1828.] REVIEW. Best's Transrhenane Memoirs. the demand. It is very true that a greater increase of paper may attend a rise in the price of corn, but we do not admit that the issue of the paper causes the rise of price, but that more currency is obtained, because more can be made by it. A banker will not advance without security, and corn being a commodity subject to waste, no landlord or farmer is so mad as to think that he can raise prices by withholding his goods, and borrowing money upon interest, a folly which would eat up all the expected profits. Nor when a banker sees the profits of his neighbours diminished, will he be on that account more abundant in his advances on the contrary, he will contract his issues. We by no means wish to depreciate the merits of writers, far more able than ourselves. We merely speak on the philosophical principle, that no theory can be sound which will not solve all phenomena without exception; and in our opinion the presumed indissoluble connexion between corn and currency, is not a theory which does solve the phenomena. We attribute a far greater influence to trade in general, and its successful or unsuccessful results, in regard to demand and supply, and other causes. Transrhenane Memoirs. By John Richard Best, Esq. Author of "Transalpine Memoirs." 8vo. p. 218. WHEN we were under-graduates at Oxford, BEST of MAGDALEN was a name well known to us; and deeply do we regret that so great an honour has been conferred upon superstition, as the enrolment of his name among Catholics. It has ruined his character as a man of reason. Such bad logic as that, because we applaud heroes, we ought to create saints (see p. 187), would never have emanated from auy school of reason, from this obvious cause, that celebrity implies only haman attestation of merit; canonization a divine character, which in se implies usurpation of a prerogative that can never appertain to man; and which, according to Scripture, no person who was ever man, except one, can possibly possess. Again, our author says, that the Catholics do not worship images, that is to say, wood and stone figures, 51 merely as wood and stone. Who ever said they did? Who ever supposed that the Minerva of Phidias was worshipped merely as a thing of wood and stone? No; such service, whether Heathen or Catholic, was, and actually is, Polytheism, the divine worship of beings, whom the figures represent, to which beings such homage must be merely superstitious. We do not think, that it was the intention of religion to make people foolish, but we are certain, that it does do so; and that it could not possibly have such an effect if the attributes of the Creator were properly studied. To any man, so informed, one half of the serious nonsense uttered about religion is absolute (though unintentional) blasphemy; and of such blasphemy, according to Bishop Lavington, the Catholics and Methodists (who assimilate each other) are the most guilty of all religionists. We are sorry that Mr. Best has extorted from us these rebuts, by unpalatable remarks concerning us Protestants. They occupy, however, but a few paragraphs. The book itself is that of a real gentleman and man of taste and sentiment-a delightful morceau, sentimental and anecdotal. Sentimental, we say, though a friend wrote to our author (p. 68) to give up sentimentality. That friend was a blockhead. He would make life to consist wholly of the details of business. the delightful feelings, which form the soul of heaven-like happiness, every thing that can alone create affection and benevolence, must be sacrificed to convert us into chess-men, with no other token of humanity than spontaneous motion. All Every man who does not lead the scampering life of a traveller for money and orders, knows what suffering it is to be put out of his way in the comfort of sleep, to be eternally gaping like a dying oyster, and find his head sinking into his body like a lump of lead; such a sufferer will duly appreciate the elegant humour of the following apostrophe. The author was travelling on the outside of a coach: "Oh! that I could obtain one hour's quiet sleep! How little, when sleeping comfortably in our beds, do we appreciate the repose we enjoy. My coat is damp with dew; I have passed a restless night. The sun is about to rise; the birds are 52 REVIEW.-Best's Transrhenane Memoirs. already singing amidst the trees.-Poor fools, not to sleep longer, now that you have it in your power! Now that you are shaded by your own native woods! Now that you are not encaged on-a jolting coach." P.70. Now this is all very just, for a bird has peculiar facilities in regard to sleep, aud therefore ought to sleep longer. He turns one leg into a post, draws up the other, makes a warm night-cap of his wing, and shows what easy and excellent provision nature has made for conferring the blessing of sleep to animals, however various may be their conformations, and uncertain their conveniences. We transcribe the following anecdote, because it is indicative of the real origin of image-worship, viz. the insensibility of barbarians to abstract ideas, to the only ideas fit to accompany divine worship, because nothing but sentiment and mind can form ideas worthy of Deity; and because it is not matter, only mind, that deserves worship. In nature it is not a mere conglomeration of earth, that forms fine scenery it is not eyes, noses, and mouths, which constitute beauty; it is the taste displayed in the disposition of them, that makes the charm, and that is an act of mind. As to pictures of the Crucifixion, and portraits of living and dying Christs-beautiful specimens of art we allow them to bewe have seen the portrait of a living Christ by Raphael, and a dying one by Canova-portraits of handsome men, but not one of them has the divine character of the Belvidere Apollo; and all, compared with that inimitable visage, which carries the stamp of divinity, are degradations; and then, the paltry substitute of a nimbus, as much as to say, "this is a saint,"-that is another degradation. Then soul-less, tame Madonnas. However, to the anecdote. "Make us a picture of the Crucifixion to place in our church,' said a deputation of poor labourers from a village in the south of France. 