chievous results of gold-hunting. It is rather his are doing battle for liberty of faith at the sword's opinion, that as the diggings have had the effect of point; and Margaret and her husband return in attracting a broad stream of self-supporting emi-peace to their native land. In the working out of gration, and have lured a better and more active this plot, some singular characters are introduced, class of labourers to the colony, the overplus, unfit whose exploits add incident and interest to the for such hard work, will supply the demand for drama. The whole story is exceedingly well told, pastoral services; declaring that up to the present and the manners and customs of the time are detime the forebodings of the prophets of evil have lineated with much force and fidelity. not been realised: neither, by his showing, can there be any permanent want of provisions for the diggers, for The Australian gold-fields are within the reach of settled communities, surrounded by live beef and mutton, and by land of the best quality, which only needs the hoe and the plough, roughly handled, to produce great crops of wheat, maize, and every green vegetable. The emigrant, or intending emigrant, contemplating a journey to Australia, cannot do better than to consult this book. By it he may test his suitability for the enterprise, and having resolved upon undertaking it, may learn the best mode of proceeding. He should make it the companion of his voyage, and by studying it well, fit himself for immediate action on arriving out. The work is full of interesting matter, and will afford no small share of information and amusement to the general reader. men. Liturgy and Church History. By Rev. C. H. WE have here a series of five tracts, on the Com- Papers for the Schoolmaster. Vol. I. 1851. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co. Glasgow: Hamilton. The Treasure-seeker's Daughter. A Tale of the Days of James the First. By HANNAH LAWRENCE. London: Albert Cockshaw, 41, Ludgate-hill. 1852. THIS little volume presents us with a capital and life-like picture of the social condition of old THESE papers should be in the hands of every London in the days of the addle-headed, pedantic schoolmaster and of every person training for the and erudite numskull, the first James; when work of education in the United Kingdom. They heresy and witchcraft were capital crimes, and are, to our thinking, the best familiar code of prac scoundrels were paid by promotion and the be- tical teaching to be met with. They do for the stowal of monopolies for the persecution of honest inexperienced instructor what it is his business to The heroine of the tale is the daughter of do for his ignorant pupils-that is, they teach him an inoffensive enthusiast, who consumes his life in how to teach. Forty years ago, in the generality the construction of a divining-rod and some other of popular schools, children were literally taught nostrums, which he imagines will guide him to nothing, at least in England; but being assembled the discovery of untold treasures. He is secretly together under the charge of a kind of boy-andpatronised and assisted by a mysterious being, girl herd, were supplied with books or odd dogswho, by kindness to her father, obtains an influ-eared leaves, and ordered to learn. We have ence over the mind of Margaret. He endeavours changed, or at least are changing, all that now; to obtain her co-operation in the perfection of and it is beginning to be seen that those who some cabalistic charm which he is engaged to would instruct others must not merely possess prepare for the Countess of Buckingham. Mar- knowledge, but must possess also the art of comgaret revolts at the task, and refuses her aid. Just municating it. These papers teach that great art; then her father dies, and she, on suspicion of and we can conscientiously recommend them to sorcery and proof of heresy, for she is a Puritan, all engaged in the practice of elementary tuition. is thrown into prison. Here she is overtaken by Had we room, we should like to transfer to our sickness, and exposed to the spotted fever which columns the essay on page 135, on “Mixed Edubreaks out in the gaol. It happens, however, that cation;" it embodies the best sense upon a subject the countess's gentleman, Tracey, has been smitten upon which the most unbearable nonsense has with her charms, and he, in conjunction with an been written again and again. old gentleman whose dead daughter she resembles, bribes the gaoler, who substitutes in her place the body of a cut-purse girl slain by the pest. Margaret, supposed to be dead, escapes with her lover, and follows in the track of her Puritan friends, who had previously sailed in the Mayflower for the land of promise. Then twenty years are passed over, and everything is changed the persecuting party are in the dust, and the Bible heroes Poems. By HENRY HOGG. London: Whittaker and on this score is yet very much to seek. He has the power of versification and a feeling of the romantic, with as yet but very little of the creative faculty which marks the poet-the maker. The best piece in the book is the story of Ellen, but that unfortunately reminds us of a rather similar story in Wordsworth's "Excursion," from which the idea appears to be taken. Mr. Hogg uses tremendous liberties with grammar, for which he deserves chastisement. With