LITERATURE. saries of the north; the insurrection of the Cos- sive heads, within one hour. He is supposed to bave sacks, and the revolts of the Russian people-these struck off a hundred heads with his own hands; and, when appealed to for mercy by Lefort, the Tzar's friend, he reare some of the prominent events of the early ex-plied, "I will be the sovereign-the people shall obey me periences of the empire, which are here detailed with a conciseness, and yet with a completeness, which rivets the attention of the reader upon their minutest details. or perish!" It is frightful to relate the number of victims who were sacrificed to the Tzar's fury, during five months that Russia was destined to witness the axe, the gibbet, and the wheel in constant activity. More than ten thousand people It is not, however, until the accession of Peter the are supposed to have perished during the massacre Great that the true history of Russia commences; The whole of Moscow was a vast butchery of human and the major portion of the present volume is victims; two thousand of the bodies were suspended around devoted to the biography of that great man, who the walls, and the gibbets were covered with them. As the executions took place in the winter, the bodies, which soon laid the lasting foundations of his country's great-became frozen, were kept until the spring, when they were The whole empire was terrified. ness in personally achieving her civilisation. The thrown into the ditches. merit of Mr. Fowler's delineation of this extraor dinary character consists mainly, as it ought to consist, in its extreme candour and impartiality. Every act of any importance in the life of this true hero, who was a despot as well from the necessities of his condition as from natural temperament, is here set forth without flattery on the one hand or palliation on the other. The good he did and the evil he inflicted-the noble self-denial, the magnanimous self-devotion-the remorseless revenges, and the brutal and beastly excesses of this barbaric Deucalion, are all set down without extenuation or undue praise; and the result is a graphic, stirring, and life-like picture, not so much of a sovereign, a regenerator and a conqueror, as of a man-great from inherent greatness in spite of the counteracting influences of a vicious education and the hourly temptations of unlimited authority. The author in his preface deprecates the censure of criticism in reference to his powers as a writer, stating that he makes no attempt at composition, and therefore we refrain from any remarks on that subject. Of several passages we had marked for extract, we can find room but for the following, which may serve to show the Tzar in what appears to us the incomprehensible varieties of his character. On one occasion during his absence abroad, the people, excited by the priests, had risen in insurrection. Having been subdued by the military, a number of the insurgents were taken and confined in prison. At this juncture, Peter, who had been apprised of the outbreak, suddenly appeared at Moscow, surprising all the world by his presence. ... he showed His entrance was the moment of vengeance, and here he showed himself the imitator of Ivan the Terrible, in his ferocious vengeance on the rebels, when he became his own executioner and stained his hands with the blood of his subjects. On the day after his arrival himself at the palace windows, when they believed him to have been at Vienna or at London. Proceedings were immediately commenced against the rebels . . . . All sus pected persons concerned in the revolt were ordered before the assembled Boyars, senators, and military officers, in his presence, and many of them were immediately sentenced to death. Orders were given to arrest all the disaffected, whether men, women, nobles, or serfs-when the executions began; and so sanguinary were they as almost to equal the butcheries of the bloody Ivan. Peter, not satisfied with ordinary cruelty, spared no pains to prolong the dying agonies of his victims. He would feast his eyes with the exhibition; and, becoming his own executioner, he prided himself on his dexterity (it is said) that, with the wine-cup in one hand and the axe in the other, he drank twenty successive draughts, and smote off twenty succes At the latter period of his life, when he had been long afflicted with strangury, aggravated by his intemperate excesses, he went to Finland, to examine the forges there, the manufactory of arms and other establishments. While at the port of Lactta, When the weather was extremely cold, and the sea rough We might adduce numerous other instances of the anomalous contrarieties in the character of Peter, but it is not necessary; the reader desirous of considering it in all its aspects cannot do better than consult the work before us. The volume in Russia, and its reform by Peter the Great, including the history and final abolition of the patriarchate. The history of the constitution, the doctrines, superstitions and ceremonies of this Church, together with its monastic institutions, is replete with interest, and will be read with profit and advantage by the students of ecclesiastical pretensions and abuses. The second volume, which will include the reigns of the two Catherines, will be in the hands of the public before our magazine goes to press. its perusal. closes with a succinct account of the Greek Church We anticipate much pleasure from From the German of Voss. By JAMES Louisa. COCHRANE, Translator of " Herman and Dorothea." Edinburgh: Johnstone and Hunter. Oxford: Francis M Pherson. London: Robert Theobald. Glasgow: David Bryce. 