The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-29 00:00:00

LONDON, PIaDAY, MAI' 29, 1868.

brought about by Mr. BAXTER'S famous resolution.
Mr. DISRAELI said that they would take seven of
the doomed burghs, and spare those of the largest
population above them. This is a wise arrange-
ment, on the whole, and lessens the disappointment
of interfering with the English Bill. Peebles and
Selkirk were joined together, not, however, without
some protest being made by Mr. MONCREIFF, who
used the extraordinary argument that, if they began
this fashion, they might not easily stop short. This
is sure, however, to be said upon the adoption of
every new scheme, and we are not surprised
that the Committee refused to sanction it. On the
whole, therefore, we think that the House has done
its best i❑ this matter of the Scotch Reform Bill,
and the progress made yesterday will be more fully
appreciated when the Committee resumes its labours
after the Whitsuntide recess is over. It is very
probable that some points might have been more
wisely decided, and that some mistakes have been

made, but judging the work collectively it hardly
seems that it can be improved upon. Whatever of
shortcomings may exist must be laid to the charge
of those hon. members who, from various motives,
have persisted in interposing delays on the subject.
Mr. GLADSTONE, to do him justice, came to the
rescue yesterday, and said that they would run the
risk of reopening the English scheme of representa-
tion if they persisted in criticising everything too
closely. This was very wise counsel, and it was
fortunate that the House accepted it. It is indeed
high time that progress should be made, and it will,
after all, be in some sort a satisfaction to learn
that the Session has not been entirely wasted, and
that the House of Commons will endeavour to
realise the errors of their past, and retrace their
wandering steps.

The discussion on the Poor Relief Bill in the
House of Lords shows how difficult it is to legislate
on matters of minor detail. For instance, on prin-
ciple, it seems only right and just that every inmate
of a workhouse should have permission to go outside
to attend religious worship, but Lord REDESDALE
pointed out that this permission would require con-
sideration, as it was to be feared persons might
avail themselves of it to get off from the workhouse
altogether, and leave their children behind
them a burden on the parish. Many privileges
are necessarily withheld from those who
would be grateful for them for fear of their being
abused by the worthless idlers who wish for nothing
better than to live at the public expense. This
difficulty shows the great necessity of a classifica-
tion of the inmates of all large unions, a necessity
which is being very slowly recognized. The whole-
sale manner in which the residents in a workhouse,
especially in the country, are too often herded to-
gether is equally opposed to the health, comfort, and
morality of the inhabitants. The young are very
apt to become contaminated by the constant asso-
ciation of older and more hardened characters,
vagrants, or drunkards, or, perhaps, worse. This
is, especially, the case in the female departments,
as those who have interested themselves in the
young girls and women brought up in workhouses
too well know. Those best acquainted with them
say that there is a manifest change in their manner
and conduct within a few days of their removal
from the school to the adult ward, and in the same
way the companionship and conversation of the
disreputable and worthless classes are irksome and
painful to those of a better stamp whom natural
infirmity or inevitable misfortune have driven to
the workhouse. If a better classification could be
carried out, and those persons of good character and
orth.rly conduct, who had themselves been rate-
payers, or otherwise proved their industry and
willingness when able to support themselves, could
be kept apart from the numerous class, whose own
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The public will learn with satisfaction that the
Scotch Reform Bill has been virtually finished, and
only the supplementary clauses have to be consi-
dered. This is well, for the time is getting on, and
any further delays that would have deferred the
bill until after the Whitsuntide holidays would have
been much to be deprecated on every account. We
are not surprised that the committee should have
exhibited signs of impatience, and resolved at all
hazards to get on with the business before them.
It was all very fine for those prejudiced in
the matter to begin discussing abstract. prin-
ciples, but men of sense had to consider
whether or not the bill was to be finished
this Session, and to shape their course accordingly.
On the whole, the Government seem to have made
wise concessions, and the result has been that they
have been strong enough to withstand the opposi-
tion made to them. Some of this was not inconsi-
derable, and Mr. GLADSTONE and Mr. BRIGHT again
exerted their eloquence in vain. The representa-
tion of minorities is most obnoxious to the hon.
member for Birmingham, and he loses no opportu-
nity of testifying his dislike to it. The committee
were, however, proof against all his objurgations,
and it is fortunate they were, for the proposition
may as well be tried, and if it prove efficacious it
can easily be extended at a future period to other
places. Mr. BRIGHT never measures his sentences
or weighs his words when he has a point to serve,
and hence it is no wonder that we find this repre-
sentation of minorities characterised as an " odious
innovation," awl very grievous to all the constituen-
cies of England. He made a long statement, to the
effect that it must not be agreed to, and wound up
by describing it as an emanation from the House
of Lords. Perhaps this initiating reminder may
account for the circumstance that he became so
vehement in his language, for we know that the
mere " mention of the other place" is enough to
raise his wrath in the greatest degree. Mr. LID-
DELL was venturesome enough to accuse Mr. BRIGHT
of preferring American principles to everything
else, and he drew down upon himself thereby such
a torrent of reproach that the Chairman had to in-
terfere, and remind the hon. gentleman that he was
getting unpariiamentary in his tone. Mr. LIDDELL
adroitly added that at any rate Mr. BRIGHT admired
American manners. Mr. GLADSTONE, in a more
moderate style, put his veto upon the principle, but
seemed very undecided about its merits one way or
the other. It is not to be expected that the mind
of the right hon. gentleman can always jump at
conclusions as it did* with respect to the Irish
Church Establishment. The Committee declined,
however, to wait until he was ready to affirm
or deny the principle of representation by
minorities, and Mr. DISRAELI showed very clearly
that they had to decide between the minority prin-
ciple sanctioned by the House last year and a new
scheme. The result of the division gave a majority
of fifty-nine against the amendment of Mr.
GRAHAM. Mr. MILL created some amusement
by declaring that if all places had their rightful