him active verbs do not govern the objective case; nor does the nominative case go before the verb. Thus he says, or sings, -and through the trees Will fall the quivering light on thee and me, And in another place, -then broke in Her at my side, and murmured, &c. Again -but her from whom I first drank life, taught me a different creed. These are atrocious lapses; but some amends are made for them in the general harmony of the verse, and the agreeable pictures which the author knows how to paint. We shall close our notice with one of "Sunset:" MANN. There is a summer calm to-night, A summer calm o'er field and fold, And still upon yon castle walls, Those grey-grown walls, the long light lies; And lo a thousand golden eyes Seem gazing from those windowed halls Upon the western skies. And by yon stately group of elms, And long lawns sloping to the lake, The wild winds from sweet sleep awake, With music that my heart o'erwhelms ; And by yon bank and brake The thick mist rises to the sky, And slowly meets the horned moon, Pictures from St. Petersburgh. By EDWARD JERTranslated from the original German by FREDERICK HARDMAN. (Traveller's Library). London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 1852. THE author of this book is a stage-player, who passed three years in St. Petersburg as the manager of a German company. He professes to describe things as he sees them with his own eyes, and presents the reader with a series of pictures of Russian society and customs differing very much from the delineations of preceding writers. We are in no condition to question his statements, which appear to wear the garb of truth, strange and anomalous as some of them certainly are. But Russia is the country of contradictions, and it is idle quarrelling with facts because we cannot reconcile them with our own notions of probability. Every page of this volume, almost, contains some startling revelation opposed to the customs of southern civilisation; and the book throughout is one of the most extraordinary as well as the most interesting collections of strange usages and occurrences that has ever issued from the press. We make room for one brief extract illustrative of Russian justice. A person who has been robbed never considers his chance of recovering his property so small as when the police have detected the thief. From the thief's hands he deems it possible he may get back his own, but from the clutches of the authorities never. . . . A Courland nobleman, Mr. Von H., lost some silver spoons, knives and forks, stolen out of his plate chest. Some weeks afterwards one of his servants came rejoicing to him he had found the stolen goods; they were openly exposed for sale in a silversmith's shop-window. Mr. H. went to the window, recognised his property, took a police officer with him, and made the silversmith show them the plate. His arms and initials were upon it; the dealer admitted he had bought it of a stranger, and offered to restore it to the rightful owner. Mr. H. would have taken away his property, but the lieutenant of police forbade that, drew up a formal statement of the affair, and requested Mr. H., as a proof that the plate was his, to send to the police some other article out of the chest to which he affirmed it to belong. Mr. H. sent the whole case, with its contents, to Ile never saw either of them again. the police bureau. Napoleon the Little. By VICTOR HUGO. (Authorised Translation.) London: Vizetelly and Company, 135, Fleet street. 1852. WARRIORS fight with the sword, tyrants with death or proscription, and genius with the grey goosequill. Napoleon the Little--the man of murder and tinsel, the wholesale assassin and wholesale liar, in the exercise of his ill-gotten power, banishes Victor Hugo from his native country. The man of genius erects the mirror of history in the face of the man of crime, and avenges with a little inkshed the bloodshed of the Boulevards, as well as his own banishment. He puts into the hands of every educated man in Europe a just balance, in which the scoundrel of December 2 is weighed and kicks the beam. Wanting in everything but guilt of the blackest dye, the monster is here dragged forth in his true colours, and held up to the infamy of succeeding ages. The book will do its work. Already, printed in a form so minute that a workman may conceal it in his boot, it is in the hands of thousands of Frenchmen who cannot afford to purchase the manuscript copies which are daily manufactured in Paris by hundreds, and circulated with little care for concealment. We are crowded with matter this month, and must defer further notice of Vizetelly's excellent translation to another opportunity. In the meanwhile we recommend its perusal to our readers, who will find it full of the "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." BOOKS RECEIVED-NOTICES DEFERRED. The Elementary Manual of Physical Geography. Elementary Catechism of the British Empire. London: Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster-row. 1852. The Travellers' Library. Parts 29 and 30. The Battle General of the Forces, and Prebendary of St. Paul's Catheof Leipsic. By the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A., Chaplaindral. