The Sun.
London, England, 1859-07-07 00:00:00

well as all great international questions, shall be
previously examined by a European congress, using
every means in its power to prevent war. Was this
admirable resolution put in practice before the
Austrians sent their ultimatum and invaded Sar-
dinia ? Evidently not. England, however, sent
Lord Cowley to Vienna, but without result. Prussia,
a German power, kept aloof all the while. Russia
alone scrupulously fulfilled her engagements, and
proposed the meeting of a congress. All the powers
agreed to it ; but Austria alone frustrated these
efforts for the maintenance of peace, and began the
war. All at once Prussia, mobilising an army of
300,000 men, would present her ultimatum to
France ! But would not the latter be entitled to
reply that the conditions of peace may and ought
to be examined and propounded by all the great
powers conjointly, not by Prussia alone, and that
such an armed mediation, made by a single power,
is equivalent to a declaration of war ? An ulti-
matum resting on such grounds would be worse
than the Austrian summons requiring uncondi-
tional disarmament. The English Ministry will
most certainly not allow this new war to begin
without first exhausting all the resources of per-
suasion. But when, to maintain the Austrian pos-
sessions in Italy, a German army of half a million
of men shall be put in motion to attack France, can

the Palmerston and Russell Cabinet remain indif-
ferent spectators of a new conflagration ? We, for
our part, impatiently await the solution of this im-
portant question."

LITERATURE.

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History 0,
Father and Son. 3 vols. By George Meredith.
Chapman and Hall.
The title of this work is calculated to attract
attention. It has an air Of originality and quaint-
ness about it, which the book itself, whatever its
other faults and deficiencies, certainly carries out.
Richard Feverel is the only son of Sir Austin
Feveral, a country baronet of a very peculiar
character. He is a philosopher sublimely superior
to all human emotions or ebullitions of feeling,
although he possesses warm affections, and is re-
presented as a good and pious man. He has pub-
lished a book of aphorisms, chiefly remarkable for
their animadversions on womankind, and their edu-
cational theories for the proper development and
training of man's higher qualities. His wife hav-
ing left him while his son was a child, he had the
entire charge and superintendence of the young
heir's education in his own hands, and to console
his wounded feelings and disappointed life, he de-
voted himself entirely to it. He had resolved that
his son should be brought up on an unvarying and
philosophic system, according to his peculiar no-
tions of the Science of Human Nature. He checeked
his own impulses, he restrained his parental feel-
ings, and the System became his one great idea, be-
fore which not only he himself, but all around him
must bow. The system failed signally, as such
deified and immovable systems often do. His son,
who is a fine impetuous youth, more inclined to
follow his own impulses than to listen to his
father's philosophy, signalises his early days by
setting fire to a farmer's ricks in a fit of
boyish passion. Contriving by the help of his rela-
tives to get out of this difficulty, his next achieve-
ment, after the lapse of a few years, is to fall vio-
lently in love with the same farmer's neice,
Lucy Desborough, while his father is absent in
London searching for a model maiden to be edu-
cated as a suitable wife for his model son. Great
is the confusion and trouble that ensue. The
young lady is despatched to some distant relatives.
Richard, after vainly endeavouring to follow her,
falls ill, and is brought home by the calm philoso-
phic Sir Austin, who considers that now the
foolish feelings of youth have spent themselves,
and his son will become a rational being. After
spending a dreary winter, Richard goes to London
with an uncle, and there meets Lucy Desborough
returning from her visit. He persuades her to
consent to an immediate marriage, and employs a
friend to break the disastrous news to Sir Austin.
Sir Austin, grieved and disappointed, yet endea-
vours to preserve his philosophy. Meanwhile, the
young couple retire to the Isle of Wight, where
they remain for some time. A cousin of Richard's
goes down to explore, and persuades the young
wife that it will be better for Richard to meet his
father alone. She agrees and insists on her hus-
band's leaving her for town to his great vexation.
He- does not return to her, but plunges in the
vortex of London dissipation, and becomes mixed
up with some very questionable characters. He is
encouraged to continue his mad career by a plot
between some other persons in the story. At last
his wife is sought by an attached humble friend,
and brought to London. Sir Austin also comes
to the metropolis, but does not find his son so
grateful for the forgiveness he is ready to
extend as he expected. Richard requests
him to receive his wife at Raynham,
his country seat, but he declines to receive her
without her husband. Richard, through the inci-
dental revelations of a death-bed, becomes struck
with remorse and hurries to the Continent without
seeing his wife. After Lucy has been staying some
time with her friend, a judicious relative comes to
London and escorts Richard's wife and son down
to Raynham, taking the baronet by storm. He
receives them kindly and they remain there, but
the family troubles are not over. The penitent
truant lingers abroad till the same relative sets off
after him and persuades him to come home. All
might be well, but he finds a letter in London
which involves him in a duel, and after showing
the eyes and grieving the hearts of his wife and
father by coming and going like a shadow, he
betakes himself to France where he gets wounded
dangerously. The family circle rush after him,
and poor Lucy, forbidden to see her husband, and
quite worn out with grief and anxiety, sinks under
this last blow and dies of brain fever. Richard is
left lying on his bed of sickness, with dim and
wavering 'intellect trying to picture the form of
her he has lost. The moral of the story is un-
doubtedly good and true—that it is impossible to
conduct education on cold systematic principles,
and to carry out theoretical dogmas with mathe-
matical precision, and that it is always dan-
gerous to disregard the natural social tastes
and curb the quick feeling of youth too tightly.
Sir Austin's aphoristic system made a good many
martyrs, even though he was a man of sense and
experience, and sincerely loved his son. When we
come to consider the manner in which the idea is
worked out, we cannot give the same credit to the
author. Setting aside the improbabilities of the
plot, which are not too glaring, we object strongly
to the freedom and even occasional coarseness of
the style. Without being hypercritical, and with
t
due allowance to the author's wish to must
trycoonusidheisr
ideas by lifelike representations,
the lengthened scenes with Mr.s.wMeount as totally
uncalled for and highly. objectionable. But even
in domestic scenes and homely descriptions the
author frequently offends his reader by a freedom
of style which he mistakes for vigour. We have
before observed a tendency to this in Mr. Mere-
dith's writings, but the subjecthiheehhhase nhoassvacvhaoisleend
has given him greater scope, which
un-
e
fastidious re
himself of in a way that will displease many
readers. There are
onfumthbeemrs osfktc hed
with vigour. minor
characters in the work, many
Had the writer compressed his work
and omitted a good deal of philo-
sophyinto one volume,
and lengthened conversation, besides refin-
ing down his he
and toningstyle, would, we think,
have produced a far superior work. However, as
it is, it teaches its lesson and sketches its characters
in broad colours, and we must hope that we shall
have another work from the same hand more
worthy
of Mr. Meredith's undoubted ability.

The Life and Times of Daniel De Foe. By Wm.
Chadwick. J. Russell S •
_mith, Soho-square.
This is a striking and rem
arkablebook, and not less
so from the abrupt and peculiar style in which it is
written, than from the stirring
time. it treats of and
the eminent abilities of
Daniel De Foe, whom the subject of its memoirs.
Mr.. Chadwick” calls " one of
Britain's greatest ofg
_ 6eniuses, was born under the
reign of the Merry
Anne a short perilonarclh.,
.and survived Queen
thus lying through all that
stormy and contentious'
c period that intervened
between the death ofl hdarles theh Second and of
Anne. The part he
his bold defence ofP theayepopular in tes these
causestruggles,an well
known, but the incidents aevents of his life needed
a chronicler. Mr. Chadwick justly enough puts
on his title-page, " The Life and Times of Daniel
De Foe, with remarks digressive and discursive,"
for these remarks occupy a considerable portion of
the book. Writing of that epoch of sectarian
animosities and angry passions, he mixes eagerly
in the strife. and makes frequent comparisons or
applications of the state of affaire in our own day.
His comments are not free from bittern :ss, and his
style is somewhat eccentric ; nevertheless it is a
work that deserves attention, if only from its being
the record of the life of one who, in Mr. Chad-
wick's own words, was " a hosier, merchant,
statesman, poet, philosopher, freetrader, novelist—
in short, everything, from the desolate island of
Juan Fernandez to a felon's cell in Newgate.
Daniel lived neglected, and died in gaol—he died
in 1731, and yet left thitt which is not exhausted
in 18.59, his opinions recorded during
a long, tur-