The Sun.
London, England, 1856-04-28 00:00:00

THE ON, LONDON, MONDAY EVENI.O, APRIL
_2B, 1856.

LE,,i_ED A ItENTALb.

THE QUARTERLIES.

—analogous and not less marked for a great man
who bas married for love. The French, we are
told, were disappointed because the Emperor bad
not married a Royal Princess ; the English would have
deemed it a derogation from his personal grandenr if he
had. One thing was wanting to the popularity of George
111. with the masses—that be should have married Lady
Sarah Lennox in place of a cold and unattractive German.
This one crowning claim Louis Napoleon had ; and by
that, more than by almost any one other characteristic,
did he captivate the sympathies of the middle and lower
classes of our island. And, in addition to all this, and
as a final clue to the explanation of the offensive pheno-
menon, it cannot be denied that the open, straight-
forward, cordial, honourable dealing of the Emperor
with this country ever since he became our ally, was
felt by our statesmen to present a most welcome and
lavourablo contrast with the circumstances which bad
marked our intercourse with the French Court under
both branches of the House of Bourbon."

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The Edinburgh Review. No. COX.--Out of the
210 of the Edin 5 urgh, there are three of them for
alleig halt
earwtiocrlleds
j ni
ust exactly up the contents of number
actly like " hamlet without
the part of Hamlet among the dramatis personc e!"
First and foremost there is the introductory contri-
bution relating to " Modern English History,"
and having reference in it to Henry Richard Lord
Holland, to Lord :Mahon, now Earl of Stanhope, to
my Lord John Russell, to the Duke of Bucking-
ham and Chandos, X.G., to every one, in fact, but
the very one whose name is popularly identified
most immediately with Modern English History—
Thomas Macaulay ! Then there is an elaborate paper
upon "The Greek People and the Greek Kingdom"
—and not a whisper in it about the Right Hon.
Thomas Wyse, her Britannic Majesty's Ambas-
sador to the Court of Athens during all these
years of anxiety, intrigue, and discontent !
Lastly, there is an argument about the " Aus-
trian Concordat," and not a syllable of allu-
sion during the whole course of it to the four
lectures delivered not very long ago in London by
Cardinal Wiseman—lectures presenting to our
English public in a condensed form one rather im-
portant side of that same argument ! Hamlet—we
repeat—without the Prince of Denmark ! It is ra-
ther significant, we cannot but think, that the
great Whig organ, just at this particular time,
when our rulers are beginning to practise all kinds
of ridiculous courtesies towards Russia, should
begin puffing up those contemptible Greeks at the
expense of the recently eulogised but now-once-
more-depreciated Osmanlis—the Edinburgh Review
saying of the Greeks, in set terms of panegyric,
" this race is rapidly increasing in wealth, intelli-
gence, and power, whilst its former oppressors
are sinking into decrepitude !" The old stock
phrase of abuse used usque ad nauseam before
the recent war broke out, a phrase that, by
repetition upon repetition, prepared the way
positively for that rascally hypothesis of the late
Czar about the sick man and the division betimes
of his property among his more powerful neigh-
bours. It is revolting to mark the revival of the
old babble so very soon iu the midst of the
banging of the preposterous squibs and crackers
of rejoicing over a disgraceful cou.promise.
In the very preamble -of the paper upon
the Austrian Concordat the following remarkable
allusions are made by the writer of the article to
the glorious dawn of the present very memorable
Pontificate : •

A criticism which will be wonderfully welcome
to the heart of Mr. Payne Collier, enrolls the
Edinburgh Review formally among the organs, ac-
cepting as reasonably admissible the authority of
the anonymous " Corrector of Shakspere."
Among other things of note the reviewer, speaking
of Shakspere's apparent indifference as to his re-
putation, says very impressively :
"The great dramatist himself took no steps whatever
to prepare his plays for printing ; he left his manuscripts
with his associates, and buried himself in his Stratford
acres, with an apathy which—
' Were it wisdom, coldness, or deep pride,'

has something of the awful in it, when we reflect on the
gigantic fame of the man and the real nothingness of
fame."

