ART. XIV.-Römische Briefe aus den letzten | the occasional elegance of style we have here: Zeiten der Republik. (Roman Letters of the few display the scholarship and reading which latter period of the Republic. Von OTTO VON are lavished upon nearly every page of the book MIRBACH. Vols. III. and IV. Mittau. 1841. before us. To the Puseyite enthusiast, we have little doubt these " Sights and Thoughts" will furnish matter to be conned over with delight; and to the wavering Protestant, whom the Tractarians have all but weaned from the faith of his fathers, the book may serve as a help to smoothe the way back to the bosom of Rome. THE two first volumes of this work appeared in 1836, and treated of the years 690 and 691 from the building of Rome. The two volumes lately published are entitled to the same favourable notice as those that went before them. They introduce the unlearned to a very fair notion of Roman manners at the period in question. All existing authorities have been carefully and conscientiously turned to account, and not only the political interests of the republic, but the domestic manners and the state of public morals are described with as much accuracy as may be looked for in what cannot wholly divest itself of the character of a work of fiction. To paint the manners of ancient Rome, the epistolary form bas been judiciously selected. A narrative would not have allowed the same fragmentary style, without which minute but important points must have been passed over in silence. M. von Mirbach has been guilty of some rather striking anachronisms. Thus in letters supposed to have been written during the republic, he unhesitatingly quotes from Virgil and other authors belonging to the empire; and even weaves into his own text the epigrams of Martial, who did not appear at Rome till more than a century after the death of Julius Cæsar. Mr. Faber proceeded by the way of Paris to Avignon, and thence by Nismes to Genoa. A page here and there is made descriptive of things as they are, but the greater part of the book dwells on matters connected with the Church during the middle ages. The thought that ap pears to have marred, throughout, the enjoyment of our Oxford divine, was his regret that, while wandering through Roman Catholic lands, he was not in the Roman Catholic communion. "The traveller of the middle ages," he says, "rose with the religious men beneath whose roof he had found shelter for the night; with them he sought first of all, the house, oftentimes the altar, of God, and joined in the matin service of the Western Church. He went forward on his road with prayer and benediction. A cloud of good wishes accompanied and guarded him from monastery to monastery, while the courts of bishops and the cloisters of learned men were opened to him, by the commendatory letters of his native prelates. The traveller of those times had solid advantages which a churchman nowadays may be allowed to regret, and for which he would be modern facilities. They who are accustomed to bewilling to exchange no inconsiderable portion of our The author has given in his third volume a historical narrative of public events from 691 to 703. The three succeeding years which preced-lieve and act as if there were a church, and one ed the war between Cæsar and Pompey, are described by the supposed correspondents, the war itself forming the subject of fifteen letters. The events in the East are related by C. Cassius; those in Rome, including the domestic politics of the republic, by P. Servilius; the Spanish campaign is described by Q. Cassius, and with Cæsar's arrival in Egypt the work closes. The book is accompanied by two maps, one represents the country round Herda, the other that between Dyrrhachium and Pharsalus. ART. XV.-Sights and Thoughts in Foreign church only, and to deem each little fact and symptom connected with her as of more importance than political statistics, or the critical observations of the artist, will acknowledge both their profit and their pleasure to have been marred, in no slight degree, by the absence of those privileges of Christian communion, so richly dealt out of old to travellers." These lamentations, these yearnings after a reunion with Rome, are constantly renewed throughout the book; and where Mr. Faber is desirous to put forward extreme opinions, the responsibility of which he is yet unwilling to assume, he places them in the mouth of an ideal personage, a ghostly interlocutor from the middle ages, who appears to have burst his cerements travelling companion to the learned Puseyite from for the express purpose of engaging himself as Oxford. These two theologians, he of the spirit and he of the flesh, engage from time to time in a kind of friendly discussion on the merits of the Church of England, on which occasions the gentleman of the middle ages is always politely allowed to have the best of the argument. The following may be taken as a specimen of the meek humility with which our Oxford Pusevite allows himself to be schooled by this imaginary champion for Roman supremacy : THIS is an almost uninterrupted rhapsody of 645 pages, inspired by the author's journey through France, Italy, and Greece, on his way to Jerusalem. He carries his reader only to Athens, but promises a continuation in case the present work should be favourably received; that is to say, if it should sell readily, and not leave the "You forget,' said I, that we are not brought up expense of publication on the author or his bookseller. We cannot say that we wish it any such Rome is not as other churches. She is not a comto reverence Rome.' That is not well,' he answered; success, but we are far from apprehending that mon city: she has no common chair.' Alas,' said I, the book will want readers. There is a large I cannot grant-Who bade you grant anything? class among whom there prevails a morbid taste he interrupted; answer me not; I was speaking, as for these religious ravings; and to do Mr. Faber it were, out of the bosom of my own centuries, forjustice, few works of the kind are written with 'getting your hindrances; but when I do speak, answer 1842. Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean. Mr. Faber takes his ghostly confessor at his word, and allows him to rail in good set terms at the rebellious church of Oxford and Cambridge, without offering a word in reply, except an occasional "I should hope," or, "we may expect," always nipped in the bud by the testy old gentleman, who very consolingly tells his young peuitent he has nothing to hope for, till he shall have effected his reconciliation with the parent church. A favourite scheme of our Puseyite traveller is the establishment of monastic orders in England. His ancient friend has a plan ready cut and dry for the purpose, and recommends particularly the location of little colonies of monks and nuns in the manufacturing districts. As Mr. Faber says nothing against the scheme in his imaginary dialogues, he must be supposed to agree in its propriety. If so, why has he not the courage to say so? Why, rather, has he not the honesty to throw up his Oxford fellowship at once, and avow himself the zealous devotee to the faith of Rome, which every page of his book shows him to be? Why does he remain in even ostensible communion with a church of which he speaks in these terms? "Am I then to believe, what I have been told on many sides, that your church is but a dream, and your churchmen dreamers, with an unrealized theology, not a branch of the Catholic vine, true, healthy, strong, vigorous, growing, pliable, gifted, tangible, substantial? Have you not made an illuminated transparency, a soothing sight for quiet times, and sat before it so long and so complacently, that you now venture to call it a Catholic church? While you talk so largely of your own church, you put no faith in her. This it is which angers me. It is a kind of hypocrisy. You do not believe that she dare loosen the pegs of her tent-cords, in order to enlarge it, lest a rough wind should blow it over in the mean while." These words, it is true, are put into the mouth of the resuscitated personage of the middle ages; but the worthy Puseyite has not a word to say in reply, but that he is determined never to leave his church, be her sins what they may. In this prudent determination the whole spirit of Puseyism is concentrated. The revenues of the Anglican are to be held conjointly with the tenets of the Roman church. 283 author to begin upon; and a little industry alone is wanting to turn them to account. In this, however, Colonel Napier is wanting. His are left in too unfinished a state. He has hitherto sketches are spirited, but, for the most part, they been little known in the world of literature, except as an agreeable writer of light articles for periodicals. Some excellent papers from his pen and in several of the sporting magazines; but have appeared in the United Service Magazine, something more solid and connected is required in a work of two volumes. The reader who takes up these Excursions, however, merely with The colonel is a lively travelling companion, a view to amusement, will not be disappointed. mixes familiarly with all classes, and has a quick eye for the beautiful, whether it presents itself in the shape of a southern landscape or a comely hostess. He is at all times ready for fun, and relates his frolics with a zest which shows how entirely he enjoyed them in the acting, and how willing he is that his readers should share the enjoyment;-but in the course of excursions that extended along both sides of the Mediterranean, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bosphorus, much and valuable information might have been collected, for which we look in vain in his pages. It was at first his intention, he tells us in his preface, to have brought the work out in its original shape of letters from the Mediterranean, addressed to Lady Napier. The confidential correspondence with a kind parent, however, necessarily containing many particulars void of interest, he was induced, whilst retaining the familiar epistolary style, to throw the narrative into the form of a journal." It was towards the close of 1837, that he aecompanied his regiment to Gibraltar, and while stationed there, he found means frequently to relieve the tedium of garrison duty by excursions into the territories of Morocco and Spain. The greater part of the present work is occupied by an account of the author's adventures during these excursions. When the "Old Commolore" arrived at Gibraltar in the Powerful, on his way to join the Mediterranean fleet under Sir R. Stopford, the colonel accepted an invitation to go on to the Levant with his step-father, and the latter part of the work gives us an account of his cruise in the Levant, in the course of which he visited Malta, a number of the Greek islands, the site of ancient Troy, Constantinople, Athens, &c. In the course of such a varied tour, he could hardly fail to see and observe much; much more indeed than could possibly be brought within the compass of two octavo volumes: and it is perhaps in attempting to compass too much that a fragmentary tone has been given to his narrative. Yet we will not be captious with so good-humoured a man. His excursions affect not to be scientific travels, or ethnographical disCOLONEL NAPIER is, we believe, the stepson of quisitions. He introduces his reader in rapid the gallant commodore whose achievements at succession to the practical humours of the messCape St. Vincent, and more recently in Syria, room, the jovial hospitality of the monastery, have placed him among England's naval heroes. and the somewhat lawless life of Spanish stuThe colonel has inherited some admirable qual-dents; he wanders gaily with the muleteer over ities from the commodore-a flow of spirits, an energy of purpose, a frankness of speech, and a hearty contempt for cant and affectation of every kind. These form a good stock in trade for an ART. XVI.