New Publications

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NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Edinburgh Review¹ for the quarter ending October has been received from the Publishers, Leonard Scott & Co.,² 79 Fulton street. It appears to be a fair, average number of this time-honored review and will well repay a careful examination.

In the year 1825 Basil Montague’s³ edition of Bacon’s Works appeared. The lively old man had devoted the best years of his life to the history and writings of the author of the “Novum Organon” but he lacked the comprehensive philosophical views, exact literary criticism and impartial biographical research necessary to the task, and the appearance of that edition is chiefly remarkable in literature as the occasion which called forth in the pages of “the Edinburgh” that consummately brilliant and eloquent essay on Bacon, Lord Verulam, which gave an impetus to the rising fame of MACAULAY. The present number of the Review opens with an article on the same theme elicited by the publication of Spedding’s complete edition, bearing the imprint of 1857. The labors of the editor are praised, and the article itself is readable and instructive.

“The Life and Opinions of Gen. Sir Charles Napier, G.C.B. By Lieut. Gen. Sir W. Napier, K.C.B., &c., &c.” furnishes the text for a paper upon the life and character of that gallant and impetuous soldier and hasty, but not ungenerous man. The writer accuses the biographer of giving undue prominence to the more forbidding features of his brother’s character, and of having gratified his own vindictive spirit at the expense of his brother’s reputation. The book is stigmatized as at once discreditable to himself and to the literature of his country.

Admiral Smyth’s⁴ work on “The Mediterranean”—a memoir physical, historical and nautical, published some three years ago, forms the subject of an interesting essay.

A very able and suggestive article on French History is founded on Henri Martin’s⁵ “History of France.” The author laments, in conclusion, that whilst every crime is pardoned and every excess palliated in a Robespierre or a Napoleon, the French are lacking in respect to feudal greatness or constitutional struggles. He says: “Aristocracy is the great bug-bear, the arch-foe for which all anathema is reserved. The political and social results of the 18th century in France may have led but too naturally to such a conclusion. But to entertain and cherish the sentiment now,—to continue to exorcise the phantom of aristocracy which does not exist, whilst the far more practical foe of human progress, despotism, looks on and profits by the flattery or the mistake, is a lamentable perversion of the judgment and a misdirection of intellectual power. The jealousy and hatred instilled into and entertained by the lower class of the French people for all that is or can be above them, by virtue of either birth, wealth or even talent, is the curse of the time, the ban which condemns France to know no freedom and to follow the blind path of ignorance and materialism. This jealousy and hatred—the exaggeration and continuance of a feeling which may have been natural in 1789, but which ought to have been satisfied and allayed forever by the events and the year which followed, it is the peculiar humor of Michelet and Martin to preach and to inculcate. Hence, while we open these volumes with curiosity, and peruse them with interest, we find little reason to hope that they will diffuse the temperate love of free institutions among the rising generation of those liberties from which France still finds herself unnaturally debarred.”

“Landed credit” is the title of the next paper. Two recent French works on the Credit Foncier furnish the immediate text for the article, which is of more interest to transatlantic readers than to our own.

Lord Campbell’s admirable “Lives of the Lord Chief Justices” forms the material for an excellent article on a subject full of interest. It is followed by a paper on “Scotch Agriculture.”

“Harford’s Life of Michael Angelo” is reviewed in a genial and appreciative spirit. The lovers of Art will perceive that not a little fresh light is thrown upon the career of the great Florentine by Harford’s elaborate biography.

An article upon “India” is in the main temperate, just and sensible in its views. The writer concedes, in the first place, that it is impossible to permanently hold that unhappy country by force alone. He asserts, however, that this outbreak had not its origin in the resentment of a mis-governed people, but that the movement is one primarily of Mahomedan origin. He notices the reasonable hypothesis started among others to account for the outbreak, viz: that the progress of civilization and Christianity in India had become, of late, so active and apparent as to arouse to frenzy the dormant passions of Oriental superstition. The mysterious power of the telegraph already united every part of the empire by means incomprehensible to the native mind—lines of railroad had begun to impart new means of locomotion to the population—freedom of trade had opened the country more and more to European enterprise—and even the law in its connection with some of the domestic regulations of the Hindoos had undergone changes which seemed destined to inaugurate a period of greater toleration. In short, the time had arrived when a more active struggle between the progressive spirit of a free and Christian government and the ancient bondage of Asiatic society had become inevitable. The reviewer does not doubt these were among the causes which engendered that agitated condition of the public mind in Northern India which undoubtedly preceeded and accompanied the military revolt. But whatever weight may be assigned to the supposition, certain it is that it is by these very arts and appliances of a high civilization by which this explosion of barbarism must be eventually subdued. Had the revolt occurred before these things existed, every European in Hindostan might have perished before the tidings reached England. The outbreak must have occurred, sooner or later, and in many respects England was in good condition for the conflict. By means of the telegraph in the Punjaub Sir John Lawrence was enabled to disarm the suspected regiments and save the province. Railroads and steam navigation ensured the speedy arrival of large reinforcements. At home there was an army greatly reduced, no doubt, but composed of veteran troops, many of whom had recently seen war in its rudest forms. Dear experience had taught them how to transport large bodies of armed men to distant quarters of the globe, and even their weapons of combat had received improvements unknown to the East. All these facts are commented on by the reviewer, who winds up his article thus:

"In short, while we deplore with our whole heart this dreadful and mysterious calamity, we retain the conviction that it could not have happened at as time when we are better prepare to meet it, and that it might have occured at a time when we were destitute of our present resources. If therefore we are called upon to restore the British Empire in India to its former stability and grandeur by force of arms—if this contest between the barbarism and fanaticism of Asiatic hordes, and the civilised authority of Christian rulers must be fought on the plains of Hindostan,—we engage in it, not only with a clear conscience and a bold heart, but with all the means which a well-disciplined and highly-cultivated nation can apply to the chastisement of its enemies. The collision was not sought by us, nor was it caused by any act of tyranny or injustice; it has been forced upon us by unparalleled acts of brutality, treason and wickedness; and if we may dare to interpret the inscrutable decrees of Providence, this is one of those occasions in which a nation is sometimes armed with every element of superior force in order to vindicate eternal justice and to advance the moral government of the world."

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