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 1852. Letter to the Right Hon. Joseph W. Henley, M.P., Pre-| The Soul: its Sorrows and Aspirations. By F. W.Nr. Je The Travellers' Library. Part 31. Memoir of the Duke of Wellington. Reprinted, by permission, from the Times of September 15th and 16th, 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. London: Thomas Bosworth, 215, Regent-street. 1852. The Village Pearl. A Domestic Poem. By John Crawford Wilson. London: J. Chapman, Strand. 1852. A Guide to the Knowledge of the Heavens. By Robert James Mann, M.R.C.S.E. London: Jarrold and Sons, St. Paul's Churchyard. 1852. A Discourse of Matters pertaining to. Religion. By Theodore Parker. London: J. Chapman, Strand. 1852. Dirge for Wellington. By Martin F. Tupper. London: T. Hatchard, 187, Piccadilly. 1852. An Elementary Treatise on Logic. By the Author of an Antidote to Infidelity, &c. London: J. Chapman, Strand. 1852. Par V. Schcel Histoire des Crimes du Deux Decembre. cher, Representant du Peuple. Londres: J. Chapman, Strand. 1852. Louis' School Days: a Story for Boys. By E. J. May. Second Edition. Bath: Binns and Goodwin. London: Whittaker and Co.; Longman and Co. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. Dublin: J. M'Glashan. 1852. The Ethnology of the British Islands, By R. G. Latham, M.D., F.R.S., &c. The Ethnology of Europe. By R. G. Latham, M.D., &c. London John Van Voorst, Paternoster-row. 1852. Eagle Insurance Company.-At the annual general | meeting of proprietors, held in August last, reports from the auditors and the actuary were read, from which we extract the following items. From the auditors' report it appeared, that the income of the year from new premiums was £5,947 4s. 2d.; from renewal premiums, £90,670 4s. 5d.; and from interest, £31,433 19s. The claims were £00,177 98. 4d.; the amount allowed for surrender of assurances, £4,706 4s. 4d.; the expenses, £5,683 19s. 5d.; and the total assets, £738,884 178. 11d. This statement differs in nothing very materially from those which have been submitted during the last two or three years, save as regards the amount of claims on decease of lives assured, which, as compared with that of the previous year, is less by the sum of £23,513 12s. 5d. On the other hand, the premiums on new assurances are greater by upwards of £600; the amounts in the two years being, respectively, £5,339, 13s. 9d. and £5,947 4s. 2d. From the report of the actuary, it appears that the assurances in force in the Eagle Company on the 30th June, 1847, were 2,684, assuring £1,827,050, and paying premiums of £58,705, whilst those added by the junction with the Protector and another small Assurance Company, consisted of 1,315, assuring £1,005,469, and paying premiums of £34,575. The number effected since is 1,299, assuring £806,956, and paying premiums of £29,695. These together make a total of 5,298, assuring £3,639,475, and paying premiums of £122,975. Deducting the number lapsed during the five years by decease of the lives assured, and other causes, there remained in force on the 30th June last, 3,914, assuring £2,723,512, and paying premiums of £92,759. Tabular statements were then read, showing that after making allowance for every ascertained claim, and for every possible liability and contingency, there remains a gross surplus of £213,709 4s. 9d.; and of this sum the actuary recommended that £60,670 be appropriated to the purposes of the present division, the remaining £153,039 4s. 9d. being left, with its accumulations, to go in aid of the fund for future additions or reductions of premiums, &c. The allotment of this portion of the surplus entitles the proprietors to a bonus of 10 per cent., or ten shillings per share, making with the dividend now falling due, fifteen per cent., or fifteen shillings per share. The policy-holders, on the other hand, will get in present value the sum of £48,536, about equivalent to a reversionary addition of COMPANIES. £120,000 to the sums assured. Adopting the actuary's recommendation, the directors declared a bonus of fifteen per cent. (current dividend included) payable on the fourth of October next. The report was agreed to unanimously. British Empire Mutual Life Assurance Society. -At the fourth annual meeting of this company, the secretary read a report, which we abbreviate as follows:The total of policies issued in four years is 6,766; the total of assurances effected is £2,724,120; and the total of the receipts is £16,703 17s. 7d. Of this amount £8,258 3s. 7d. were premiums, and £8,445 14s. duty. Average new business per year, £681,030. The receipts of the second year show an increase of £1,075 17s. 7d. upon the first year; the third, £1,710 5s 9d. upon the second year; the fourth, £1,719 15s. 8d. upon the third year. The ratio of increase becoming larger year by year. "The assurances in force have been carefully selected, and form a safe and profitable class of business. The total losses sustained during four years have amounted to £3,78415s. 84, being 45 per cent. of the premiums received; and it is believed that this ratio, satisfactory as it is, will be much diminished as the operations of the society extend, and a less fluctuating average is consequently obtained." The cash account was as follows: LONDON: SALISLURY AND CO., PRINTERS, FOUVERIE-STREET AND PRIMROSE-HILL, FIEET-STREET. TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NOVEMBER, 1852. THE POETRY OF MARTIAL ENTHUSIASM. preciated the delusive renown of military prowess, and protested