The political excitement in the United States,
which may be expected to reach its height in the
months of June and July, is to affect, it would
seem, the interests of others as well as American
citizens and voters. The great Fenian leader, Pre-
sident O'NEILL, intends to seize that favourable
opportunity to revenge the wrongs of Ireland upon
Canada. A circular, forwarded by that worthy to
the Fenian centres, shows that the rhodoraoatade
of the head centres is not exhausted, nor their
desire for mischief and plunder diminished by the
flight of time, the failure of their enterprises, or the
general condemnation of mankind. O'NEILL's
feelings have been deeply hurt, and with reason.
Malicious and self-constituted agents have
been busying themselves in promulgating the
statement that the Fenian leaders are " too
virtuous " to revenge the death of the mar-
tyrs of Manchester. This very needless fear
Mr. O'NEILL effectually dispoies of in his circular.
His brothers are told to "believe it not." He is
ready to shed rivers of blood—a pleasant intima-
tion—for the Canadians, and he is firmly convinced
that rivers of blood will have to flow before Ireland
can take her place among the nations of the earth.
His virtue only extends so far as to refuse to sanc-
tion " the dagger of the assassin ;" but assassina-
tion on a wholesale scale he has no objection to,
even although to ordinary minds the connection
between Canada and Ireland is not very clear.
Revenge sure and certain is at hand for the mur-
ders of the Manchester martyrs and the cruet
treatment of the Irish patriots pinin3 in British
dungons. how about the Clerkenwell martyrs
pining in hopeless infirmity ? All is to be done in
" fair and honourable fight," we are told, so that if
O'NEILL's programme is carried out we shall be
introduced to a new phase of Fenian warfare.
This wise and valiant leader thinks it necessary to
caution his followers against political tricksters who
want to join their organisation for their own selfish
purposes, and who have done much mischief in the
past. All Fenians must obey the Fenian Constitu-
tion, to be defined, we presume, by O'NEILL him-
self. All who form independent circles are not
Fenians. What a prospect for the Emerald Isle
when her liberation is effected and the rivers of
blood have flowed in her cause that there should be
divisions in the camp of her leaders. 'Who shall
decide when head centres disagree ? We hope
that some external authority will be found who will
dut a stop to all this mischievous nonsense before it
causes any more loss of life and limb.

