The Sun.
London, England, 1859-03-14 00:00:00

A fresh levy of 18,000 men had
been ordered for
the end of. May. Altogether, during the year end-
ing at the present time, 36,000 men had been en-
listed.

There have been fresh earthquakes in the
Abruzzi, and several new craters have recently
opened in Mount Vesuvius,

In a secret sitting of the Chamber at Hanover, a
war loan of one million has been resolved upon.
The Hanoverian Government is urged to demand at
the Diet of Frankfort the calling out,:of the Federal

RAILWAYS.

THE NEW QUARTERLY.

Bentley's Quarterly Review. No. I. Pp. 341.
Bentley.
The appearance of the initial number of Bentley's
Quarterly is an event in the history of periodical
literature. It is none the less remarkable an event
of its kind, the commencement at the present -time
of this first-class, high-priced review, remembering
that we are now in the midst of a very storm and
tornado of cheap publications. From the highest
to the lowest, bookmen of all descriptions, writers
and publishers, authors grave and gay, publishing
houses old and new, have emulated each other,
during the last quarter of a century, in supplying
the reading public of the United Kingdom with
railway volumes and cheap serials in abundance.
Messrs. Longman have issued their Traveller's
Library—Mr. Murray his Home and Colonial
Library—Messrs. Blackwood have inaugurated the
monthly reprint of Tales from their popular maga-
zine. Mr. Charles Knight, having years ago set a
brilliant example to his brother bookmen—whether
considered as authors or as publishers—by his
Penny .Magazine and his Penny Cyclopeedia, has
now more recently been setting the seal to his repu-
tation as the father of cheap literature, by his
Popular _History of England and his National
Cyclopcedia. The Messrs. Chambers, having, in
elementary, treatises, run through the whole range
of human knowledge for the benefit of the million,
still sustain their repute in that way by the magic
aid of stereotype. The Messrs. Chapman and
Hall, having introduced Boz to the world as the
first and greatest of all serial novelists, are, simul-
taneously with the extension of their cheap
Select Library of Fiction, • issuing from the
press revised editions of the works of
some of our most distinguished living men
of letters—including among them men of mark
like Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens. The
Messrs. Hurst and Blackett very recently, as the.
enterprising sue cessors of the late Mr. Colburn,
commenced a new miscellaneous reprint of well-
known books by writers, of note—the diversified
character of -which has been sufficiently well indi-
cated by the contrast of the three first of the series,
viz., the story of " John Halifax," the whimsical
disquisition by Sam Slick upon " Nature and
Human Nature," and those ever delightful travels,
" The Crescent and the Cross," from the pen of the
late gifted and ill-fated Eliot Warburton. Within
this last quarter of a century, moreover, there has
sprung into existence out of this very emulation
of our publishers in the issue of cheap railway in-
struction, a new firm, whose parti-coloured volumes
have long since been scattered far and wide over
the length and breadth of these islands, and over all
our numerous and remote colonial possessions—the
well-known cheap publishing firm of the Messrs.
Routledge.
The advantages arising from all this enterprise
are upon the instant obvious and undeniable.
Thousands now possess libraries who formerly
found one or two books a scarcely attainable luxury,
