The Sun.
London, England, 1858-11-05 00:00:00

AN OLD SOLDIER ON REFORM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

SIR,—A fair number of our Parliamentary great-
guns have already fired off, and many more will
probably shortly follow. Most of them will, I
suspect, have shown themselves to be loaded with
blank cartridge, and little can be expected from
them, before the war season commences in February
next, when, it is to be hoped, they will throw in
their round shot with good effect, and that the pro-
mised Reform Bill will not end in smoke. A chief in-
gredient in it ought to be, in my humble opinion,
the Vote by Ballot. But, sir, I have not, as yet,
observed that any speaker has touched on that
point, which I consider equally essential—the dura-
tion of Parliaments. Now, sir, it..is much more
pleasant to a newly-elected member to say to his
friends—" Now, I hope to be able to represent you
for many a year to come," or to think that he has
a good chance of doing so, and thus (to use a com-
mon phrase) to snap his fingers at them, than to
have the reflection that he will have to appear
among them again at the end of three years, at
furthest. An argument frequently used against this
change is, that the average duration of Parliaments
is not above three years. This, I think, should
have no weight, for we have known them to run on
till six years' duration, one, not many years back,
to its seventh year. I will not, however, touch on
historical periods, but confine myself to expressing
my opinion that our present system is totally
wrong, and is only maintained by the objection our
public men have of speaking or writing on what
may be termed " a self-denying ordinance." To go
to another point—that which I commenced with—of
great guns. No one has come out so strongly, and
whose speeches atßirmingham have been commented
on by you so forcibly and so justly as Mr. Bright's :
I presume to make a few remarks. Is it not strange
that he—the apostle of peace at any price, the
intense hater of war and all its paraphernalia—
should have gone to Birmingham, of all places in
the kingdom, the very focus and hot-bed of every-
thing that produces the means by which war is
carried on, and among constituents who are chiefly
employed in the construction of every deadly
weapon—cannon, swords, rifles, &c. How is it,
I ask, that Mr. Bright can so outrage his feelings
and his opinions as to ask for the suffrages of such
destroying hands.

Your faithful servant,
AN OLD SOLDIER AND POLITICIAN.
The Welsh Hills, Nov. 3, 1858.

LITERATU.RE.

Lives of the Queens of Scotland. By Agnes Strick
land. Vol. VII. Blackwood. and Sons.

Another volume will bring to a close this noble
series of historic biographies. It will comprise
within it the lives of Elizabeth Stuart, QUeen of
Bohemia, and of her daughter Sophia, the Electress
of Hanover, upon whom, as our annals relate, the
succession to the Crown of Britain was settled by
Act of Parliament. It is especially observable that
the conclusion of the life of the Electress Sophia
brings these historical biographies down to a period
contemporaneous with the reign of Queen Anne,
the narrative of whose career, it will be remembered,
complete* the record of " The Lives ofthe Queens of
England," by Agnes Strickland. So that the range
of the companion series, now rapidly approaching
its completion, will be directly parallel with that
of its brilliant and classic predecessor. Already
this remarkable contribution to our national
annals has so nearly advanced towards its
termination that we may speak of it as a work
virtually completed. So far as relates to the
Queen's Regnant of Scotland, it is, in fact, at this
moment brought to a conclusion—the current
volumes relating the last mournful incidents in the
career of the beautiful and unfortunate princess
whose memory survives as that of the most roman-
tic of all the Scottish Sovereigns. Miss Strick-
land's narrative of the death of Mary Stuart is,
beyond any question whatever, the most eloquent,
the most touching, and the most authentic ever
yet penned by biographer. It is impossible to
read it without emotion. The scene, the person-
ages, the incidents, all rise up before us as we turn
the leaves—as vividly as though we really saw and
heard them—as though they were events not of
three centuries since, but of yesterday.• The piety
of Mary's death is placed beyond the possibility of
doubt. Her patience, her meekness, her tender
thought for others rather than for herself, all these
' pathetic evidences of her perfect submission to the
decrees of Divine Providence are displayed eenspi-
cuously for our admiration. During the breathless
moments of preparation upon the morning of her
most inhuman execution, we hear resounding melo-
diously that exquisite impromptu prayer, " well
known," says Miss Strickland, "to have been ex-
temporised by the Queen" during her last devo-
tions :