1852. WE once ourselves contemplated the task of rendering into English verse the beautiful "Idyls" of Voss. They form the most exquisite and minutely daguerreotyped portraits of rural life in Germany that are to be met with in the language; and there 66 cabbage, Which the divine was accustomed to fill in the blustering winter, When an acquaintance dropped in of an evening, with toddy or bishop. is a vein of such tender, affectionate, and quietly | Porcelain vessel, in shape like the head of a red-coloured humorous simplicity running through them as renders their perusal, at certain moments, when, as Tony Lumpkin says, one is in a concatenation accordingly," the most delightful employment imaginable. Mr. Cochrane, however, has performed the task to our hands; but though he has succeeded admirably, as far as the stubborn genius of our language will permit, yet we cannot but regret that he had not chosen some other metre than the hexame ter for the material of his English garb. There is no more reason why a German poem should not be translated in a naturalised English metre than a Greek or a Latin one. As well might Dryden or Cowper have felt bound to write in hexameters, because their originals were in that measure, as the translator of Voss or Goethe. It appears to us that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as hexameter verse in our language, and that there cannot be such a thing in a language so outrageously accented as ours is. When an English man pronounces the word "indefatigable," all that a foreigner hears is the monosyllable "fat." It is the same with a thousand other words in daily use, not one of which the most cunning contriver of verses could twist into an hexameter, though he laboured a month at it; and it is unwise, to say the least of it, for a poet to write in a metre which excludes him from a good part of the vocabulary. Then, again, the jingle of everlasting dactyls, four-fifths of which are such only by position, is wearisome and distressing to the ear. It is like a whole day's canter upon the bare back of a fastgoing hunter; one longs for the variation of a trot or a gallop, and, above all, for the accommodation of a saddle. We are aware of no such uneasiness in the fiery coursing of the Greek or the Latin, or even of the German, if we know it well; and the reason is that, in the case of the ancients, quantity governs everything with a rigid law, and in the case of the German, that language being less violently accented than ours, the change of accent for quantity is tolerable, and therefore allowable. Mr. Cochrane probably thinks very differently on this subject, and it is natural that he should, seeing that he has, perhaps, attained the art of doing better than any other man what yet no man will ever succeed in accomplishing perfectly. We give the following extract as a specimen of the genius both of author and translator. How gracefully and merrily might it not be rendered into the octosyllabic rhyme! When at the soft-swelling moss of the beech, wide-spreading and shady, All had arrived, then hastened mamma and the gentle Louisa cover, Which to the basket belonged, spoons, knives and forks in abundance; (English the cutlery) also the sugar-box made of cut crystal, Violet-coloured and fastened with silver, a gift from the countess. Likewise fine delf dishes; and strawberries flavoured like Piled upon egg-shaped salvers, and milk like cream, in a Crawfish, also, like lobsters in size, ornamented with Two good capons besides, well roasted, and wrapped in a parsley; towel; Likewise, for Walter and Charles, some square-shaped, lozenge-like biscuits, duction. Piled in a saucer, Susanna the cook's unrivalled pro- cover, Fixed for a handle, a cow in recumbent position was moulded; peppery radish For the beloved papa; and cherries of various species; currants. a carpet, Gracefully bending, the blooming Louisa invited the circle. There's a pic-nic for you! That's the way they do it in Fatherland! If the reader have a mind to see what follows, and if he have not swallowed enough of German consonants to read it in the Louisa" will lure him on to the conclusion, in original, let him get Mr. Cochrane's translationspite of the rough riding of the hexameters. There is a charming sonnet at the end, which comes to our lips like A draught of vintage that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep delvèd earth; and is mighty refreshing after the dactylous jolting of two hundred pages, and indicates the possession of original powers in the writer. The Supremacy of St. Peter, and his Successors the THIS is a very earnest and eloquent apology for gical, and is written throughout in an agreeable, readable style, which renders it doubly welcome as a wayside companion. The summer tourist to the north of our island cannot do better than consult this volume for information connected with the locality of which it treats. It is adorned with many valuable engravings, and enriched with a collection of ballads of Scottish history. Considering the number of illustrations it contains, and the style of its getting-up, the work is published at a price extremely moderate. often broached before, or of having encountered a | and legendary, connected with the interesting loca- i single passage in the shape of an argument which lities which the author visits and describes with a has not been fifty times at least refuted by Pro-graphic minuteness and accuracy not to be surtestant pens. We have the Eu e IIεrpoç contro- passed. The volume further comprises the natural versy over again at full