'Do you choose the figure of Christ to be represented dead or still living,' demanded the artist. This was a question on which the projectors of the painting had never thought; but, after consulting together for some moments, they replied to my friend the painter, You had better make it living, because, if it does not please us so, it can be killed afterwards.'" P. 80. "The tobacco-pipe,” says Mr. Best, [July, " is an utensil which a German can never lay aside," immortale, manet, multosque per Stat fortuna domus : [annos indeed, an editor of Homer has immeasurably obliged us antiquaries by informing us that the epithet ny PETs was applied to Jupiter, through his being an inveterate smoker. (p. 143.)* Mr. Best further mentions an avocat of Vienna, who smokes thirty pipes a day, and that he may do so without interruption, has thirty individual tobacco-pipes, which are every morning prepared by his servants, and for each of which he calls in turn by its respective name, for he has christened them all. P. 115. The Germans think it conducive to health, that the upper bed-clothes should never be so long as to hinder protrusion of the feet beyond; and sometimes they sleep between two beds. "It is related, that an Irish traveller, upon finding a feather-bed thus laid over him, took it into his head, that the people slept in strata, one upon the other, and said to the attendant, Will you be good enough to tell the gentleman or lady that is to lie upon me, to make haste, as I want to go to sleep."" P. 116. Mr. Best says of toll-bars,— than in France; and we are amused by "In Germany the roads are much better finding here, the original, the primitive toll-bar. In England, though we still keep the ancient term, we have erected gates in lieu of that which it represents in Germany, an immense bar, the smoothed painted trunk of a pine-tree, still rises and falls across the road by means of a weight placed at one end of it." P. 146. We cannot part without sympathising with Mr. Best in one thing. He has been arraigned for his opinion upon some points of architecture, sculpture, and painting; and all through that gross blunder of confounding mechanical execution with taste. 66 You are wrong,-look how beautifully that hand is done.”—Admitted, but what is it to the purpose? I expect impression. I do not go to see such things as I do to buy a horse; I expect effect. I expect what I have found from Hogarth's pictures; permanent recollection of delight. *We do not give this as a new joke. -a 1828.] REVIEW.-Hodgson's History of Northumberland. A History of Northumberland, in three Parts. By John Hodgson, Clerk, Vicar of Whelpington, &c. &c. Part ii. vol. i. 4lo. THE History of such a lawless county in the Marches as Northumberland, brings to our recollection the chivalrous events connected with Chevy-chase, and that valourous Knight, who "When his legs were smitten off, Still fought upon his stumps." The existence of such disorder is ascribed to the natural consequence of overloading the population through small farmis. "The true cause of the disorders that prevailed in both districts is very reasonably and forcibly deduced from its being overstocked with population. Three or four families lived upon a farm of noble rent. The consequence of this poverty was, they went into the orderly districts of England and Scotland to steal. Idleness and early associations had endeared to them every field, and wood, and stream, and dell, in their native valley, so that they had rather lived poorly in it, than more wealthily in another country. Besides which, when any of them had settled in distant places, they so frequently became abettors of their friends at home in plans of plunder, that people were afraid to employ them. Sir R. Bowes [the agent employed by Government] therefore recommended, that the superfluous population should be sent southward, to places too far distant for their relations and countrymen to resort to. They were divided into clans, each of which had rank and precedence in the country according to its numerical strength. If a thief of any great surname, or kindred, was lawfully executed by order of justice, for stealing beyond the limits of his own province, the rest of his clan would visit the prosecutor with all the retributive vengeance of deadly feud, as bitterly and as severely as if he had killed him unlawfully with a sword. This method of seeking revenge, had before that time frequently bred a sort of civil war in the country; whole townships were burnt; gentlemen and others, of whom they sought revenge, were murdered; great garrisons established to check their outrages, and raids and incursions made against them, and by them, even as it were between England and Scotland in time of war." Hence parties that were plundered generally chose, when they discovered the thieves who carried off their goods, to take a part of them back again by way of composition, rather than go against them in the extremity of justice." P. 70. 