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REID, Fellow and AssistantTutor of Christ's College, Cambridge. Fcap. 8vo. [Shortly. Second Edition, Third Thousand. This day, in 2 vols. medium 8vo. cloth elegant, price 32s. HOLLAND HOUSE. & CO.'S PAGE. BY PRINCESS MARIE LIECHTENSTEIN. With Five Steel Engravings by C. H. Jeens, after Paintings by Watts and other celebrated Artists, and numerous Illustrations drawn by Professor P. H. Delamotte, and engraved on Wood by J. D. Cooper, W. Palmer, and Jewitt & Co. TIMES. Also, an Edition containing, in addition to the above, about 40 Illustrations by the Woodbury-type process, and India Proofs of the Steel Engravings. 2 vols. medium 4to. half-morocco elegant, 4l. 4s. "The author's general tone of thought and feeling is unimpeachable; her animation never flags; we feel at every step that she is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the place; and she has plenty of fresh anecdote and pieces of information to compensate for the introduction of the old, which, after all, are frequently acceptable as saving the trouble of reference..... When every strictly just exception shall have been taken, she may be conscientiously congratulated by the most scrupulous critic on the production of a useful, agreeable, beautifullyillustrated, and attractive book." MORNING POST. "In a happy hour the Princess conceived the idea of writing its history, and her portraiture of Holland House, being the work of one who knows it so intimately and loves it so well, could not fail of being at once vivid and tender, bold, yet delicately minute and carefully finished. The book loses none of its charm by being written in a simple and unpretending style." PALL MALL GAZETTE. 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They are a worthy memorial of a mansion, attractive not merely because of its gifted frequenters, but also, and no less, as the home of a family distinguished in successive generations by public services and by private worth." DAILY NEWS. "The Princess Marie Liechtenstein has just given to the world two volumes full of interest about its history, its associations, its guests, and its archives. No one could have had better opportunities for such a task." Fourth Edition. NEW NOVEL BY WILLIAM BLACK, A PRINCESS OF THULE. 3 vols. crown 8vo. 818. 6d. [This day. "We can heartily recommend all jaded novel readers, and still more heartily all Londoners who have at any time learnt to love the scenery and sport of the Scottish Highlands, to refresh themselves or their memories by a perusal of Mr. Black's story of the Western Isles." Athenæum. "A beautiful and almost perfect story....There is a mingling of humour of the raciest with pathos most truly simple and dignified, of which the author has proved himself capable before now, but has never exhibited so fully." Spectator. "It is quite refreshing to take up such a work of fiction. It is no exaggeration to say that the story exercises a sort of fascination over the reader from the first chapter to the last, and this by no fantastic spell, but by the charm of the purest, truest, and most healthy sentiment. There is not one extravagant incident, one overdrawn character, in the novel. The structure of the plot is simplicity itself. The events narrated are free from all sensationalism. The characters represent human nature such as it actually isthe very noblest of them, indeed, exhibit it in its simplest and least conventional form. Yet we defy the united powers of all the most transcendental romancist to produce a more beautiful and touching tale."—Daily Telegraph. "It is not of many novels it can be said they are good from the title to the end, but this may be fairly remarked of Mr. Black's last work, to which he has given so happily descriptive a title. Mr. Black never relies for effect upon violent means. He contrives by delicate, subtle, but sure touches to win the interest of his readers, and to retain it till the last volume is laid down with reluctance. The characters of Sheila and her father, Mackenzie, ought to have an enduring and recognized existence in fiction. The 'Princess of Thule' is altogether a remarkable novel : it will add to the reputation which Mr. Black has already made by his sincere and undeviating loyalty to the best principles of the art in which he excels."-Globe. "If Mr. Black had written no other novel than this he would have made himself a high place in the republic of literature. It is witty, humorous, pathetic, and throughout artistic."