length, which, prove what history of the district, as well botanical as zooloit may, is not worth a button in support of the Papacy as it now exists. Unless Mr. M'Corry can show us that St. Peter set up an Inquisition, presided at an auto da fe, or patronised the rack and the faggot in some shape or other, or filled his pocket by the sale of indulgences, or at least left behind him some authority for these amiable peculiarities of Holy Mother Church, it is to little purpose his proving the succession of an unbroken line of Pontiffs from St. Peter to Pio Nono. There is many a pure and sparkling spring, whose waters the thirsty traveller would delight to quaff at the fountain-head, but with which he would not defile his lips after it has scoured the sewers of a crowded city. Such a stream, whether broken or unbroken is of little consequence, is the pontifical succession; and it will take more learning than Mr. M'Corry is master of—and he is a very clever fellow-to induce those whose eyes are not blinded by prejudice to believe in the purity of its turbid and muddy waters. Guesses at the Beautiful. Poems by RICHARD REALF. WE gather from the prefatory notice prefixed to these compositions by the gentleman who has undertaken the part of Maecenas to the youthful writer, that they are the productions of a young man of eighteen, the son of humble parents, to the influShould the Tenant of Land Possess the Property in the ence of whose excellent example, supplemented Improvements made by Him? By D. CAULFIELD by such instruction as could be obtained at a vilHERON, Esq. Dublin: Hodges and Smith. 1852. lage-school, he is indebted for the sole means of To be sure he should. This is a question that education he has enjoyed. Considering the cir ought to have been finally settled centuries ago. has had, the verses published in the present volume cumstances of the lad, and the few advantages he It is a disgrace to the law of the land that such a question yet remains to be asked; and it shows that are highly creditable to him. They are guesses at the property of the humbler classes, which is their the true and the good as well as the beautiful, and labour, has never received that protection from the very near guesses at truth, goodness, and beauty legislature which the law-makers, who are the land-some of them are. But, let not Richard Realf holders, and who have reaped the benefit of with- deceive himself, or be deceived by the kindness holding it, were bound to afford. In the present or mistaken patronage of mistaken friends-they pamphlet the subject is considered in all its legal are nothing more than guesses, and afford little or bearings, and the author comes to the conclusion, no indication of the possession by the writer of that whereas the present law, based on the feudal that creative faculty which characterises the true system, gives the property in the tenant's improve- poet. We speak thus plainly, not because we ments to the owner of the land, in the absence of despise the precept recommended to our notice agreement to the contrary, he would have, in the by the editor, " Maxima debetur puero reverentia," but because we venerate and would observe it. absence of such agreement, the property in the improvements to be vested in the tenant, and that no He is really wanting in the reverence due to such tenant should be evicted without being reim- youth who would nurse unfounded hopes and exbursed the full value of his improvements at the pectations; not he who would urge him to rely time of his eviction. Every honest man himself. Mr. De La Pryme compares solely upon will Richard Realfin dazzling precocity of genius" heartily concur in this opinion. to Chatterton. If his protégé will procure a copy of Chatterton's Works, and measure himself by the same standard, he will, if we mistake not, find out what thanks are due to his patron for the comparison. We trust he will take our counsel in THIS pleasant picture of life on land and water is good part when we advise him, as we earnestly do, nothing more nor less than one entire and perfect to turn his attention at once and immediately to history of South Queensferry and its neighbour- some trade or occupation as the means of living, hood; a history ecclesiastical, topographical, archa- and to cultivate poetry only as the amusement of ological, traditional, and picturesque. As a his leisure hours. The warmth of patronage will Guide-book it is the most complete and compre-decline sooner or later, and the sooner for him, hensive vade-mecum which has ever come under perhaps, the better. We assure him that, to the our notice; and it is full to overflowing of what is the most valuable element in all such works, namely, of associations literary, historical, romantic, Summer Life on Land and Water. By WALLACE best of our belief, there are ten thousand lads in London, and twice that number of lasses, under q eighteen, who can write verses equally good as શ those contained in his volume. The talent of metrical and rhyming composition is as common almost as that of crochet and cross-stitch, and would be more so but that in this practical age it is found to be utterly unproductive. We consign to the waste-basket monthly whole quires of verse, the majority of which has a better claim to notice than anything in the volume before us. But let not this discourage Mr. Realf; rather let it urge him to the pursuit of independence where it is to be won-in the arena of industry or commerce, and to cultivate his intellect in such hours as he can win from the daily duties of life. We add two or three stanzas from