53 the Gentry and Clergy; for, continues Mr. Hodgson, "But we are most inclined to a merciful review of the manners of these people from the consideration that thieving was a fashionable accomplishment among them-the employment in which they most delighted; and especially because their clergy were as vicious and disorderly as themselves; and the crimes for which they were holden up, as infamous, were constantly committed by the heads of the best families in Northumberland, not only without any sense of shame, but even with feelings of rivalry in courage and dexterity, and as feats which they boasted in. Bishop Fox, in 1498, had, on informations being taken to him of the great number of robbers which infested these parts, issued Redesdale, charging them to visit with the his mandate to all the clergy of Tindale and terrors of the greater excommunication, all the inhabitants of their several cures, who should, excepting against the Scots, preand salel or knapescull, or other defensive sume to go from home, armed in a jack armour, or should ride on a horse worth more than six shillings and eight pence ;, or should wear in any church, or church-yard, during time of divine service, any offensive weapon more than a cubit in length. And the same prelate elsewhere describes the chaplains here, the good Sir Johns of Redesdale, as publicly and openly living with con. cubines, irregular, suspended, excommunicated and interdicted, wholly ignorant of letters, so much so, that priests of ten years standing did not know how to read the ritual. Some of them were even nothing more than sham priests, having never been ordained, and performed diocese service, not only in places dedicated to divine worship, but in such as were unconsecrated and interdicted. Of the example which they had from the laity of the county, Sir Robert Bowes has left us this description. The whole country of Northumberland is much given to wildness and riot, especially the young gentlemen, or headsmen, many of whom are guilty of thefts and other greater offences; and then regard for truth in depositions about their quarrels is so indifferent, that it were perilous to give credence to them without the evidence of the complaining party being con fronted with that of the accused." P. 74. Such were (in great part), says Mr. Hodgson, the consequences of "parcelling out the lands into very small farms." P. 75. We are rejoiced to give the following result of educating the poor. show a very praiseworthy zeal in forwarding, "The inhabitants of this parish [Elsden] according to the best of their ability, the education of their children. They have And these habits obtained also among schools to suit the convenience of every part 54 REVIEW-Hodgson's History of Northumberland. of it; and at Birness, where twelve might attend gratis, that number, so great is their dislike to pure eleemosynary assistance in rearing their families, very rarely attend it in that capacity. Reading has been a favourite occupation among them; and the poor-rates, generally speaking, are low, and the poor contented, honest, and thrifty." P. 86. We have a relick of Anglo-Saxon usages in the paragraph next ensuing. "To these parishes resort the Witeiding men [supposed Wureding from pite, a chief lord, and pæben, a council] otherwise called Thanes of that English March." P. 91. In p. 95 we find the mullions of a Gothic window taken out, to make way for a modern sash one, “ by an Archidiaconal command." P. 95. Mr. Hodgson doubts the authenticity of Richard of Cirencester's work, "De situ Britanniæ;" 1st. because no manuscript of it could ever be found 2d. because the pretended fac-simile of the first page is not in the style of any manuscript of Richard's time, but is a clumsy imitation of the hand-writing of a century before him, and contains abbreviations unwarranted by ancient examples; 3dly. because the Latinity is too pure and classical for a Monk of the 15th cent., especially one "whose acknowledged historical works are, in point of language and enquiry, scarcely on a level with the dull and ignorant productions of his contemporaries." P. 146. The following account of a Peel House at Whelpington shows the ancient mode of living in this country. The "The only Peel house remaining in the place is called "the Bolt House," and consists of a byer or cow-house below, and the family apartments above, viz. an upper room with a boarded floor, and a garret, both approached by stone stairs on the outside, and the whole covered with thatch. door-way to the cow-house is under the landing of the stairs, and the door of it was fastened with a strong bolt in the inside, for which purpose the byer and the upperroom had a communication by a trap-hole, that is, by a horizontal door in a corner of the floor, and a trap or ladder; for the English word trap, in the terms, a trap-way, trap-hole, trap-door, and trap-rock, has the same origin as the Swedish and German words trap and treppe, which mean stairs, and seem to owe their origin to some obsolete inflection of the German and English verbs treten and to tread. This was the character of the principal farm-houses in Northumberland a hundred years since. The peels of the lairds or yeomanry proprietors [July, had each a stone arch over the byer, and were frequently covered with free stone slate, which made them more secure, than houses with thatched roofs, from being burnt in the plundering irruptions of the Scotch, and of their no less troublesome neighbours, the people of Redesdale. The cottage next to the Bolt-house, on the right, is a good specimen of an inferior farm-house, the room at the entrance of which was, and still continues in many places to be, a byer in winter and a bed-room in summer, and is called the out-bye: the in-bye, or inner room, with three small windows to the left of the outdoor, was the dwelling of the family, and often partitioned by two press-beds into two apartments." P. 189 Shakspeare's and Milton's use of the Fairy Mythology is well illustrated, as once a matter of serious credibility, in the following account of Rothley Mill. "The old mill, with its black water habitations, and shut up in a glen narrow wheel, and heathery roof, far from humau and thick with wood, was the haunt of a family of fairies, and had many marvellous tales about it. For old queen Mab and her train, they say, with the help of the miller's picks, formed out of the rock the numerous circular basins which are still to be seen here in the bed of the