The Sun.
London, England, 1851-12-01 00:00:00

LITERATURE

;THE BOOR OF DIGNITIES. :By Joseph
Haydn. Longman, Brown, Green, and Long mans.
A wonderful compilation was Mr. Haydn's" Book
of Dates," and not less wonderful is his " Book of
Dignities." It must be ranked henceforth among the
most remarkable works ever contributed as guides
to human knowledge. Every one, we presume, is
familiar enough with the well-known sarcasm upon
history which fell from the lips of a famous philo-
sopher. According to his ironical definition, romance
is scarcely a jot more the produce of the imagination.
After all, too, he was not far wrong—the only really
reliable record of the human race being comprised in
chronology, and even that sometimes being necessarily
somewhat dubious in its character. What says one of
the most thoughtful writers of our generation upon
the Fame subject, and speaking nearly in the seine
strain as the philosopher before referred to? Sir
Bulwer LS tton exclaims, in one of his earliest
and Dot least remarkable effusion; " Oh, Truth !
What a hard path is thine! Does any keep it for
three inches together in the commonest trifle?—
and yet two sides of my library are filled with histo-
ries ! ' There is a subtle sting in the remark coin-
cident with the satirical observation already particu-
larised. We acknowledge the accuracy of the
sentence pronounced by both those keen and scruti-
nizing observers—we are compelled to acknowledge
it, reluctantly it is true, but still fully ; and aware
consequently of the dubious nature of the ordinary
annals of humanity, we look more confidingly to
Maunder • than to Thucydides, to Haydn than to
Macaulay. We recognize less likelihood of being
deceived, intentionally or unintentionally, by the
chronologist. We behold in the colossal form of
history a monstrous shape not unlike that of the fa-
brication of Frankenstein. We strip off the hetero-
geneous materials there found collected together—the
nerves of imputed motive, the muscles of rhetoric,
the veins of philosophy, and the epidermis of
style—until we come at last to the only
symmetrical portion of the work—the bones of the
skeleton of chronology. We prefer, moreover, the
destructive dissection of- a man like Mr. Hayda than
the perilous patchwork of a man like Mr. Hume. We
prefer the reduction of history to its scanty but com-
prehensive and harmless outline—rather than its un•
wholesome agglomeration into a shape
" - if shape it may be called
Which shape has none,"
a shape constructed out of the dead and decaying
fragments of antiquity and animated by the genius
breathed into it by the vitalizing powers of the an-
nalist. More • particularly when its dangerous capa-
cities are borne in recollection—capacities not unfre-
quently employed in slaying the hitherto unassailed
reputations of the departed.• Therefore we repeat it,

* Er. gr. William Penn.
the compilations of men like Mr. Haydn are at all
times peculiarly welcome to us—because in them we
recognise a veracity eminently entitled to our confi-
dence. In the extraordinary volume lying be-
fore us, entitled " The Book of Dignities,"
we have in this manner tabularly arranged
the principal part of the History of the
IVorld since the earliest records of its inhabitants.
We have catalogues of all the Sovereigns of Europe
from the foundation of their respective states. We
have well authenticated rolls of the official personages
of the British empire, comprising the civil, ecclesias-
tical, judicial, military, naval, and municipal; be-
ginning with the remotest periods and coming down
to our own generation. Besides these, we have the
Peerage of England and of Great Britain, with a va-
riety:of other lists too multifarious to be here enume-
rated. Among the Princes of England, for example,
we find duly numbered, in addition to the Kings of
the Heptarchy, the Kings before and after the Con-
quest. We descend from Hengist in 455 to Egbert
in 820; from Egbert in 827 to Harold in 1066; from
William in 1066 to Victoria in 1837 ; passing succes-
sively through the Saxon race, the Danish race, the
Saxon race re-possessed, the Norman line, the
Plantagenet line, the line of Lancaster,_ the
House of York, the House of Tudor, the House
of Stuart, and the House of Hanover.
So likewise with the other kingdoms and
principalities of Christendom—in France, from
Pharamond in 418, to Louis Napoleon in 1848, in
Austria from Charlemagne in 800 to Francis
Joseph in 1848, in Hungary, from Stephen in 997 to
the days of Kossuth in 1851. Most marvellous of all,
it seems to we, in the whole of these catalogues, is the
one of the "Popes," as given by Mr. Haydn, begin-
ning at page 64, with St. Peter, in 42, and proceed-
ing, in uninterrupted succession, down to Pius IX. in
1846, his present Holiness. " Between Leo IV. and
the next Pontiff, Benedict III.," says Mr. Haydn,
" an absurd story, not worth refutation, places ' Pope
Joan.' " Besides the existing kingdoms of the earth,
with their Sovereign princes, we find moreover, in
the astonishing volume before us, due mention made
of kingdoms either merged or extinct, such as Swabia
or Burgundy. Then come copious catalogues of Am-
bassadors, Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers
Plenipotentiary from Great Britain to Foreign
States. After wards—perhaps of all the most interesting
feature in a work of which every page is an attraction
—we find a most carefully arranged list of all the
administrations of England from the reign of King
Henry VIII. down to the reign of Queen Victoria.
All the great officers of state of England follow;
then come the Speakers of the house of Commons,
the Judges of England, the principal ecclesiastical
functionaries, and the governors of the various colonies
from the period of their foundation. Among these we
are amazed to find no mention whatever of the Go-
vernors of Australia, although of all the vast and
scattered possessions of this country that is perhaps
the most remarkable, for various reasons—the most
noticeable of which is the circumstance of its being
sufficiently huge in its dimensions to be regarded
by many less as an island than as a fifth continent.
Altogether the accuracy of the work under consider-
ation is, however, most conspicuous. The labour
requisite for its successful compilation would
be sufficient, one might well imagine, to deter
any man less energetic than Joseph Haydn
from the task upon which he has here ad-
ventured. That Herculean task, nevertheless,
in spite of a thousand bewildering difficulties, he has
accomplished with all but miraculous ingenuity.
He has furnished the curious with an unfailing clue
to the dignities enjoyed by the most of the remarkable
personages of the human family, from times nearly
" lost in the twilight of fable" down to the glaring
notoriety of facts occurring in the present generation.
He has consequently well earned the eulogium which
he cannot fail to receive from all quarters, and bas in
his own name affixed ,a stamp of enduring popularity
on a work designated aptly enough on its title-page,
" Beatson's Political Index Modernized."

