The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-11 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Books, New Prints, Music, &c.
.eview, may be left at Mr. C. Mitchell's, Red-
London, addressed "to the Editor
n they will be forwarded

BOOKS FOR REVIEW,

[tended for

lion-court, Fleet-street
of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

and receive

attention

Blackwood's Magazine. Edinburgh : Blackwoods.
Little need be said in eulogy of a magazine which
enjoys so large a share of public favour, and which
confessedly stands at the head of our periodical
literature. Wherever the language is known,
Blackwood's Magazine is eagerly sought for, whe-
ther in the far stations of our Indian empire, or in
the backwoods of America, through the reprints of
New York publishers. It is a universal favourite,
and each succeeding number proves how well it has
earned the distinction. The January number opens
with an ably-written article on " Slavery and the
Slave Power in the United States of America," not
suggested, as may have been supposed, by the po-
pularity of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," but it is a re-
view on a work published in Boston, entitled
" Five Years' Progress of the Slave Power ; a
Chapter of American History." "My Novel ; or,
Varieties in English Life"—has at length reached
its final chapter, from which we give the following
short extract descriptive of

THE NEW LANDED PROPRIETOR

An excellent justice of the peace, though more severe
than your family proprietors generally are ;—a spirited
landlord, as to encouraging and making, at a proper per-
centage, all permanent improvements on the soil, but
formidable to meet if the rent be not paid to the day, or
the least breach of covenant be heedlessly incurred on a
farm that he could let for more money ;—employing a
great many hands in productive labour, but exacting
rigorously from all the utmost degree of work at the
smallest rate of wages which competition and the poor-
rate permit ;—the young and robust in his neighbourhood
never stinted in work, and the aged and infirm, as lumber
worn out, stowed away in the workhcnee ;—Richard
Avenel holds himself an example to the old race of land-
lords ; and, taken altogether, is no very bad specimen of
the rural civilisers whom the application of spirit and
capital raise up in the new.

A " Letter to Eusebius about Many Things" gives
us the opportunity of quoting the following warn-
ing against the

PPROACH TO DEMOCRACY.

It is very well to scoff at the barbarity of feudal times ;
but they had something good in them ; and those coun-
tries, among us, which yet retain something of the feeling,
have not the worst population. It is a great thing for our
amelioration in manners and morals, that we should have
in our sight persons above us ; and even if that " above
us" is a mere idea, we are the better for it. Is not the
general feeling, howsoever in modern times deteriorated,
produced by England's parks and mansions, and refined
men and women, the titled and the gentry, a blessing
bestowed upon the people at large. These things are not
of our making ; they are the growth of time, by the gift of
Providence. What does France now groan for ?—an aris-
tocracy. What is her insecurity ?—the want of a large
landed proprietary. Once gone, how hard to build up
again. The wild fanatisism of democracy in France
demolisbsd that fabric, and divided the lands. What
remains for the court of an empire—what field for the
noblest arts—where, by law, a man is compelled to divide
his property equally amongst all ? Who will build a
mansion, and ornament an estate, even if he could pur-
chase the land for a perpetuity? You travel widely in
France, and what a contrast to England, as yet possessing
noble residences and perpetuated families 1 The demo-
cratic spirit is at work to destroy them here; the laws of
the last fifty or sixty years have done much to destroy all
this, our visible greatness bringing with it other greatness.
Democracy says, pride of ancestry shall become extinct—
families shall sink—we will entirely abrogate primogeni-
ture—we have virtually done so, by enabling tenants in
possession and tenants in tail to alienate. The operation
is going on surely, and let monarchy itself look to it, if it
can stand safe, left as a mark on the naked hill, with all
the shelter of ancestral trees levelled to the earth. Is
there not now a disinclination to establish a family ? The
man of wealth, who would gladly do so, knows he cannot
secure it to his posterity for two generations. Hence
expenditure, which might be making a permanent, a
beautiful reality, will be thrown upon mere temporary
things ; it will not be the mansion and the park, but the
furniture—all those things which may be most easily
divided, or turned into ready money, be chalked, and
numbered, and packed off to the readiest auction-room.
The upholsterer will supersede the architect. It is a sub-
ject well worth the attention of our legislature ; some
check should be given to these facilities of ruin and of
Injustice to posteritiFs. or we are running too fast into a
democracy from which there is no return.
A new story is commenced under the title of
" Lady Lee's Widowhood," which bids fair to be
very entertaining. From a long and favourable
notice of the Memoirs of the late Thomas Moore,
edited by Lord John Russell, we extract the follow-
ing just remarks on the