A soirée, a miserable, dull, doleful, funereal repast, celebrating the decease of every particle of mirth and jollity! That would be the most inaccurate description imaginable. Perhaps a conventional bore and nuisance, but not a soirée, as these meetings are commonly known. We pass to a pithy and excellent remark which the author gives us, about the use or abuse rather of argument. He says: "There are two classes with whom there is no arguing the half-educated, who are too conccited to be convinced; and the half-savage, whose truths are more than half drunken, and cannot be wholly gainsaid." The chapter, styled "A group of Queens, unqueened," contains a great deal of useful historical information. In speaking of Katherine Parr, he says: Katherine Parr was the wife of many husbands. She was a learned young lady, with some sprinkling of royal blood in her; and was wooed by Lord Scrope; married to Lord Borough, and became a widow before she had completed her fifteenth year. Neville, Lord Latimer, admired her, her understanding, and her needlework, and forthwith espoused her, to speedily leave her again a widow. The handsome Sir Thomas Seymour, most gallant of admirals, next offered himself for the acceptance of this accomplished young lady, but his pretensions were set aside, by the irresistible courtship of a king, who had divorced two wives, beheaded two more, and killed a fifth by his cruelty. She had no choice, but to take thankfully the terrible gift imposed upon her; and Katherine became the last, and the lackiest, and perhaps the wisest of the wives of Henry. She was a tender mother to his children, an incomparable nurse to himself, and was so esteemed by him, that she only nearly lost her head. She had touched upon religions questions, and probably had not the king recollected that it would be difficult for him to find her match at rubbing in a lotion, all her submissiveness would not have saved her from the scaffold. With one more extract, too good to be omitted, we must end our notice of this work. It is contained in a chapter on "The things we don't know." The author is speaking of Knowledge and Ignorance "Summarily," he writes, "here it may be said, on such a text, that our ignorance, compared with our knowledge is as a giant to the dwarf in the fable. They walk through the world together, sensitive Knowledge getting all the blows, while stalwart Ignorance swaggers on with withers all unwrung. Ignorance is the sea, and Knowledge the bright evening star, shining over it in clear, chaste, and circumscribed purity: Ignorance is sometimes better than Knowledge, and the end of Knowledge, after all, is but confirmation of Ignorance. We can linger no longer in gazing at these very pleasant pictures, or knocking at the dim old panels. The work needs no commendation. The extracts answer that end. Recollections of the Last Four Popes, and of Rome in Their Times. By H.E. CARDINAL WISEMAN, Pp. 523. London: Hurst and Blackett. A ROMAN CATHOLIC work, giving the author's reminiscences of the Popes, Pius VII., Leo X., Pius VIII., and Gregory XVI., with whom he became personally acquainted during his residence in Rome. It has been too long published to require a long notice now. The Cardinal describes the character and duties of these prelates, and gives, in the process of doing so, an account of several important Roman Catholic religious ceremonies. The descriptions are meant to be imposing. There is plenty of gold, and silver, and glitter, and brocade, and incense in them; but as the Bible has taught us to love simplicity rather than parade in the " things which belong to heaven," we should not be dazzled by these processions, but regret them. There is a far-fetched deduction near the end of the volume, which is the very acme of superstition. The Cardinal says:-"One does not see, why, if a Jewish high priest, had the gift of prophecy for his year of office, one of a much higher order and dignity should not occasionally be allowed to possess it." Of course the Cardinal alluded to the Pope, and we never before heard it surmised that prophecy was an accompaniment of the papal chair, although it is as easy to believe in that as to believe iufalibility. However it is not one's business to see " why." We must expect such passages and deductions from the pen of Cardinal Wiseman. The useless and pharasaical pomp of worship is brought vividly before us in the book. These passages cannot be said to be overdrawn or untruthful as they are written by a "Prince" of Rome. Fragmentary Remains, Literary and Scientific, of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. Edited by his brother, John Davy, M.D., F.R.S. Pp. 326. London: John Churchill, New Burlingtonstreet. His THIS work comprises the memoir and correspon. dence of Sir Humphrey Davy, who was born at Penzance on the 17th of December, 1778. parents were of the middling classes of society, and "belonged to a family that both on the father's and mother's side for many generations, so far back indeed as it could be traced, had received a lettered education, and were above the wants which the peasant labourer had to struggle with." The first eight years of his scholastic career were spent at the grammar school in his native town. From thence he went to Truro, and was placed under the care of the Rev. Dr. Carden. His character as a schoolboy is thus described :— "He was a favourite with his schoolfellows, on account of his good temper, and willing readiness to aid them in