The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-10-04 00:00:00

LITERARY NOTICES.

Abbotiford edition of the Waverley Novels; No. 11.
Cadell, Edinburgh, and Houlaton and Stoneman,
London.
The eleventh number of this work is before us, and con-
tinues to display the same excellence as those which have
preceded it.

Our Mess. By Harry Lorrequer. Walmsley, Liverpool.
Jack Hinton, in this number, we find leaves Ireland, and
revisits home, finding matters there in great confusion. He
receives orders to proceed abroad, and is present at the
retreat from Burgos. The illustrations are very good : that
of, the " Last of Tipperary Joe," is capital; the figure is
well drawn, and the face full of expression. This is an
amusing number.

The Commissioner. Walmsley, Liverpool.

....... _
A laughable, but rather improbable, description of a lot of
county magistrates, receiving at the hands of the Viscount
Outrun a cold bath, is to be found in this number. We
obtain some account of " Laura Longmore," and the tale is
evidently drawing near to conclusion. There are some good
hits made at the anti-corn-law people and the manufacturers.
Jerry Tripe and Joey Pike get into limbo ; and other strange
affairs are detailed.

The Foreign Quarterly Review. October, 1842. Chapman
and Hall and Longmans.
The present number of this valuable publication contains,
as usual, abundance of lively writing, mingled, however,
with much of a more solid and important description. In
its notices of those gossipping Memoires, in which our mer-
curial neighbours appear especially to delight, the Foreign
Quarterly is occasionally very happy, and continues to give
us, within the compass of twenty or thirty pages, the sub-
stance which modern French authorship, or bookmaking,
which appears to be almost synonymous, spreads over half a
dozen volumes. Of this description of articles we have two
or three in the present number, which, if they are valuable
on no other account, are at least so as being likely to pre-
vent all but the most devoted lover of frivolous anecdote, and
ten times reported scandal, from dissipating his time in wad-
ing through the lengthy works themselves which are made
up of these materials. Our own taste may be singular in
this respect ; but we must confess the perusal of one in ten
of the collections of fritters and tinsel, which are eternally
poured forth as the literary ,food of the reading public of la
grande nation, would be a purgatorial achievement to which
we should be really sorry to be condemned ; and those who,
from inclination or necessity, are required to make the ac-
quaintance with the contemporary literature of our neigh-
bours, are infinitely obliged to the reviewer who thus under-
takes the labour of its condensation.
This is not, however, the description of matter which oc-
cupies the bulk of the publication before us. We find, on
the contrary, several articles which will well repay not only
perusal but study—which are, in fact, under the name of re-
views, Treatises, and valuable ones, upon the same subjects
as the works whose titles are placed at their heads. Amongst
these, the article entitled " The First Philosophers of
Greece," presenting an analysis of the theories and the de-
ductions of the sages who flourished in that land of thought,
from Thales of Miletus to Socrates, is eminently worthy of
notice, not only by the scholar and the student, but by the
Christian. To the latter, indeed, we know of no more in-
teresting pursuit than to trace, through the darkness of the
Past, the glimmerings of a perception of the immortal nature
of man ;of the existence of an eternal Being—a. GOD ;of
the acceptability, to that Being, of virtuous works on earth ;
of the principles which regulate the universe—as these things
were arrived at by the wise of old, unaided by revelation or
tradition, or by the appliances of modern science. We know
of nothing more strongly confirmatory of the truths which
revelationtt and the progress of philosophical and scientific
ainment have established, than the facts to be derived
from such an enquiry, that, even amid what we have been
too
much in the habit of esteeming a heathen and semi-bar-
barous age, the direction of the noblest intellects of the men
by whom was laid the foundations of those physical sciences
in which the sceptic and the infidel most pride themselves,
was towards the reception of those great truths—the immor-
tality of the sotil of Than, and the existence of a supreme
Creator and Ruler of the world.
The article on " The Life and Character of Anselm of
Canterbury" is also a valuable and instructive one, as are
several others in the number. Amongst the most interest-
ing, however, are the articles upon " Contemporary French
Criticism," the first in the number, and the concluding one,
upon the Newspaper Literature of America." The latter
contains much just remark and many striking facts, some of
which we shall take an early opportunity of bringing before
our readers.
As a whole, this publication is characterised by consider-
able ability, and ought to find a place in every library, and
upon the table of every scholar. We may add, that the de-
partment of " Ancient Literature," a new feature in the
Foreign Quarterly, is continued in the number be fore us,
the Idyls of Theocritus being the work under criticism.

THE VINTAGE IN FRANCE.—The weather in the south of
France as well as in Paris has been for
adp
this fort
tnhighht astot
n,
very bad, and all hope of saving the grapes, whic
already been got in, has almost disappeared, !hey are rot-
ting on the vines, Generally speaking, however, enough of
the vintage has been got in under favourable circumstances
to prevent a deficiency as to the wine harvest. It is oui y
in
Champagne that any great misfortune can arise to the grow-
ers ; but be assured that there will be no deficiency of Sham-
pagne wine (so called), for millions of bottles are manufactured
out of the common white wines, sweetened, and having the
champagne bouquet imparted to them : and purchasers for
the foreign markets can supply themselves with any quantity
at the wine stores at Bercy, near Paris, at a franc and a half
a bottle. Th;ee-fourths of the wine sold in London as Sham-
pagne wine comes from these stores ; and it is a curious fact,
that in most cases it is preferred to the real article, for it is
made more effervescent than that which comes from Cham-
pagne, and with most of the English the test of excellence is
the superior degree of force with which the cork flies from
the bottle.