The Sun.
London, England, 1858-01-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Illustrated History of Preston, in Lancashire. By
Charles Hardwick. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.
Upon the substantial basis of this goodly volume,
of very nearly seven hundred pages, Mr. Hard-
wick has forthwith built up a durable and distin-
guished reputation, at once as an archaeologist
and a topographer. It assumes its position upon
the same shelf with Cunningham's London, and
Barrett's Bristol, and Whittaker's Manchester.
It is a work, we may observe, published by sub-
scription, under the direction of a local firm of
considerable enterprise, the firm of Messrs. John
Worthington and Company, of Town-hall Cor-
ner, Preston—the metropolitan agents being
the Messrs. Simpkin and Marshall, the London
booksellers. Altogether, after a very careful
examination of the volume we do not hesitate
to pronounce it one of the most entertaining, and at
the same time one of the most conscientiously
elaborated productions of the kind that has probably
yet anywhere made its appearance. The interest
of the work is not by any means of a local or even
of a provincial character exclusively. It throws
light through its antiquarian researches upon the
general history of the island, as well as in a more
peculiarly vivid manner upon the martial annals
of the county of Lancaster, Nor can this be re-
garded as in any remarkable degree surprising
i
when t is considered that the borough of
Preston is, after all, one of the most ancient
bo.roughs in the whole of the United
Its antiquity, as place of human
habitation,indeed, dates back to a period, to use my
Lord Macaulay's phrase, "lost in the twilight of
fable," or, according to a famous legal idiom,
; regarding the borough of Preston as such, the me-
, mory of man running not to the contrary.
Preston is presumed to have risen out of the ruins
of Ribble Chester, and Ribble Chester is under-
, stood to have flourished immediately before the
advent to our shores of Julius Caesar, Britain's first
conqueror, and what is yet more Britain's first lite-
rary celebrant. Precisely as Hume, and Rapin, and
Lingard, respectively begin their narrative of the
national fortunes, Mr. Hardwick begins his more
restricted record of the fortunes of Preston (vice
Ribble Chester abolished !)—with reference to classic
authorities, such as Strabo's Travels and Caesar's
Commentaries. He illustrates his argument in
these annals, moreover, somewhat as a geologist
might illustrate a treatise of the strata of this earth,
by allusion to the print of ferns upon the daedal
granite, to the footmarks of extinct monsters, to
the very bones, the colossal skeletons im-
bedded in the solid rock, the osseous relics
of the mastodon and the icthyosaurus. In-
stead, however, of doing so with foot-prints
and skeletons, the archaeologist adorns his
text with sketches of antique amulets, and celts,
and paalstabs—spearheads of iron, bronze urns, and
bone needles, curiosities dug up in the course of
recent excavations. The plan of Mr. Hardwick's
History of Preston appears to us to be really admi-
rable. Divided into three parts—it treats of Pres-
ton
successively in a historical and topographical
point of view, subsequently expatiating upon its
environs—with particular reference to the Valley
of the Ribble, the Hundred of Leyland, the Hun-
dred of Blackburn, and the Hundred of Aveounder-
ness. A very curious Appendix is followed by a
most diversified series of Biographies, and this
again by a Chronological Table and an Index, each
admirably complete, and each arranged with a
careful regard to the facilities for instant
reference. The purely Historical division of
this History of Preston carries the reader by
due gradations downwards from the most
remote epoch upon record to times immediately
contemporary, through the British Period, and the
Roman Period, and the Saxon Period, and the
Danish Period, to the Norman Conquest, and so
onward in the stream of events throughthe reigns of
Plantagenets, and Tudors, and Stuarts, to the dy-
nasty and the very reign of our present gracious
Sovereign. After the fifth chapter of the First
Part, a chapter, bringing us from the Restoration
to the age of Victoria, we come to three other
chapters, completing the section, with records re-
lating to Municipal Government, Guild Merchant,
Trade and Commerce, and Parliamentary Represen-
tation. The illustrations of the work are so profuse
and costly, that we are almost ashamed to notice,
in regard to them, what, nevertheless, appears to
us a deficiency. Yet it is without doubt a deficiency
so remarkable that it may not unreasonably, in
spite of the merit and multiplicity of the numerous
engravings scattered through the letterpress by way
of embellishment, be here at once distinctly speci-
fied. The deficiency we speak of is simply no other
titan that caused by the absence of a really good
plan—nay, for that matter, the absence of any plan
at all—of Preston as it is nowadays. There cer-
tainly is o plan of Preston in the volume, intro-
duced opposite page 429, one solitary map of the
borough among all these ninety-five engraved and
lithographed illustrations—but it is a map of Pres-
ton only as it was in 1774, just eighty-four years
ago I The omission of a plan of the borough as it
actually appears now in the second half of the nine-
teenth century might be very advisably filled up
in any subsequent edition of a book worthy'of being
very often reprinted. Verb. sap. to men of enter-
prise like the Messrs. Worthington. Other histories
of Preston and its immediate neighbourhood have
already of course at intervals before now made their
appearance to the gratification of the curious in such
matters in Lancashire. But besides the fact of
these productions being long since out of print, and
only to be met with accidentally once in a way upon
some oid book-stall in a dal& corner of a bye-street
somewhere (a rather vague and tantalising dic-
tion this to an impatient bibliopole !)—Mr. Hard-
wick's work has many claims for pre-eminence
beyond the very best of his various predecessors.
It is a topographical, and archaeological, and histo-
rical, and biographical record of the annals of Pres-
ton, readabie elsewhere than in Lancashire. It is
a narrative so readable that any one of moderate
intelligence who happens to dip into the book once
in search of information, will be tolerably certain
to return to it more than once in quest of amuse-
ment as well. If every old borough in England
had an annalist as painstaking and conscientious as
our historian of Preston, the labours of the Macau-
lays in the way of research would be very won-
drously facilitated. Th© work, although appa-
rently merely provincial in its character, is indi-
rectly but indisputably imperial in its interest.
As such, we can earnestly and heartily recommend
it to the perusal of the metropolitan reader, hardly
less than to the more minute examination of the
habitual inhabitants of the ancient borough of
Preston itself, and of the contiguous parts of the
county of Lancaster.

