
to form a series of " Oriental rromance," a species oil
in h
literature almost unknownis country--almost
unknown in prose, that is to say, for,a save the admi-,
rable compositions of the author of Zwo
with
b " and
few others, our chief acquaintance ate h Eastern
legends has been hitherto through the medium of our
poets. The inimitable tales of oore and Byron have
depicted the gorgeous scenery and romantic narratives
of the East in glowing colours and most attractive'
guise. In " Lallah Rookh" especially the various
peculiarities of Eastern life are vividly portrayed, and
the Vale of Cashmere is invested with charms fa
ex-
ceedingr those with which reality has adorned it. Afters
such writings have been published on the subjects
Oriental romance is a dangerous subject to interfere
with. Nevertheless, Captain Rafter has essayed his
bard and with infinite success. The chief attraction
of his work consists in its very interesting plot, and
the romantic adventures in which its characters ar•
concerned. The Queen of the Jungle, the beautiful
Lachema, is a worthy heroine of an Eastern romance,
and her history is most marvellous and full of interest.
The next work which claims our attention is of a
very different kind—" The Adventures of a Medical
Student." Prefixed to these " Adventures" is a brie
but interesting memoir of their author, Henry Dou-
glas, a surgeon of the Royal Navy, who died at an
early age, after displaying great abilities, and giving
promise of far greater. The " Adventures of al
Medical Student" consist of a series of sepa-!
rate papers, which originally appeared in the;
Neuf Monthly Magazine. They are written with;
great power, and possess a most enthralling'
interest ; nevertheless, they are in many cases far'
from pleasing. Surgical operations, for instance, are
occasionally detailed with a minuteness and emphasis,
that have a most disagreeable effect. In one place 4
for example, he describes an amputation in a most}
theatrical manner, increasing the horrible interest oq
the description by the help of italics and capital let-I
ters, thus—" it is the knife!" "it is the sear !" Astt
being written by one who has mingled in the scenes'
he describes, the " Adventures of a Medical Student'
have necessarily a peculiar attraction, and as the)
composition of one who has passed away, leaving only
this memorial of his great talents, they are invests
with an especial interest. ".James II.," edited b 4
Harrison Ainsworth, makes its appearance at an ap
propriate time, when other sovereigns are tollevrin
the example of its hero, and enduring similar, thoug
hardly so great, misfortunes. What has peculiar'
gratified us in this work is the impartial spirit wit
which it has been penned. On first taking it up w
feared to meet with errors of misrepresentation, eithe
on the one side or the other. It is difficult for th,
historian to be just, but for the novelist
it is almost impossible—he must " extenuate" on thi
one side, and consequently " set down in malice " mt.
the other. The history of James 11. is, on this
account, a very embarrassing subject. We antici-
pated to find the character and conduct of the exiled
sovereign described with a censure of which he wai
not deserving, or else to hear him extenuated at thg
expense of the liberty of conscience and rights of his
subjects. The author of this narrative has, however,
avoided both extremes. He has given us a most
interesting narrative of the downfal and exile of the
last Stuart king. The account of the escape of Mars'
and the Prince of Wales is, perhaps, hardly detailed
in so interesting a mant.er as in Miss Pardoe's " Loui's
XIV." Among the " new novels "we should
include the recent publications of Cooper and Mrs
Maberly, and the indefatigable James; but we mu
necessarily reserve them flr a separate consideratior

