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LITERATURE IN THE CABINET.

IN China the only road to rank and station is the highway of literature. A man must be a good scholar, or he never will be a great mandarin. The printing-press is said to have been in use there five hundred years before Koster or Guttenberg, or our greater British benefactor, Caxton, were heard of; and the wise people of England have just hit upon the novelty of pre-examination for official appointments, which has been practised in the Celestial Empire time out of mind. For there, all employments are conferred according to certain rules, and only those candidates who have obtained certificates of literary proficiency, more or less, can expect to be raised from the ranks. The suspension from examination for several years, as a punishment, is, therefore, much worse than being plucked or rusticated, as with us. But, on the contrary, when honours are attained through all their various degrees, from the lowest, Tew-tsae (flowery talent), to the highest, conferred by the national college, Han-lin, the scholars, mastering the five classics, reach the title of mandarins, and have fine dresses of sundry fashions, and coloured buttons, and peacocks' feathers assigned them; the very pinnacle of fame and fortune being now open to them at the will and pleasure of the Teën-tsye, the Emperor, "Son of Heaven." Even Yehs are thus educated and promoted; and only that this unique aristocratic class are equally liable to be hanged or ripped up for any imputation of wrong or misadventure, it might be asserted that China was the paradise of literary men, the true field for the cultivation and reward of intellect, the righteous test of competency, and, consequently, the best-governed nation on the face of the earth. But, alas! as a little learning is a dangerous thing, so is a great deal; and though the upper functionaries may enjoy the luxuries of birds' nests and donkeys' heads for a season, they are terribly exposed to degradation and death in the event of matters taking a wrong turn under their management.

Equally prone to risk all and endure all for eminent station and power, our English competitors are not drawn so entirely from the learned classes, and even the pushing and ignorant sometimes get uppermost. But it is a little consolation to find that individuals gifted with education, mind, and cultivation do manage to obtain a tolerable share in the objects of ambition; and it is to illustrate this subject that we have thrown together the following loose sketches, chiefly relating to the present reigning chiefs in our political system.

Lawyers' clerks perish, poetically, if they "pen a stanza when they should engross" an indenture; but an aspiring politician may hope to rise in the world by the very same expedient. Many of the late Cabinet, many of the present, and many other legislators, official celebrities, and semi-sinecurists who have passed through the struggle to comparative quiet and affluence, and rising aspirants aiming to tread in their successful footsteps, come within

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the category of authors, or at least writers-contributors to the press. hope it may interest our readers to throw a coup-d'œil over the subject, and we will commence with the cabinet of Lord Palmerston, now in power. The Premier, Lord Palmerston, enjoying a pedigree from the nude Lady Godiva, of immortal Coventry memory, is not known to have published any separate work, though some of his speeches, as on the Catholic question and our relations with Portugal, have been authoritatively reported; but his communications to newspapers (as well as his courteousness to those concerned in them) have been copious and unceasing. When at the University he was addicted, as report sayeth, to poetical compositions of a lively tone. Master of irony, his shafts in print have often pierced the adversaries whom argument in other places had failed to vanquish; and.the leader and the paragraph told well where speech and office weapons failed to reach. In his early days of Tory partizanship, the contribution of poetical satire and epigram to the "New Whig Guide," "Anti-Jacobin," and "John Bull," ascribed to his pen, were marked by a stinging wit and pungent humour not unworthy the spirit and fame of the "Anti-Jacobin" itself.

The Lord High Chancellor, when plain Jock Campbell, began his literary career as theatrical critic and reporter on the "Morning Chronicle," then edited by James Perry. He thus maintained his way to the bar when about twenty-seven years of age, and soon distinguished himself by his forensic abilities. To a toiling law occupation was, at a later period, superadded a very active political life; and never did an individual display more signally the labor ipse voluptas, than Mr. Attorney-General, Baron, and Lord Chief Justice Campbell, now advanced to the highest legal dignity of the British Empire. We know not if he had made himself master of equity jurisprudence, equally with his common law experience, by writing the voluminous history of the Lords Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal, whom it has been his destiny to succeed, but the work reflects much credit on his research and industry. Mr. Foss, perhaps, is more accurate, but still Lord Campbell may say Exegi monumentum! which will carry my name down to a late posterity. His next production, Lives of the Chief Justices of England," is of like calibre, and has been well received, though obnoxious to the charge of certain small partialities and prejudices, which detract from its general merit. His last performance cannot be esteemed so praiseworthy or successful, for by a process of quoting and reasoning, which could as definitely prove Shakespeare to have been a curate, a botanist, a chemist, an apothecary, or a thief, his Lordship has endeavoured to shew that the Swan of Avon swam into immortality on the feathers of a goose, dabbled with ink in an attorney's office :

