LITERATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6296, 21 January 1882, Page 3

LITERATURE.

EXTRACTS FROM NEW BOOKS. PERORATION OF A SPEECH OF MR. BRIGHT. [From "Life and Speeches of John Bright." By G. Birnctt Smith.! I recollect when Sir Robert Peel addressed the House on a dispute which thrcateuc-d hostilities lo the United States. I recollect the gravity of his countenance, the solemnity of his tone, his whole demeanour showing that he felt in his soul the responsibility that rested on him. I have seen this and I have seen the present Ministry. There was the buffoonery at the Reform Club. Was that becoming a matter of sueh grave nature ? Has there been a solemnity of manner in the speeches heard in connection with this war, and have Ministers shown themselves statesmen and Christian men when speaking on a subject of this nature? It is very easy for the noble lord the member for Tiverton to rise and say that I am against war under all circumstances, and that if an enemy were to land an our shores I should make a calculation as to whether it would be cheaper to take him in or to keep him out, and that my opinion on this question is not to be cousiderod either by Parliament or the country. lam not | afraid of discussing the war with the noble lord on his own principles. I understand the Blue Books as well as lie, and leaving out all fantastic and visionary notions about what will become of us if something is not done to cripple Russia, I say—and I say it with as much confidence as I ever said anything in my life—that the war cannot be justified out of these documents, and that impartial history will teach this to posterity if we do not comprehend it now. lam not, nor did I ever pretend to be, a statesman; and that character is so tainted and so equivocal iu our day that 1 ain not sure that a pure and honourable man would aspire to it. Iha /e not enjoyed for thirty years, like the noble lord, the honours and emoluments of office. Ihave not set my sails to every passing breeze. I am a plain and simple citizen, sent here by one of the foremost constituencies of the empire, representing—feebly, perhaps, but honestly, 1 dare aver—the opinions of very many and the true interests of all those who have sent me here. Let it not be said that I am alone in my condemnation of this war and of this incapaplc and guilty Administration : and even if I were alone, if mine were a solitary voice raised amid the din of arms and the clamours of a venal press, I should have the consolation I have to-night, and which I trust will be mine to the last moment of my existence, the priceless consolation that no word of mine has tended to promote the squandering of my country's treasure or the spilling of one single drop of my country's blood. GATED. [From "Cambridge Trifles, or Spluttorings from an Undergraduate Pen."]

There had been many other great prisoners in the course of the world's history before this —but is any comparison to be drawn between them and mo ? To be sure, lam not in some respects so badly oft as some of them ; 1 have not yet been reduced to throwing two pins about and groping after them in the darkness of my cell to preserve my reason ; nor have I to write down my feelings on the remuant of my shirt with my boot-blacking for ink and a nib ingeniously contrived out of a grounddown paving-stone; and should I wish to effect an escape, there would be no absolute need for me to pick open lifty-six locks or so with a rusty nail, climb up a chimney, and slay my landlady's husband on arrival at the top with an iron bar that I had encountered half-way, finishing up with a terrific drop over the parapet into the street—all this would hardly be necessary, exccpt as a matter of taste, seeing that there is nothing actually to prevent me from opening the street-door and going out that way. It is not that that I mind ;it is the moral part of the business, the paltriness of my ofl'cncc, and the apparent callousness with which I am consigned to this vile durance. Was Napoleon, was Richard C<eur de Lion, was Monte Christo, again I ask, were any of these above mentioned shut off from humanity for not getting up in the morning ? No —emphatically 110. Getting up early does not agree with me. It is all very weil for people to attempt to cast ridicule oil the notion, and say that it is good for everybody, and therefore that it must bo good for me. I am not everybody, and consequently everybody is not I. I have known myself longer than anybody else, and I consider that I have a right to an opinion on the subject. I do not wish to make excuses, only to justify myself in the eye of authority. I couldn't get up. It was raining and I had lost my umbrella ; I might have got my feet wet. I was sleepy ; sleep is sent by nature, and it is wrong to combat nature. I didn't want to get up, and I think that it is a horrid shame I should be made to do so. T.OWI.Y AGENCIES IN NATOIUS. 11-'rom " Darwin on Worms."J When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, on which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been slowly levelled by worms. It is a marvellous reflection that the whole of the superficial mould over any such expanse has passed, and will again pass, every lew y ears, through the bodies of worms. The plough is one of the most ancient and most valuable of mail's inventions; but long before be existed the land was in fact regularly ploughed, and still continues to be thus ploughed by earth-worms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organised creatures. Some other animals, however, still more lowly organised, namely, corals, liavo- done far more conspicuous work in having constructed innumerable reefs and islands in the great oceans ; but these arc almost confiucd to the tropical zones. LITERARY NOTES. Novels by ladies of quality arc said to be a drug in the English market. "Trash in three volumes," is Saturday Review for the average English novel. The German hymnology is said to be the largest, richest and fullest in the world, but much' of it is decidedly rationalistic. Mr. Frederick Courteney Selous has written an account of his nine years' "Wanderings in Africa," which will be published shortly. The author of "The Love Poemsof Proteus" is Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, the husband of Lady Anne Blunt, the graud-daughter of Byron. A new and enlarged edition of the works of Bret Harte, in live uniform volumes, is to bo 1-rought out by Houghton, Milllin & Co. One of William Black's reviewers say that he is pure aud healthy iu what ho writes, because he has a passion for out-of-door life. A novel publication is to be issued in London this season. It is a small album containing outline sketches of the hands of many famous pei'sons. Gustave Dord, who has recovered from the grief induced by the death of his mother, will spend much of the winter in Loadon. His lateat picture is a very mournful one. The King of Sweden, who has long figured as a poet, is now having some success as a novelist, his story of '' The Palace of ICronbcrg" having been translated into French, German, and Russian. Professor Seeley's Cambridge lectures are so fully attended that undergraduates give up their seats to the ladies, stand themselves through the hour in the passage and outside the door, and take their notes on the top of their caps. The original manuscript of the Book of Mormon is said to be in the possession of an old follower of Joseph Smith. He lives in Missouri, aud he and his son believe,that it is inspired. They do not believe in polygamy, and long ago left the fold. Most of Dante Rossetti's new poems were buried in the grave with his wife, but through the importunities of friends have at last been resurrected. He kept his paintings alas shut up in his wife's house, declaring that he would neither publish poems nor exhibit pictures to a public that could not appreciate them. '' Oliver Cromwell's Head" stuck on a spike over Westminster Hall, alter the Protector's body was dragged out of the Abbey by the returned royalists, is the subject ofanarticlc in the Phrenological Journal. The embalmed head, with the iron spikes still in it, is the property of Mr. Horace Wilkinson, of Sevenoaks, Kent. Mrs. O. F. Ashinead Windle, of San Francisco, has taken up the task of proving that that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. Sho finds the proof not in the sonnets or the faint allusions found in Bacon's correspondence by Miss Delia Bacon, but in tlio "enigma of "Cymbeline." In this play sho lias discovered a "veiled allegory, placed by the author at the end of his book. According to Mrs. Windle's solution, Bacon is Belai-ius, and when ho eoines to the king as "Old Morgan," whom ho had "sometimo banished" the two sons he presents as brothers to Jmojen (imagination) are meant to typify respectively Bacon's qualities as a man (Arviragus : the virtuous man) and a philosopher (Guiderius philosopher and guide). This is far fetched if ingenious, but will the new Shakespeare Society, to whom she addresses her pamphlet, think it " a good enough Morgan