after they effected their escape from Honolulu, that the ships approached nearer than eight and to take measures for bringing the whole squadron within reach of their guns. It was at length discovered that the Aurora and the Dwina had succeeded in finding a refuge in the Russian harbor of Petropaulovsky, in Kamtschatka, while the Pallas, another Russian frigate, lay at the mouth of the Chinese river Amoor, to the south of the Gulf of Okhotsk. Leaving the Sandwich Islands on the 25th of July, the allied squadrons, consisting of two English and two French frigates, besides a steamer and a corvette, sailed to the north-west. Admiral PRICE's flagship was the President, a fine 50-gun frigate, supported by the Pique, and the six vessels carried in all nearly 200 guns and 2,000 men. On arriving off the Bay of Avatscha, in which the settlement of St. Peter and St. Paul stands, on the 28th of August, Admiral PRICE went in on board the Virago to reconnoitre the place. He approached within long range of the batteries, and found that the Russian ships of war were laid up within the harbor, defended by four external batteries of no great strength. Fort Schakoff, however, mounted five large guns, and was flanked by two batteries of 12 36pounders.

The

cables' length from the batteries, and, although the Russian guns were silenced for a time, the works were repaired in the night. The Aurora frigate opened a heavy fire from behind the tongue of land which partly concealed her from our ships, but she received in return considerable damage from the squadron. The result of the day was, however, less decisive than had been anticipated, probably because the ships were not brought in close enough to effect the destruction of the works. In consequence of this imperfect success, it was resolved on the 4th of September to attempt a combined attack by land and by sea, which unhappily cost the squadron many valuable lives, with no proportionate result. A force of 700 scamen of the two nations and 160 Marines were landed from the Pique and the French corvette Eurydice, being nearly half the entire strength of the united crews. party was led by M. DE LA GRANDIERE, Captain BURRIDGE, of the President, and Captain PARKER, of the Marines. They succeeded in reaching the battery which they were to take in the rear, but they found it abandoned and the guns already spiked. Meanwhile the enemy lay in wait for our troops in a thick Upon this reconnoissance it was decided jungle or "chaparal," into which they appear that an attack should be made on the 30th of to have been led by the treachery of an August; the ships were cleared for action, and American guide. Here a most unequal comwent into the harbor, and the bombardment bat ensued between the Russian sharpshooters had just commenced, when an incident of a in close ambuscade and our brave Scaman most singular nature suspended the attack. and Marines. Captain PARKER was one of Admiral PRICE, at the commencement of the the first who fell, and two French officers action, is stated to have gone into his cabin were killed by his side, while the whole loss and shot himself with a pistol through the of the landing party exceeded 100 killed and heart, his mind having apparently given way wounded. The ships meanwhile renewed the under the responsibility of his position. Few attack, but without much success, as so large officers in the British navy saw more service a proportion of the crews were on shore. One from 1801 to 1815 than the late Admiral, or or two Russian transports were soon aftermore ably discharged their duty to the country. wards captured by the President, but it must He served in both the expeditions to Copen- be admitted that the attack on Petropaulovsky hagen, in Sir SAMUEL HOOD'S squadron, and the Russian frigates was not so successful and in the last American war with great dis- as it ought to have been; perhaps because our tinction, and his recent appointment to the forces were not prepared to meet so strenuous command of the Pacific squadron was justly and well-organized a resistance on so remote a approved, as an appointment conferred on point of the Russian empire. It is, however, merit alone. The lamentable and unforeseen of some importance to know that the Russians incident which ended his career at so critical have succeeded in establishing maritime staa moment must therefore be regarded as the tions of this strength both on the promontory result of some infirmity or sudden visitation of Kamtschatka and at the mouth of the Chinese beyond all human control. Upon this occur-river Amoor; for these positions might, if unrence, Captain Sir F. NICOLSON, of the Pique, became the senior officer of the British ships there present, and the French Admiral DES SOINTES assumed the command of the allied squadron. The attack, however, was suspended until the following day.

