confute with sickly horrors the special-pleading of | code. It also urged, on financial grounds, a genthat Thomas Love Peacock who tried to vindicate eral and simultaneous disarmament of all nations. the taxed and dirt-adulterated salt of India by its Addresses embodying these views had been precolored likeness to the salt of Paris. The Indians pared for presentation to the governments and for might address the directors in the words of the cho-publication to the people of all civilized nations. The one addressed to the British government was presented on Monday to Lord John Russell; who in receiving it expressed himself in terms of the deepest interest, and stated that he considered the great meeting at Brussels would be a means of promoting moderation and mutual kindness among the people of Europe. rus stricken with terror for the retribution that Ah! sconvolta nell' ordine eterno 66 Spectator. Dr. Bowring, in seconding a motion of compliment to M. Visschers and the vice-presidents, alluded to the visit of the national guards : He had been much struck by the circumstance, that while we disarm our own soldiery when not on duty, such was the confidence in our French brethren that they were allowed to walk the streets of the metropolis with their swords and bayonets, and not a word of reproach had been uttered against them. M. Visschers and M. Jousselin addressed the meeting, in speeches of national sympathy. The former said he felt in the midst of personal friends, although speaking in a strange tongue to an audi A SPECIAL deputation from the Peace Congress, which sat at Brussels on the 20th, 21st, and 22d September, waited on Lord John Russell, by appointment, on 30th October. The deputation was headed by M. Visschers, a member of the Belgian government, who presided at the congress; and was introduced to Lord John by Mr. Ewart, M. P., "the vice-president of the congress for England." Mr. Elihu Burritt "was present as vice-president of the congress for the United States;" the Reverend Henry Richard appeared for M. François Bou-ence in a strange land. The latter vowed, in Engret, vice-president for France;" and Mr. John Scoble appeared for the Baron Suringar, "vicepresident for Holland." Lord John Russell received the deputation with courtesy, and professions of deep interest and sympathy. He is reported to have expressed “his ready belief that such meetings as those recently held at Brussels might be well calculated to produce a temper of moderation and kindness amongst the various nations of the world; but though to the full extent he admitted the desirableness of universal peace, he appeared to doubt whether, in the present circumstances of society, and whilst men's passions remained as they were, such an end would be easily attainable. The deputation withdrew, much gratified by the interview." 66 A MEETING of the "Friends of Peace" was held on Tuesday night, at Exeter Hall, to hear a report of the proceedings of the late Peace Congress at Brussels." Mr. Charles Hindley, M. P., presided; supported by M. Visschers, Mr. Ewart, M. P., Mr. Elihu Burritt, Lord Beresford, Sir W. Lawson, and Dr. Bowring, M. P. Before the speaking began, a national guard, in full uniform and wearing his side-arms, was recognized at the back of the platform. He was summoned from his obscurity by the audience, with good-natured shouts and laughter at his arms; and, coming forward, was announced as M. Jousselin, deputy of the procureur of the French Republic. Mr. Scoble narrated the proceedings of the congress. lish, that the English were "capital good fellows;" that" Frenchmen love them all like brothers ;" and that he would be an Englishman himself if he were not a Frenchman. Mr. Elihu Burritt spoke in a strain of poetical and religious fervor. Mr. Joseph Sturge announced future plans. It is intended to have a far more effective conference next year-if possible—at Paris. One or two prizes, of 2000 francs, are to be given for the best essay, in French, on the means of carrying out the objects of the congress. An endeavor will be made to raise 5,000l. for carrying on the "warfare," in the next twelve months. On the morning of the same day a meeting was held at the Hall of Commerce in the city, and a committee was constituted to carry out the objects of the congress.Spectator. From the Examiner. THE PEACE CONGRESS. Every PEACE is the hare with many friends. foe. For the success of the peace congress a war blessings of peace and horrors of war, responds It had adopted resolutions, that the resort to arms for the decision of international disputes is condemned by religion, justice, reason, and the inter- know it." ests of the people; that the European governments should be invited to put arbitration-clauses in their for eighteen centuries has been that which some treaties; and that a grand congress should be held worthy gentlemen have formed themselves into an for the purpose of framing a positive international association to reveal and promote. The peace congress ought to be the congregation of every | were now? (Cheers and laughter.) It did not parish. follow that people were always the worse off for In the Catholic church there used to be a being conquered. devil's advocate, upon whose fallacious arguments If people may be the better off for being conand cavils the orthodox polemic weapons were quered, inasmuch as the results of conquest may exercised, and made to show their edge and poten- be good, so, too, conquerors must be good also, cy. The peace congress wants this convenience, and the sword, after all, in Mr. Rowley's view, it has no devil's advocate; it would be as easy to may be an instrument of benefit to the world. find a defender and eulogist of cholera as a defend-The desirable consequences proceeding from suber and eulogist of war. And let us add that it would be about as profitable to start a health congress against cholera, that is, an association to combat cholera, by preaching the blessings of health, as a peace congress against war. No one pretends to have a good word to say for war; the best to be pleaded for it is that it is an evil preferable to something worse. It is irrational, nobody gainsays it; but what is there amiss in the world that is not irrational, and that would not be put an end to by the reign of pure reason? And why not, then, have an honesty congress to abolish the foolish practice of theft? and a virtue congress to banish forever the not more injurious than irrational immoralities? The sure consequence of over-estimating our power for the attainment of any object is, upon experience of failure, recourse to another at any expense of consistency, as we have notably witnessed in the instance of Irish moral-force organization, whose progeny have been riot and rebellion. And if the peace congress live long enough, and grow big enough, it will probably end by turning to and thrashing all the soldiers. Give modesty its head, and it is a raging and a roaring lion," says Sterne; and the same, we apprehend, would be the turn of an unbridled pacific enthusiasm. 