And the works thus placed within their reach are
no ephemeral effusions, but classics ineffaceably
sealed with the soul of genius, and stamped with the
tincture of immortality. Cheap polyglot Bibles,
cheap Greek and Roman masterpieces, cheap
Shaksperes, cheap poets, moralists, and historians,
cheap issues of Scott's Waverley romances, cheap
editions of great living writers like Dickens and
Bulwer and their many world-famous contem-
poraries—have for 'years been purchased, and are
still being purchased by the million. The middle
classes, even the more intelligent and thrifty of the
humbler classes, have been placed virtually by these
means upon a par with the wealthier sections of
society. Everyone 'indiscriminately has now the
means of extending his knowledge in the domains of
literature. But—together with these just and con-
spicuous benefits, rather, perhaps, we should say,
blessings, to the community at large—there have
been hardly lesS "glaring disadvantages which have
resulted from the rapid rise and development of this
cheap railway literature. Handsome volumes have
appeared all this while from the press but very
sparingly. Quartos and folios have years and
years back had their day—and we are now, for tho
most part, happily rid of them. These we do not
regret. But what has been all this while very
frequently a subject of regret with us is the fact
that so few books of a more reasonable size have
been published in a form sufficiently handsome and
substantial to take their rank with the standard
volumes upon our book-shelves. We are re-
joiced, however, latterly to recognise what
we cannot but regard as a wholesome reac-
tion upon the wholesale publishing of our
cheaply got up and flimsily stitched together
•railway volumes. As proof positive of this right
welcome reaction we hail the appearance of Mr.
BENTLEY'S new high-priced Quarterly _Review, the
typographical getting up of which is a marvel of
excellence, demanding from us the cordial expres-
sion of our very liveliest admiration. Although
we have'but one solitary number of it before us—
es an example it is all sufficient.. It is varied in
16. contents. It is scholarly in style. It is
thoroughly independent. Appearing as it does in
the midst of a great transition period in the
politics of this country—when the landmarks of
party are broken down—and everything and every-
body seems to have gone vaguely adrift in an inun-
dation of liberalism—here shallow as shallow can
be, there deeper than can well be sounded by the
plummet of Reform Bentley's Quarterly
enunciates political views that it would be difficult
to define with any precision or exactitude. They
are views, indeed, hesitating almost midway be-
tween moderate Whiggism and what is called, for
want of any better title, Liberal Conservatism.
The opinions held in this free, lax, open-handed
way by the new review are chiefly discernible
throughout the opening paper—being an essay on
" English Politics and Parties." Here we find in-
dications of a talent comparable in some measure
to that evidenced of late by the very able but very
acid abilities • of [the writers who have suddenly
created a name and a fame for the Saturday
Review. In Bentley's Quarterly, as in the
Saturday Review, the contributors appear disposed
to tilt at each and all without hesitation, almost
without discrimination. In the political paper or
leading article inaugurating No. 1, for example,
we find every political party, every distinguished
man in the House of Commons, whose name deserves
