The Sun.
London, England, 1846-07-01 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WhDisTESDAY EVENING-, itTtr 1, 1816.

inst., when Colonel Richardson, with 274 of the 7th Dra-
goons, reached this, having heard that we were hemmed in
on every side. Pato has openly declared himself our enemy,
the war cry' having issued from his kraal, and so I think
we have warm work before us, as at this present moment
about 500 Kaffirs are within one mile, of Fort Peddie, fight-
ing with the Fingoes of this settlement ; the bugles are blow.
ing and tro3pa turning out, &c. The Kaffirs are very daring."

Another hand writes :
" From the 21st to the 27th we were kept constantly on
the alert—war cries on all sides—but nothing done. We lost
our position at Sand Drift, and which caused such a panic
here, although the strongest post on the frontier, garrisoned
by 200 men, yet 'officers and all moved their baggage for
security into the infantry barracks. Stock (Eno's son) re-
mains steady, but his men, there can be little doubt, have
joined the enemy, but not in anv great numbers. Umkie
also, with a few, remains steady. .Sesola, Nonibi, and Pato,
are the only chiefs who have openly mustered a war party.
Umhala is still quiet, but there is good reason to believe that
he is as deep in the plot as any of the rest. There are still
those who are willing to believe that Pato is quiet, and has
,committed no overt act against the colony, and this in the
face of his driving in the Fingoes from Sand Drift, and of his
people in great numbers being in the colony, and returning
with large herds of colonial cattle. Such nonsense is quite
sickening, and if Pato should be again acknowledged as a
chief it will be a great error.
" May Ist.—Pato's people have attacked the Fingoes close
to this, and the parties are now engaged.
"An instance of what may be done, if the Kaffirs are
dealt with properly, has been reported to us as follows :
Some 20 or 30 Kaffirs being seen on the Konap Heights, Mr.
R. Ayliff, of Leo Fontein, sent out a party of 12 Hottentots,
who creeping stealthily towards the spot fired a volley into
them, when such as were able instantly fled, panic struck,
leaving 12 guns, several assagais, and many other things in
the bands of the attacking party. Three of the enemy are
said to have been shot dead."
We are informed, also, that a most resolute resistance was
made a few nights since to an attack by the enemy in a
position taken by some Dutch farmers on the Konap, under
J. Nel. The Kaffirs were in great force, but were repulsed
with the loss of 46 of their number, who are said to have
been shot dead.

LITERATURE.