Hart, and were every moonlight summer's evening seen like so many water-fowls, flickering and bathing in them. The mill itself was their great council-hall; and the eye of the kiln their kitchen, where, in boiling their pottage, they burnt for drying the corn he had next to grind. the seeds or husks of oats the miller laid up The meal and firing thus made use of, they took as an old customary claim for guarding and cleaning the mill and other useful services; but the miller thinking them too extravagant, was determined to disturb them; and while they were preparing their supper one night, threw a sod down the chimney and instantly fled. The falling mass dashed soot, fire, and boiling pottage amongst them; and the trembling fugitive, before he could reach the dingly verge of the glen, heard the cry, "burnt and scalded! burnt and scalded! the sell of the mill has done it ;" and the old mother of the family set after him, and just as he got to the style, going into Rothley, touched him, and he doubled up, was bow-bent, and a cripple to his dying day." 805. Mr. Hodgson has been indefatigable in his researches; and has enlivened his book with numerous biographical matters, respecting the proprietors of estates in more modern æras, a prac tice which is not sufficiently regarded in topographical works. The pedigrees are remarkably full, elaborate, minute, and well-authenticated. General anti 1828.] REVIEW.-Modern Atlas.-Wilson's Travels in Russia. quities are treated according to good authorities; and though we are not satisfied with all the etymotogical deductions, this is a very trifling ground of complaint, and appears to have originated in a right principle, that of leaving nothing unexplained. We shall anxiously expect the remaining parts. The Modern Allas, by William Channing Woodbridge. Whittaker. In addition to the maps of the world, Europe, Great Britain, Asia, Africa, North America, United States, &c., this Atlas contains a moral and political chart of the world, exhibiting, in connexion with the outline of countries, the prevailing religions, forms of government, and degrees of civilization; also an isothermal chart of the world, containing a view of the climate and productions of the earth, with the mean annual temperature, and various other interesting particulars regarding the heat of the atmosphere. The map of the world is accompanied by a comparative view of the rivers and lakes on the Eastern and Western Continents, from the Missisippi and the Missouri to the Mersey. We recommend this useful Atlas, as well adapted for schools. Travels in Russia, &c. &c. By William Rae Wilson, Esq. F.S.A. Author of Travels in Egypt, &c. 2 vols. 8vo. TRAVELLERS ought to be men of the world, and throw aside all prejudices and national habits, if they mean to write philosophically; or else, like Dr. Moore, (the first of all travellers, as to taste,) give us natural peculiarities in the elegant manner and delicate painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Horace Walpole. Learned travellers form a distinct class, and have equal eminence in their exclusive way. We have gone into this proemium, because Mr. Wilson is a very copious and excellent informant, but seems to have adopted two very extraordinary notions; one, that the glory of all nations is a Bible Society; the other that solitary imprisonment is sufficient for prevention of all crimes. Both these notions are founded upon that defective reason which is the prineipal characteristic of sectarianism. As to Bible Societies, it is well known, that to give away bibles, without note or comment, only to multiply discordant opinions, and found new sects. 55 A caricature says, the bible is translated into five hundred unknown languages, and dispersed over as many uninhabited islands. This is irony, but Mr. Wilson (vol. ii. 286,) seriously informs us, that "Ghent must be overstocked with English bibles; for we actually observed many lying on the counters of several shops, where they are sacrilegiously used for waste paper, to wrap up the articles that are sold.", Thus the good people of England subscribe their pounds sterling to send abroad bibles, in a language which the natives do not understand, viz. English in countries where only French is spoken. Now we will venture to affirm, that in the parish in which we reside, where the population is large, there may be a bible to a house, but certainly not a bible to every adult, even to those who can read. But then that is playing the cards into the hands of the parish Clergyman. No mention is made, or thought entertained, of knowing the state of education and manners in the countries where bibles are rained down in showers! But of what use are bibles to those who cannot read them? and what taste have savages for reading? Educate them and bible them simultaneously-to bible them only is to plant trees without roots. So superior is the Church of England plan, with its National Education, and its wise directorial Board of Management, the Christian Knowledge Society. We come now to the second notion. Mr. Wilson says, of solitary confine ment, "It is most devoutly to be wished, that it were generally substituted in England for capital punishment. i. 137." Now we have read in ancient history of numerous hermits and anchorets who were very happy fellows, liked a lazy life, and had no concern about the wants of the day, because they were devoted drones, whom devotee bees petted, fed, and clothed. Zimmerman also shows, that solitude may become a great luxury Nor is this all. Men have been known unnecessarily to inflict upon themselves this tremendous punishment of solitude. The Eddystone lighthouse is insulated from all communication. We have heard, that two men, its only inhabitants, once quarrelled, and never spoke to each other for six months. If Shakspeare's account of the " Melancholy Jaques," and De Foe's "Robinson Crusoe," are |