to be mentioned, 'ridiculed or depreciated, with one
solitary and most eccentric exception. One M.P.
alone is mentioned with anything like respect—
his opinions alone are quoted with any honour or
seriousness. And this lusus nature—tell it, we
say, from the very farce of thing, tell it in Gath,
publish it in the streets of Askelon, is the hon.
member for East Surrey, Mr. Henry Drummond.
Thrice in that one article are the opinions of Mr.
Henry Drummond mentioned, or rather distinctly
quoted, with every indication of respectful coinci-
dence. As for the rest P—Well, Mr. Bright, for
example (designated one of the ablest of our dema-
gogues), is said to have " spared no effort, and
shrunk from no falsehood," et cetera! An allusion
to Lord Palmerston is only suggestive to the re-
viewer of "a broad grin." Lord John is commended
chiefly for his ability as a clever trickster among
party leaders. Mr. Disraeli is reprobated as a
chief without a shadow of principle. Sir James
Graham is sneered at as a person, politically speak-
ing., of very dubious character. Mistrust is declared
by the writer to be the universal feeling in regard
to the leaders and the chief men of Parlia-
ment and of this universal distrust the
new Review is an expression. The result
being in tone—something very like political
cynicism. The effect upon the palate—like that of
most tonic bitters—being appetising buf unplea-
sant. We reserve our estimate of the judgment of
Bentley's Quarterly until it has had opportunity to
be more outspoken. As yet we feel ourselves to be
in many respects decidedly and earnestly antago-
nistic. Thoroughly and completely independent
ourselves as politicians—separated from all parties,
or sections of party whatsoever—we must, per-
force, we do, of course, bear with the absolute
independence of our New Quarterly contemporary.
But we shall, in consideration and pursuance of
this selfsame principle of entire independence, take
leave to differ from it decidedly—upon some mat-
ters we perceive that we shall have reason to do so
toto ado. But at present we care not to bandy
arguments with the gallant new coiner—upon the
first moment, as it were, of our introduction to each
other. We would rather accord to him a hearty
and spontaneous welcome—coupling with it a
cordial hope that the colour it has chosen may
prove to be auspicious ! That Bentley's Quarterly
Review may be well read in its brilliant interior,
no less than well red in its brilliant exterior. For
the comfort of instant reference to the contents of
,the future numbers, we would suggest that hence-
forth the contents of each should be given upon the
now blank back of the crimson covering. Number I.
includes within its 341 pages octavo as many
as ten elaborate and diversified contributions.
As a specimen of the "manner" of the first, the
political paper already particularised, we take the
following. The reviewer is talking of the disrup-
tion, in 1846, by Sir Robert Peel, of the ranks of
Conservatism. He says:—
" The head and the tail of the then Conservative party
were irreparably severed. On the one side the brilliant
debaters and experienced statesmen who formed the Pt el
administration were loft a distrusted and isolated knot in
the House of Commons. Deprived of the ballast which a
large following furnishes, floating about with every wive
0 \ d
tificklel
ioubFc
ioihr
saayi
sdei3dozn
laest,
of opinion, they have hung as free rovers on the beam of
fiz,eeoulanrc;ds
to,
hat
eo
yob ;hoar m la
all
divbaeibet7hne
party, too
to be attac..... ,
• a • ?
the comets of the