—Excursions along the Shores of the Mediterranean. By LIEUT.-COL. E. NAPIER, 46th Regt. 2 vols. Colburn. 1842. the Sierras of Andalusia and Grenada, and seems to realize at times the adventurous excursions of the Manchan knight; he shows us the way to the haunts of the gipsies, and the camp of the Arabs; entertains us at one moment with an account of a Greek review, too technical perhaps for a civilian reader, but very interesting, no doubt, to his brother officers, and then dashes off with the steamer for Constantinople, to explore the bazaars, and watch the very decided preference of Turkish ladies for handsome shopmen. Nor must it be forgotten that the colonel is quite as much at home with his pencil as with his pen, of which we have many finished evidences in the volumes. To the reader who seeks only amusement, and looks for a cheerful and agreeable travelling companion, we can conscientiously recommend the colonel. evidently been suppressed, and the public would have lost nothing if the rest of the memoirs had been treated in a similar way. Varnhagen von Ense, by giving a preface to the book, becomes its sponsor to the public. This is a trick of which we have of late had frequent examples at home, though we doubt whe ther a dull volume can ever be rendered popular by introducing the name of a favourite author into the title-page. It is a piece of finesse that may succeed now and then, but its effect must he destroyed by frequent repetition, and the honesty of the device is at all times questionable. ART. XVII.-Denkwürdigkeiten des Freiherrn ART. XVIII.-Frederick the Great, his Court and Times. Edited by THOMAS CAMPBELL, Esq. Vols. I. and II. London: Colburn. 1842. "I SHOULD feel myself degraded," says Mr. Campbell, "to be the editor of any composition unlikely to be interesting or useful to the public. If such a production were condemned, the editor would have to bear the brunt and shame of its condemnation. It would not suffice for him to say, 'I am not the author of the work;' for the ready reply would be, No, but you are its sponsor.' True; and if I had any such fear about these volumes, I should never have made myself their sponsor.' THE memoirs of a man who has played a prominent part upon the public stage are likely to be of the highest interest, if he is disposed to be communicative; but then his communications must not be confined to trivial matters, while up on all things of which the public is most desirous of information he preserves a dignified silence. The present work is compiled from papers and documents left by Von Asseburg: but the compiler, himself a diplomatist, has been Mr. Campbell then is not the author of these so ultra-discreet with respect to everything rela- volumes, but he comes forward as the guide of tive to public matters, particularly to the Rus- public judgment. He is the sponsor to assure sian government, that what remains might just the world that this anonymous life of Frederick as well have remained among the other family is a good book. He anticipates the office of the papers of the deceased. Who, for instance, reviewer. He stamps his own name upon the coin, and expects it to pass current in the world on the strength of his credit. would feel disposed to pay the smallest fraction of the price of the book, to be informed of the genealogy of the house of Asseburg? Yet to this mighty subject is the introductory part of the work almost exclusively devoted. This little artifice, already referred to in the foregoing article, is one that has been becoming more and more customary, both in England and on the continent, and has perhaps been attacked, both here and abroad, with more violence than so venial an offence can be said to merit. The name of a popular author on the title-page not as author but as editor, can scarcely make a bad book " go down," and it may sometimes call immediate attention to a work of merit, which would otherwise have made its way more slowly into public favour. Upon the permanent position of a book the popularity of an editor can exercise no influence; but to a bookseller, to whom quick returns are of importance, it may be of use to have a sponsor whose authority forces the public to pronounce immediate sentence upon a book that might otherwise have required years to creep into notice. The editor, in such a case, is like the friend who recom mends a new contributor to a popular periodical. The friend becomes the sponsor of the article offered, but he does not pledge himself to obtain its acceptance. We are first introduced to the baron himself as a Danish general, in which character he was employed in Sweden, in 1755, in the honourable task of doing what he could to impede the regeneration of the Swedish monarchy. He was a witness of the abortive revolution of 1756, but none of the many letters here communicated throw any fresh light upon the history of that time. The negotiations relative to HolsteinGottorp led Asseburg first to Berlin, and afterwards to Russia, and subsequently, with the consent of the Danish government, he undertook to travel through Germany to select a wife for the Archduke Paul. He was fortunate enough to find what he was in quest of, in the person of a princess of the house of Hesse Darmstadt. Asseburg now entered avowedly into the diplomatic service of Russia, and for twenty-four years filled the office of Russian Ambassador to the German diet. Had a less reserved communication been made of his papers, much information might, no