their tasks, and also for the entertainment he afforded them as a reciter of stories, in which his inventive and imaginative faculties, it is remembered, were early exercised, and of which proofs remain in some sketches of romance which he had planned and begun. His last master, the Rev. Dr. Carden, records his early recollection of him, as being chiefly distinguished for amiability, the good terms he was on with his schoolfellows, and for the superiority of his exercises in translating Latin into English verse; one of his schoolfellows remembered the assistance he and others had from him in the composition of Latin verse." On his leaving his native place he went to Clifton, to become superintendent of a Pneumatic institution then about to be established. He remained in Clifton for two years and a balf, and left it for London, "to become Professor of Chemistry, at the invitation of Count Rumford, in the Royal Institution of Great Britain-the high name in full by which the institution, in its modest abode in Albemarle street, was designated." We have not space to trace the life of this great man carefully throughout. The book is interspersed with interesting letters, and notices of celebrated people. His eminent career brought him into association with the celebrities of the day, who not only admired him for his intellect, but respected and loved him for the intrinsic worth of his character. The progress through life of a great and good man yields always a beneficial lesson to the mind. The present instance forms no exception to the rule. The memoir of Sir Humphrey Davy may be read with both pleasure and profit. Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair. By HENRY MORLEY. Pp. 494. London: Chapman and Hall. THIS book, as its title promises, gives us a history of the Fair from its opening to its close. It was instituted by a Court jester in the time of Henry I., named Rayer, who had it confirmed by charter. A priory and church were connected with the Fair, Rayer, of course, acting as prior. A conspiracy which was said to threaten the safety of the prior induced him to lay his case and claims before his sovereign, in a deposition "expressing how, with cruel despites, he was deformed, and what fastidious outbreaking had tempted him, beseeching his royal munificence, that the person and the place he had granted him he would defend. The King answered that he would apply him to his just and necessary petitions, and that furthermore he behested himself to be a defender of him and of his." The success of this application was a full and complete charter, granting to the prior, the priory, and church, in connection with the Fair. The end being thus answered, conspiracies and conspirators were heard of no more. By a succession of miracles the cunning prior raised the reputation of the priory, and brought devotees in crowds to its shrine; and the devotees brought their offerings, which doubtless were more acceptable than themselves. And miracles were said to be wrought in favour of those who acted generously by the priory, as an encouragement to others, no doubt, to do likewise. The author tells us one such in the following words. "Alfuin (one of the monks) when collecting the materials for a brew of ale by the monks, went to a pious woman in the parish of St. Giles, Eden, the wife of Edred. This woman had but seven sieves of malt, from which if she spared any, her own brewing would be spoilt; nevertheless, rather than send the holy man away empty she measured him a sieve full. Then she measured what remained, and there were still seven sieves full. Surprised at this she tried again, and lo! there were eight sieves full. She measured again and there were nine sieves full. She took her increase to the church, and publicly bore witness to the miracle." The monks, we know, were very clever jugglers, and they must have performed some very clever trick here, and an useful one moreover, for no doubt every thrifty housewife who wished to add to her stock of malt would bestow some of it on the priory, thus reaping a full harvest herself by the working of a special miracle in her behalf. Whether the quality of the beer brewed by these good housewives would be improved or deteriorated by their munificence and the special miracle remained an open question. The site which Rayer, at the instigation of his patron, St. Bartholomew, chose for the Fair was Smithfield, then the King's market. It was the common centre to which all the trading classes resorted, and therefore about the best spot in London which could have been selected for the purpose. At first it was used merely as a place of commerce, afterwards it became one of wild and boisterous amusement. Jesters, tumblers, jugglers, and mountebanks found patronage in the Fair-for thither all the pleasure-seekers went. But dark scenes were enacted there as well. On the opposite side of Smithfield to that where the Fair was held stood the gallows, and there those who had incurred the penalty of the law offered up their lives, or rather had their lives taken from them. St. Bartholomew's, too, was the scene of many martyrdoms, and good men and women also were burnt for the crime of holding firmly to the truth. The author leads us through the follies and vagaries and political agitations of the Fair up to the time of Ben Jonson, who, in 1614, "the year of the paving of Smithfield, represented in a comedy, what Bartholomew Fair, then a most ancient London festival, was in his