On the 31st of August the bombardment of the batteries and the ships began in carnest, and the fire on both sides was kept up with great animation. It does not appear, however,

molested, enable them hereafter to harass our trade in the Eastern seas, and to open a direct communication between the Russian territories in Asia and the Western States of the American Union. The expedition commenced by Admiral PRICE was, therefore, not ill conceived, and if it be repeated with a more complete force, we trust it will be more successful.

From the Athenæum. willingly sacrifice our share in certain great thoughts, for the assurance that there was no A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Me-note-book in the neighborhood, where the mories, and Fancies, Original and Selected. sense, or nonsense, of the hour was recorded, By Mrs. Jameson. With Illustrations and as the listener's sympathy or antipathy dictatEtchings. Longman & Co.

ed. Is Mrs. Jameson sure how far O. G.

principle by protest.

Mrs. Jameson's own; and better than most of Let us now take a few passages which are these we may number the following picture :her borrowings from other persons. Among

"And

THE graceful and highly-finished writer of (whose initials it is not hard to unriddle) meant the Characteristics of Women' mentions in her ingenious plea for suicide (p. 34) to figure in print?-and the Kemble sisters wished to the Preface to this book, that out of the gradual accumulations of notes, which it has been encounter what the one may have said conher habit to make, more than one of her works cerning Mozart, and the other à propos of "the tune of Imogen"? We hold that such has taken form, if not been originally suggest things are not Mrs. Jameson's own, precisely ed;—and that the collection now put forth by her is, in some degree, the residuary matter to use as she will, any more than would be a of what had found its way into her note-books and it is for the good both of recorders and of secret captured by an involuntary listener; and which she feels unwilling to throw away. those recorded to have attention called to the Nevertheless, miscellaneous as is the character of these passages, they can be grouped in two divisions, the one devoted to Ethics and Character,' the other to Literature and Art.' Little more than such an announcement is required by way of criticism on this Commonplace Book' as a whole; since Mrs. Jameson's value in authorship has not now to be adjudgThis present Sunday I set off with the others ed; and she is one who respects herself in res- to walk to church, but it was late; I could not pecting her public:-one who never slights them, turned back. I wandered down the hill keep up with the pedestrians, and, not to delay the labor in hand, nor does less than her best. path to the river brink, and crossed the little In some paragraphs, Mrs. Jameson regis- bridge, and strolled along, pensive, but with no ters her dissent against, or reply to, what definite or continuous subject of thought. How "Carlyle" has said (not written) on this or beautiful it was-how tranquil! not a cloud the other question. We must stop to ask if in the blue sky, nor a breath of air! this be fair and modest? Is conversation so where the dead leaf fell there did it rest;" but so squared and methodized a relaxation that it still it was that scarce a single leaf did flutter may-that it should-be preached from in or fall, though the narrow pathway along the print? It is now-a-days sufficiently hard for water's edge was already encumbered with heaps of decaying foliage. Everywhere around, the simple folk to feel unconstrained and natural autumnal tints prevailed, except in one sheltered in society; so systematically is society work-place under the towering cliff, where a single ed for the purposes of gain and advancement. tree, a magnificent lime, still flourished in sumThe pre-occupied author who-betwixt the mer luxuriance, with not a leaf turned or shed. first and the second courses-drops a hint of I stood still opposite, looking on it quictly for a what his fifth act or his third volume may be, long time. It seemed to me a happy tree, so runs no visionary risk of finding his tragedy or his tale forestalled by some nimble hearer, dining out "in search of situations." Poor statesmen at soirées are wedged up into corners that the screw of curiosity may be put on them-regarding their views on any given question, crisis, or combination-since Boswells are "out," who keep ponderous diaries of such dialogues (the power of checking which of course, does not exist), and who put down all that the screwed statesman has yielded up, under these terrible circumstances, to be copied, read, and circulated.-If a " Latter-Day Pamphlet" were to begin with "said Mrs. Jameson to me"-and if the Lady were there to find some saying which she had idly uttered descanted on by way of text-would she The river, where I stood, taking an abrupt turn, not complain? Privacy is a public good so ran wimpling by; not as I had seen it but a few unspeakable-so intimately connected with all days before-rolling tumultuously, the dead that is surest in confidence-with all that is with the mountain torrents, making one think of leaves whirling in its eddies, swollen and turbid most reviving in intercourse—that we would the kelpies, the water-wraiths, and such uncanny

