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the "sentimental" wrongs of Irishmen, so | Wordsworth and Thomas De Quincey, surely as we acknowledge in word and plain John Campbell" and "Christopher deed that they are our equals, entitled to North," not to mention other names, have respect even in their idiosyncrasies, to tol- all their rightful place of appreciation in erance even in their prejudices, to argu- her picture-gallery. Then the knowledge ment even in their errors, so surely shall of the authoress is seldom, if ever, at fault. we find that they are willing on those terms She is as equally at home with the happy to be our comrades- nay, that they have circumstances of Lockhart's early intimacy always in the worst hours been- our cor- with Walter Scott, as with those of the dial friends in every task which lies before Wordsworths at Rydal Mount, or with the the at last United Empire. What that political events in the long career of Lord friendship is worth to us as a people we Palmerston. Again, the sense of justice shall not attempt to describe, for this is makes itself felt in every one of her essays. not the moment to tell how bitterly our Or, at all events, if we were to make any Saxon people need the aid the Celt alone exceptions, it would be in these two incan bring, the genius and the dash, the stances: light-heartedness and the imagination of the Irishman: but we may use one material and unanswerable argument. We are now but twenty millions, for of our nominal thirty, the Milesian five neutralize by their discontent the strength of at least five more. When Ireland is reconciled, we shall be thirty millions.

From The Spectator. MISS MARTINEAU'S BIOGRAPHICAL

SKETCHES.*

Ir is quite impossible, within the limits of a single article in this journal, to say all that we should like to say of the delightful volume. We must accordingly content ourselves with putting down a few observations as to the general merits revealed in Miss Martineau's biographical sketches, and singling out one or two of her portraitures for special comment, which, however, must in the main, prove for commendation. Miss Martineau has furnished us in the compass of fewer than 500 pages with representations of forty-six more or less distinguished or noteworthy personages, who have recently passed from the stage of visible human life. Nine or ten pages are all the space which she affords to any of her delineations, and yet she never fails to leave with the reader a singularly distinct impression of the character, the surroundings and the work of the subject of her presentment.

- She seems a little too severe on Mrs. Jameson, and rather exaggerates the influence of Lady Byron on the world at large-in the latter case imputing to a wider outer circle feelings which only existed within a comparatively limited one. Finally, the artistic ability with which the authoress combines a careful analysis of character, with just so much thread of narrative as is necessary to render a given sketch intelligible and lifelike, and with telling anecdotes which at once illuminate the idiosyncrasy of the person depicted and also the wit or humour of the biographer, is of a kind highly admirable.

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Miss Martineau arranges her Essays under six divisions, which are the "Royal," Politicians,"66 Professional," " Scientific,' "Social," and "Literary." Beginning the first list with the Emperor of Russia, she closes it with the late Duchess of Kent. To the mother of the Queen she dedicates a paper, which is altogether charming, of womanly grace and geniality. Indeed, each of Miss Martineau's representations is dividual subject of her pen-and-ink art, that so thoroughly a caught reflection of the inthe perusal of her sketches has been to us like a study of the portraits of one of our ablest artists late Thomas Phillips. The heads of Phillips we mean especially those of the are all "objective," if you like the word. He saw the object, and could paint it. And in reading Miss Martineau's volume, the awakened within us as we same sense of truth and reality has been experienced, lately, in surveying in succession the masterIn the first place, we are struck, as, in- pieces of Phillips, such as his smug Dissentdeed, we were prepared to be, with the parson, the fine old country gentleman, redolent of high breeding, a copious cellar, range of Miss Martineau's sympathies. and broad acres, side by side with the polGeorge Combe and Bishop B.omfield, Rob-ished bishop, the fiery Hetman Platoff, and ert Owen and Archbishop Whately, Mrs. the marvellous face of Lord Byron, in Jameson and Lady Noel Byron, David which last the whole complex character of Roberts and the Emperor Nicholas, Mrs.