against having society demoralised by a process which, to mould the mechanical servility of the soldier, crushes the virtue of the citizen. They unanimously adopted the report of the committee, and expressed a hopeful confidence that, in a future age, war shall be altogether abolished. Two very dissimilar scenes, at one time con- | revolting horrors of multitudinous slaughter; they trasted in our mind, moved us to certain anxieties, exhibited, from historical examples, the uselessness, inducing the present reflections. In the Parisian the political inexpediency, of warlike operations; field of Mars, a multitude of admiring gazers saw and calculated, in money and wasted labour, their the magnificent array of military France. Ac- ruinous cost. With sarcastic ridicule, they declaiming shouts and thunder of cannon announced the possessor of that splendour and force, to whose name an idolatrous nation had again devoted itself. He rode far down the close and rigid lines of gleaming bayonets; he turned to gallop past the squadrons of warrior horsemen, and crossed the iron range of destructive engines, terrible and mute, significant of sudden, overwhelming death. Holding up the Roman eagle, associated with superb designs of European sway, he spoke of the exciting "glory" of conquest, and of the imposing "order" of a camp. Receiving in fond exultation this familiar banner, a hundred captains swore to combat under it. Religion-such religion as may be "in a rich gold-embroidered cope and mitre"imparted to the army an ostensible sanction in the Latin offices of pliant Catholicism, and in the prostituted word of God. Voluptuous festivities were preparing, and the gay city swelled in sumptuous intoxication. The pomp of the world, the vigour of the flesh, and the pride of life were at their highest. There was little memory of the unburied corpses on the plain of Borodino, of the starving men who were stiffened in the Russian frost, or those who rotted in the Egyptian fever. The perception of the truth was made dim by the dazzling parade of war. The description of this came to us, in busy and pacific Manchester. After a few hours, we sat at evening within the plain white walls of a quiet building, a customary place of the silent worship of Friends. A few score of people-placid matrons, respectable elders, and earnest youth-were calmly meeting for a testimony against war. Some persons, whose character and services to mankind are such as to obtain our reverence, in turn addressed them. With speech impressive because of the great interests it involved, the more convincing through their grave sincerity, they demanded the recognition, in national policy, of the Christian spirit, the Christian law of mutual love. They laid bare the VOL. XIX -NO. CCXXVII. We have faith in that anticipation. The author of our race has pledged his universe to the fulfilment of that promise. The prayer for the speedy securing of final peace is echoed in the hearts of all just men, as it is incessantly repeated from all places of the lamenting earth. The violence done by man to man affects us with a sorrow that craves immeasurable utterance; it would count the dropping blood with its own tears. On us, citizens of England, who have in community the power of partially directing the state, is set the duty of exerting, for the prohibition of war, an influence never before wielded by any nation of freemen fn · the modern world. Britain should maintain an attitude, noble as her public spirit, declaring the truth, denouncing tyranny, standing alone in generosity, with the courage that dares to go unarmed, but holding back in wary vigilance the resources of formidable strength. Let it be known to despots and to courtiers, while in Europe a perjured and cringing treachery licks the cruel hand of triumphant barbarism, that, though we do not prepare to contend with it, no timidity, nor indifference of comfortable case, causes the abstinence, but patient, humane wisdom. It is known, as the distinction of our country, that our Government cannot originate or provoke a war, except by the popular will. We are to endeavour, by all methods of discussion, through the press and in the sacred appeals of Christian exhortation, through constitutional assemblies and petition, and the occasional congress of foreign deputations, to infuse into the public sentiment a disgust with martial 2 T achievements, and so to prevent the people from | say that the State, corporately invested with the ever consenting to their repetition. direction of our physical resources, for the chief But the advocates of this principle, contradict- and primary purpose of protecting its members, ing the vulgar opinion, announcing a law to which is to hold in readiness, if need were, the bayonet the world has hitherto been strange, need to use a and the cannon, to support effectively the staff of discreet and delicate tact. They are not, indeed, police. We say there is between the principles of to pare and clip the truth into conformity with individual and political morality no discord. As existing prejudices; but they must avoid the it is the duty of a man to spare neither his own scandal of exaggerating it. They should not nor a murderer's life, where such homicide may be hazard the too positive unqualified assertion of a needed for the safety of helpless innocence, so is rule, which, like