fresh, and fair, and grand, as if its guardian Dryad would not suffer it to be defaced. Then turned, for close beside me sounded the soft, interrupted, half-suppressed warble of a bird, sitwith its tiny weight. Some lines which I used ting on a leafless spray, which seemed to bend to love in my childhood came into my mind, blending softly with the presences around me:

The little bird now to salute the morn
Upon the naked branches sets her foot,
The leaves still lying at the mossy root,
And there a silly chirruping doth keep,
As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep;
Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,
And sad for winter too soon coming on!

things-but gentle, transparent, and flashing in | down the dark staircase, or stood by my bed: the low sunlight; even the barberries, drooping only the blessed light had power to exorcise it. with rich crimson clusters over the little pools How it was that I knew, while I trembled and near the bank, and reflected in them as in a mir-quaked, that it was unreal, never cried out, never ror, I remember vividly as a part of the exqui- expostulated, never confessed, I do not know. site loveliness which seemed to melt into my life. The figure of Apollyon looming over Christian, For such moments we are grateful: we feel then which I had found in an old edition of the “Pilwhat God can do for us, and what man can not. grim's Progress," was also a great torment. But -Carolside, November 5th, 1843. worse, perhaps, were certain phantasms without shape-things like the vision in Job-“ A spirit

The next passage comprehends a true dis- passed before my face; it stood still, but I could not tinction, gracefully phrased:

These

discern the form thereof:"-and if not intelligible voices, there were strange unaccountable sounds filling the air around with a sort of mysterious There are few things more striking, more in life. In daylight I was not only fearless, but auteresting to a thoughtful mind, than to trace dacious, inclined to defy all power and brave through all the poetry, literature, and art of the all danger—that is, all danger I could see. I Middle Ages, that broad ever-present distinction remember volunteering to lead the way through between the practical and the contemplative life. a herd of cattle (among which was a danThis was no doubt suggested and kept in view gerous bull, the terror of the neighborhood) by the one grand division of the whole social armed only with a little stick; but first I said the community into those who were devoted to the Lord's Prayer fervently. In the ghastly night I religious profession (an immense proportion of never prayed; terror stifled prayer. both sexes) and those who were not. All through visionary sufferings, in some form or other, purDante, all through the productions of the media-sued me till I was nearly twelve years old. If I val art, we find this pervading idea; and we had not possessed a strong constitution and a must understand it well and keep it in mind, or strong understanding, which rejected and conwe shall never be able to apprehend the entire temned my own fears, even while they shook me, beauty and meaning of certain religious groups I had been destroyed. How much weaker chilin sculpture and painting, and the significance dren suffer in this way, I have since known; and of the characters introduced. Thus, in subjects from the Old Testament, Leah always represents the practical, Rachel, the contemplative life. In the New Testament, Martha and Mary figure in the same allegorical sense; and among the saints we always find St. Catharine and St. Clara patronizing the religious and contemplative life, while St. Barbara and St. Ursula preside over the military or secular existence. It was a part, and a very important part, of that beautiful and expressive symbolism through which art in all its forms spoke to the popular mind.

have known how to bring them help and strength, through sympathy and knowledge, the sympathy that soothes and does not encourage-the knowledge that dispels and does not suggest the evil.