Biographical Sketches. By Harriet Martineau. London: Macmillan. 1869.

the man is rendered for those who can read it. To return to the essay last named, Miss Martineau tells us in it the following char

acteristic story of the young Princess Vic-autocrat were numbered. And if her lantoria :

guage is prophetic, it is not less remarkable for its pathos and power. There is not perhaps in the whole volume a passage so striking as that in which she depicts the Russian Emperor "sitting among the wreck of his his last. We must make room for a portion on that birth-day which proved to be

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of it :

"It became known at Tunbridge Wells that the Princess had been unable to buy a box at a bazaar, because she had spent all her money. At this bazaar she had bought presents for almost all her relations, and had laid out her last shilling, when she remembered one cousin more, and saw a box, priced half-a-crown, which would suit him. The shop people of course placed the box with the other purchases, but "Hated by his nobles; liked only by an igthe little lady's governess admonished them by norant peasantry who can give him no aid, and saying, 'No, you see the Princess has not got receive no good from him; drawn on by his own the money, and, therefore, of course she cannot passions to sacrifice them in hecatombs, while buy the box.' This being perceived, the next they fix their eyes on him as their only hope; offer was to lay by the box till it could be pur-appointed in his army and its officers; afraid to tricked by his servants all over the Empire; dischased; and the answer was, 'Oh, well, if you leave his capital, because it would be laid waste

will be so good as to do that,' and the thing was done. On quarter-day, before seven in the morning, the Princess appeared on her donkey to claim her purchase. Anecdotes like these, apparently small, have large meanings; and in such traits people saw promise of the rectitude and elevated economy which have made the mother of our Royal family respected by the people whose need and convenience she has so admirably respected."

as soon as his back was turned; cursed in all

directions for the debts of his nobles, the bankconscious of the reprobation of England and ruptcy of trade, and the hunger of his people; France, whose reprobation could be no indifferent matter to Lucifer himself; finding himself out in his count about Austria, and about everybody but his despised brothers of Prussia and (as an after-thought) Naples; and actually humbled before the Turk, what a position for a man whose birthday once seemed to be an event in the Calendar of the Universe! Be it remembered the while that he is broken in health and he cannot take sufficient food. The eagle glance has become wolfish. The proud calm of his fine face has given way to an expression of anxiety and trouble. Let him be pitied then, and with kindness. He is, perhaps, the greatest sufferer in Europe, and let him be regarded accordingly. But, as we need not say, he is totally unfit for the management of human destinies."

heart. . . . He trembles with weakness because

The first sketch is entitled the last birthday of the Emperor Nicholas, and there is something almost prophetic in its character. For though on the day in question, July 6th, 1854, Nicholas was broken in health, and stooped as if burdened with the weight of old age, yet he was only in his fifty-ninth year, and to the world at large he was still the most prominent and responsible actor in the Crimean drama. When, accordingly, eight months later, the tidings reached England that the Emperor had passed away, we can most of us recall the sensation which Among the politicians of whom Miss Marspread over the country, and with what tineau has thought it well to write there is bated breath men spoke under the sudden one name which was but little known to the overshadowing of the wings of the Angel general world — that of Lord Murray. But of Death. On Sunday, the 4th of March, we cannot doubt that this Edinburgh celebri1855, there was scarcely a pulpit in which ty will, for a short time, be a somewhat inreference was not made to the startling event teresting subject of discourse in literary cirwhich had occurred in the previous week; cles. Lord Murray, a Scottish judge, and and history was eagerly ransacked by many the son of a Scottish judge, was in his early reverend speakers for a parallel instance of days associated with the light-hearted and the unlooked-for intervention of the Divine audacious young men who, through the meProvidence in the fortunes of a great com- dium of the Edinburgh, bearded old Toryism paign. Tamerlane, Alaric, Attila, Sennac- in its den. In due course Murray became herib were not altogether injudiciously Lord Advocate, and while he held the of brought forward to point the moral on the fice, his tea-table at St. Stephens's, "with occasion, so suddenly had each one of an enormous and excessively rich Edinthese warriors been summoned by the Sov-burgh cake in the centre" (was it not canereign Will from the command of their arm- onical Scotch bun, we wonder?) was a very ies and the visions of their ambition. But popular board of gay and witty conference. Miss Martineau writes in the previous year There was to be seen no end of celebrities, as if a brain-wave of the coming end of Nic- including, of course, Sydney Smith, when holas had already reached her consciousness, in town. Then, in Mr. Murray's countryassuring her that the days of the haughtyhouse on Loch Fyne, the hospitalities of