We are requested to contradict a statement to
the effect that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has
consented to dine with the corporation of the Trinity
House on Trinity Monday, Juno 8. No invitation has
yet been issued to his Royal Highness,the banquet having
been deferred to a day subsequent to Trinity Monday,
when it is hoped that his Royal Highness the Duke of
Edinburgh, the Master, will have arrived, and be enabled
to preside.

number of members Glasgow should have six.

An attempt was made to combine the counties of
Sutherlandshire and Ross, which provoked a spi-
rited speech from Lord R. LEVESON-GOWER, and
Mr. DISRAELI and Mr. GLADSTONE concurred in
opposing the amendment. Upon a division the amend-
ment was rejected, In order to Fettle the difficulty

The prices of Horniman's Teas are Ireatty reduced; their
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THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, MAY 29, 1868.

LITERATURE.

Bailey's Festuse

Festus : A Poem. By Philip James Bailey. Seventh
Edition. One Vol., pp. 602. Bell and Daldy.
Universal Hymn. By the Author of " Festus."
One Vol., pp. 51. Bell and Daldy.

Our wonder is—not that this is the seventh edition
of " Festus," but that it is not the seventeenth.
Since the work was first published in 1839, when
its author was in the twenty-third year of his age,
it has been growing, and expanding, and spreading
forth its leaves and rising perpetually to greater
altitudes, like a noble tree in the fields of lite-
rature. TJpon its greater adornment, upon its
ampler range, upon its securer perpetuation, the
poet, of whose brain and heart it is the emanation,
has from the first lavished all the resources of his
genius. Like many a great original writer before
him, Philip James Bailey has in his time been the
target for those fleering sarcasms by which the
shallower intellects of the commonplace vindicate
their own lack altogether of anything like orig,i.
nality. There is that famous whimsicality, for
example, flung by him at the Devil, in the very
abandon of youthful genius—
" Yon kok as if you lived on buttered thunder."
Why, for years the mere mention of the poet's name
brought forth the remembrance of that one phrase,
and wakened fresh peals of seemingly inextinguish-
able laughter. In the appreciation of that one
carefully-selected passage no attention whatever
was paid to an equally fantastic simile occurring
earlier in the poem—

" God! God ! God !"

"As though an earthquake smacked its mumbling lips
O'er some thick-peopled city."
Yet, while the " groundhogs," in another sense than
that in whieti Hamlet uses the word in his Address to
the Players, were making merry over a single selected
sentence, over one solitary phrase—which at the best
or at the worst was simply flung forth by the
young poet, as what it is and what it alone
affects to be, the wildest andwilfullest of whimsicali-
ties—they appeared to have no thought whatever of
the fact that the greatest creative geniuses of the past
had indulged in precisely the same extravagances
of metaphor or of diction. Instances by the half
dozen might be adduced in proof of this from
"Hamlet" and from "Faust," two of the most mar-
vellous productions of the human intellect—to say
nothing of the other effusions of Shakspere and
of Goethe. " Aha old Truepenny," or again
that allusion to " the fellow in the sellaragee
(phrases addressed or applied to the ghost
of his royal father by the appalled and heart-
stricken Prince of Denmark), are cases, as we take
it, absolutely in point. It is the privilege of genius
alone—not of talent simply but of genius, that is,
of an intellect inspired by the true crfilatus, the
poetic cestrunt, divine and undeniable—to indulge
in eccentricities like these, whimsicalities setting
at defiance all the laws of art, all the established
rules and regulations, so to speak, of the rhetorical
praprieties. Folly, it is true, may ape these eccen-
tricities, but genius alone can override them, can
by its all-mastering splendour not only insure their
toleration as mere freaks and oddities (atom-blurs
like the faculre on the solar disc), but reduce them
to almost inappreciable insignificance. Through
the admiration awakened by right of a prerogative
of that supreme order, the rare and casual phan-
tasies in which the author of " Festus" here and
there indulged, his violations of good taste have
been more than merely condoned. They have come
to be accepted and recognised as integral parts of
one elaborate and wonderful whale. They are the
streaks in the onyx, the bee-bites on the nectarine,
the moles—