time." In the year 1665, the great plague of London blanched each cheek with fear. Then the Fair was for the time suppressed. It was not thought safe to encourage so great a concourse of the people in the very neighbourhood of the pestilence. Here the author, quotes the words of a nonconformist minister, who wrote:: "Now people fall as thick as the leaves of autumn when they are shaken by a mighty wind. Now there is a dismal solitude in London streets; every day looks with the face of a Sabbath day, observed with a greater solemnity than it used to be in the city. Now shops are shut in, people rare and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places, and a deep silence in every place, especially within the walls." No Bartholomew Fair, therefore, in 1665. At the beginning of September, usual fair time, in that year, on fires burnt night and day for the cleansing of the air in every street, till they were put out by the rain. From this period the author leads us through the revival of the Fair down to its decay and death in 1842, when the last handbill was printed. The work is entertain. ing and instructive, iliustrated by numerous quaint old pictures which add to the interest of the memoir. The book will amply repay those who take the trouble of perusing it, and will while away many a leisure hour agreeably. Mendip Annals. 1 vol., pp. 253. London; James Nisbet and Co. THIS volume gives an account, from the diary of Martha More, of the labours and pursuits of Hannah More and the writer, in their neighbourhood. The volume is edited by the Rev. Arthur Roberts, Rector of Woodrising. It is interesting to us now, as in some measure a report of the first efforts for the extension of education among the destitute villages in the south of England. The silence in which the two sisters laboured incessantly and successfully, apparently, originated in a visit of the late Mr. Wilberforce to the cliffs of Cheddar. The ignorance of the people dashed, in his eyes, the beauty of the scenery. Mr. Wilberforce easily enlisted the sympathies of Hannah More, and her good and quiet sister, in the education of these people; and when they commenced, it was difficult to stop. A ring of schools surrounded them at last; but they met the resistance of farmers, Methodists, and ministers. The Misses More did not like the Methodists, who, in turn, disliked them; and the two sets of labourers indulged the ecclesiastical bad feeling and rivalry for which the south of England has been notorious, unfortunately. Even Bristol, the city of churches, had no help to spare for Cheddar. The ministers of the Established Church opposed the schemes of the benevolent ladies, and did not forward them for some time. This conduct was not pursued by the ministers as a body, or with any authority from the Church, but by individuals; one of whom turned out to be an Unitarian in his doctrines and sentiments, who should have been favourable to schools according to his professions. The difficulties were, however, gradually overcome; those with the farmers being really the more serious. The farmers did not believe in education, but they considered it in some way favourable to the revolutionary principles of which they knew enough to be afraid, though they could not comprehend them. These men had to be managed with considerable discretion, for they had influence and power in all that country, which they did not scruple to use. Many of them were at last brought over, and the two ladies lived to see a great change in the districts where they dwelt and which they regularly visited. They did not confine their labours to the bestowal of money, and its collection for the employment of proxies. They were the active inspectors of their own schools, and the industrious managers of plans for the benefit and improvement of the old as well as of the young; combining social with religious improvement, and struggling to improve their places on earth, whose minds they directed to a place in heaven, as the grand end of life. The most intelligent friends of all modern plans for improving the circumstances and the condition of the poorest in faith, and in works on earth, will be astonished on reading these annals, which we earnestly commend, to find how long ago two active ladies anticipated their plans. Failure of the Forbes Mackenzie Act. By JAMES STIRLING. Pp. 38, sewed. Glasgow: James Mac'chose. WHEN we cursorily glanced over this pamphlet, we formed the opinion that it was a hoax, cleverly done, by some ardent friend of the act. Satires of this nature have been sometimes successful. The opinion was erroneous. The author exists, and is pleased with his performance. He does not appeal to figures largely, and that is unnecessary. Mr. Stirling is a logician, and argues a priori for the failure of the act, because he believes that it must fail. He commences by confessing a "national propensity to intemperance." Mr. Stirling backs out the Times and other journals of its class nobly. We deny the "national pro pensity," alleging that we are not drunken, do not get drunk, and have no propensity to be drunken. Moreover, that is the condition mentally of a large number of our acquaintance, and all our friends. Mr. Stirling, we fear, has got among a bad set, and he should come quickly out from them. The majority of the nation escape his reproach, or, of course, it would be unneces sary to write pamphlets against the Forbes Mackenzie Act. Our author has discernment sufficient to see