As a critic of Art, Mrs. Jameson is generally sensible and suggestive. Many may be curious to see how the author of The Loves of the Poets' handles the female creations of the Lecturer on "the Humorists," and will be amused with the sentimental exaggeration of a sound judgment passed by her on Mr. Thack

Here is a recollection, the force of which eray's heroines :attests its reality :—

No woman resents his Rebecca - inimitable There was in my childish mind another cause Becky!-No woman but feels and acknowledges of suffering besides those I have mentioned, less with a shiver the completeness of that wonderacute, but more permanent, and always unac-ful and finished artistic creation; but every woknowledged. It was fear-fear of darkness and man resents the selfish inane Amelia, and would supernatural influences. As long as I can re- be inclined to quote and to apply the author's member anything, I remember these horrors of own words when speaking of "Tom Jones:" "I my infancy. How they had been awakened I do can't say that I think Amelia a virtuous characnot know; they were never revealed. I had ter. I can't say but I think Mr. Thackeray's heard other children ridiculed for such fears, and evident liking and admiration for his Amelia held my peace. At first these haunting, thrilling shows that the great humorist's moral sense was stifling stories were vague; afterwards their form blunted by his life, and that here in art and varied; but one of the most permanent was the ethics there is a great error. If it be right to ghost in Hamlet. There was a volume of Shak- have a heroine whom we are to admire, let us speare lying about, in which was an engraving I take care at least that she is admirable." Laura, have not seen since, but it remains distinct in in "Pendennis," is a yet more fatal mistake. She my mind as a picture. On one side stood Ham- is drawn with every generous feeling, every good let with his hair on end, literally "like quills gift. We do not complain that she loves that upon the fretful porcupine," and one hand with poor creature, Pendennis, for she loved him in all the fingers outspread. On the other strided her childhood. She grew up with that love in the ghost, encased in armor, with nodding plumes; one finger pointing forwards, and all surrounded with a supernatural light. O that spectre for three years it followed me up and

her heart; it came between her and the percep tion of his faults; it is a necessity indivisible from her nature. Hallowed, through its constancy, therein alone would lie its best excuse, its

To every line of the following criticism we can subscribe-with one question. Is there not some confusion as to facts, when Mdlle. Rachel is spoken of as having personated Athalie ?