"Cinque-spotted like the crimson drops
I' the bottom of a cowslip "
on the neck or bosom of beauty. Regarding it as a
work of art, as a product of unquestionable genius,
and that moreover a genius of an intensely and
essentially original character, we accept it in its abso-
lute entirety, in its full and comprehensive integrity.
We take it, in other words, exactly as it is —precisely
as it conies to us from the artist-hand by which
it has been fabricated. For, as a work of art, it is
no mere cold and impassive form of marble carved
into linear beauty for the world's admiration. If it
might be likened to anything sculpturesque, it
would be alone to that statue of Pymalion's in to
which the artist himself breathed the very breath
of life. Remembering the youth of the poet of
" Festus," when the book first made its appear-
ance, and remembering at the same time the
splendour and audacity of the imaginative flight
upon which he then adventured, who can wonder
that occasionally the beat of his strong pinion
flagged and faltered, who can marvel that in
spite of casual flaws and blemishes (all of them
when put together intrinsically of utter insigniti-
cance), whO can marvel, we say, that the work,
upon its first coming forth, was welcomed by the
more discerning with mingled admiration and asto-
nishment ! That the first Earl of Ellesmere, himself
a fastidious and accomplished judge of poetic excel-
lence, exclaimed with enthusiasm, " I can scarcely
conceive any degree of poetic excellence which this
author, starting with so much richness of imagina-
tion and force of expression, may not be expected to
attain." That Bulwer, speaking at once out of his
large heart and from amidst his own lofty aspira-
tions and imaginings, pronounced the book " a
most remarkable and magnificent production."
That a poet, not of the schools, but of the
people, like Ebenezer Elliot, the Corn-Law
Rhymer, exclaimed almost defiantly in regard to
it—" It contains poetry enough to set up fifty
poets !" Who can wonder, again, among those who
know anything at all of "Festus," that a highly edu-
cated man of letters like Dr. Westland Marston,
while commending its imagery as " sometimes bold
and towering as the mountains, at others soft,
subtle, and delicate as the mists that veil their sum-
mits," hesitated not to assert emphatically that
" there are few books in which what is so profound
in its essence is rendered so familiar in its exposi-
tion." Even at the moment of its first appearance
the work was, so to speak, rounded to a whole. It
was no mere fragment or instalment—it was the
young poet's day-dream in its completeness. Since
then—upon the original foundations of this poem
which he built up from the first with a reverent
hand like a very Temple of adoration to God, he
has been raising, time by time, now here, now there,
a loftier superstructure, elaborating, now this por-
tion of it, now that—devoting the main energies of
his life to the perfecting, so far as might be pos-
sible, of this as the opus nzagnunz of his heart and of
his intellect. Until at last it has come to assume to
itself some of the proportions and characteristics of
one of those "poems in stone," our grand old Gothic
Cathedrals. And of the 4rtiricer of this cathedral-
poem of " Festus," it may, indeed, be said without
any extravagance that he has lavished all the resources
of his genius, with an unstinting hand, alike upon all
portions of its most intricate and comprehensive
fabric ! From the crypts under the pavement, to
the trefoils of the parapet—up even to the topmost
pinnacle of the loftiest turret, clanged about by the
whirling wings of the daw ! Standing without—clos-
ing the book after a perusal of it—organ tones float to
ns from it out of our remembrance. Standing within
—opening anew these pages—we
are there in
the midst of all the glory showered down in gor-
geous dyes from the stained glass windows, we are
there among all those pictured and sculptured forms
of beauty—we are there with the sanctuary be-
fore us, and the altar, and the tabernacle—we
breathe the fragrance of the adorning flowers, we
smell the perfume of the incense from the swing-
ing thuribles, we hear the choral chant of the
Choristers, the reedy notes and chords, the
variable stops and pedals of the great organ
with a sense upon us, all the while, of the pendulum
throbbing every second in the clock tower, of the
chimes pealing quarter by quarter in the belfry,
of the grand bourdon tolling hour after hour from
its own central turret, of the stony imps and devils
leering and mowing each from its coign of van-
tage, a gurgoyle. We know of no apter symbol,
through which to indicate the scope, and aim,
and significance of " Festus"
as a poem, than that
of one of those grand old Cathedrals. The word
expressed by it all is —God. The very first scene
(which is heaven) has for its interlocutors God and
the Cherubim and Seraphim, The first line satiny=