ROGUE'S EUROPEAN LlBRARY.—.History of
Civilisation. By M. Guizot.—Literary History of the
Middle Ages. By the Rev. Joseph, Berington.
In issuing these two celebrated publications in such a
portable and moderately priced form, Mr. Bogue has per-
formed a service to the reading public, while he has
adorned his excellent series, entitled the " European
Library." So important do we consider these works,
and so necessary do we conceive their perusal to be, that
we feel justified' in designating them elementary books
to one of the widest fields of human knowledge. They
induct the reader to a capacious and yet concrete and
symmetrical cognizance of the progress of that ex •
traordinary race of beings of which he is an unit.
They are perhaps the most fitting pioneers of historical
lore ; they serve as a connecting medium between
ancient and modern times. Certainly the most im-
Fortant fact to us, as inhabitants of the earth, is the fact
of barbarism having become modulated into civilisation.
Before we have acquired some accurate sense of the
manner in which this change was developed, of the
causes which originally withdrew mankind from their
primitive rudeness, and of the consequences
which have followed from that momcntuous meta-
morphosis, we are ignorant of our true position
in the scale of creation. That ignorance is an
intolerable anomaly (in the present age especially),
and it may be effectually dispelled by the perusal of
these volumes. Can there be a more for
cible recommendation to any literary venture
than this ? We opine not ; and in uttering
it we have been actuated solely by a love for truth and
a reverence for justice. One circumstance in connexion
with these Histories is singular enough, inasmuch as
they are intimately associated with each other in subject,
as well as in publication. The one is the production of
a Protestant. Frenchman; the other of a Roman Catholic
Englishman. Any particular allusion to the " History
of Civilisation" by M. Guizot would be at once super-
fluous and impertinent, as the writings of that illustri-
ous stateman have justly achieved for themselves an
European celebrity. Since the chapters of the present
lucubrations were first pronounced in lectures
at the Sarbonne, in Paris, they have illicited
a constantly enlarging attention, both from the vastness
of the theme and the remarkable excellence of the com-
position. The survey taken by Guizot is peculiar for
its extent, and yet the remotest outlines of the panorama
are pencilled with a marvellous distinctness. The work
enlarges the mind, and imparts fresh vigour to the
faculties. In the " Literary History of the Middle
Ages," on the other hand, we obtain a more minute and
elaborated description of one segment in the cycle of
civilisation. Namely, of that extraordinary period in the
history of the world, when the popular intellect was slum-
bering save in the recesses of the casual philosophers, and,
be it said in justice, in the cloisters of the monasteries.
This, indeed, is not the only instance in which the cor-
rectness of the titlo of " Dark Ages," as applied to
those times, has been disproved. The secretary to
the present Archbishop of Canterbury has already spoken
boldly in defence of those ancient ecclesiastics; and has
sufficiently demonstrated that but for the literary and
scientific spirit which was fostered in the monastic
edifices, the classics would possibly have been
swallowed up and lost in the almost universal
apathy of the popular mind; and that, but for such cha-
racters as Copernicus, and Friar Bacon, and a thousand
others, either wearers of the cowl cr clients of the cowl,
philosophy might have lagged on for many centuries, in
the same effete and slumberous manner. As a new ex-
position of these circumstances, the work of Berington
is extremely interesting, and, with its renowned com-
panion already noticed, cannot fail to carry instruction
and ilitellectual advantages among all classes of the com-
munity.

PLEASURES OF POESY. By W. H. Haynes.
The author of this little volume has altogether mis-
taken his subject. He can write a brilliant passage and
an effective stanza, but, as far as these pages
can indicate, he is incapable of producing a con-
tinuous poem very far removed from medio-
crity. There is a want of sustained vigour,
and an indistinctness of conception, throughout these
two cantos which sadly deteriorate from their merit as
an accumulation of musical sentences. Akenside,
Rogers, Campbell, and Warton have severally dilated
upon the Pleasures of Imagination, Memory, Hope, and
Melancholy. Mr. Haynes attempts, if possible, a
loftier flight,—videlicit, the " Pleasures of Poesy."
But the presumed fraternity with his pre-
decessors renders his failure so much the more
manifest. He reminds one of the philosopher
in "Rasselas," who, to test the merits of his artificial
wings, ascends to the summit of a conspicuous eminence,
and tumbles into a lake. Is the water in this instance
Lethe ? Unquestionably it will prove so to the poem,
but the poet may extricate himself from the same catas-
trophe if he strives to compose something more likely to
live. We do not mean to imply that the writing is altogether
faulty; on the contrary, there are in the volume para-
graphs of no inconsiderable beauty. But those advan-
tages are marred by such forced similitudes as, where
the author is speaking of the time,
" When Newton's eager telescopic eye,
Explor'd the realms of circumambient sky."

A figure of speech, which calls up any unpleasant recol-
lection of the visual organs of a lobster 1 Again, the
repetition of strained adjectives, is a remarkable blemish
in the whole poem. For example, in the very same
page, (p. 50), we have :--
"And his far roar awakens pallid fears, &c."
" Yet even thus, amid the pale alarm, Bcc."