97

beauty and its truth. But Laura faithless to that we might possibly learn from Rachel's imitative first affection; Laura, waked up to the apprecia-representation (studied in an hospital, as they tion of a far more manly and noble nature, in say), how poison acts on the frame, and how the love with Warrington, and then going back to limbs and features writhe into death; but if she Pendennis, and marrying him! Such infirmity were a great moral artist she would feel that might be true of some women, but not of such a what is allowed to be true in painting, is true in woman as Laura; we resent the inconsistency, art generally; that mere imitation, such as the the indelicacy of the portrait. And then Lady vulgar delight in, and hold up their hands to see, Castlewood so evidently a favorite of the au- is the vulgarist and easiest aim of the imitative thor, what shall we say of her? The virtuous arts, and that between the true interpretation of woman, par excellence, who "never sins and ne- poetry in art and such base mechanical means to ver forgives," who never resents, nor relents, nor the lowest ends, there lies an immeasurable disrepents; the mother, who is the rival of her tance. I am disposed to think that Rachel has daughter; the mother, who for years is the confi- not genuis, but talent, and that her talent, from dante of a man's delirious passion for her own what I see year after year, has a downward tenchild, and then consoles him by marrying him dency,-there is not sufficient moral seasoning to herself! O Mr. Thackeray! this will never do! save it from corruption. I remember that when such women may exist; but to hold them up as I first saw her in Hermione she reminded me of examples of excellence, and fit objects of our a serpent, and the same impression continues. best sympathies, is a fault, and proves a low The long meagre form, with its graceful unduWhen an author lating movements, the long, narrow face and standard in ethics and in art. presents to us a heroine whom we are called upon features, the contracted jaw, the high brow, the to admire, let him at least take care that she is brilliant supernatural eyes which seem to glance every way at once; the sinister smile; the painted admirable. red lips, which look as though they had lapped, or could lap, blood; all these bring before me the idea of a Lamia, the serpent nature in the woman's form. In Lydia, and in Athalie, she touches the extremes of vice and wickedness with such a masterly lightness and precision, that I am full of wondering admiration for the Every one who remembers what Mdlle. Ra-actress. There is not a turn of her figure, not an expression in her face, not a fold in her gorchel was seven or eight years ago, and who sees her now (1853), will allow that she has made nogeous drapery, that is not a study; but withal progress in any of the essential excellences of such a consciousness of her art, and such an os her art. A certain proof that she is not a great artist in the true sense of the word. She is a finished actress, but she is nothing more, and noWith regard to another art, Mrs. Jameson thing better; not enough the artist ever to forget or conceal her art, consequently there is a want is a sayer of pleasant things, rather than a somewhere, which a mind highly toned, and of collector of facts to be relied on by the uninquick perceptions, feels from beginning to end. formed. This Art is music. Fancy, for inThe parts in which she once excelled-the Phèdre and the Hermione, for instance-have stance, her offering a parallel betwixt Mozart become formalized and hard, like studies cast in and Chopin;-as two men "in both whose bronze; and when she plays a new part it has no minds the artistic element wholly dominated freshness. I always go to see her whenever I over the social and practical." What does can. I admire her as what she is-the Parisian" the social element" mean? The fact was, actress, practised in every trick of her métier. I that Chopin, one of the most delicately spiritadmire what she does, I think how well it is all uel conversers whom we ever met, was the dedone, and am inclined to clap and applaud her light of perhaps the most super-subtle and inHe answered no drapery, perfect and ostentatiously studied intellectual coterie in Paris. every fold, just with the same feeling that I ap- letters, it is true:-he gave lessons (save to As to the last scene of Adrienne ladies whom he liked) very reluctantly;—and plaud herself. Lecouvreur (which those who are avides de sensation, athirst for painful emotion, go to see as they his infirm health made him languid, unready, would drink a dram, and critics laud as a mira- and oftentimes capricious, in performing the cle of art; it is altogether a mistake and a fail-duties and attending to the courtesies of life. ure), it is beyond the just limits of terror and But he was as willing to discuss French polipity-beyond the legitimate sphere of art. It tics or Polish nationality,-to anatomize the -as to dream at the pi reminds us of the story of Gentil Bellini and new poem or novel,the Sultan. The Sultan much admired his pic-ano;-in this being totally unlike Mozart, who ture of the decolation of St. John the Baptist, only seems willingly to have exchanged his but informed him that it was inaccurate-surgi- spirituality (which was music) for reckless, cally-for the tendons and muscles ought to animal dissipation. Unlike Mozart, too, Chopshrink where divided; and then calling for one

tentation of the means she employs, that the power remains always extraneous, as it were, and exciting only to the senses and the intellect.

of his slaves, he drew his scimetar, and striking in had a reason to give for everything which off the head of the wretch, gave the horror- he did in his art, and was thus sometimes, as a struck artist a lesson in practical anatomy. So musician, affected in his delicacies, and elabo

DLV. LIVING AGE. VOL. VIII.