lated by the latter, as also the refrain throughout,
is—

Hear Festus himself descanting upon the glory and
unutterable bliss of the Creator, as symbolised in
that true Music of the Spheres, when—
" Heaven's harps
And orbs join in : the whole being harmony—
Distinct yet blended—blending all in one
Long and delicious tremble like a chord."
The poet adding—
" But to Thee, God, all being is a harp,
Whereon Thou makest mightiest melody."
Or listen to him again when he recounts, through
the burning lips of Lucifer the process of crea-

tion :
" God worktth slowly ; and a thousand years
He takes to lift His hand off. Layer on layer
He made earth, fashioned it, and hardened it
Into the great, bright, useful thing it is ;
Its seas, life-crowded, and soul-hallowed lands
He girded with the girdle of the suu
That set its bosom glowing like love's own
Breathless embrace, close-clinging as for life ;
Veined it with gull and dusted it with gems,
Lined it with fire, and round its heart-tire bowed
unbr,mkable ; until at last
Earth took her shining station as a star,
In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds."
How, in effect, is Universal Beauty apostrophized
by the poet of Festus, speaking through the voice of
Helen, one of his heroines ? Why, as thus—

" Thou apple of God's eye !"
And, again, remembering that Heaven is the home
of God, how sublimely he says at one time (again
through the lips of Lucifer)--
"The Universe is but the Gate of Heaven."
And again—

"Oh ! everything
To me sooms good, and lovely, and immortal;
The whole is beautiful ; and I can see
No wrong in man, nor nature, nought not meant ;
As from His hands it comes who fashions all,
All Holy as His word. The world is but
A revelation. He breathes Himself upon us
Before our birth, as o'er the formless void
He moved at first, and we are all inspired
With His Spirit. All things are God or of God,
For the whole world is in the mind of God,
What a thought is in ours. Why boast we then
Of aught ? All that is good belongs to God ;
And good and God are all things or shall be."
Another while in the same spirit, he says or rather
sings—