that a confusion of ideas may exist somewhere. Thereupon we accord with him thoroughly, and, by way of confirmation and example, we adduce the fol lowing passage from page 4 of the pamphlet, with the expression of our sincere hope that the author is not an ambitious gentleman for legislative honours, and in search of aid from the spirit trade, when Glasgow gets its six representatives. To me, it seems the whole system of temperance legislation rests on a confusion of ideas; the lawgiver mistaking the true function of authority, and undertaking to cure a social evil by the direct restraint of individual desire. He thus attempts what he has neither the right nor the power to do. He applies brute force to the inward will, and vainly seeks to gain a spiritual end by coarse material means. The true scope of government is negative, not positive: the end of law is to repress wrong, not to create virtue. To purify the desires and ennoble the will of a people is the work of the teacher, not the ruler; and the lawgiver mistakes his calling, and causes infinite confusion, when he assumes the function of the Apostle, and attempts to reform the morals of the community. Crime, not sin, is the true object of legislative repression. The lawgiver has to do with the overt act, not with the secret desire. It is only when the inward lust takes a visible form, and issues forth in some act injurious to the common good, that the State acquires the right of interferSo long as sin lies hidden in the individual heart, conscience is its sole judge, Society can rightfully inter ence. fere with moral evil only when it assumes the form of against the sin of drunkenness alone that he directs the social wrong. When you have got a good principle, go through with it. Therefore do not employ policemen to watch warehouses-if Mr. Stirling has one, we trust he is not mean enough thus to restrain his neighbour's will. So long as "it is an inward will" he has no right to interfere. He may, indeed, steck the stable door when the steed is stolen; but he should not chain and lock his doors in interference with the inward desire of Tim Snelly to get in for some property on which he has sinfully set his heart. He should wait until Tim commits a crime before he snub him with the blacksmith's work. At any rate, the State should not emyloy policemen and soldiers to keep the peace. The State may have jails, penal colonics, and even the gallows, but it must not prevent their employment. That policeman may have a strong suspicion that this old acquaintance of his, with the snub nose, tracks that old gentleman who has not exactly observed the Forbes M'Kenzie line of morals, with the hope of a business in garotting. The policeman has no right to encumber his friend with his company on this interesting occasion. He has no right to create virtue in the prowler, for sin lies hidden in the vagabond's heart, but he may become a fit subject for the policeman in a few minutes. This is the author's theory; but we have a fatal admission in his confession that the law may "repress wrong." What is wrong? Any man injures the community who spends his money and his time in vice. He neglects his duties. If he be poor in this world his children are not half educated. If he be rich, he maketh haste to become not rich. The next paragraph is equally edifying: The State has no right to compel morality. Self-ennoblement is the end of man's existence; and to force virtue on him, even were it possible, is to do him wrong. Every interference with his moral development is an unjustifiable curtailment of his freedom in the exercise of its highest function. Neither has the State the right to remove temptation, except it assume the form of an outrage on public morals. To fence men round with legal safeguards and precautions, and forcibly shut out all opportunity of evil, is to deprive them of the indispensable condition of moral culture, and prevent that gymnastic of the will, without which there can be no growth of moral power. The Bible says, "Avoid the very appearance of evil." Do not "walk in the counsel of the ungodly," "shun the path of destroyers," "if sinners entice thee consent thou not.' All obsolete very obsolete. The new way is, keep in the moral gymasium. Young persons should morally visit the most attractive brothels, where the prettiest females are for sale at the highest price, as "the indispensable condition of moral culture." Very well, Mr. Stirling; we do not half like your logic, nor even your statements; thus: We have lost our faith in the edifying influence of the jougs and the cutty-stool, and have abandoned the stocks as a means of regeneration. The legislator here recognises the natural limits of his function, and modestly leaves the moral training of man to his spiritual guides. It is pains and penalties of an obsolete puritanism. The sin of drunkenness is not the only subject against which the law makes provisions. What has happened of late to betting houses, gambling houses, disorderly houses already named, and many other matters, such as hours of labour, the education of factory children, female working in mines, the truck system, and various other evils, of which we will increase the list in course of a few years; for the class to which Mr. Stirling belongs -we mean, the class of thinkers, for we know nothing of his circumstances--may depend upon it that the nation is not to leave, as Louis Napoleon says that he has been left, to God, his conscience, and