-Scotsman. "There is an originality about Mr. Black's work which, in these days of novels which are all more or less copies of each other, is most welcome. He writes, too, in a healthy and manly style, totally free from the maudlin sentimentality too common in novels, and his books, moreover, are perfectly pure and wholesome..... We do not remember to have read anywhere of a more wholly fascinating heroine than Sheila."-Court Circular. LADY BARKER'S NEW BOOK. SYBIL'S BOOK. By Lady Barker. Illustrated by S. E. Waller. Globe 8vo. gilt, 48. 6d. [This day. "Another of Lady Barker's delightful stories, and one of the most thoroughly original books for girls that has been written for many years. Grown-up readers will like it quite as much as young people, and will even better understand the rarity of such simple, natural, and unaffected writing.....That no one can read the story without interest is not its highest praise, for no one ought to be able to lay it down without being the better girl or boy, or man or woman, for the reading of it. Lady Barker has never turned her fertile and fascinating pen to better account, and for the sake of all readers we wish 'Sybil's Book' a wide success."-Times. MACMILLAN & CO. 29 and 30, Bedford-street, Strand, W.C. CONTENTS. 1. UNCLE JOHN. By MAJOR WHYTE-MELVILLE, Author 2. The CYCLE of ENGLISH SONG. 3. IN the INTERESTS of SCIENCE. 4. CHATEAUBRIAND and HIS TIMES. 5. JUVENAL in LONDON. 6. BERTHA'S WEDDING-DAY. 7. CUPID'S PUPILS. 8. SIR ROBERT STRANGE. 9. SONNETS. 10. PHILIP LEIGH: a Novel. Chaps. 5, 6, 7 and 8. Now Ready at every Bookseller's. NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS. I. MAD DUMARESQ. By Florence MARRYAT, Author of A Love's Conflict,' &c. 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The tone is elevating, and LOTTIE DARLING. By J. C. Jeaffre SON. SECOND EDITION. 3 vols. "A capital novel, healthy in tone, interesting from beginning to end, Chaps. TRANSMIGRATION. By Mortimer By Captain H. BRACKENBURY, Royal Artillery, Assistant COLLINS, Author of Marquis and Merchant.' 3 vols. Military Secretary to Major-General Sir Garnet Wolseley; VICTOR and VANQUISHED. By MARY CECIL HAY. 3 vols. [Next week. CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. Each Work complete in 1 vol. price 58. (any of which can be had Sir J. GILBERT, MILLAIS, HOLMAN HUNT, LEECH, FOSTER, HURST & BLACKETT'S STANDARD LIBRARY Dixon's New America. Robert Falconer. By George Mac- John Halifax.' The Englishwoman in Italy. Freer's Life of Jeanne d'Albret. A Brave Lady. By the Author of Sam Slick's Americans at Home. JUST PUBLISHED. 1. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, For JANUARY, 1874. No. DCXCIX. Price 2s. 6d. Contents. The PARISIANS. Part the Last. The STORY of VALENTINE; and his BROTHER. No. II. FORMS. JOHN STUART MILL: an Autobiography. 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Now complete, in 8 vols. and Index Volume, price 37. 38. cloth, the Second Edition of THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND, From AGRICOLA'S INVASION to the EXTINCTION of the LAST JACOBITE INSURRECTION. By JOHN HILL BURTON, 8. In 4 vols. fcap. price 21s. cloth, By GEORGE ELIOT. 9. In fcap. Svo. Roxburghe binding, price 6s. 6d. A HAND-BOOK OF WEATHER FOLK-LORE. Being a Collection of Proverbial Sayings in Various Languages By the Rev. C. SWAINSON, M.A., WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London. SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 1874. LITERATURE SPENCER PERCEVAL. The Life of the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, came vacant; it was offered to Perceval, and was MR. SPENCER WALPOLE, the biographer of father. the money difficulty by offering him the Chan Spencer Perceval was a younger son of the Earl of Egmont, and had to make his own fortune. He was born in 1762. After Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he went to the bar. In 1790 he married a lady of some fortune, and in the same year he was made, by the interest of his relative Lord Northampton, Deputy-Recorder of Northampton. Other small appointments followed. Romilly well described him on his joining the Midland Circuit. After mentioning another recruit, Ayscough, as one who "had read a great deal,' and was "cheerful, warm, friendly, and a great acquisition to the society of the circuit," Romilly adds: "So, too, was Perceval; with much less, and indeed very little, reading, of a conversation barren of instruction, and with strong invincible prejudices on many subjects, yet by his excellent temper, his engaging manner, and his sprightly conversation, he was the delight of all who knew him." had the aid of high connexions, and a bright, This is the right key to Perceval's political career and character. He was clever, but not profound. He had all suitable ability for a successful Parliamentary life, and for this he from the drafts of his speeches, which were carefully