the best poem in the book, as a specimen of this youth's performances. Strike while the iron is hot! While the metal is all in a glow, Lift up the sledge of thine own true might Strike while the iron is hot! And make the clear sparks fly; For myself, I fear that the reign of universal peace is not arrived. I wish to trust in Providence, but also to keep my powder dry." First and foremost, just over against us, and separated by a gigantic ditch of one hour and a half's width, we have a powerful military despotism, with a magnificent army, such as the world never saw sur passed. This army has just gained the upper-hand in a contest against its own countrymen, and is now in the natural state of elation after victory, and eagerly calls for another foe to descend into the arena. Where can the fue come from? Not from the north, because it is evident Russia is delighted with the masterly manner in which Prince Louis has played her game; instead of a foe, be will find only a friend there, with whose connivance he may think, indeed, that the affair of the 2nd of December was performed; for "Old Nick" is at the bottom of many things, aud works with long wires. Austria is equally delighted, too, in her miserable heart, half sordid half cowardly, and smiles after the Russian model. Prussia "lets I dare not wait upon I would," and plays double, as usual; but, at any rate, is friendly with one hand although she might give a backhanded blow with the other, especially when she thinks of her sainted queen, so outraged by Napoleon the Great, and those confounded Rhenish provinces. Spain is too poor and lean to be worth the trouble; all hard knocks there, and neither honour nor glory. As for Turks and They are fragments of truth, and perchance may light heathens, they are not worth counting; not good enough Upon some one standing by. Strike while the iron is hot! With the fire of human zeal, Ye may temper it then to its proper heat- Strike while the iron, &c. The volume might have been better fitted for the public eye had the editor purged it of some grammatical blunders, and of words used with a wrong appreciation of their meaning. Brittany and the Bible; with Remarks on the French People and their Affairs. By J. HOPE. London: Longman and Co., 1852. for the French sword. So, in truth, save England, there is no one to fight with. Ah! but is not England worth them all together? What use to travel far, when there, under our very noses, lies the choicest morsel of them all-perfidious Albion, an old foe of 500 years, who has occupied Paris twice within fifty years, beaten us (let the truth be told) often, but when we were down; and who finally im prisoned and killed the great Napoleon. Then, in a word, think of Waterloo! The Natural History of Creation. By P. LINDLEY KEMP, M.D. London: Longman and Co. 1852. As a compact and popular treatise upon a series of very important subjects interesting to all classes, we can recommend this little volume to the notice of the reader. The first chapter is devoted to a THIS little book forms Part 23 of the Traveller's brief retrospect of the earth's history from the Library. It is a clever, gossiping narrative of facts dawn of creation up to the period of its adaptaand affairs in Brittany; not too exclusively confined bility for human habitation; and from this cursory to the subject of Bible circulation, but embracing a review an important principle is deduced, which variety of topics with which it is pleasant to be is not to be lost sight of by the hygeist. The remade acquainted. We have humorous portraits of maining chapters contain a plain and intelligible various foreign subjects, from the pigs of the Bre-resume of all that is known of the internal me tons to the nasal organ of the French President, concerning whom (the President, not the pigs) the writer expresses himself pretty clearly in a note of warning to his countrymen. The state of religion in France, and the evident opposition to Protestantism under a regime that professes to regard all religions with equal favour, occupy a good portion of the book. The difficulties in the way of the colporteurs engaged in the distribution of the Bible are very agreeably detailed, as well as the ingenious manner in which they are sometimes surmounted. The miserable homes, wretched habits, and depraved morals of the Breton population-all in a great degree attributable, according to our author, to the fact that the Bible is systematically and actively forbidden and destroyed, and to the influence of the priests and Jesuits are graphically and amusingly pourtrayed. The work concludes with some stirring -remarks upon the French people and their affairs, from which we extract the following passage, which will be grateful to the alarmists: chanism and motive agencies of the human frame, together with the causes of disease and death, and of the operation of such medical agents as we possess in curing the one and postponing the other. The chapter on the causes of disease is one of pe culiar value, controverting many popular fallacies, and leading the way to a more accurate and more universal knowledge of the general laws which must be observed in order to the permanent preservation of health. It should be read by all parents, guardians and governors, because, were its admonitions widely received, the ravages of pain and sickness would be confined within narrower limits. This small treatise forms No. 24 of the Traveller's Library. Earlswood; or, Lights and Shadows of the Angli THE talented writer of this strange and interesting We need not recommend this volume to the notice