mingled fear and admiration, but puzzling the most exr
rienced calculators who have attempted to predict their move-
ments. •
"On the other hand, the severed tail has not been less
aimless or less erratic in its course. Abandoning or aban-
doned by its natural leaders, it was forced to sally forth
into the highways and hedges to pick up new ones. It went
into the market and bought such articles of the kind as
were for sale—mostly damaged goods of unprepossessing
appearance, which other buyers had rejected, and whose
subsequent wear has hardly made good their original cost.
It pounced upon unfortunate country gentlemen livini
serenely in the complacent discharge of bucolic duties, ane
designated them for positions for which neither their Pre-
vious experience nor their progress in the English language
had adapted them. The collection thus made was hetero-
geneous and unpromising enough; When first this scratch
crew were set to work, their appearance was so . raw that
people concluded it must be a practical joke of their noble
leader, who was known to have the capacity of taking his
diversion out of most sublunary affairs. But in the
nature of things, defects of this kind mend of themselves
by lapse of time. If a considerable party will only wait,
it is certain to gather leaders for itself, whether by develop-
ing young talent, or enticing the old to its standard ; and
as ministries go, the present Government, taking thew
man for man with the last, would, with scarcely an excel)
Ulm, be very far from making a discreditable figure in the
world, if only somebody woul give them an outfit of prilr
ciples."
The second paper is a most discriminative add
scholarl treatise upon " Mr. Gladstone's Homeric
Studies,' in which the eminent Greek scholar and
the still more eminent English statesman, receives
his due meed of cordial praise and severe reprehen-
sion. The next contribution—a loose and disjointed
survey of the " Novels of Sir Edward Bulwer
Lytton"—appears to us as superficial as it is in the
main depreciatory. From this paper we content
ourselves with extracting one passage, in which
the reviewer comments generally upon the career
of one whom he calls (and with reason).—
THE MOST POPULAR OF OUR LIVING NOVELISTS.
" No writer of this class has laboured more earnestly ie
his vocation than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton; none has
more fully recognised it as a sphere of personal duty de-
manding s.ll his energy; no one has felt se constantly the
necessity of labour and severe study to bring to fruition the
conceptions of a lively fancy and a large and varied intelli-
gence ; nono has abandoned himself with more self-devotion
to the painful and irksome research which some of his
subjects involved. Intellectually he must be regarded
as one of our most conscientious writers : he hes
grudged no trouble he has spared no pains, to bring
his work up to his own ideal. And this not from
necessity—the honest spur to many an indolent genius
—but from love and reverence' for his art, and pro-
bably from a more than commonly poignant yearning
to win for himself a name—something that may last--
a .renown worthy to be called fame. We say ' his own
ideal' as a qualification ; for there is one important study
which we cannot but feel that he has neglected—ono that
his never fairly engaged his attention; but whatever he
has aimed at Sir E. B. Lytton has applied every effort to
accomplish. For more than thirty years of a life, which
without this application to the desk might yet be called a
busy one, in which he has lived before men's eyes in societh
parliament, and office, he has been one of our leading, most
prolific, most' varied, and, if we estimate popularity by num-
bers dreaders, most popular of our living novelists. This
deserves to be called a career. The,critics must allow so
much ; those critics with whom Sir Edward has had so
many a bitter conflict; who have given and received so
many hard blows in their attempt to set the world right in
its estimate of his power and successes."
Enough will have been said for our readers in
regard to the next article in the number, when we
have observed that the writer of it comes to the
conclusion, after descanting at large upon The
Commercial Crisis of 1857, and the Currency"--
that the Bank Charter Act of 1844 ought to be
Maintained ! From the next paper, a disquisition
upon " The Prospects of Art in England," "we
excerpt the following brief but most truthful sen-
tence, conveying a thought, or rather pointing a
fact as full of encouragement as it is conciliatory. -
The art critic here writes :--
"We have often wondered that it is not more clearly
perceived that the early election of Mr. Millais to be an
Associate of the Royal Academy is itself a proof that no
such unfair prejudice exists among the older school of
painters as would exclude conspicuous artistic merit from
its due reward."
After a politico-religious treatise upon " Indian
Conversion," we have a charming essay upon
" Horace Walpole," the most delightful of all Eng-
lish letter-writers. From this contribution we
would gladly make copious extracts, but that our
notice has already extended beyond convenient
limits—now when our space is more than usually
restricted by the demand upon it consequent upon
the sitting of Parliament. Briefly enumerating
the names of the three last contributions to No. I.
of Bentley's Quarterly—" Civilisation in Russia,"
and "Historical Study at Oxford," and "Austrian
Italy"—we would close our remarks in the spirit
with which they were commenced—with heartiest
good greeting to Bentley's Quarterly, and a cordial
wish a revederla !