prepared, the immense quantity of Perceval's oratory in Parliament while he fought under the leadership of others. Perceval was Prime Minister from October, 1809, till the shot of an assassin laid him low in the lobby of the House of Commons on May 11th, 1812. He had great difficulty in completing his administration; overtures for junction were unsuccessfully made to Lord Grey and Lord Grenville; he failed also in procuring Lord Sidmouth's assistance; Vansittart, one of Lord Sidmouth's friends, refused the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, and he then turned to two young men of promise, Lord Palmerston and Robert Milnes, the father of Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer was refused by both, but Palmerston accepted the office of Secretary at War, without a seat in the Cabinet, for which he distrusted his capacity. After some other refusals, Perceval reluctantly determined to retain the Chancellorship of the Exchequer in his own hands, together with the office of First Lord of the Treasury. Speaking of Perceval's want of assistance for debate in the House of Commons, Mr. Walpole says: "Two younger men were indeed capable, if they had been willing, of rendering more effectual assistance. But the qualities which ultimately made Sir Robert Peel the greatest minister of the nineteenth century, were only partially developed stitutional diffidence condemned Lord Palmerston in 1810, when he made his maiden speech. Con to habitual silence." Parliament, with a great reputation from Early in the session of 1810, Perceval showed the disinterestedness of his character by resisting a great temptation to enrich himself or a son by a sinecure Tellership of the Exchequer, which became suddenly vacant. "The place was worth 2,700l. a year; it involved no duties; it was in the gift of the Minister; it could be held either by the Minister himself or Pitt, twenty-six years before, had been subjected any member of his family. Singularly enough, to a similar temptation." refer the reader to Mr. Walpole's account of the admiration universally excited by Perceval's manly, courageous, and successful conduct through the House of Commons of the Regency Bill of 1811, and of the eulogiums from all quarters evoked by his melancholy death. His politics were cramped and narrow; he had no political prevision; but a more honest, virtuous or amiable man never appeared in English public life. Mr. Walpole has done well to engraft an extensive historical narrative on the biography; but his history is sometimes obscured by illjudged omissions. He abstains from all explanation of the cause of Pitt's ceasing to be Prime Minister in 1801, when Addington took his place. He tells fully and well the Canning machinations against Lord Castlereagh in 1809, but omits to tell of the Castlereagh and Canning duel. We have complimented Mr. Walpole on his industry and fairness; but the book is not remarkable for ability, and we cannot call it a classical biography. Mr. Walpole is remiss in keeping up dates as he goes on. He is somewhat too didactic and dogmatical on constitutional questions. When Whitbread, in 1805, moved resolutions censuring Lord Mel-To ville, Pitt met them by moving the previous question, and the numbers being equal on a division, the Speaker, Abbott, gave his casting vote against the Government, for Whitbread's motion. Mr. Walpole goes out of his way to remark: - lation and the language of the last Parlia "No historian, as far as I am aware, has ever criticized this vote of the Speaker; but it seems clear that it was wrong. It is the Speaker's duty, in the case of a tie, to give a vote which shall allow the question to be raised again. The Speaker, therefore, on this ground, should have voted for the previous question" (vol. i. p. 160). NEW TALES FROM THE NORSE. Tales from the Fjeld. A Second Series of " all who are in quest of a book as a new year's present for young people of any age, let us recommend these Tales from the Fjeld.' Everyone knows, or at least ought to know, the Popular Tales from the Norse,' which MM. Asbjörnsen and Moe collected, and to which Dr. Dasent some years ago gave so wide a circulation in England and in America by his translation, and the excellent introduction by which it was preceded. That work has long been out of print, but we are glad to learn from Dr. Dasent that a third edition will shortly be published. Meantime, let us welcome its worthy successor, this new series of Norse tales, full of the life and spirit, the imagination and the poetry, which made the first series so attractive to old and young alike. The Speaker's duty can only be described by saying that he should give the vote which he thinks right. It is difficult to