of the public. It has only to be known to the circumstances of the times, and it is fortunately one calculated to make its own way. It will be welcome to thousands of Dissenters as well as Churchmen-to all, in short, who would separate Christianity from the mummeries of incense and donnas and stinking relics-from the curse of Popery and the charlatanry of shirtless Puseyism. The Free Church of Ancient Christendom, and its founded upon facts. It sets forth the history of the | the Tractarian school, and their destructive tenfamily of an excellent clergyman in a rural dis-dencies are shown in their actual working. Chartrict, whose happiness is for a time destroyed lotte Anley has brought to this task the powers of through the jesuitical and fatal influence of a Trac- a truly masculine mind; she writes with the vigour tarian tutor. The principal characters are-Mr. of a polemic of the old order, and with a clearness Everard, the clergyman, a most admirable por- and out-spoken simplicity which controversiontraiture of the Christian minister; Alice, his alists do not invariably display. daughter; her cousin, the Lady Gertrude; Ernest Willoughby, his ward; and a Mr. Grey, an Oxonian pervert, a tutor in the family of the Mow-be generally received. It is a work demanded by brays, with whom the Everards are in some sort connected, and the source of all the miseries and misfortunes which make up the story. Ernest, who has been long betrothed to Alice, goes to Oxford to prepare for taking orders. Here he falls in with Mr. Grey, who wins him over to the new semi-altars, of crucifixes and nosegays, of winking MaRoman faith, and pledges him to a life of celibacy, and the sacrifice of his happiness upon the altar of the Anglican Church. The mistaken youth is gulled into a state of fanatic enthusiasm, and, having renounced his mistress, and recovered from a fever, the result of his mental anguish, sets out for Rome under the guidance of his spiritual Mentor. Grey himself, the apostle of delusion, is more deceived than a deceiver. He is a THE history of the early Church of Christendom is man of a high order of intellect, who thinks pro- a matter involved in so much darkness and mystery foundly and reasons well, and acts from the sin- that the general reader for the most part finds himcerest convictions. Though cherishing a secret self in no condition to test any assertions which popassion for Gertrude, he never makes it known- lemical writers see fit to make with regard to the but labours to win her to the views and practices acts of the first Christian people. He has neither of the new school, in which he succeeds so far as the time nor the means to ransack the rubbish of to make use of her fortune in founding an Order the Fathers for the few grains of gold to be found of Sisters of Peace. By degrees, the influence of in them; and if he had both he would probably the foul morality inseparable from an association despair of deriving any satisfactory conclusions. which, professing to belong to one Church, vir- from a stock of materials which seems hitherto to tually attaches itself to and labours for another, have been made use of chiefly for the purpose of corrupts the once pure mind of Grey, who resorts bolstering up any theory which it was convenient to Jesuitical deceptions to secure the salvation of his to maintain. The present work supplies what has neophytes, and ends by kidnapping his confiding long been a desideratum in religious literature, pupil and bountiful patroness, and shutting her up and it will be doubly welcome to readers anxious in a nunnery. In the meantime, Ernest, who has to come at the truth without the trouble of wading wandered to the Holy Land, falls in with a Mr. through voluminous ecclesiastical histories, and exMonteith, a missionary, by whom he is brought tracting it from the prejudices of their writers. back to reasonable views on the subject of Chris- Commencing at the Advent, Mr. Cooper carries tianity and its obligations. He returns to Italy, down the history of the Church during the period where, at the instigation of a Captain Mowbray, a of her freedom, for the three first centuries, ending man of fine good sense and spirit, he proceeds in with the Council of Nice and the subjugation of search of Grey in order to procure the release of the Church to the will and caprice of a patronising Gertrude. During his absence, Gertrude is, how-despot. This word "subjugation" is a key to the ever, released by the instrumentality of a dumb whole book, which will be found written in the child, and restored to her friends. There is a fine pure spirit of nonconforming Protestantism; and scene in the convent, where Ernest encounters it richly deserves, what for anght we know it may Grey, now transformed to a miserable and moping monk under the name of Father Paul, whose replies to the appeals of his former friend happily embody the delicious state of repose to be found by the renegade in the bosom of the papal Church. Gertrude, Captain Mowbray and Ernest return once more to the parsonage in Devonshire, and, of course, a joyful matrimonial consummation winds up the story. But the merits of this very remarkable and clever production will be found elsewhere than in the story, though that is well constructed and well told. The narrative is made the vehicle of a most masterly exposition of the mischievous doctrines of very likely obtain, a place in the Index Expurgatorius of the Inquisition. This little volume should find a place in every Protestant library, domestic as well as public. The Drama of Life, and Aspiranda. By JOHN |
