The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-04-12 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

BOOKS FOR REVIEW, &c.—Books, New Prints, Music, &c.,
intended for review, may he left at Mr. C. Mitchell's, Red-
lion-court, Fleet-street, London, addressed " to the Editor
of the LIVERPOOL STANDARD," when they will be forwarded
and receive attention.

The Church of England Quarterly Review. London

W. E. Painter.

The writer of the opening article, in treating of
the Holy Scripture and the Hebrew language,
traces the history of language back to the period
when God first addressed Adam at the creation of
the world, and expresses the belief that the primi-
tive language was perfect, and that all deviations
from the first standard have been corruptions rather
than improvements—if we regard " word," in its
highest capacity, as having reference to spiritual
and eternal things, and not merely to the things of
earth and the passing events of social intercourse.
This, of course, is entirely opposed to what has
becomea favourite hypothesis with many speculators,
that all language, not excepting the primitive, have
begun in a rude form, and have been made regular
and copious by successive improvements. " The
Life and Letters of Niebuhr," the German his-
torian and theologian, furnish the theme of the
second paper. Niebuhr is called a discoverer and a
pioneer of an almost unknown region of history—
a region of vast extent. This is a high order of
praise. He stands before subsequent historians,
who have laboured with more success, just as
the chartless explorer, Columbus, stands before the
captain of the " Arabia " steam-ship, or Van
Dieman before a Forbes and a Mathews. " The
Saxon in Ireland," a work published last year, is
the text of an interesting article, the writer of
which points to the Saxons as the sole hope of
Ireland. A people sunk so low as the Irish, in
his opinion, can never themselves succeed in effect-
ing either a political or social regeneration. It will
be a happy day, he holds, for the Celtic inhabitants
both of Great Britain and Ireland when their own
vernacular language shall be everywhere superseded
by that which is justly entitled to be considered
the mother tongue of the United Kingdom. If the
Saxon element had predominated throughout Ire-
land, as it has in England and the lowlands of
Scotland, Ireland might have been both a brilliant
and a valuable gem in the British Crown. Dr.
Traill's edition of Josephus, the recent novels, a
biography of the great Florentine poet, some thoughts
on our foreign relations, a resume of the history of
English literature, the Egyptian pilgrimage of Mr.
Augustus St. John, and the usual complement of
literary notices complete the present number of
one of our most esteemed quarterlies. Its pages are
genial, yet evangelical; pervaded by a spirit of
unaffected piety, yet most lively and attractive;
and altogether it is fitted to do service in an age
whose greatest bane, perhaps, is a Godless litera-

The Dublin University Magazine. Dublin : James

~Z'Glashan.

The April number opens with some "fancies" in
prose and verse, suggested by the month of smiles
and tears, whose portals we have newly passed.
Denis Florence M`Carthy has a warm, Irish heart,
rrid a wealth of wit which moves the reader now
into the melting mood of sadness—anon into wild
merriment ; and surely he was never more at
home than while discoursing of April alai its asso-
ciations. The continuation of " Sir Jasper Carew,
Tint.," is followed by a learned paper exhibiting the
relationship which exists between Coriolanus and
the Constable Bourbon, "as remarkable instances
of haughtiness of temper and ungovernable pride,
leading to perilous and unjustifiable extremes."
James Kennedy, Esq., Her Britannic Majesty's
Judge in the Mixed Court of Justice at the
Havana, is mercilessly mauled for the book of
translated Spanish poetry which he issued last year
to the English public. The reviewer, unacquainted
with any term sufficiently expressive of the fearful
rhythmical strangulation to which this terrible
judge at the Havana has doomed a number of in.
offensive Bards, mildly heads his article, " Spanish
Poets Garroted !" New South Wales and Tas-
mania are the themes treated of by a discerning
writer, who dissects the works of Dr. Lang and Mrs.
Meredith—the former "verbose, serious, ponderous,
and bitter—the latter nervous, gay, lively, and good-
tempered." The critic denies the assertion of Dr.
Lang that Australia was discovered by the Spaniard
Don Pedro Fernando de Quiros, and assigns the
honour to a series of Dutch commanders, chief
among whom was Tasman, the attached lover of
Marie Van Dieman. From a sprightly series of
reminiscences of travelling we extract two amusing

passages :