Highland Jessie : a Song. Words by D. M. Aird.
Music by T. Browne. Henry Bale, 340, Strand.
Another impassioned song, asociated with the
heroic memory of Havelock. It is a song, too,
worthy of its theme—poet and musician having
alike acquitted themselves to admiration. The
profits derived from the dittyare to be devoted to the
India Relief Fund. May they help to increase that
fund not inconsiderably. Mr. Aird's war song of
"Havelock to his Warrior:Band," renders his name
upon the present title-page doubly acceptable. We
observe that while his new song is commemorative
of the Heroine, it is at the same time dedicated to
the relict of the Hero of Lucknow. Few of those
who sing the thrilling words and tones of " High-
land Jessie," but will heave a sigh of sympathy for
the Lady Havelock.

Thom's Almanac and Official Directory for 1858.
Thom and Sons, Dublin : Longman and Co.,

London.

This volume is one of a series whose value is
recognised and whose character is established for
general accuracy and utility. It is the fifteenth
year of its publication, and, consequently, it is no
new candidate for popular approbation. When
first commenced in 1844, it was almost exclusively
devoted to Ireland ; but, encouraged by its exten-
sive circulation, the compiler has taken advantage
of the opportunities afforded him to enlarge its
sphere of usefulness, and it now gives the reader,
in addition to the regular Irish Directory and
Almanac, several distinct directories for other parts
of the United Kingdom and its Colonial possessions.
Ono of the most remarkable features of the work,
and one which immediately commends it to the
favourable notice of politicians and poorlietiicnal
setcaotneos-,
marks that it is gratifying to
econo-
mists, is the collection and compilation of statistics
for the United Kingdom, also
trace,
oa
fcF: ig e compiler re-
n the portiOn
their population, revenue, &e.
Tel
of these statistics relating to Ireland, the progres-
sive improvement and advance in social condition
which is evidenced by the comparison of year with
year. The commercial tables are likewise of great
practical utility to the merohant and the man of
business.
he
T Peerage, t
u .Kingdom,aronetage, and Orders
of
Knighthoodof the
Army, Navy, and Militia Directory, the Govern-
ment
nited the
Schools of Medicine, Colleges, Literary
Offices,
and Scientific Insptiotuttioins, together with the Ec-
clesiastical, LaW,
convenient method. The'assl.
and.fi County Directories,
are all arranged and ad.
Indexese. classified by a
are
ocompleteear andan d
compendious and greatly facilitate reference. The
public will, no doubt, appreciate the care and pre-
eisieh with which this laborious undertaking has
been conducted.

The history of England. By Lord Macaulay.
Vol. 111. Longman.
The third volume of the popular edition of this
valuable work has now appeared. Those who
have been unable to obtain it in its preTioto farm,

should secure the present handsome and moderatos
edition, which is equally adapted to the library or
the casual reader. We are glad to see a work of
this character placed withia the reach of moderate
means.