7

rately grotesque in his avoidance of commonplace.-Curiously enough, in stating a difference betwixt Mozart and Chopin, Mrs. Jameson falls into an error of criticism as remarkable as the error of fact, just corrected :—

at the moment, what Handel called "de taut." The essays on "Shakspere's Female Characters," "Sacred and Legendary Art," with other productions, originated from these memoranda; the writer's mind, we take it, being frequently occupied with the theme, and thus producing When called upon to describe his method of ideas akin to it; for isolated thoughts, coming composing, what Mozart said of himself was at haphazard, would never make a continuous very striking from its naïveté and truth. "I do work. The volume before us is a selection not," he said, "aim at originality. I do not from those thoughts which could not be used know in what my originality consists. Why my up in a book, with choice extracts from Mrs. productions take from my hand that particular Jameson's reading, sometimes standing alone, form or style which makes them Mozartish, and different from the works of other composers, is more frequently serving as a text for annotaprobably owing to the same cause which makes tions. The subjects themselves are divided my nose this or that particular shape; makes it, into two parts, one division relating to "Ethics in short, Mozart's nose, and different from other and Character," the other to "Literature and people's." Yet, as a composer, Mozart was as Art." These terms, however, must be interobjective, as dramatic, as Shakspeare and Ra- preted very broadly to logically include all phael; Chopin, in comparison, was wholly sub- that appears in the respective divisions. Misjective-the Byron of music. cellaneous thoughts on morals, manners, society, religion, individual character, art in very many of its branches, literature, criticism, and anecdotes, for the most part of well-known persons, constitute the topics of Mrs. Jameson's Commonplace Book.

6

The characteristics which we last week no

Mozart as dramatic as Shakspeare!-This is news to those who feel with us. Mozart is everywhere in his works,-always tender and gentle, rarely lively, affluent in melody, wondrous in science, but vague as a character painter; in his Masses as gay as in his ticed as appertaining to real conversations beOperas, in his Operas as solemn as in his long to the book. It is brief, various, and Masses, one who sentimentalized even the sometimes pithy. If it has not the weight Figaro' of Beaumarchais, and flung so much which attaches to the talk or thoughts of some of his own melancholy, mysticism, and musical eminent men, it has great elegance and refinescience over a common Vienna extravaganza ment, without conventional timidity in hand(for such is the book of Die Zauberflöte ')ling certain questions. There is, moreover, a that the transcendentalists, deceived by the feminine nicety of appreciation and a justness exquisite beauty and individuality of the com- of judgment on matters that fall fairly within a poser, have absolutely wasted time and specu- woman's ken. Praise, however, must be confined lation in burrowing to find the bottom of that to the brief detached reflections, anecdotes, and which, like Bottom's dream, "had no bottom." comments. There are some longer pieces that Perhaps no man's name, example, genius, story rather smack of bookmaking. Such are the have been put to such hard duty, have been so ever-interpreted, as those of Mozart. Mrs. Jameson, in the above, merely repeats the old fallacies, which mean little, because they

do not touch the truth.

The fragments on Sculpture, which close this elegant volume, are better. In taking leave of them and of the book, we cannot but ask Mrs. Jameson why, when speaking poetically and artistically of Helen, she had not a word for Canova's bust of the enchantress, and Lord Byron's graceful and epigrammatic eight

lines on

"the Helen of the heart?"

From The Spectator. MRS. JAMESON'S COMMONPLACE BOOK OF THOUGHTS, MEMORIES, AND FANCIES.* LIKE many authors and some musicians, Mrs. Jameson is in the habit of writing down,

brief reports of sermons, the author has heard delivered by various preachers, well enough, but which it was not necessary to publish. The long autobiographical reminiscences of the writer's childhood, in connection with certain views on education, are but so-so, in spite of their general elegance and particular passages of interest. A kind of chapter on sculpture, sculptors, and what our ancestors (when it was the fashion to draw a character adapted to art) would have called "advice to sculptors," are also elegant, but somewhat flimsy. Extracts from Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, and other books, are articles without the text, where the broader parts are cut away, and nothing is left but some remarks on the quotations.

Pruned of these inferior parts, the book would form a very pleasant Jamesoniana, not only agreeable but instructive. "How can we reason but from what we know?". we think unless we have matter to think about?

-how can

A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories Jameson. With Illustrations and Etchings. Puband Fancies, Original and Selected. By Mrs.lished by Longman and Co.