doubt, have been given respect- Still, after all that can be said for it, the arti ing the intrigues of Russia to establish her influ- fice is one which ought to be discouraged; for ence in Germany; but if such papers existed it is an artifice, and is particularly dangerous to they have been withheld by the baron's literary the public favourite that lends himself to it. If executor. All that was worth publishing has the book is a good one, the author ought to have the full merit of it, and his readers will all think energy of the nation, than the fiery zeal which they would have discovered its worth without has arisen of late years, and has led to so vast the interference of the sponsor; if the book is a an expenditure of ink and invective. bad one, the blame is all laid on the editor, and very deservedly. The work before us is one of the countless multitude which the reanimated zeal of sectarian Having said thus much of a practice of which controversy has latterly called into life in Gerwe cannot exactly approve, any more than we many; but it is distinguished from the crowd of can join in the outcry that has been raised against its brethren, inasmuch as it is not only an eruit, it may not be amiss to say a word or two of dite, but moreover a sensible and entertaining the book to which Mr. Campbell has chosen to book. The author, a German, had been a destand godfather. We could have liked a more votee to rationalism at the university, but unlike comprehensive history of the "Times" of Frede- the majority of those who adopt the same opirick. They were bold and stirring times. All nions without any very patient inquiry into the Europe was in arms, and in almost every Euro- tenets they reject, he seems to have held it to pean state great questions were at issue. An be his duty on a matter of such importance, not historian could not have chosen a nobler theme. to take even infidelity upon trust. By dint of In France the great revolution was preparing. much study and patient investigation, he at In Spain a new dynasty was becoming familiar-length arrived at the conviction, that the dogized to the people. In England the ancient mas of the Lutheran church comprised the tru royal family were struggling to recover their lost est, the purest, and most complete system of crown. In Germany the imperial dignity was Christianity. With these feelings he entered thrown down as the prize to be contended for the church, and accepted an appoin.ment as And in the New World a new republic was preacher to a Lutheran congregation that had preparing to spring into life. The History of recently been formed at Brussels. In this posiFrederick, And his Times, in the hands of ano- tion he was of course brought into constant inther Robertson, might have furnished a national tercourse, and sometimes into collision, with the work equal to the Charles the Fifth, but the Roman Catholic and Reformed churches, as well author of the volumes now under consideration as with the various fractions of the latter, known appears to have had no such object in view. under the title of Independents, Baptists, &c. His aim has evidently been confined to a deli- Of all these denominations he here presents an neation of the court and camp of the Prussian amusing and life-like picture, and he speaks of monarch, of which he has furnished an amusing them all with quite as much impartiality as a and probably a correct picture. He has skil- man can be expected to do, who is not lukewarm fully combined into one narrative the numerous in the cause which he advocates. He presents memoirs that bear upon the life of Frederick and a black picture, indeed, of the intrigues and Frederick's father; and has thus composed a machinations of the Jesuits and of the monkish very amusing book, replete with anecdote, and faction in Belgium, but we are not prepared to admirably illustrative of the courts of Germany say that his statements are not in substance true, in the early part of the last century. To the though his colours may at times be overcharged. English public a large portion of the work must He is never betrayed into unseemly expressions be entirely new, many of the letters of Frederick towards those whose conduct he blames, and having been interwoven; and in the subsequent whose opinions he rejects; and the spirit of bevolumes, we may expect advantage to be taken nevolence by which he seems to be animated, of the documents which the commission ap- and which leads him often to look into the future pointed by the present King of Prussia is pre- with somewhat too sanguine a hope, is not the paring for the press. less deserving of our respect for the very rarity of that union of sectarian zeal with Christian charity which characterizes his writings. ART. XIX.-Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte der THE activity and enterprise of the reigning pope, Many of the leading events and questions of the day are discussed with an earnestness not unbecoming in a churchman, who has no fear of impairing the sanctity of his office by sympathizing with his fellow Christians in matters in which the temporal welfare of millions is more or less concerned. Thus the life and discipline of the students at the German universities are treated of in a manner that shows the author to be acquainted with his subject, and well able to make it attractive. The jubilee lately commemorated by the printers of Germany, the separation of the Lutherans in Prussia, the restric tions on the German press, the utility of foreign missions, and a variety of other questions of the day, are discussed in succession. The book is rendered particularly attractive by a personal description of many of the most eminent churchmen of Holland, whom even to the majority of his German readers the author has probably introduced for the first time, and who are doubtless still less known to the English public. ART. XX.