THE MAGAZINES.
BLACK WOOD.
Seldom have we seen a superior number of Maga.
It is worthy of the merry month of May, the month
of hope and greenness, the month of cowslips and
lupins, of promise to summer, of germination to
autumn, of defiance to winter, and of fervour to love.
Those who remember the beautiful paper on May as
the season of the heart in the " Spectator" will
revel in the pages of this number of Blackwood, not
because of any direct affinity between the
essay and the magazine, but because of
the mutual contrast afforded by the two effu-
sions, and because the last mentioned of the two
is a new testimony that all has not been said that can
be said in illustration of the charms of springtime.
In speaking of Les Alois, by Roucher, we well re-
member that M. de Lamartine somewhere calls them
"those French Fasti!" So may we term the charm-
ing comments penned upon the spring, and especially
upon the month of May, by the writers of England,
from Gower to Spenser, from Spenser to Thomson,
from Thomson to Budgell, from Budgell to Allan
Cunningham, and from Allan Cunningham to
B lackirood. In the present instalment of Maga,
however, the principal excellence is the diver-
sity of the themes and moods upon whidh
and in which the different articles have been penned.
':'here is scarcely a single page that is exactly be-
fitting the month of love (as May is regarded in the
i'pe.cta is itor"), and yet nearly every contribu-
tionn some sort appropriate, and even season-
able. There are two exceptions we will allow,
and those exceptions are the poetic fragments.
First, the little canzonet called " Heigh he, !"
a dainty outbreak of naive passion : and, secondly,
" The Last Walk," by B. Simmons. A welcome,
thrice welcome to B. Simmons the sound of whose
lyre has been too long hushed. He would be wel-
come, if only for that exquisite verse in the brief
poem before us
" Yes! far for ever from thy side,
Madonna, now for ever fair,
To death of DISTANCE I have died,
And all has perished, but—Despair."
The reiteration of the word ever (that articulate sigh
of despair !) and the beautiful alliteration in the third
line imparts to the verse a tone irresistibly plaintive.
Let us quote it again if only for its musical pathos :7--
" Yea ! far for ever from thy side,
- Madonna, now for ever fair,
To death of DISTANCE I have died,
'• And all has perished, but—Despair."
We would listen to the voice of B. Simmons more
frequently in the pages cf that magazine with which
his signature has become identified. The con-
tinuation of " The Caxtons" (a serial which
we deservedly commended in April) is good—the
controversy as to the orthography of Pisistratus or
Peisistratos is capital,.and the letter of rebuke to his '
son about the preference of the latter name, from the
pen of old 'Mr. Caxton, is admirable We commend
that letter to Mr. Grote, who, to our thinking, has
done as much mischief to Greek history by the pe-
dantic exactitude of his orthography is proper names,
as Mr. Lane had previously done in his new translation
of the "Arabian Nights Entertainments." Thoroughly
do we' sympathise in that emphatic sentence of old
Mr. Caxton,—" I prefer my old acquaintances Thu-
cydides and Pisistratus to Thoukudides and Peisis-
tratros." So do we prefer them, heartily,—Mr. Grote
nevertheless notwithstanding. " Education in Wales"
is another enforcement of that report of the Com-
missioners of Inquiry, which we ourselves have already
noticed so repeatedly. Against the ignorance of the
Welch, the press must continue to utter its unanimous
and vociferous protest—until the evil has been dissi-
pated. Never mind the repetition of the same facts
and arguments—tautology is better than indifference !
" The Silver Cross—a Campaigning Sketch,"
is a story from the German of Ernest Koch,
a young German now living near Bareges,
in the Upper Pyrenees. It has all the fresh-
ness and fascination of novelty—and, if . only
for that reason, will be relished. "Republican
Paris" is—of course—a caricature of democracy
such as the conservative predilections of old Christo-
pher must revel in.- According to the opinion of the
contributorrthe_difference between the, appearance of
downfall
Paris as it is now and .as it was. before the
of the monarchy is, the difference between
our democratic
t
a lady and
a Bacchante. Need we
sYtnpathies are not thors
.ayofs-
h Eb
differ o they
ence. " The
ony. N ;
are only the same
Spaniard in Sicily is an admirable review
r
on the book recently written by Count Alexis
t..P
de Sriest,
would be deliget t-peof France. Any contribution
fhulhaving reference to Sicily—to
that Sicily " whiC
Plato taught and Timoleon go-
verned--which Archimedes defended and Theocritus
sung And the rapture of the theme is immemurably

1848.

. .
f enhanced to our mind' by the recent emancipation of
the Sicilian; and the newly-conquered independence
of their island—torn by a revolution from the grasp of
the King of Naples. " Crimes and Remarkable
Trials in Scotland" is an enthralling contribution,
recounting the surprising adventures and vicissitudes
of Peter Williamson—the narrative being prefaced
by an animadversion upon the system of laws which
admits of the practice of kidnapping. "The Repealer's
Wish Granted" is a solemn warning to the mock
patriots of Erin—a warning at ,first as, obscure as a
prophecy, and at last as awful as the. utterance of a
doom. But that a note deClares to the contrary, we
should certainly have attributed ti se inspiration of the
chapter to the adMirable- articles recently .published
in our contemporary the Times. , One view_ of the
scene of desolation has, however, been overlooked by
the writer in Blackwood, namely, the sending
away the many thousand liish •frOtn England--thOte
Irish who find employment, wages, and food in the
land of the Saxon. Could not the contributor pen
a brief episode to his vision of the future? In the
present chapter the repetition of ..the_sentence---7" The
sail bellies bigly to the, wind. From Erin
the Green the Saxons are gonp There rose' from
earth to sky—what ?"—has a sound so solemn
that it becomes at last almost horrible. "Man is a
Featherless Biped" reads pleasantly—it gives one the
reminiscence of a passage or two in "Caleb Stukely."
The writer rattles off his narrative with a devil-
me-care .precipitation, such as he would doubt-
less display on the , back Of a hunter. With
a melancholy and even despairing lamehtation,
over "The Revolutions in Europe"-the necessity of
which lamentation is bolstered up by quotations from
the eccentric speeches recently delivered,in the House
of Peers by Lord. Brougba4l:7l3./gchwood is brought
to a conclusion for May.. A;;better nun!her
has not
for a very considerable time appeared.
.(041.1.