"As a grove all classic men do
Lucus term, a non lucendo !" "

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So Luttrell sings; but to conclude, with legal prose rather than flippant The Lord Chancellor's "Nisi Prius Reports" will, in our opinion,

verse.

last longer than any of his other works. They are very able and judicious, and have contributed much to his Lordship's great reputation; they are, in fact, the best reports of his day,—his own, and his greatest claim as an author, not pilfered, or plundered wholesale from others; whereas the Biographies, though they contain some very good writing, are not to be securely depended upon.

Lord John Russell is now sixty-seven, and being a son of the Duke of Bedford surrendered to Whig politics instead of the army, navy, or church, has had nearly half a century of a busy life. Like Lord Palmerston, he received part of his education in Edinburgh, and it would be curious to seek whether the sweet airs of Auld Reekie had any influence in eliciting the literary temperament so strongly developed in the contemporaneous Mackintosh, Brougham, Horner, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, et hoc genus. Be that as it may, his Lordship has diversified his political career by numerous essays in various literature, tragedy, history, biography, and scene indivisible. Perhaps he would have done better if he had had more time; really valuable standard works are not to be done by snatches.

An "Essay on the History of the English Constitution" ought to have taught the writer to understand it, and how he has understood it has been shewn by the sequel of his long parliamentary and official career. "A Life of Lord William Russell," was a natural exercise of his pen, and he gilded the character of that unfortunate nobleman to his utmost ability, though it falls far short of the halo thrown over his memory by his devoted wife, which has enveloped it with a brightness that makes the dark spots invisible a. "Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to the Present Time," is also polished by Lord John with the gloss of his party, and has not "prevented" the superior History by Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope,) which is not only more impartial, but more enriched by research and elaborated by pains-taking. Indeed, we may repeat that Lord John has not had time for his works, and they are consequently only temporary productions, where they are not failures. Under the former category, and not pretending to more, is a Brief Sketch of the History of the Turks in Europe;" and, by the way, we may observe that a good history of the Ottoman Empire (Von Hammer being the chief mine) is a manifest desideratum in our literature. Of the Life of Moore we would fain not speak. The object was benevolent, but if the deeply wounded Moore's spirit could be heard to shriek, it would be, "Oh save me from my friend!" The pitchforking into many volumes, and without explanation

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• For a traditional and hereditary, as well as for a great political and party capital, nothing could be better adapted for one of the Bedford family than the confection of such a biography, and Lord John has handled it accordingly. The touching devotedness of Lady Rachel has linked sympathies around the death, which if not that of a traitor (as the crime was construed from the Norman invasion to the 'forty-five,') was the common fate of the conquered at the hands of the conquerors on all sides alike, from Wallace to Balmerino, and "young Rutland” to aged Laud.