-Reise um die Erde, durch Nord object in educating our daughters, is simply to Asien und die beiden Oceane in den Jahren render them attractive during a short period that 1828, 1829, und 1830. Von ADOLF ERMAN. we may have a better chance of getting rid of Zweite Abtheilung; Physikalische Beobach- them, it is vain to point out the means that tungen. Zweiter Band: Inklinationen und In- might serve to the attainment of a very different tensitäten, &c. (A Journey round the World, end. through Northern Asia and the two Oceans.) Berlin. 1841. In the mean time, as Mr. O'Connell tells his Repealers, The cause of this "effect-defective" lies no doubt in the difficulty of providing for daughters otherwise than by marriage: in the want of luTHE present publication is a continuation of Pro- crative and honourable occupations correspondfessor Erman's account of the journey round the ing with what are called the liberal professions, world, on which, impelled solely by a love of to which women of refinement and cultivated science, he set out in 1828, and which he per- intellect, belonging to the middle and higher formed, almost wholly, at his own expense. classes, might devote themselves without any His object was to establish a series of magnetic fear of losing caste, or of incurring that “world's observations round the whole circle of our globe. I dread laugh" declared to be so terrible even to With this view he joined the scientific expedi- philosophers, and which girls are carefully taught tion of Hansteen through Western Siberia, and to shun as the greatest possible evil. Hrrein we accompanied it as far as Irkutsk. The remain- firmly believe might be found the cure of the der of the journey was performed by Erman un- mercenary marriages, the frivolous lives, the assisted by any government or society. From wasted energies, the breaches of conjugal ties, the mouth of the Ob he travelled, by the way of and all the long train of evils on which so many Okhotsk, to Kamtshatka; thence by sea to the chapters of lamentations have been, are, and Russian colonies in America; and after visiting will continue to be written. California, Tahiti, and other places, he returned by the way of Cape Horn to St. Petersburg and Berlin. The first volume of the Professor's ac-"Who would be free themselves must strike the count of this journey was published in 1833, the third in 1838, and the fourth is now before us. The series of valuable observations made by Professor Erman during his journey, and of which the substance has for several years been a known to the scientific world, are here explained more in detail. They are preceded by a minute description of the instruments used, and of the system of calculation adopted. The present volume belongs altogether to the scientific portion of the work of which it forms a part; and should we attempt to lay an abstract of it before our readers, we should only fatigue some of them by the dryness of the technology, while we should disappoint others by the incompleteness of our extracts. The scientific inquirer will be content with nothing less than the whole work; the general reader would find little attraction in tabular statements of the sort of declinations and inclinations, intensities and variations, to which the learned Professor Erman has devoted his life and his fortune. ART. XXI.—The Educatian of Mothers of Families, or, the Civilisation of the Human Race by Women. By AINE MARTIN. Translated by EDWIN LEE, Esq. THE subject of this book is one on which there is so much to be said that it can scarcely be unwelcome. That the bad education of women lies at the root of almost all that is unsound in the state of modern society,-that a thorough reform of this would include nearly all other reforms, might be satisfactorily proved without any great expenditure of time or labour. But before all things," says a German writer, "if we would inquire our way, it is necessary to know where we wish to go to." It is an old observation that none are such bad seekers as those who have no wish to find-and as long as our real blow; " lever that should operate so great and beneficial and whoever would set in motion the mighty change must induce women to put their own is the one M. Aimé Martin has had in view; but hands to it. This excellent and important object he would perhaps have had a better chance of declamation, and avoided that tone of sentiattaining it, if he had indulged less in vague mental adulation more likely to offend than to persuade the only women to whom he could address himself with any chance of success. mothers to undertake themselves the cultivation It is to be feared also that the injunction to of what he calls the "faculties of the soul," while they leave to others that of the intellect or "animal intelligence," will be rather difficult to work out in practice. Morals and Religion cannot be taught like Greek and Mathematics, at certain hours set apart for the purpose; and, if a child pass the greater part of the day at school, his notion of morals and religion will be usually such as the school will supply. It may do very well for some purposes, to separate with metaphysical dissecting-knives the faculties of the intellect from those of the soul-although we do not profess to think M. Aimé Martin has always succeeded in the attempt; but education admits of no such process; and, unless women are rendered capable of instructing the intellects of their children, it is idle to talk of confiding to them the cultivation of the heart. ART. XXII.-1 Novellen aus dem Süden. (Tales from the South.) Von ROB. HELLER. 2 Vols. Altenburg. 1842. 2. Waldteufel. (Wood Demons.) Von LADISLAUS TARNOWSKI. 3 Vols. Grünberg. 1842. 3. De Braha und Sein Schwerdt. Historischer |