Besides the seven articles already specified in
our remarks, there is an eighth of an eminently
readable character relating to " Sir Isaac Newton,"
a paper half criticism, half biography.

The Quarterly Review. No. CXCVI.

Usually there are two or three stock-themes in
the current number of the quarterly reviews and
monthly magazines—precisely as there are the
same important and unimportant fragments of
intelligence given to the public simulta-
neously in the daily and weekly newspa-
pers. It is so just now, as under ordinary
circumstances, with regard to the Tory Quarterly
and the Whig Edinburgh. Both contain onslaughts
upon Mr. John Ruskin by reason of his recent
issue of additional portions of his magnum opus
about " Modern Painters." Both—again—com-
prise among their contents certain rather stringent
strictures anent the views lately expressed by M.
de Montalembert in an extended pamphlet, or, as
it may be otherwise termed, a moderately-sized
volume, as to the " Political Future of Great
Britain." The estimate formed in reference to

"The Pontificate of Pius IX. has already exhibited to
the world a series of vicissitudes hardly to be equalled in
the long annals of the Papacy, and of contradictions not
to be surpassed in this age of sudden changes and sur-
prising revolutions. For the first time since the death
of Ganganelli, Europe hailed the election of a Pontiff
to the chair of St. Peter, who addressed himself to popu-
lar sympathies, and seemed eager to advance with the
liberal progress of the 19th century. He owed his no-
mination to the b'ameless purity of his life, and to the
influence of the constitutional government of France,
which was at that time represented iu Rome by an am-
bassador of no common discernment. He was enthroned
in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, amidst the
veneratio❑ of the clergy and the enthusiastic applause
of the people. His first actions were calculated
to improve the degraded condition of the Roman
Government in the Papal States, and to vindicate
its independence even against the preponderating
influence of the Austrian garrisons in Northern Italy.
But few months had elapsed after the Pope's accession,
when that storm broke loose which convulsed the poli-
tical fabric of Europe, and unhappily laid low so many
of the free institutions of the Continent. At that awful
mement, when more powerful Sovereigns and more vi-
gorous Governments fell in rapid succession before the
excited populace of their capitals, the Pope still rode for
a time upon the eddies of the stream, and lent his voice
to consecrate the cause of Italian liberty and indepen-
dence.

the latter by the Quarterly reviewer who has
taken M. de Montalembert's brochure in hand,
is rather disparaging upon the whole—but then
some critics, it must be borne in mind, aro neces-
sarily, perversely, and cross-grainedly—Crokers !
According to this view of the work, Englishmen
have no reason to be at all solicitous as to the value
set upon their institutions, or as to the nature of
the hopes and fears entertained, by M. do Montal-
embert in regard to their future—the great, thun-
dering, infallible Boanerges of the Quarterly roar-
ing out against one of the most eminent of living
Frenchmen this terrible interdict—" We have little
confidence in his judgment of either men or things,
and we look on his work as a mere half-fanatical,
half-rhetorical essay." Thinking thus of Montale m-
bert and his writings, why on earth has
this very critic taken such notorious pains
to supervise the translation of the political
brochure in question—why ? But for the rather
malignant purpo e of wilfully distorting the mean-
ing of the original in its transformation into our
English vernacular ! And why, having this rather
contemptuous opinion of both book and author—
why, after voluntarily undertaking the task of intro-
ducing him, through a deforming medium, to the
British public—why take the supplementary trou-
ble of analysing at some length a volume so en-
tirely worthless in its character and tendencies—
why ? But that, here again, some little opportunity
was afforded to the acrid translator and
the sour-tempered reviewer for avenging himself
spitefully upon one Abraham Hayward for
certain sharp and caustic gibes hurled at him
(and at somebody else, of another and more definite
gender than the epicine) through the columns of the
Times newspaper ! At least se it appears—if we
are not very wide of the mark in viewing this same
Quarterly Reviewer as decidedly and beyond all
manner of doubt—a Croker. Speaking of Mr.
Ruskin hardly less severely than that critic's critic
in the Edinburgh, another reviewer in the Quar-
terly says of him very happily—" Mr. Ruskin's
writings have all the qualities of premature old
age, the coldness, callousness, and contraction."
A definition we cannot but regard as, all things
considered, wonderfully felicitous. Yet the writer
is by no means blind to the beauties of the great
object of Mr. Ruskin's idolatry—or indifferent
consequently to the subject of the major part of his
enthusiasm. For example the Quarterly reviewer
thus ingeniously enumerates the many admirable
qualities of various eminent landscape painters only
to accord to. Turner the highest place of all—if for
no other reason for that of his combining in his
marvellous paintings so many hitherto scattered
excellences. Rah the critic :