What shall be said, moreover, of such dissonant rhymes
as these :

" Transmuter of base passions to the ore
Of love that leaves the breast no longer poor !"
" To the fair orb of day, with homage due,
In worship bent the Incas of Peru.'
Again, is there no lack of grammatic construction in the
following ?
" Whose obelisks retain-thiYrnultlight-lore
_ _

Of buried time, which ages have :forbore !"
Such expositions of failure as the foregoing, are anything
but hypercritical, since, with the like flaws, no real
eminence in poetry can ever be attained. Mr. Haynes
has endeavoured to breathe through the opheoclide of
metre, and his powers have proved inadequate : let him
restrict himself to the flageolet of metre, and he will
succeed. A passable ballad, or a tolerable canzonet,
would always be preferable to a laboured and abor-
tive epic.

DRAMAS FOR THE STAGE. By George
Stephens. Two Vols.
Our national literature, perhaps, is more en-
riched with dramatic writings than with any
other description of composition. And this cir-
cumstance arises not so much from the num-
ber of our professedly dramatic poets, as from the fact
of almost all our celebrated bards having, without ex-
ception, ambitioned the production of a play. Thus
Milton, with an essentially epic mind, has given posterity
his delicious masque of " Comus," as well as the " Sam-
son Agonistes ;" thus Thomson, though almost solely
endowed with a descriptive genius, produced the " Tan-
cred and Sigismut,a," with the " Edward and Eleo-
nora;" thus also Dryden, whose chief capacities were
those of a translator and a lyrist, displayed considerable
fecundity as a playwright. Within our own times
Byron, who rose before the world as a satirical and
meditative poet, with a greater facility in the production
of cantos than of colloquies, of stanzas than of scenes,
was not contented without the publication of " Manfred"
and " Cain;" while Shelley, at first lost in the exalta•
tion of ethical philosophy, ushered into immortal life,
possibly the most glorious of his creations, certainly the
most splendid tragedy of modern times, his "Cenci."
Such as these are, so to speak, the adventitious aids
thrown in, from generation to generation, to our dra-
matic literature. And, what with our great English
dramatists, advisedly so called, our Shaksperes, Jon-
sons, Wycherleys, Sheridans, Farquhars, Beaumonts,
Knowles's, Massingers, and Talfourds, render Great
Britain in the world of letters second to none other in
ancient or modern times. It is from this very richness
and splendour of our dramatic compositions that, we
conceive, may be derived the decadence of the popular
passion for theatrical amusements—the decadence at least
as far as the representation of new plays are concerned.
The Shaksperian drama can never, it is true, become
distasteful to the public, as long as the language in
which the great Titan of Poesy has written, continues
in existence ; for, as the lexicographer has said in his
behackneyed, but not less beautiful phrase, " Shah-
pere wrote not for an age, but for all time."
It is in the modern drama that the histrionic art has for
a long period been exhibiting tokens of a scarcely re-
parable
teddewcaiyth;
euanasdtetrhplise,eebsecianutsheatwsetylaureofallrieteardaytursoe
e
becomet
to measure.time
may be employed to infinitely better ad-
afasteiedaiosueiseabsneyesosnd
vantage in studying and restudying the chef d'oeuvres
of our many matchless dramatists, than in frittering
that
evenings away in company with the O'Keefes and the
Reynolds, and the almonds. That, we take it, is the
whole secret of the so-called downfall of the stage. The
people will never fail to relish the repetitions of the
book-shelf plays, such as are performed at the Hay-
market, at Sadler's Wells, and occasionally at the Prin-
cess's. But notwithstanding all the epigrammatic sparkle
and keenness, and dagger-like flashing of wit, which is
the principal characteristic of Jerrold ; notwithstanding
the jocund and rollicking bonhonunie of Bourcicault, or
the stern reflectiveness of Spicer, the modern drama,
looking at it in its general aspect, cannot by any means
flourish. This is not in consequence of a deficiency of ster-
ling dramatists, for we can boast a Talfourd, a Sheridan
Knowles, and (vide " The Lady of Lyons," and " Riche-
lieu," and " Money,") a Bulwer : neither is it from a
paucity of histrionic talent, while Macready, and Miss
Faucit, and Farren continue before the footlights. It is
rather from that spirit of the age, to which we have
already referred—a spirit of intense thoughtfulness,
and hence a spirit of fastidiousness. The motto of
this generation might aptly enough be Cui
bone?" We are therefore persuaded that Mr. Stephens,
in publishing two large volumes of tragedies and
comedies like the present, has adventured too much.
He has adventured too much in presenting to public
criticism a collection of plays which, while they evince
the scope of his intellect, are nevertheless too crude
and precipitate to acquire him any solid or imme-
diate popularity. We regret this the more as in several
portions of his work we recognise a very considerable
aptitude for dramatic invention, and a very nervous flow
of ideas and expression. Ilad he restricted himself to
the composition of a single play instead of attempting so
many ; had he pruned exuberances and scrupulously
collated the manuscripts of that one performance ; had
he in fine concentrated his very admirable powers upon
a solitary theme, and thrown his whole imagination
and his whole judgment into its execution,
we are convinced that he might more readily
have secured the attention of his contemporaries,
and threugh them of posterity, than by the laborious
production of these two volumes. Will he redeem his
vantage gretintl ? Se has, we feel, the innate capaeity

