The Sun.
London, England, 1856-01-28 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

,
The Quarterly Review. No. CXCV.
r A pleasant gossipping paper upon " Table Talk'
—leading off the eight new articles in the old
Quarterly—introduces us in imagination to the
homes of John Selden, of Williamilazlitt, and of
Samuel Coleridge. Nay, more, it carries our
fancy to the dwelling-place ofMartin Luther,
where we listen to him babbling, in his slippered
ease, about th© wearing of love-locks by wo.tien—
and suddenly breaking off in his discourse with a
" Let us talk of something else," as though the
theme were too much for him to speak of with any
degree of sustained equanimity. The contribution
referred to comes to Land appropriately enough,
midway, as it were, between the anecdotal bio.
graphy of Sidney Smith and the promised record
of the bon mots heard by the initiated at Samuel
' Rogers' breakfasts, hard by the Green Park. An
earnest essay upon the noble subject of "Reforma-
tory Schools ' next appears among the present con-
tents of the Quarterly, and evidences throughout the
fact of its having emanated directly from the heart
and the conscience of an active, genuine, practical
philanthropist. A wag, too, in his way—ae we
glean from his casual record of the subjoined scale
of the value of Boy Labour, as jotted down by a
Farmer of the West of England :-
1 Boy is a boy •
2 Boys are half ?a boy;
3 Boys are no boy at all.

The critical, biographical, literary, antiquarian
palaver about " Menander," given immediately
afterwards by another reviewer well " up " in the
old Greek comedian's life and writings, as well as
admirably versed in the recent disquisitions upon
the same, given to the world of letters in 1854 lsy
Charles Benoit, and in 1855 by Guillaume Guizot,
will be seized upon as a welcome tidbit by the stu-
dents of classic literature. Strange is it to find
the old Christian sentiment--
" He dies the earliest whom the gods love beet—"
articulated in so many words, centuries and een.
turies ago, by the old pagan dramatist—
" Ov yap Not tpiXovatv, aroOvnatzEt vtoc."
Stranger still, almost, to find how accurately Me-
nander has expressed in Greek the grand, trutk
that—
" The voice of Conscience is the voice of God—"
" Bporotc araatv ottutariatc ©fog."
It is agreeable to turn over the pages coming to
band immediately afterwards, affording us, as they
do, so genial a notice of Mr. Frederick Lawrence's
recent biography of Henry Fielding, and giving
us, while doing so, the memoir of our glorious no-
velist all over again, in a form very ingeniously
epitomised. Articles upon " The Neology of the
Cloister," upon " Landscape Gardening," and upon
" The Zoological Gardens," succeed, and these ia
turn are crowned by the political chapter of the
Quarterly, for this once—relating, as a matter of
course to the present (shall we say to the recent ?)
War—its "Results and Prospects." It is amusing
to find in the last-mentioned contribution, not the
faintest inkling of an anticipation of the sudden
collapse of all our warlike preparations, consequent
upon the sinister auguries of a precipitate compro-
mise with the Russian Government.

The New Quarterly Review.
Those who are desirous to keep themselves an
courant with the literature of the day, and have
not time for wading through many periodicals,
will find the New Quarterly of service. In addi-
tion to a digest of current literature, most of the
principal productions of the quarter, French,
German, and Italian, as well as English, will be
found in the present number, as was the case with
its p redeeessors.