" Prince Metternich declared in his exile that of all
the strange and astounding phenomena he had wit-
nessed, that which bad surprised him most was a libe-
ral Psipe.' But the illusion was a brief one. In the re-
action which followed that paroxysm of madness, the
Roman Government was the first to recoil from the task
it had undertaken. The revolution, which had been mo-
mentarily assisted and controlled by the valour of Charles
Albert, and by the adhesion of Pio Nono to the national
cause, soon deserted its champions, and turned upon
them with as much fury as it had shown against its
mortal enemies. The Pope, betrayed by his troops and
attacked by his subjects, saw one of his secretaries shot
by his side in the Quirinal, whilst his minister, Connt
Rossi—a man who combined the loftiest conceptions of
a statesman with the most courageous devotion to the
cause of his native country—fell, butchered on the steps
of the Cancelleria."

The sequel to all this is held vividly enough in the
popular remembrance. The exile at Gaeta, and. the
Gallic bombardment of the eternal city from the
Janiculum—consequent upon which incidents the
spiritual domination of the Papacy is described by
the reviewer as having been more signally than ever
demonstrated throughout Christendom, embracing
"all nations, from the frontiers of Thibet and the
most distant islands of the Pacific to the
great cities of Europa." A suggo.tiro them°
in truth all this for very serious contem-
plation ! " Body and Mind" is the title
of a.very enthralling essay tracing the- connection
between the two—an union the physical part of
which is thus cleverly described :
" Every bone of the spine is a thick ring ; and these
bones, when placed upon each other, form not only what
is called the vertebral column, but also a canal. Within
this strong bony canal is placed the spinal cord --medulla
or marrow, in popular phrase,--which is clntinuJus
upwards with the brain, and downwards with the nerves
going off to the limbs and trunk. The brain and this
spinal cord constitute the great centres of all sensorial
and motive action ; hence they are termed the cerebrl
spinal axis.' It is in and by and thrciugh this axis that
the mind operates and receives the impressions of the
senses ; and its various channels of communication
with the external world are the multitudinous nerves
of motion and sensation which, passing off in innumer-
able and microscopically minute fibrils from the axis,
ramify over the whole surface of the body, and penetrate
every muscular fibre."

" Claude had set the very sun in the heavens ; Cuyp
had depicted the rarified pulsation of still-noon heat,
and the solemn all-massing vapour of a golden after-
noon ; Berghem ha I piled up those stately masses which
the winds drive together, and then leave for hours un-
disturbed ' • Poussin had gathered the thunder-charged
clouds, showing deep within the lurid chamber whence
the bolt is ready to fall ; Rubens hal spanned the rain-
bow ; Wilson had painted daylight in every gradation,
from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same ;
Ruysdael had given the sky which heightens the idea of
solitude ; Van de Weide and Backhuytien, that which
we most remark at sea—each had their favourite phase
best in keeping with their favourite object ; while to
Turner was reserved not only the desire of expressing
every phase (excepting always the unfathomable vault
of the early masters), and of rendering every form of
cloud that floats under heaven, but also of arresting
those evanescent and fantastic forms of vapour and mist
which never bad been aimed at before."