other ethical principles, is to be it the duty of a Government, of an entire people, construed with reference to the presumed general where the safety of all may be invaded by anarrelations of men towards each other; and which chical force of foreign or domestic aggressors, to is liable, in the possible case of those relations spare not ten thousand lives of the citizen or of being reversed, to be superseded by the new special the enemy. The rule of mercy to all mankind is duty of the emergency. Whether it be right or subjected in this case to no breach, but to a special no for one suddenly attacked by a murderous observance; it takes the form, peculiar to the assailant to yield his own life to permissive emergency, of the defence of those nearest and suicide, rather than disable his aggressor by killing dearest. This is the dictate of nature, confirmed him, we leave to keener casuists. Some men are by all personal and historical experience, and by capable of this self-devotion, no doubt, and in numerous examples of the Bible record; anisuch submission to a sense of Christian obligation mating us in any such peril with the call of him, we recognise a sublime virtue; although it is a the statesman and prophet, who rebuilt the walls questionable beneficence to deprive one's neigh- of Jerusalem: "Be ye not afraid of them; rebours of one's own upright and useful life for the member the Lord, who is great and terrible, and sake of letting a murderer, probably, escape upon fight for your brethren, your sons and daughters, the world. But this superstition of the absolute your wives and your houses.” inviolability of man's bodily existence, may be tested by another situation, in which its application would be absolutely immoral. Imagine oneself alone the protector of a weaker person, of a child, or of a woman, shrinking under the imminent danger of a violent death or of a worse outrage, the perpetration of which can only be stopped by striking a deadly blow; is there any Christian, whose bosom is ardent with tender compassion, who would hesitate to strike? Is there any remorse due for such an act? is it not an obedience to the divine law, a charity done to one's neighbour? That such situations are possible, cannot be disputed; and if the family affections be ordained of God, to manhood He has intrusted the stern obligation of defending them even to the death. The partisans in this peace controversy must, therefore, looking forward to the application of their principles in the diversity of human affairs, beware of implicating it in an unforeseen fallacy. They must not damage a cause, in its true proportions so beautiful and so rational, by extravagant distortions, disowned by the common sense and the common heart of humanity. We have been made ashamed and sorry by some notorious escapades of this erring zeal. What judicious person, hating the practices and the system of warfare, did not grieve, during the recent debate on the Militia Bill, when the contemptible absurdity of an anonymous writer gave a noble lord the opportunity of raising the inane clamours of Parliamentary derision, to counteract the high-toned counsels and the practical warnings of those who were opposing, not a prudent and patriotic measure of preparedness, but a vain panic and a mischievous job? How far has the moral influence of the advocates of peace been discredited by the exposure of similar inconsequential assertions! We would not have them discouraged, but go on directing with a more sure aim all the instrumentality of reason, of satire, of clear argument, facts stated, and eloquent persuasion, the commands of Christian and the testimony of human wisdom, to eradicate the prolific source of military contests, the vulgar admiration of warlike exploits. We say more that such situations are to be provided for. They may often and everywhere occur, so long as men abuse their strength in the bestial fury of lust and rage. Every day, every hour, in some spot or other of this world, the feeble and the lonely are writhing in tortured despair beneath the injuries of brutal force. Because the groans of the slain, the shrieks of the tormented, the low wailings of violated shame, that go up continually to the sky, do not reach our own ears except at intervals, shall we deny the existence of violent wrong? shall we deny to the protecting arm the authority and the weapon to prevent it? In every land where the passions of For a contribution to this work the present men have been loosed by prevailing war, in every essay is designed. Comparing the splendid exhi country where the law is not feared, where its bition of martial state, "the pomp and cireumministers bear the sword of justice in vain, atro- stance of glorious war," displayed in the spectacle cities beyond conception are openly committed. at Paris, with the modest agency of retiring be In England, peaceful, decent, honest as the nation nevolence, the quiet protest of which it happened is, there is a power of wickedness, held down by to us then to witness, no method of opposition to legal terrors and by the common resolution to the war-spirit seemed likely to be more effective keep order and enforce the punishment of offenders, than a fair criticism of its aesthetic aspect. It is huge enough to drown us all in dire dismay. We to strip off the meretricious finery in which the |