or comment, of many matters which never were meant and never ought to have seen the light, has been more injurious to the character of the poet than the bitterest attacks of enemies could have been. The indiscretion (another example of haste) has done much injustice to the subject, and brought out as prominent features what were only slight passing traits, excited by mingled intercourse with the world, and circumstances which affected the moment, but had no permanent consistency in Moore's heart and soul. By this means, weaknesses, follies, tuft-hunting, and even heartlessness are made to appear, where good sense, proper appreciation of self and others, and a liberal disposition might have adorned the posthumous canvas. It would, however, probably be more close to the truth to suppose that his Lordship is simply answerable for allowing his name to be put to what he did not write, and perhaps never read. But in that case he should have been more cautious in the choice of the agent. The noble Secretary is now issuing the "Life of Charles James Fox," and from what has been published it is only to be hoped that in his conduct of our foreign affairs he may not be so lamentably abroad as in his literary efforts. These, indeed, stand greatly in need of radical reform. We have nothing lively to say of "Sketches by a Gent," ascribed to the same pen; and we know nothing, except by report, of a little bit of a Romance which emanated from juvenile fancy. In the tragedy of "Don Carlos," (certainly after Schiller!) the absence of dramatic interest, the coldness to genuine pity and in the language, and the want of either elevation of sentiment or bursts of passion, reduce the play to a dead level for the stage, where it was tried and failed nearly forty years ago. Monotony is its bane, though in the details there are many passages of pretty verse; and the mixture of politics and theology does not harmonize with the tragic muse.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis is a bird of another feather, an author of another pen, a gainer of another plume. Of classical attainments and mathematical powers in reasoning, he has had long experience in laborious drill duties of the most useful kinds, and he has acquitted himself ably in all, passing through various subordinate offices, till at length he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now Secretary of State for the important Home Department. During twenty-three years, eighteen of them in Parliament, he has published at least ten works,—more or less valuable, but all meritorious,-in politics, political economy, jurisprudence, and general literature; and besides, as the successor of Professor Empson, underwent the fatigue and responsibilities for several years of editing the "Edinburgh Review." We have not read any of his productions without reaping such information from them as is likely to flow from a well-educated man who can find time to think as well as to write. Employed on the Commission of Inquiry into the State of the Irish Church, 1835, he published in the following year (at the ripe literary age of thirty) a lucid exposition of the

"local disturbances," &c., which, in Hibernian fashion, perplexed that vexed question. Other political treatises have since that period kept his name continually, substantially and favourably before the public. "On the Use and Abuse of Political Terms" evinces original mind and application; "On the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion" is, perhaps, more steady, but with less of novelty. The same may be said of the essay "On Matters of Observation and Reasoning in Politics ;" and there is a fund of good sense in his remarks on the "Government of Dependencies, 1841." The "Connection of Church and State, and the Principles of that Connection," are lucidly expounded; and his opinions on the " Extradition of Criminals" is another valuable piece; but, no matter who are our Government, Conservative, Liberal, or Radical, they may depend upon it that banishment, exile, transportation, under proper management, is the only humane and effectual method of disposing of the unhappily vicious section of the community. "On the Political Economy of the Athenians," from the German of Bockh, must (from the writer's principal studies) have been a labour of love; but more allied to polite letters are his view of the "Romance Languages," whilst yet at Oxford, 1835; and his magnum opus in this line, "Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History," 2 vols. 8vo., 1856. Poor Roman history; we must all go to school again, or burn Niebuhr, and read Macaulay, and lament the loss of the books of Livy b. But truce to reflections. We have stated enough to demonstrate that Sir Cornewall Lewis is one of those well-read scholars, whose works, after producing their due influence on the public of their period with regard to the important or interesting matters they discuss, are well calculated to descend to later years, and hand down the name of their author with credit to posterity. For the present he must be esteemed a sensible and learned man, though a dull and stammering speaker in the House of Commons,—not so much, in judgment, of the genuine Anglo-Saxon type, as of the Welsh blood which is his natural inheritance.

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The Duke of Newcastle is only known to literature, if it can be called known, by accounts from the Crimea and other regions about the Black Sea, to which he paid a long visit four years ago. As Lord Lincoln, before he succeeded to the ducal title, however, we remember him on public occasions an eloquent speaker, whose suavity and refinement declared him undeniably to belong to that class whose minds are most sensibly imbued and informed by high literary cultivation.

In the earlier work we are much inclined to agree with the author and with Schlegel, with whom he coincides; and with him also to differ from the hypothesis of Raynouard, viz. that instead of the various modern languages founded on the Latin being derived from the central source of the Provence (Troubadour) spread over the south of France and Aragon, they have all been modified from the Roman original as differently acted upon by Arab, Teutonic, and other conquering tribes in Italy, Spain, France, &c., till they assumed their existing forms of national tongues in these

countries.

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