for so doing. "Philip Basil" is a sufficient attestation
of this. Will he revert to the original dic-
tates of his ambition, and forsake, as incon-
sistent with his talents, such conventional frib-
bles as Courtall in " Rebecca and her Daughters ?"
If he acts thus, and restrains the superfluity of his fancy,
and imparts a more artistic sequence to his plots, he
may produce something worthy of himself, and not un-
worthy of forming another link in our chain of literary
treasures. The two volumes before us, amidst an
abundance of valueless matter, justifies us in anticipat-
ing much. Mr. Stephens has it in his power to realise
or .disappoint those anticipations. May they be
realised !

MAGAZINE DAY.
BLACKWOOD.
It has become quite a necessity in magazine writing
to flavour the literature of such periodicals with
i com-
pilations of historical romance. For one thing, t im-
parts a semblance of solidity to what might otherwise
appear the mere frippery of pencraft, and infuses both
brilliancy and interest into a number which might
otherwise elicit the stigma of immeasurable dullness.
Among the melodramatic class of these publications, the
court debaucheries of Charles 11. furnish a dainty sup-
ply of materiels to be dished up into "A revel at Sedg-
ley's L9dgings," or " A walk in the Mall with Nelly ;"
with others of a more morbid appetite the "Reign of
Terror " is the most popular epoch ; while those of a
fastidious delicacy situate their plots in the purlieus of
the Palais Royal, during the reign of the Grande
Monarque. There are, however, three themes which
present attractions to all descriptions of magazines, and
which, but for their being altogether exhaustless, would
have long since become frittered away into the veriest
commonplace ; those themes are, to employ the lan-
guage of Count Montholon, " a single thing, a single
event, and a single man—the thing is Waterloo ; the
event, the fall of the Empire ; and the man, Napoleon."
History will become wholly distasteful! when these
mighty and momentous facts—than which none are
more mighty or more momentous in the entire range of
history—fail to arouse the attention and to kindle the
imaginations of men. Blackwood, in the present num-
ber, adds another chapter to the commentaries which
have already been written, and will still continue to be
written, again and again, upon these three extraor-
dinary topics. By a rather anomalous clash of words,
the paper is entitled " The Last Recollections of Napo
leon," and every one who is familiar with the political
creed and the literary antipathies of our Edinburgh
contemporary cannot remain in doubt for a single in-
stant as to the sentiments which are inculcated in the
contribution. They are thoroughly anti-Napoleon.
They are built up on a succession of fallacies which
have not even the merit of being specious; every alter-
nate sentence is a sophism, but such a sophism as John
Willet himself would have penetrated in a second. The
writer undoubtedly is not so facetiously outré in his hatred
for the Emperor as Colonel Mitchell ; indeed he concedes
so much as to acknowledge that " it is perfectly childish
to question the talents of Napoleon," though in good
sooth "it needs no ghost to tell us that." But while
thus grudgingly eulogising his " antipathy," he discloses
the real prejudices of his heart in the sentence, "that
the character of Napoleon was a singular compound of
the highest intellectual powers with the lowest moral quali-
ties !" A very "singular compound," without question !
" The highest intellectual powers with the lowest moral
qualities." Why, that is literally a description
of the arch-fiend himself ; and surely it is not
indicative of the coolness of dispassionate criticism,
to compare an historical character with the
attributes of the devil ! To our thinking such a proceed-
ing is the very quintessence of bigotry. But taking the
sentence in its literal acceptation, it is altogether a meta-
physical paradox, for the most illustrious analysers of
the human intellect, men who have anatomised the
phases of the mind, and familiarised themselves with the
emotions of the heart, coincide in declaring it to be in-
compatible with ethics, and to be averse to all experience,
to suppose the possibility of a man wholly and essentially