IRISH TRAVELLING : PAST AND PRESENT.
The purgatorial passage of Lougbrea being cleared,
little further interruption occurred until you found your-
self fairly afloat upon the bosom of the Grand Canal, at
Ballinasloe. You were then not far from the close of a
winter's day, and seventy weary Irish miles remained
still to be traversed. But a Dido alone could make me
dwell upon that middle passage, or renew its unspeakable
dolours. " Which of the mermaids"—(as our classical
friend, Justin Mooney, once rendered an apposite pas-
sage in a well-known author)—" Which of the mermaids,
or the dolphins, could keep his timper wid the tears,
bearing tell of the like ?" Melting in summer, shivering
in winter; at all times overpowered by nausea, and suf-
focated with foul air; stunned by disquisitions of Galway
and Roscommon attorneys, about family matters, and
about everybody's property, of which everybody knows
more than everybody else, you arrived, accidents ex-
cepted, in Dublin, about six and twenty hours after
your departure from Galway. It is no wonder that the
Liverpool shipowners smiled in those days at an over-
land route through Ireland to North America. Some-
times at Christmastide the ice would interfere with your
progress, and, after grinding through it for many a
dismal hour, the captain would open the cabin-door at
dead of night—like the man who drew Priam's curtains,
much about the same time of day—and demand, " What's
to be done next ?" The question was commonly pro-
posed somewhere about the centre of the great Bog of
Allen, where the only answer a sensible passenger would
like to be in a condition to make, would be, " Go on, to
be sure," and that was impossible. The most prosperous
course lasted, as we have seen, six and twenty hours,
and the cost, with the strictest economy which propriety
allowed, could not be screwed down under a sovereign.
A second class passenger is now conveyed the same dis-
tance, in a comfortable carriage, covered and cushioned,
for sixteen shillings, within six hours. All honour be to
Stevenson, or whoever he was, that first started the bright
idea of making steam available for dry land travel.

STAGE COACHES.
When the day-coach for Mullingar was launched about
the year 1810, it was considered a prodigy. The country-
people used to leave their work at the sound of the horn,
and run across the fields to look at it as it swept past, at
the rate, which it required the evidence of sight to
realise, of five miles an hour. Limerick, which is
ninety-two miles from Dublin (about the same distance
that Birmingham is from London), was first reached by
a one-day coach in the year 1825. Before that date the
light post-coach plying between those termini, rested
from its labour at the end of the first day at Mountrath.
The remaining articles are " Parallels, by a Pil-
grim;" a lengthy poem entitled "The Taking of
Jerusalem ." the conclusion of a paper on Clan-
macnoise, Clare, and Arran ; and the last flying-
shot at the United States, by Fitzgunne, who ably
sums up

THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE NEW WORLD.
In the ecclesiastical establishments of America, we
may discern the same all-powerful democratic
spirit.
t. The
constitution may be said to ignore religion, for it is the
great maxim of the people that religion and government
are mutually independent. Undoubtedly, this is the
worst feature of democratic government. To separate
government and religion, is to separate man and wife.
Religion should refine government, and government
should support religion. It is folly to, suppose that either
can with safety be independent of the other. Even the
heathen nations of antiquity were aware of this, and they
accordingly. maintained a religion of the state. The
amount of Injury done by this erection of popular will
above more elevated standards, can scarcely be estimated.
The Church and the State alike feel the evil influence ;
while a selfish, worldly, and unstable spirit pervades the
laws, religion is turned into a trade by the establishment
of a voluntary system. The clergy are elected by, and
are made responsible to, the people. The natural result
of this is, that the clergy are deprived of their proper in-
dependence. In vain do the advocates of the system
point to apostolic times, and claim, as a precedent, the
example of the first preachers of the Gospel. The in-
spired disciple, speaking tongues which he
.had never
learnt, and astounding the heathen world by raising their
very dead to life, cannot properly be placed on a level
with the modern pastor. The former might accept alms
without detriment to himself or to the donor, while the
latter, whose mission is less clearly divine, incurs the
risk—when placed in similar indigent circumstances—of
sacrificing his integrity, and of being obliged to follow
where he cannot lead. Another consequence of subject-
ing the clergy to the law of popular election is, that the
relations which ought to subsist between the clergy and
their flocks are utterly destroyed. In the United States