host and hostess, to use Chaucer's phrase she writes concerning Owen, Combe, and when writing of the Franklin's open table, Father Matthew. To the worth of their requite "snowed" all sorts of good things spective characters she is keenly alive, as upon the guests. Doubtless Lord Murray to the benevolence of all their intentions was a sufficient and companionable host, an and systems; but she is equally bold in ashonest Liberal, and wholly respectable in- serting of the three that their endeavours dividual; but as Miss Martineau is careful after the amelioration of human society must to note, the goodly fellowship of the Edin- needs fail, because of their imperfect views burgh reviewers did not turn out one great of the needs and deeper aspirations of the statesman. With the exception of Lord Human Being, whose welfare they all had Brougham, they said, and did not. Murray so much at heart. Vows, mechanical assohimself settled down into a mere steady pro- ciations, enlarged acquaintance with the moter of Whig elections, and rumours used structure of the animal portion of our nature, to be current in the northern metropolis of and of the laws which rule over its health his mild enjoyment of a good snooze on the will not cast out the demons which possess bench, with this special addition in one in- society. No; the culture of the higher facstance, that Lord Cockburn gently whis- ulties of man will alone lead to that hopedpered to him, "Murray, dinna snore sae for consummation, and, as we believe, that loud, or ye'll wauken Cunningham." culture is only to be gained in the school of Christ.

Miss Martineau writes in an altogether righteous tone of Murray's more distinguished brother reviewer, Lord Brougham; but we had occasion so very recently to give expression to our own estimate of the erratic nobleman, it would be rather supefluous to say more about him now; only the concluding paragraph of Miss Martineau is much too piquant to be omitted;

"Lord Brougham was at his château at Cannes when the first introduction of the daguerreotype process took place there; and an accomplished neighbour proposed to take a view of the chatean, with a group of guests in the balcony. The artist explained the necessity of perfect immobility; he only asked that his lordship would keep perfectly still for five seconds,' and his lordship vehemently promised that he would not stir. He moved about too soon, however, and the consequence was a blur where Lord Brougham should be; and so stands the deguerreotype to this hour. There is something mournfully typical in this. In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by history, this very man should have been a central figure; but now, owing to his want of steadfastness, there will for ever be a blur where Brougham should be."

Did our space permit, we would gladly add to our selections from Miss Martineau's Recreations,' as her essays might appropriately be designated, and give our readers some account of the rare workmanship

We most reluctantly come to a conclusion, but ere doing so would specially call the attention of our readers to Miss Martineau's In Memoriam of Christopher North. It is altogether beyond praise of ours, and is written at once with the finest discrimination, and with a generous enthusiasm which makes us feel that the heart of our essayist is still young.

From The Spectator.

MR. BROWNING'S NEW POEM.* THERE can be no doubt but that in a certain sense the alloy which Mr. Browning told us in his prologue was necessary to shape the pure gold of the ring into such a tempered, though fragile, circlet as would be fit for use, has been successfully manipulated. We have at last

"The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore, Prime nature with an added artistry,"

in the exquisite and, we dare assert, immortal portraits of the dove-like yet indomitable Pompilia, and the gallant priestly knight-errant Caponsacchi, in their sharp Count Guido's face,contrast to the glaring, wolfish eyes of

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which is to be met with in the articles on Whately and Bloomfield, Miss Berry and Hawknose and yellowness and bush and all; ' Samuel Rogers, whose united ages nearly make out a couple of centuries; George - with, above them all, the grand figure Combe and Robert Owen, Mrs. Opie and of the old Pope Innocent XII. sitting in Mrs. Wordsworth, John Gibson Lockhart judgment, -a "grey ultimate decrepiand Lord Macaulay, Thomas de Quincey tude," as he calls himself, and John Wilson Croker; nor should we forget the one on good Father Matthew.