depraved. The utter villain is a creature to be encoun-
tered in novels and melodramas, but never in real life ;
for even those who are almost demonised in nature, re-
tain some lurking place (however gloomy) for the sym-
pathies and tenderness with which they are still linked
with humanity. In either case, therefore, the senten-
tious expression with which this contributor to
Blackwood sets out, is clearly an exaggeration.
That is the premise of the entire article ;
and the premise being thus exaggerated,
the inferences are, by necessity, nothing but one mar-
velous distortion. Among other things, the writer de-
clares that Napoleon was selfish and heartless. Now
history assures us, that never was man so worshipped
as was this man. Colonel Muiron was shot dead at
Arcola in defending his life ; Savary wept in the bit-
terest anguish, because not permitted to share his exile
at St. Helena. On the return from Elba, the love of a
whole nation preserved his life better than a Phyrric
phalanx. His wives entertained towards him the sin-
cerest affection : his household submitted voluntarily
for six years to the most cruel caprices, and the most
irksome privations of banishment, rather than be se-
parated from the great man whom they loved so well.
Heartless, forsooth ! Then, as to his selfishness—
what pomps, and pensions, and dignities did he not
shower upon his satellites, only to be repaid by ingrati-
tude in the days of his tribulation. Many times did he re-
turn the crowns of Austria and Prussia to their conquered
monarchs; and, at one period he permitted Alexander to
return to Russia in freedom when captured by the
grand army :—was this selfishness? So far was Charles
James Fox from deeming Napoleon selfish or heartless
that he declared " he believed him to be the best as he was
certain he was the greatest of men!" Now we would
more readily bow to the judgment of Charles James
Fox than to those of the anonymous Blackwood con-
tributor, MM. Chateaubriand, Bourrienne, Mitchell, and
the Due d'Otranto, all put together. But we neither
pin-our--opinion-down to the dictation of -Pox or any
other personage: the scroll of history has been written
and unrolled, let those, who will, read ! We might, with
the least possible effort, disclose the flimsiness of all
those fallacies which we have already remarked as the
principle constituents of this article, but that we con-
eeive such efforts to be little better than killing summer
flies, which must inevitably die away when the cool-
ness of the wintry future has passed over them.
Agreeing with an elegant writer in the Cyclopredia,
Brittanica (a Professor of Edinburgh too 1) that "no
one has been (like Napoleon) the object of such unspar-
ing abuse, such bitter detraction, such inveterate and
unrelenting rancour," we agree with him also in the
conviction that "neither envy, nor malice, nor hatred,
nor slender can ultimately succeed in depriving him of
his just fame." Believing this we can afford to pass over
such relics of the Georgean prejudices in silence, and to
leave the justification of the Emperor Napoleon to time
and the reason of posterity—satisfied that while his
memory will be one of unparalleled greatness, it will
be no less a memory of eminent and beautiful goodness.
" Marlborough's Dispatches," " Rogues in Outline," and
"Elinor Travis" are continued, the latter with some-
what of improvement. The tale of " The Americans
and the Aborigines" is brought in this number
to a conclusion, and, though it may bear the
appearance of a rather questionable compliment,
we consider the last part to be decidedly the most ac-
ceptable. Colonel Lord Howden's description of " The
Death of Zumalacarragui" is a literary curiosity, and
will be perused with the utmost interest ; the disserta
tion upon " Peru" conveys a remarkable bulk of useful
information. By far the most agreeable contribution, to
ourselves, however, is that headed " New Scottish Plays
and Poems," which is brimming over with the music
and the poesy of the " Land o' Cakes"—the land of
mountain and of tarn"—" the land of Ossian and of
Burns"—or by whatever other title of beauty you may
please to affix upon Scotland. It is a critical essay, well
worthy of the taste and the nationality of Blackwood.