BAND ATLAS of PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.
By Edward Geyer.
Everyone acquainted with the works of Baron Hum-
boldt and of Mrs. Somerville, will feel grateful for the
appearance of this " Hand Atlas of Physical Geo-
graphy." Though its assistance is rendered at
once apparent, what must otherwise with the vast
majority have remained altogether incompre-
hensible. It presents to the students in cosmogony
an array of facts not hitherto collected together
within the same compass and with a similar amount
of accuracy. The principal effort of those entrusted
with the supervision of the undertaking before us
seems to have been that of having every detail of the
publication duly and scrupulously authenticated. To
this end the extraordinary compilation of Berghaus
—a compilation until now accepted on all hands as
faultless and unimpeachable—has been carefully
revised, and the inaccuracies lurking in that wonder-
ful book weeded out in every instance. This, we re-
peat, is the most conspicuous merit of the singular
production here submitted to our scrutiny, but it is
by no means its only excellence. It is something, of
course, to have removed from a work of this particu-
lar description errors which were dignified by the
authority of such a man as Berghaus, errors, too, en-
dorsed by the acceptance of all subsequent geographers.
It is yet more, however, to find this most laudable
emendation accompanied by a variety of other
very remarkable and really inestimable im-
provements. Among these must especially
be commended the introduction of several
additional maps drawn under the immediate superin-
tendence of Dr. Ritter and Dr. Kieppert, of O'Etzel,
Grimm, and other distinguished persons, whose
names are not enumerated. Besides this, it is worthy
of remembrance that the extent of the Great River
Basins, together with the direction and formation
of the mountain chains of Asia and of south-eastern
Etirope, have undergone a most cautious series of
alterations, and are consequently given now, we be-
lieve, for the first time free from the blunders detected
in the charts of Professor Berghaus and his followers.
These considerations of themselves would assuredly
be sufficient to secure to the volume published by
Mr. Gov( r the attention to which we are convinced it
is eminently entitled. Possibly it may be as well to
observe hri, fly—for the benefit of those not familiarly
acquainted with the study of which the book here
noticed is at: once the vade mecum and the
ency clopmdia—that the changes already speci-
fied have been made under the direction of
the editor of the " University Atlas of
the Middle Ages," taking, of course, as the basis
of his enterprise the "Physikalischer Atlas" of Ber-
ghaus, the most astonishing result of the genius end
the researches of that illustrious professor. Like i's
mast?rly prototype, the " Hand Adis of Physical
Geography," before us, consists of a succession
of
maps end illustrations displaying the geographical
distribution of natural phenomena—embracing neces-
sarily the divisions of geology, of hydrography,
of meteorology, and of natural history—that lest
. and crowning effort in the sequence of Creation.
Foremost comes a comprehensive and magni-
ficent view of the geological structure of the
earth, according to the scheme of Dr. Arnie Boue,