Miss Martineau is singularly candid in all

The Ring and the Book. By Robert Browning. In 4 vols. Vols III. and IV. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1869.

"Yet sensible of fires that more and more Visit a soul in passage to the sky

Left nakeder than when flesh-robe was new'

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add something towards the completeness and vividness of the picture of the society in which this tragedy occurred, just as the outline of the red-tape town-clerk of These four figures, of Pompilia and Cap- Ephesus adds a certain vividness to our aponsacchi, in their tragic conflict with Count prehension of the character of St. Paul. Guido, of Guido himself, and the old Pope Still we are compelled, after studying and of eighty-six tottering on the verge of the reviewing carefully the whole course of this grave, but fearing the grave and the repute tragic story, to think that the alloy has he will leave behind him so little, and God been too freely used for the purposes of so much, are both sculptured and painted Mr. Browning's art. In a story told, like for us, as only a master in imaginative art this, in long semi-dramatic reaches, where can sculpture and paint; and we do not the reader is closeted, as it were, with each doubt that some part of the full effect may character for a couple of hours at a stretch, be due to that alloy which Mr. Browning there is far less room for the use of an arwarned us that he was compelled to use for tistic foil, than in a proper drama, where the purpose of his moulding, and which he the action and reaction of the secondary certainly has used somewhat prodigally. characters on the principals are rapid and We do not dispute that had the contending effective. Polonius is a splendid foil to • views of Pompilia's murder taken by "Half Hamlet, but we could hardly endure to let Rome," and the other Half Rome," and Polonius hold us mentally by the button for by that Tertium Quid" whose tertiary an hour and a half or two hours, even quality we found it hard to guess, and though Shakespeare himself developed his finally, the opposite pleadings of the coun- character for us during that period. We sel for the defence, Dominus Hyacinthus de think that what Mr. Browning saw to be Archangeli, and the still dismaler counsel necessary for us in the way of putting in for the prosecution, Juris Doctor Johannes- the background of Roman and Tuscan soBaptista Bottinius, - we do not dispute, we ciety, he might have very well done in his say, that had the contending views of these prologue, and that if he had kept the subsecondary authorities, who "darken coun- stance of the poem itself to the two dissel by words without knowledge," not been courses of the murderer, Count Guido, heard, the impression made upon us by the that outburst of lean and crafty malignity principals in the story, by the yellow wol- before his condemnation, and of hoarse and fishness of Guido's malice, by the ethereal naked hatred after it, to the splendid addepth of blue in Pompilia's clinging but dress of Caponsacchi, the dying tale of the saintly love, by the bright intensity of flame childlike mother Pompilia, and the final in Caponsacchi's indignation, by the keen, judgment and musings of the old Pope upon spiritual truthfulness of the old Pope's dis- the case, he would have given us a poem criminating judgment, might have been very nearly as effective in its features, even much less sharp and vivid than it is. to those who studied it, as the present, and Doubtless the foil of unreality has added with a certainty, moreover, of having, at something to the clear and telling expres- least, five times as many eager and intersiveness of reality. Doubtless the groping, ested students. Without disputing at all uncertain fancy-pictures of the facts by the marvellous cleverness of old Arcangethose who talked of what they knew not, li's legal Latin and selfish epicurism, we have done something to quicken our appre- must confess that we found his buffoonery ciation of the drawing where every stroke very hard reading indeed, while Bottini's tells and a figure grows out so lifelike and hollower and emptier conventionalism was characteristic from the background that it well nigh inducing us to skip him outright. confutes and dissipates at once all the misty That we might have missed something in shapes which the vague surmises of others the finer effects of the whole, had we done have attempted to pass off. We may ad- so, we are ready to admit. All poetry mit even more. We may concede that the probably needs the dull prose_detail of life conditions of society under which this great as a background to bring out its full meancrime, Mr. Browning's theme, took place, ing and force; still, even the greatest poets would scarcely have been so completely dare not embody too much of this in their pictured without the hollow pleadings of poems, and Mr. Browning seems to us to the Roman lawyers on each side, the guzz- have endangered the fame of a noble poem, ling, punning old buffoon who defends the dramatic masterpiece of this great Guido, and the watery-eyed, conventional, writer, by giving us one-half of alloy to petty, and spiteful formalist who pleads for one-half of the highest imaginative paintPompilia. Doubtless these two portraits ing. Of course, we do not mean that in