" Oue solitary or foreseeing thought
Passed like a planet's transit o'er the sun
Across the brow of God."
Somewhere, if we remember rightly, he speaks even
of the azure heavens above us, as—
" The blue eye of God."
It is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and
the end : it is the absolute whole of his medita-
tions—the adoration of God. And, being so, how
he lifts his reader's heart up, with a true sursum
corda, by this ennobling incentive—
" Let each man know himself an act of God,
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God ;"
bidding him, thereupon, act and live accordingly.
The thought, here, out of which that incentive
springs being identical with the one he elsewhere so
exquisitely expresses thus—
"The world is a great poem, and the worlds
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts."
So heartening is his philosophy, that from the known
he argues the unknown, asserting boldly—
" Faith is a higher faculty than reason."
According to the same admirable reasoning set
forth in Blanco White's superb sonnet, the sonnet
ending—
"lf light can thus deceive, wherefore not life—"
Bailey observes in his very prona—
" We know in day-time, there are stars about us,
Just as at night, and name them what and where
By sight of science ; so by faith we know,
Although we may not see them till our night,
That spirits are about us, and believe,
That to a spirit's eye, all Heaven may be
As full of angels as a beam of light
Of motes."
No metaphor is too daring for him in the enun-
ciation of his thronging thoughts. " Destruction
and salvation," he says,
" are the hands
Upon the face of time. When both unite,
The day of death dawns."
As for annihilation, he recoils from the mere con-
jecture of it, crying aloud—
" Hell is more bearable than nothingness."
Occasionally, when he seems to soar the highest, he
drops into a colloquialism that has a bathos in its
very extravagance, as where he says—
" Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Bush like a comet, tearing up the sky,
That we should juin with God and give the world
The slip."
At other moments his delicacy of illustration
dwindles into mere prettiness, as where he speaks of
heaven towards evening—
,. Just when the stars falter forth, ono by ono,
Like the first words of love from a maiden's lips."
For the most part, however, the tenderness of his
lovelier similes in no way derogates from the pre-
vailing dignity of his verse ; in illustration of which,
as we turn the leaves, we light upon the subjoined—
" Tears, feeling's bright embodied form, are not
More pure than dewdrops, Nature's tears which she
Sheds in her own breast for the fair which die.
The sun insists on gladness; but at night
When ho is gone, poor Nature loves to weep."
The merest hint of a metaphor sometimes evidences
under his hands an extraordinary and overflowing
abundance of imaginative power. When Festus,
for instance, is asked by Clara, " Can'st see the
world," he replies—
" Just—a huge shadowy shape ;
It looks a disembodied orb—the ghost
Of some great sphere which God bath stricken dead;
Or like a worl I which God bath thought—not made."
How daintily in his lighter moments he can em-
bellish a thought with music of verse, and grace of
illustration, let Helen answer when Festus casts
aside for coolness the wreath she has twined about
his temples-
4, I thought 'twat' a thorn which was tearing thy brow,
And if it were only a rose-thorn was tearing,
Why, whether of gold or of roses, as now,
A crown if it hurts us is hardly worth wearing."
Frequently the whole force of his most powerful
utterances will be found to be in their exceeding
simplicity. Instance this—
,' Peace hath more might than war. High brows are calm.
Great thoughts are still as stars and truths, like suns,
Stir not; though many systems tend round them.
Mind's step is still as Death ; and all great things
Which cannot be controlled, whose end is good."
Or again, in austerer shape, the following :
" And there arose
Out of the earth a giant thing, all earth ;
His eye was earthy, and his arm was earthy :
He had no heart. He but said, lam Decay,
And, as he spake, he crumbled into earth,
Aud there was nothing of him."
So all-embracing are his sympathies, he even goes
so far as to assert that—
"— evil is
Good in another way we are not skilled in."
It is here, in " Festus," that is set forth that most
exquisite of all symbols of the Holy Trinity, the
combination of the three primitive colours into
which the beam of white light is resolvable : the
poet here showing that—
"— as the three primal rays make one
Sole beam of Light, so the throe Persons make
Ono God."
Reverting for a moment to what we have already
asserted as to the theme, the purport, the inspiration
of the whole poem being God, the poet's words are
worthy of transcription where he exclaims in an
impassioned apostrophe— •
"Thou knowest, God, that to the full worship
All things are worship full ; and Thy groat name
In all its awful brevity hath nought
Unholy breeding in it, but cloth bless
Rather the tongue that utters it ; for me
I ask no higher office than to ling
My spirit at Thy feet, and cry Thy name,
God! through eternity."
Everywhere, above, below, around him, in the
minutest atom no less than in the immeasurable
universe he beholds the attestation of the divinity.
lie sees the recognition of God in the very twink-
ling of the stars in the heavens, when he points to—
" Yen countless orbs, aye fixing each on Him
Its flaming eye, which winks and blenches oft
Beneath His glance."
With one other extract only shall we here indulge
ourselves. And it is one that, for the force and
passion of it, may be not inaptly quoted as one
of the most startling integral portions of au extra-
ordinary whole. It is from the scene in Hell, where
the Fiends sing in chorus :
" rill the bowl!! it burns but blackly,
Fill it up with living fix!: