The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-11 00:00:00

THE QUARTERLIES.

THE QUARTERLY RE VIEW. IVo.CLXXII.
Among the whole of the eleven contributions to
the current number of the Quarterly, the most inte-
resting is the one already noticed in our leading
columns, relating to the extraordinary vicissitudes of
Louis Philippe—vicissitudes which were brought to
such a striking consummation by the days of February
in the last French Revolution. Taking the lucubra-
tions of Guizot, of Lamartine, of Blanc, of Caussi-
diere, of Chenu, and of Delahocide, of our distinguished
nautical writer Captain Chamier as the objects of his
criticism, the Quarterly Reviewer retraverses the
whole of that long and tedious road passed over by the
royal fugitives of 1848, a road which, considering the
number of writers that have travelled along it, must
be by this time tolerably well macadamised by their
footsteps. Of course the whole narrative is replete
with that scorn for democracy and that homage for
legitimacy (as the rule of the most illegitimate rulers
is absurdly called), which scatters ridicule alike over
the bourgeois dynasty of the House of Orleans and
over the revolutionary members of the Provisional
Government. The derision felt by the Reviewer to-
wards the former is more covert, of course, than that
expressed openly and emphatically in reference to the
latter : in fact, the terms in which the ex-King and
the princes are mentioned are not unfrequently terms
of sympathy and admiration. N evertheless, through
all this apparent condolence, it is scarcely possible for
the discriminating not to recognise a secret predilec-
tion fur the head of the regal house of the Bourbons
eclipsed by the shadow of three sombre and terrific
revolutions. If the weakness of Copperfield's ac-
quaintance (Hamlet's aunt, or some other such dis-

tinguished female) was Blood—Blood also, but more
especially Blood Royal, is a decided weakness
on the part of the Quarterly Reviewer. He is ready to
faint on the occasion when he tells us of the appoint-
ment of Albert ouvricr to one of the posts of the
Republican Government. He goes very nearly into
convulsions of disgust when dilating over the rise of
certain intellectual parvenus to authority. He evi-
dently sighs for the parfume de la cour and the bou-
quet de. Versailles to allay the sulphurous stench of
the Revolution. So true was that saying of William
Hazlitt, that the aristocrats hate " the look of the
People, the touch of the People, the smell of the
People 1" Another, and more coherent reference to
the age of continental outbreaks, is the critical notice
immediately preceding the one just mentioned, sug-
gested by several political brochures published in
1850, but especially by Mr. Baxter's "Impressions
of Central and Southern Europe." Utterly nauseated
as the public is with that everlasting and disgusting
topic of Dolly's Brae, a topic rendered infamous by
its association with Orange ruffianism in its state of
most rampant atrocity, the Quarterly must needs
allude yet once more to the debate in the Lords, for
the purpose of emptying the last dregs of its little
paltry vial of wrath on the doomed but still, happily,
illustrious head of the Right Honourable the " Lord
Lieutenant Clarendon." A most readable and de-
lightful paper of antiquarian small talk and topo-
graphical gossip has been penned in the Review by
one of the most appreciative of the readers of Mr.
Peter Cunningham's " Handbook for London," the
critical contribution in which that charming work is
considered being enlivened by clusters of agreeable
and attractive anecdotes. What shall we say of the
little intermediate criticism on a tiny volume pub-
lished last year by some one who, saving his initials
(H. E. 0.), wisely chose to remain anonymous
upon the title-page of the "Diary of a Dutiful
Son ?" How the volume ever came to be noticed by
a Quarterly Reviewer we cannot for the life of us sur-
mise, unless it was as a random freak of eccentricity.
All lovers of the comparatively modern science of
political economy will find a very relishable " nut to
crack" in the article entitled "Facts and Figures"—
a nut which may be rendered somewhat more
palatable (excuse the pun, gentle reader !) if taken
cum grano salis. In the course of an odd sort of
rambling, crabbed, and yet at times well tempered,
criticism on the works of the Urquharts—that is to
say, the writings of the famous translator of Rabelais,
and of the well-known Member for Stafford—one of
the Quarterly Reviewers delecteth his readers with a
grotesque sketch after the antique representing Fame
running away from one of her aspirants with her
thumb to her nose, and her fingers spread out deri-
sively, saying, Exac tat staXe—" Catch me if
you can, my fine fellow !" The woodcut (p. 430) is
worth turning to, and we warrant will afford some
amusement. " Grote's History of Greece—that
masterly effusion of research, scholarship, eloquence, and
erudition—obtains another eulogistic notice from the
historic critic of the Quarterly. " Queens College.—
London," also passes under the second and revised
consrd-ration of the same periodical. At a
periodia are still like
competingpresent, whv,enithAuesatoriha aonthderPrufos;
Prus-
sia
the chieftainship of the Germanic Confederation,
stl he
the " Memoirs of the House of Branden burgh,"
by the annalist of the Popes, the learned and indus-
trious Leopold Ranke, must necessarily demand a
very large share of attention ; and hence it appears