in

the views of " Half Rome," and "the other | Browning, in the most dramatic passage Half Rome," of the "Tertium Quid," of his whole great poem, makes Guido, when Arcangeli, and of Bottini, there is not a at last the procession enters his cell to lead large share of Mr. Browning's peculiar ge- him away to execution, call out in his last nius. Still, we believe that the group for agony of terror:the sake of which he wrote his poem would be complete without these interpolations, and that without them the poem would have commanded both a wider and a more unflagging interest.

ers.

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"Abate, Cardinal, Christ, - Maria, God. Pompilia! will you let them murder me?" -Pompilia standing at the very climax of With this qualification, it is not easy for his thought of everything Godlike, in spite us to express too highly our admiration for of the fury of his hate. To her, dead, he the four great full-length portraits we have appeals as to a power almost beyond God's, now before us. Of Count Guido we have to save him. And yet with this high valour partly spoken in reviewing the second vol- at the bottom of her, no more simple ume of this poem, and of the noble figure of man-child," as the old Pope finely calls her, the Canon Caponsacchi we then said suffi- was ever painted than Pompilia,- simple cient to fix upon it the attention of our read-alike in her religious maternal love for the But in these two last volumes we have Pompilia the victim of the crime, and the old Pope, its final judge, in a most impressive and living portraiture. We doubt if Mr. Browning's poem will be perpetuated by any of his intellectual studies so long. Pompilia is a figure at once of the most original and simplest school of art. It has something of the loveliness of Raffaelle's Madonna della Seggia about it, but with more both of the child and of the saint. Her husband, a murderer, calls her the pale poison my hasty hunger took for food," and speaks of her as like one of the favourite figures of Fra Angelico,

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"Who traces you some timid chalky ghost

That turns the church into a charnel. Ay,
Just such a pencil might depict my wife."

But that of course is the libel of the malig-
nant and greedy man who can value nothing
without a spice of wickedness in it, nothing
that is not willing and even anxious to take
a taint in his foul service. But the Pope
understands her thoroughly. He makes it
her special praise that having been “obe-
dient to the end,"
66 'dutiful to the foolish
parent first," submissive next to the bad
husband," she could, nevertheless,-

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- be found

"Rise from law to law,
The old to the new, promoted at one cry
O' the trump of God to the new service, not
To longer bear, but henceforth fight,
Sublime in new impatience with the foe;
Endure man and obey God; plant firm foot
On neck of man, tread man into the hell
Meet for him, and obey God all the more."

There is alacrity, even valour, at the bottom
of Pompilia, in spite of what her husband
calls the timid chalky ghost" in her; she
can seize his sword and point it at his breast
when his cruelty and malignity pass all
bounds; and even he feels this. Mr.

boy to whom she gave birth just a fortnight
before her own murder, and in the confes-
sion of the pure depth and intensity of her
devotion to the young priest who saved her
from her husband, and for whose purity of
soul she fights as for her own.
The Pope
speaks of her as of a wayside flower that
"Breaks all into blaze,

Spreads itself, one wide glory of desire
To incorporate the whole great sun it loves,
From the inch-height whence it looks and
longs."

And all these feelings are exquisitely painted
in her last account of the tragedy she just
survived. How fine and tender is this de-
scription of Caponsacchi's care and sympa-
thy for her during the flight from her hus-
band:-

"Is all told? There's the journey: and where's
time

To tell you how that heart burst out in shine?
Yet certain points do press on me too hard.
Each place must have a name, though I forget:
How strange it was— there where the plain
begins

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