perusing them, the reader will acknowledge that, as
Robert Hall said about Johnson, Gil&llan " shines most
on the angles of a thought."
" Byron's mind, in itself essentially unspeculative, was
forced upwards upon those rugged and dangerous tract s of
thought, where he has gathered the rarest of his beauties,
by intimacy with Shelley, by envious emulation of his Lake
contemporaries, and, above all, by the pale hand of his mi-
sery, unveiling to him heights and depths in his nature and
genius, which were previously unknown and unsuspected,
and beckoning him onward through their grim and shadowy
regions. He grew, at once, and equally, in guilt, misery,
and power. An intruder, too, on domains, where some other
thinkers had long fixed their calm and permanent dwelling,
his appearance was the more startling. Here was a dandy
discussing the great questions of natural and moral evil; a
roué in silk stockings meditating suicide, and mouthing blas-
phemy on an Alpine rock; a brilliant and popular wit and
poet, setting Spinoza to music, and satirising the princi-
palities and powers of heaven as bitterly as he had done the
bards and reviewers of earth. Into those giddy and terrible
heights where Milton had entered a permitted guest in pri-
vilege of virtue; where Goethe had walked in like a pas-
sionless and prying cherub, forgetting to worship in his ab-
sorbing desire to know; and on which Shelley was wrecked
and stranded in the storm of his fanatical unbelief; Byron
is upborne by the presumption and the despair of his mental
misery." . . .

Such articles as this one upon Bulwer are very appro-
priately introduced into the pages of Tait, since the
principle characteristic of that magazine is that of
elaborate and dispassionate criticism. The credit which
it has already acquired in this respect is fully sus-
tained in the present number by the notices of Prince
Labanoff's " Lettters of Mary Stuart," Ulrici's volume
upon " Shakspere's Dramatic Art," Murdoch's " Tour
in France and Italy," and particularly by Thomas Do
Guincey's sound analysis of the " Miscellaneous Works
of Mackintosh." We should recommend the son of
Sir James Mackintosh to revise his editorial
notes after the blunders and the " sins of
omission" which De Qaincey has therein exposed.
A great responsibility is always assumed by any man
who undertakes the editing of a bygone author, especi-
ally if that author has acquired for himself a reputation
so solid as that of Mackintosh ; and it becomes the
bounden duty of such an editor to fulfil the responsibili-
ties of his self-imposed offices with the utmost care and
the most scrupulous exactitude. Indeed anything like
an editorial slur, anything indicative of slovenliness in
the supervision of works like those, is excessively repre-
hensible. Hence we are inclined to think that a fresh
edition of these miscellaneous writings is necessary for
the reputation of Mr. Robert Mackintosh, if not for the
reputation of his celebrated father. The paper, such as
it is, written by De Quincey, will not be attractive to the
general magazine reader, but to the contemplative and to
the lover of bibliographic curiosities it will prove—to em-
ploy a, somewhat cant and conventional phrase—" nuts."
The little poem addressed "To the Clouds," might
possible appear more worthy of insertion, did it not
recall, by the very association of its title, the dainty
lines of Shelley—and, by them, sink into insignificance.
In the "Literary Register," there arc some agreeable
quotations ; and, what with the continuation of " Truth
and Falsehood, a Romance," Tait is not unworthy of
this summer season.