The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-04-11 00:00:00

THE COALITIOX MINISTRY.

Had they been of one accord among themselves, nothing
of this kind would have happened. If Lord Aberdeen had
been sole and supreme master in his Cabinet, it is possible
that Russia might have succeeded in acquiring a protec-
torate over Turkey. The Sultan could hardly have
attempted to resist without powerful European aid ; and
France, had she found Britain lukewarm or indifferent,
could not be expected to come forward as the defender of
the balance of power without a single ally. No doubt,
had this occurred, it would have given Russia a most dan-
gerous preponderance in Europe, and probably necessitated
a future struggle ; but, in the meantime, there would have
been no war. Had the Cabinet been under the guidance
of Palmerston or Russell, the first advances of the Em-
peror, if made at all, would have been met by a distinct
and peremptory refusal, and by a threat which would have
effectually deterred him from moving a step further. But,
unfortunately—most unfortunately for us, and for our
children, and for the general peace of Europe,—this is not
a united Cabinet. It is a congregation of men holding
totally opposite opinions —bred up in adverse schools—
adhering to antagonistical traditions influenced by
jealousy among themselves—and unable, upon any one
important point, whether it relates to foreign or domestic
policy, to arrive at a common conclusion. Take the case
now before us. But for Palmerston and Russell, and their
other adherents in the Cabinet, Lord Aberdeen might
have established the principle of non-interference between
Russia and Turkey, and there would have been no war.
But for Lord Aberdeen and his adherents, Palmerston and
Russell might have checked the designs and met the over-
tures of the Czar, by declaring at once that they would
not suffer him to send a single soldier across the Pruth,
and that if he persisted in his design, they would invite
the co-operation of France, and defend Turkey to the
uttermost, and in that case also there would have been no
war. But the Cabinet was split into two, if not three,
parties ; and the adoption of a middle course, of feeble
dissuasion, unaccompanied by any hint of ulterior conse-
quences, but rather couched in terms of extreme and
unworthy subserviency, deceived the Czar, encouraged him
to proceed,— and now war is all but declared, and our fleet
is riding in the Baltic. * * * Let those who shudder
at the cost at least know to whom the cost is due. We
are now paying, and are likely to pay for a long time to
come, for the privilege of having a Coalition Ministry.

The magazine is not, however, wholly devoted
to serious questions. " The Quiet Heart " is con-
tinued in the same attractive style which induced
many readers to commence its perusal. There is
also an interesting article on " The Puppets of All
Nations," and an ably-written essay on fine-art
fallacies, entitled " Chronological curiosities : what
shall we collect ?" We may also allude to a review
of a recently-published work on wanderings among
the various Arab Tribes of the African Sahara.

Colburn's New Monthly Magazine. London :
Chapman and Hall.

The April number of the New Monthly com-
pletes the hundredth volume of the Magazine ;
and, by the fulfilment of its tenth decade, recals to
memory a crowd of reminiscences connected with
those mighty dead, whose brightness of intellect has
shed a lustre over its pages. Prominently among
the great departed the finely attempered genius of
Campbell claims a passing tribute ; the regulated,
yet enduring brilliancy—the glowing imagery and
refined taste which pervade the Minstrelsy of
" Wyoming"—the spirited and chivalrous strains
of " Lochiel"—the nervous energy and heroic
daring of the " Mariners of England"— the thril-
ling pathos of the " Baltic ode," and the mysteri-
ous and awe-inspiring boldness of " The Last
Man," are too dazzling and too generally recog-
nised to require more remark from us than simply
to allude to their author's long and intimate con-
nexion with the periodical before us. Between
him and the last of its gifted contributors, whom
the sickle of death has reaped and garnered in the
general harvest, many names of renown might
easily be placed ; but we shall feel content with
mere allusion to the last, the late Sir Thomas Noon
Talfourd, who for many years was an extensive
writer in its pages. The present number of the
Magazine contains a brief, but interesting, resume of
his connexion withit,from the pen of Cyrus Redding,
a gifted co-labourer in the same literary field. The
memorial paper concludes with the annexed :

PANEGYRIC ON MB. JUSTICE TALPOURD, AND ORSERVA-

TIONS ON HIS DEATH.

This highly-endowed, excellent, kindly man is no more.
He pleased living, because all the world believed in his
sincerity : death put a seal to his high character. He has
departed, having kept up his reputation to the last. He
cannot change now, fall off, and forfeit our esteem. He
cannot cause a retractation of our opinions, lessen our regard
for his memory, or exhibit unkindly feeling, so opposite to
his former nature : action with him is no more. How
wonderful was his change from vigorous life and strength
to insensibility and decay ! It was an appalling moment
when, in his solemn professional robes, he was uck sud-
denly down before a crowded auditory, listening to his
address in the very sanctuary of justice, the attention at
once drawn from the speech to the speaker; in the twink-
ling of an eye, the lips unfolding the line of public duty
changed to the quiver of instantaneous dissolution ; the
flush of animation to the pallor of death ; the flexile
muscle to rigidity ; the fixed foot to helpless prostration. I
remember no parallel case in our law courts. Hope might
mitigate, skill procrastinate, and both lighten a coming
mortality ; but this was a scene of irreparable privation.
Never was the utter helplessness of our nature more trans-
parent—never has the pride of the living received a more
humiliating lesson in the midst of the most exalted duties.
To the above observations we shall offer no
addition ; they are sufficiently impressive to arrest
and gratify attention, and we shall not risk the
likelihood of weakening by attempting to amplify
them. The character of the New Monthly, as a
magazine of light literature, and of dramatic and
artistic criticism, has long been extensive as well
as high ; and we are glad to see it still deserves
the reputation it has acquired in these departments.
It opens with the commencing chapters of the fifth
part of an English tale, called ' The Flitch of
Bacon, or the Custom of Dunmow," by W. H.
Ainsworth, the editor ; it contains likewise a paper
on the " Prospects of Art in England," in which a
good deal of rational opinion is mixed up with
arguments of a doubtful character. The writer
takes it for granted that art must look for its true
patrons among the middle classes, and laments the
defective knowledge they display in connexion with
it ; he might have added, and the false taste they
also manifest regarding it : but we cannot concur
in the conclusion inferentially drawn, that the mid-
dle classes of ancient Greece and Rome, or of
mediaeval Italy, were more highly cultured than
those of our own day. The teachings of history
lead us inevitably to the conclusion that in those
halcyon days of art, as in the present, its patrons
were the educated and affluent few, not the busy
and comparatively necessitous many. That the
middle classes may not ultimately become the great
patrons of English art, we do not mean to question;
what we contend for is, that our middle classes are at
the least equal in intellectual culture to the middle
classes of those days, when art achieved its highest
triumphs. Among the light literature of the num-
ber is an admirable jeu d' esprit, ridiculing the
self-imposed Quaker Mission to the Czar ; it is
called " Mr. Jolly Green's Account of the Peace
Deputation to St. Petersburg," in which that gross
intrusion of humbug into the business of the world
is happily quizzed. Mr. Jolly Green is represented
as a gentleman actuated by shallowness, impudence,
and self-conceit, sufficient to entitle him to a vice-
presidency, at least, in the Peace Society ; he is
invited by Henry Beans, of Birmingham, to join
with him and Obadiah Starch, of Bullock Smithy,
to join the Peace Mission to the Czar, and forth
they sally. The narrative of their journey and
adventures is given with much satirical spirit, as
will be readily guessed from the statement of their

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