posterity. The vox populi in these matters will be as the vox Dei. Our author is, of course, Conservative, and dislikes the emergence of the people from that wallowing in the mire of filthy pleasures, falsely so called, which he and others would provide for them : A late meeting, held in one of our largest cities, to press restrictionist principles upon Parliament, was announced as "under the auspices of the Sabbath Protection Society, Sabbath School Union, City Mission, Young Men's Chrisbers of such associations, however admirable they may be in their peculiar spheres of action, are deprived, by their very position, of that wide and varied experience of life which alone can give expansive views of society, and fit men for rashness of inexperience, these persons, and others still more the high work of statesmanship; yet, with the proverbial unqualified, scruple not to rush in with vehement and violent counsels, when wiser men stand by and hold their peace. City missionaries fresh from the Divinity Hall; half-grown Sunday School teachers, male and female; kirksessions of country parishes; and ruling elders from the remotest Hebrides, feel themselves called upon to enlighten Parliament as to its duties, and to lecture the magistracy on the fit administration of the laws. tian Association, and Abstainers' Union." Now the mem Why not? Is not Parliament the representative of that class of people ? Dear Mr. Stirling, there is not a member for all the counties who will not acknowledge that he is the servant of Kirk Sessions and others, especially at this difficult time. Don't you know, sir, that we are approaching the dissolution of the present Parliament ? As for City Missionaries, any pratical sense possessed by us would lead us to them for information on the question, has the law failed or not? A sad catastrophe occurs from the Forbes Mackenzie Act, says Mr. Stirling. Hear him : If we shut out those who will have drink from public houses we only drive them into private houses. Hence the notorious spread of "Drinking Clubs"-places of nightly resort and systematic dissipation, where the desire for drink soon degenerates into a chronic passion, and the occasional drunkard sinks into an habitual sot. Or, worse than this, we drive the drunkard to his own house, to contaminate his family and wrap wife and child in one common ruin. If drinking there must be, by all means let it be carried on in publichouses. The very existence of public drinking houses proves that a natural instinct prompts men to carry abroad their vices. An intuitive impulse sends forth the drunkard to hide his sin and shame in the puolichouse. Bad as he is, he would not willingly pollute those dear to him. It may be, he still respects the decencies of domestic life; has still a home where holy influences are at work, and where it may yet be given him to repent and reform. But all this a blind restrictionism undoes. A fanatical law drives him back to defile his home and deprave his family; carries intemperance to our very hearths; and taints the whole people with the leprosy of vice. So we are to have free trade in what, at our domestic hearths, is the leprosy of vice. Man or woman may respect the decencies of domestic life by getting drunk in the public, and coming home tipsey. We differ radically here from this cele. brated author, and assent unequivocally that the less indecent place for a human being to get drunk in, is his or her bed-rocm, perhaps his or her bed is less offensive as a locality still. We have not touched this gentleman's figures, because they are few and lonely, and we had to deal with such things before; but now we quote one sentence: That this estimate of the number of shebeens recent is far within the truth is clearly proved by a official return, which gives the names and residences of 326 persons who have been positively ascertained by the police to be habit and repute in the undisguised practice of illicit spirit selling; while the total number of shebeens, discovered and undiscovered, is variously estimated at double or treble that number. If Mr. Stirling or any other person is acquainted with the existence of shebeens or unlicensed houses; he, or that other person, is bound to give the necessary information to the proper authorities, and is no good subject if that be not done. BY A VISION OF LANGSIDE. SONNETS. JAMES By the hillside calm and sunny, Those grey mists of long ago. Sudden all the hill is wreathed With a pale, white smoke, proclaiming That the demon, War, has breathed, And a sword has leapt like lightning, Which in death alone is sheathed. Now the foes are met like waters That in tempest rage and boil, Now the gory gaps are yawning, Now a blush runs o'er the soil, Ho for Mary! Ho for Murry! On a sunny They were brothers who are foemen, In the fight so fierce and hot. MACFARLAN. But their arms are unavailing, Flushes regent Murray's brow. O thou night, so hushed and hallowed, With thy blue and starry screen; Through the mists of yore descried, And the gold of sunset lingers O'er the fields so fair and wide, And the peaceful harvest waveth Where a sovereign's hopes have died. THE SHADOWY SHEPHERD. In long duli nights, when feeble moons are waning, Cries of thy helpless lambs, I wot they be, That shifts in twilight o'er the Norland lea. Walk only, fair one, in the arms of noon light, Stroll in the sunshine careless, still, and free, Thy charm is in the soft and witching moonlight Thou shadowy shepherd on the Norland lea, |