see how voting for the previous question would have led to For, although this book will serve as an resuscitation of the motion. If there were any admirable present for children, its interest is convention as to the Speaker's course, it might, by no means confined to them. Since MM. perhaps, be said that he should show inde- Asbjörnsen and Moe commenced their task of pendence of the Government. But anyhow collecting from the mouths of Norwegian we know not where Mr. Walpole has found peasants the tales in which successive generaauthority for his exposition of the Speaker's tions of their forefathers had delighted, a vast duty. Again, Mr. Walpole precipitately lays impulse has been given to the study of folkdown the law on a point which must engage lore in all its branches, and especially to that the attention of Parliament as soon as it of popular tales. The volumes which have assembles. He thinks he has found an un- been published on the subject are so numerous mistakable precedent for Mr. Gladstone's that they form no inconsiderable library in assumption of the office of Chancellor of the themselves, not to mention the host of articles Exchequer in addition to that of First Lord of in scientific and other journals in which the the Treasury, without the necessity of present- questions to which it has given rise have been ing himself to his constituents for re-election. treated by scholars in many lands, more When Perceval became First Lord of the especially in Germany. But few of the collecTreasury in 1809, he already held the office of tions have naturalized themselves in England, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and after many and only the German stories due to the ineffectual attempts to induce others to accept Brothers Grimm can compete in popularity it, he continued to hold it with that of First among us with the Norse tales, for which we Commissioner of the Treasury. The Speaker were indebted in the first place to MM. Asb(Abbott), the Lord Chancellor (Eldon), and the jörnsen and Moe, and in the second to Dr. Attorney and Solicitor General all advised Dasent. The present series is contributed that Perceval had not vacated his seat by entirely by M. Ásbjörnsen, for M. Moe, occubecoming First Lord of the Treasury. Mr. pied by his duties as a parish priest, has of Walpole concludes that "the acceptance of late years left the pleasant task of gleaning in the Chancellorship of the Exchequer by Mr. the harvest - field of popular wisdom and Gladstone would no more vacate his seat fancy to be carried on by his friend than Perceval's was vacated by the acceptance and former colleague, whose official duties of the First Lordship of the Treasury" (vol. ii. | lead him year after year into all manner of p. 55). Apart from the effects of recent legis-out-of-the-way places, along the shores of lonely fjords, across fjelds where a human ( Through all difficulties of this nature, Dr. Dasent appears to have successfully made his way. His translation is as accurate as it is spirited, preserving the essential characteristics of the original, and rendering it into vigorous English. Two faults, it is true, the one of commission, the other of omission,—we have to lay to his charge. It is said that good wine needs no bush, and analogy would lead us to conclude that good tales require no "setting." Dr. Dasent appears to have arrived at the same conclusion after he had finished about a third of the present volume. He began, he tells us, by setting the tales "in a frame formed by the imaginary adventures of English sportsmen on the Fjeld or Fells in Norway." But after a while he " grew weary of the setting and framework," and "resolved to let the Tales speak for themselves and stand alone." We are sorry that this resolution was not formed at an earlier period, for the "setting and framework" are uncalled for, and out of keeping with what they enclose. Our other complaint is, that Dr. Dasent, while he has often altered the titles of the original stories, and has completely changed the order in which they occur, gives no numerical references or other indications by which they may be identified with his versions. The absence of some such assistance has been the cause of our wasting many a minute, spent in an attempt to find in the pages of Asbjörnsen's new series of 'Folke-Eventyr' Dr. Dasent's stories of 'The Haunted Mill' and 'The Honest Penny.' The second of these tales really belongs to the first series, to which it was contributed by M. Moe, forming No. 59 in the fifth and last edition. But having noticed these slight drawbacks, we are glad to resume the more agreeable office of commending to our readers |
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