Out of this essay grows up a suggestion as to the
meaning of insanity which appears to us about the
most ingenious within the range of our recollection.
Au explanation it is dependent upon the duplex
character of the brain as an anatomical structure—
upon the exact balance, or exquisitely nice adjust-
ment, of whose moieties the sanity of thought and
sensation may reasonably be presumed to be de-
pendent. And consequently- Dut of the disorgani-
sation of which balance or adjustment of the twin
lobes of the brain—insanity, or at the leas.;
monomania, may readily enough be under-
stood to emerge as au inevitable result. This
suggestion of a clue to the Mystery is worthy,
we cannot but think, of a very elaborate
and extended development. 4, Ruskinism" is the
suggestive heading of a fiercer onslaught upon the
author of " Modern Painters," by a slashing,
dashing, crashing critic in the Edinburgh. Who
says of—

Besides these, of course, others might readily
enough have been enumerated—such as Salvator,
with his wild and rocky fastnesses ; and Hobbima,
with his green and twinkling verdure ; and Cana-
letto, with his glancing water courses, and others,
the dii minores of pastoral and sylvan scenery, and
glimpses of river and ocean; Ert Veest, and Gia-
como Cavedone, and Bartholomew Briemberg, and
Paul Potter, and the Brills Paul and Matthew,
and Phillip° d'Angeli, and! the like—but those
already mentioned were obviously of them-
selves more than sufficient. Sufficient, more
than sufficient, to satisfy even Mr. Ruskin's
greed of praise for the greatest of all English, per-
haps in truth as the Oxford Graduate has all along
maintained the greatest of all English or Foreign
painters of landscapes. Does anybody want to
know anything at all about " The Haldanes ?'' If
so—here is a very readable—" full, true, and par-
ticular account " of Robert of Airthrey, and of his
brother James Alexander—sons of a Captain in the
H.E.I.C.M.S. "Lewis on Early Roman His-
tory" seems destined to form a companion volume
to Niebuhr—just as, in reference to English His-
tory, Hume's name is coupled inextricably with
Smollett's. Pity it seems that au ingenious philo-
logist and antiquary like the right hon. member
for Radnor burghs should forsake his natural
post as a shrewd commentator upon Livy and
Tacitus for the purpose of assuming a most unnatural
position for him, namely, that of a bungling and
crotchetty Chancellor of the Exchequer. Let us
cherish the hope that before long he may once more
take up with Facts instead of with Figures. A
chapter on " British Family Histories" introduces
the readers of the Quarterly successively to such
houses as the Bagots, the Shirleys, and the Lind-
_

says. Besides the five articles already particula-
larised in this new number there are three other
rather noticeable contributions yet remaining to be

mentioned.

There is a treatise on the " lieace"

considered in regard to its effects upon the condi-
tion of Turkey. There is an amazing paper en-

titled "The Triton and the Minnows,'' descriptive

of Scott Russell's monster vessel the Great Ea-stern
Sereu;-and-Padelle Steam-ship a perfect mam-
moth in its way, as is glaringly demonstrated
upon page 445, where six little outline woodcuts
show at a glance how comparatively trivial, as
compared with this huge sea-monster are—(in in-
creasing proportions) one of the gun-boat flotilla,
the Great Western, the Great Britain, the Persia,
or even H.M.S. (131 guns) the Duke of Welling-
ton ! Frivolous productions these latter really
seem to be when contrasted with a gigantic vessel
like the Great Eastern—"rushing through the
night in full career—an arrow 27,000 tons in
weight, propelled by a bow of 3,000-horse power!"
A. ship twice the size of the Ark 1—" receiving on
board floeks and herds to furnish fresh meat for
the passage !" A vessel capable of " bringing
home our 50,000 troops from the Crimea, with all
their artillery and baggage, in the course of
ten or twelve days !" Finally, to complete our
catalogue of the eight articles in this current num-
ber of the Quarterly, there is a very clever and
caustic review of " Southey's Letters," as edited
and selected by the Rev. John Wood Warter,
Vicar of West Tarring—Vicar (one could almost
fancy him to be, now that we have read this scarri-
fving criticism of his literary labours)—Vicar (at
once we may be allowed to hint) of Tarring and
Feathering ! Speaking of recent biographical
works of a very absurd character generally, the
reviewer remarks upon one of them—
" The last sacrifice to pretentious incapacity is James
Montgomery of Sheffield, an excellent man and a re-
spectable poet, whooe Yirttle4 aid terse COMbin94