" 0 Domino Deus ! Speravi in to ; •
0 care me Jesul nunc libera me.
In dura catena, in misera Fens., desidero :
Languendo, gemendo, of genu flectendo,
Adoro, imploro, ut Micros me 1"
Exquisite words of tender and pathetic sup-
plication—words that may thus be echoed back in
the vernacular :

" 0 Lord and 0 God I have hoped in thee.
0 Jesus, sweet Jesus, now liberate me ;
In sorrow I languish, in chains and in anguish,
Lamenting, repenting on lowly bent knee,
Adoring, imploring-0 liberate me 1"
It is difficult, looking back at this infamous crime
—the murder of Mary Stuart by order of the Eng-
lish Queen and Government—it is difficult to say
whose conduct appears the most cruel and inhu-
man among those who, either directly or indirectly,
participated in its perpetration. The brutal and
fanatic Earl of Kent fills us with abhorrence. The
harsh and unrelenting bigotry of the Dean of
Peterborough excites in our mind, as we
read on; feelings of half-incredulous amazement.
None can recal to mind without a shudder
the pitiless spite with which Elizabeth vowed that
her rival should die the death, confirming the de-
claration with an oath, " Yea, by G— !" Few
can remember without mingled emotions of scorn
and horror the callous and implacable hardihood
with which Lord Burleigh ordered all the arrange-
ments for the execution. It is Consolatory to remem-
ber that if the creatures of the English Queen
were thus covering themselves with infamy by
aiding with inhuman zeal the atrocious work of
official assassination—the faithful dependants of
the Royal victim were in some manner redeeming
human nature from this infamy by their evidences
of deathless devotion. The tragic spectacle revealed
to us through this sombre loophole of history is
one, in truth, eminently calculated to excite our
pity and our admiration. There are tears in the
annalist's voice as she tells the tale to us anew ;
and, beating our breast like the wedding guest in
the poem of Coleridge, we needs must listen to the
words of the sorrowful narrative. " Sadder and
wiser" we close the volume--grateful to the pro-
found research and vivifying eloquence of Agnes
Strickland. Remembering; while we lay the book
aside, that according to those closing lines of
Caussin, Queen Mary's French biographer—" So
long as there shall be eyes and tears in this vale of
misery, there shall be tears distilled on those Royal
ashes, and the piety of the living shall never cease
with full hands to strew lilies, and violets, and
roses on her tomb." And the perpetuated grief is
wholesome purifying and elevating. Olim
meminisse juvabit.

A Summer and Winter in the Two Sieilies. By
Julia Kavanagh. author of " Nathalie," " Adele,"
&c. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.
Miss Kavanagh's clever historical works and
sparkling novels have long since obtained for her a
high rank among our feminine writers. She has
now ventured into a new sphere, and has given us
her impressions of Southern Italy—a task for which
her cultivated artistic taste and unusual knowledge
of ancient history especially qualify her. Her de-
scriptions of the loveliness of Italian skies and
scenery are glowing and enthusiastic; indeed pro-
saic readers will be tempted to say they are almost
too much so ; at least there is too much reiteration
of the artistic delight in the wonderful effects of
colour, and the influences of a southern sky.
Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the authored in-.
spires the reader with something of the same feel-
ing; and those who have visited these beautiful
and traditionary regions will revive their first im-
pressions while revisiting them in Miss Kavanagh's
pages. A lengthened stay at Sorrento enabled her
to make the acquaintance of a poor Italian family,
and she gives us some pleasing domestic details of
industrious
and home life and management of these
and frugal people. The management of silkworms,
the olive trees and vineyards, and the simple girl's
wonder at the marvels unfolded to her by the
foreigner, come in pleasantly among the visions of
ruined temples and lonely plains. The historical
lore of our authoress is something uncommon for a
feminine writer. She has all the misdeeds of the
Roman Emperors, and the comments of Virgil and
Horace, always ready for reference or illustration.
Her familiarity with the native tongue, too, helps
her very much in gaining an insight into national
character. When she leaves classics and his
tern however, for political economy, she is