The Sun. — 1859-01-26 (London, England)

CCXXI.  Altogether a very able, but, it must be confessed, at once also a particularly heavy, number of our Whig quarterly contemporary. The principal political paper in the number is in itself so ambiguous as to be for the most part simply tantalising. It is entitled " History and Prospects of Parliamentary Reform"—yet in its character it is chiefly retrospective. It appears upon the eve of all the Parliamentary disclosures, and was penned before Mr. BRIGHT'S revelation f his scheme, with all its explanatory schedules. Lord John maintains an inscrutable silence. Lord Palmerston keeps his own council perfectly. The Cabinet of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli remains, of course, until the appointed time, wholly unrevealing. The reviewer in the _Edinburgh, therefore,, writes accordingly. His speculations are especially vague and misty. He avoids as much as possible the chance of committing himself. He argues in generalities. He bides his time in the darkness and the silence of  the recess, between the prorogation and the reassembling of Parliament. The happiest comment upon the whole situation is that in which the writer remarks:— " Lord Derby's followers already rank among their political trophies the proud distinction of having, emancipated the Catholics, repealed the corn laws, and admitted the Jews to Parliament by the hands of Tory Ministers. They will, perhaps, add to their triumphs that of having expanded and enlarged the popular representation of the country. But though the hands are the hands of .Esau, the voice is the voice of Jacob " Cordially do we coincide with the conclusion of the Edinburgh reviewer as to the imperative. necessity of doing the work of reform either thoroughly or not at all. Even "a further delay," we agree with the reviewer, " would be preferable to a tame ac-• quiescence in an imperfect and unsatisfactory measure." The paper on Reform is the closing contribution—the first article being a luminous and dispassionate criticism on Arthur Helps' history of the " Spanish Conquest in America." The second is a shrewd and sensible treatise upon "Life Assurance" —upon which apparently dull and unsuggestive theme the reviewer who has penned it has written both wisely and interestingly. The critic is evidently himself one who has sympathised to the full in the lament of the facetious poetaster whose rhymes he has quoted casually :  " By fire and life insurers next I'm intercepted, pestered, vexed Almost beyond endurance ; And tho' the schemes appear unsound, Their advocates are seldom found Deficient in assurance." After a chapter upon the /ong•vexed " Church-rate Question"—comes a rather scrambling and incoherent essay upon " The Roman Catacombs"—a magnificent subject treated here but very indifferently. Due homage is paid to the learned archaeologist and antiquary, the Padre Marchi, whom the reviewer, by necessity, regards as entitled to the honour of having revivedthe study of those interesting monuments. But by one flippant sneer the critic affects to ignore the whole of the laborious investigation' made in the track of Marchi by Mr. Spencer Northcote and the profound and gifted scholar to whose genius Europe is indebted for the exquisite tale of Fabiola. As to the perversely disingenuous argument in favour of the doomed " Hudson's Bay Company," we have already commented upon that paper in our leading columns at considerable length. The historian of our administration during the last half century, to whose pen the readers of the Whig Quarterly have been already indebted for a record (Edin. Rev., Oct. 1858, art. 1) of the course of the Grenville, Portland, and Percival Administrations, here pursues his narrative most ably from the date of the murder of Percival in 1812, to the close, in 1822, of Lord Liverpool's protracted administration. The reviewer promises on a future occasion to carry on his retrospect from 1822 to the resignation of the Duke of Wellington, and the advent to power of Lord Grey's Reform Administration. When completed, the series will be well deserving of re-issue by the Messrs. Longman, in the form of a separate publication. The Edinburgh closes—prior to the final paper on. Reform—with a charming bibliographic gossip on the Library of the British Museum, and a masterly article on " Life and Organisation."