THE OCEAN MAIL SERVICE.

SOUTHAMPTON, March 12.—The heavy mails for
our Australian and New Zealand colonies were
despatched hence to-day by the Pera steamship,
Captain T. Jamieson, this being the first departure
under the contract recently entered into with the
Peninsular and Oriental Company. She also takes
out the fortnightly mails for Bombay. There are in.
all 471 boxes and bags, of which 378 are for Aus-
tralia, the whole being under the charge of
Messrs. Casson and Fisher, of the General Post-
office, by whom the homeward mails will be
sorted on board during the voyage from Alexan-
dria to this port, ready for immediate delivery
on the steamer's arrival here. For this
purpose a post-office is fitted up with every
convenience on the Pera's • deck, and we
understand that this
.plan of sorting mails is' in
future to be adopted in all the company's vessels
employed on the Mediterranean line, comprising
the India, China, and Australian mails.' The Pera
has 84 first and nine second class passengers, among
whom are Commander D. Spain, R.N., Lieut. D.
Denny, for Malta; Commander L. Reynolds, for
Suez ; Captain and Mrs. Pvm, Capt. F. Phillips,
Capt.
Milne,Batt, Lieut. G. S. Jackson, for Bombay;
Capt. for Kangaroo Island, &c. Ott freight
she has a large cargo, and 1,443 boxes of specie and
valuables—viz, X 395,095 in barsilver and five franc
pieces, and jewellery worth £705, for Bombay;
jewellery, value £BO5, for Melbourne; and £2OO
for Sydney ; total, £396,805. A new screw steamer
of 1,800 tons and 450 horse power, named the Jeddo,
arrived here on Friday afternoon, in charge of Capt.
Black, from Liverpool, where she was built for the
Peninsular and Oriental Company by Mr. John
Laird. Before leaving Liverpool the Jeddo Made
a preliminary trial trip round the Bell buoy, when
.she attained a speed of over 13 knots per hour with
151 b. steam pressu: e, and the engines (which are
by Mr. J. Napier, of Glasgow) making 60 revolu-
tions per minute. The:Royal Mail Company's steam
ship Thames, Capt. West, having undergone a tho-
rough overhaul and refit, left here on Thursday for
intercolonial service on the West India station,
taking a mail for Mad3ira, where she 'will call on
the way out. The Magdalena, Capt. Baynton, with
the next mails from the West Indies, California, Cezr-
tral America, and the Pa ific, is due here on the 16th
inst.; the Teviot, Capt. Abbott, with the Australian
mails, about the 16 h inst. ; but the arrival of the
Oneida at Suez is not yet telegraphed, so that the
Teviot will be several days later ; the Fulton, Cap-
tain Wotton, is due on the 17th, with the French
and English mails of the sth from New York; the
Ceylon, Captain It. W. Evans, on the 20th, with
the East India and China mails ; and the Tagus,
Captain Hall, on the 21st, with the mails from
Lisbon, Oporto. and Vigo. The Atrato, Captain.
Woolley, with the West India and Peel& mails,
and the Jeddo, Captain Black, with the mails for
Vigo, Oporto, and Lisbon, are appointed to leave
this on Thursday, the 17th inst. ; the Hammonia,
Captain Schwensen, for New York, on the 18th ;
the Indus, Captain J. Weeks, with the India and
China mails, on the 20th; the New York, Captain
Van Santen, for New York, on the 22d ; and the
Behar, Captain J. S. Field, with the Bombay mails,
on the 27th. The Peninsular and Oriental Com-
pany have given notice of a considerable reduction
in their rates of freight to Australia by the over-.
land route in favour of packages of newspapers and
periodicals; the freight on packages of this nature will,
be at the rate of £l5 per ton of 40 cubic feet for
newspapers, and £25 ditto for periodicals. The
Pasha of Egypt's steam yacht Faid Gihaad, which
has been lying at this port during the winter, went
out of dock yesterday afternoon, and proceeds to
Alexandria under the command of Captain A. Kel-
lock, of the Peninsular and Oriental Company's
service.

ELECTION INTELLIGENCE.

SOUTH ESSEX.
All doubt as to the retirement of Sir W. Bowyer
Smijth as a candidate in the Conservative interest
for this constituency is now at an end; and Mr. J.
W. Perry Watlington has been selected by the
party as their candidate in conjunction with Mr.
Braznston. A strong effort will be made hero by
the Conservatives to retrieve the defeat they sus-
tained by the return of Mr. Baker
IVingfield in March, 1857;
what success will crown their efforts
remains to be seen.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY.
Mr. L. T. Wigram will retiro front the represen-
tation of the University of Cambridge, and Mr.
Selwyn, Q.C., the eminent Chancery barrister, will
be a candidate for the vacancy. Mr. Selwyn is a
brother of Professor Selwyn and also of the Bishop
of New Zealand.

THE ROYAL ACADEMY.—It is said that the mem-
bers of the Royal Academy contemplate making a large
addition to the number of the associates, so as to include
almost every artist of note, and then to confine their exhi-
bition exclusively to the works of their own body. We give
this rumour as it has reached us; but it must be evident
that an alteration so important would lead to other changes
in the constitution of the academy,—.Bulletin.