66 mission would clearly be wanting but for the armed aggression. Mr. Rowley has mistaken his vocation, and should belong, as his logic indicates, to a war instead of a peace congress. Indeed, he may be qualified to fill that office, the absence of which we have pointed out, the devil's ad vocate. As for his query whether England, conquered by Louis Philippe, would have been worse off, the presence of the national guard with their swords by their sides sufficiently answered the question; for the government, too bad for the French, and which drove them to arms, and has left them in arms, and with trust to their arms only for the defence of all that men hold dear, leaves no room for doubt as to what its blessings would have been, extended by the gentle means of invasion and conquest to a neighbor. should probably not have been worse off than Algeria. But is the cause of peace advanced by talking such balderdash as this, and preaching the impossible doctrine of submission, or rather prostration to all aggression? The whole argument, if argument it can be called, is condensed in Swift's query, having another application: We Why are they so wilful to struggle with men? on the sensible ground that to the submissive and We observe already symptoms of fanatical ex-consenting no wrong can be done, the slight contravagance, Mr. G. Thompson declaring that he sideration being overlooked of the wrongs invited regards our army as practical Atheism. Are we by such submission and consent. to infer from this that any departure from the strict If a foot-pad had stopped this Mr. Rowley on precepts of Christianity is to be considered as prac- his way home from Exeter Hall and demanded tical Atheism? and if so, how is one to be con- his purse, would he have used his stick to guard sidered who, instead of taking no heed for the his pocket, or would he have said, "My good felmorrow, and looking to be fed as the young ravens low, if I resist and you take my purse from me, are, receives a comfortable salary from the East you will be a thief, and I shall not be the less for advocating a certain cause, which if righteous robbed, therefore, to save you from committing a the Christian should advocate for justice' sake, felony, and to save myself from being pillaged, I and if unrighteous for no motive whatever? make a free gift and spontaneous offering of my money to you." We note, too, a considerable lack of consistency and coherency in the arguments and views of the orators of the peace congress. The recognition and fraternal reception of the national guard at Exeter Hall seemed rather to jar against the note of the dove; but yet more startling was the view taken by Mr. S. Rowley, entrusted with one of the resolutions, who coolly propounded the hypothesis: The cause of peace cannot be served by the repugnant extravagances to which we have adverted; and we have our doubts whether, with the discreetest conduct and language, the assumption that peace wants congresses for the comprehension of its blessings tends to the purpose in view. As well might we have congresses to demonstrate the The world is old enough Now, suppose Louis Philippe had conquered distastefulness of taxes. this country a few years ago, who knew but that to know what it pays for war, and the most effectthe people might have been better off than they ual missionary of peace is the tax-gatherer. From the Examiner, 28th Oct. In the parliamentary reports it frequently appears that a member explained, but prudently omitting all particulars of the explanation. This is a very good rule; for an explanation really explaining anything is one of the rarest things in the world. An explanation is ordinarily confusion worse confounded. If explanation is usually so perplexed a matter, what must be an explanation of Lord Brougham by Lord Brougham? the Gordian knot unknotted, the Sphynx unriddled, or, in one word, the Brougham unBroughamed. But this impossible task Lord Brougham has attempted, and with the effect, as might be imagined, of surpassing all comprehension. As Dangle says in the Critic, "Egad! I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two;" and Lord Brougham interpreting Lord Brougham is the climax of the unintelligible. The National charges his lordship with having found the grapes of the republican government sour, after the disagreeable discovery to a man who would be all things, that he could not be both Englishman and Frenchman at once. Upon this Lord Brougham explains: Naturalization was made easy by the decree of the provisional government, of which I was desirous to avail myself as speedily as possible, aware how short-lived any revolutionary ordinance might prove. I desired naturalization as a security against confiscation; and though the property which I possess in the South of France is inconsiderable, these things are always by comparison; and to me, a man of very moderate fortune, that property is greater than I can afford to lose. I also desired, though no republican, to testify my confidence in the French free institutions, how little soever I might trust the men who administer them under mob control. I still have the same confidence, and only fear that scenes of blood and anarchy may suspend these liberties. And what is this "same confidence," which Lord Brougham still possesses? He has a confidence in the French free institutions, but no trust in the inen who administer them. That is, in Touchstone's train of reasoning, the republican free institutions are good inasmuch as they are republican, but villanous inasmuch as they are administered by republicans. And this confidence in the free institutions consists with the apprehension that they will be swept away by blood and anarchy. This is as if a passenger were to profess all confidence in the safety of a ship, avowing in the same breath the most lively apprehension of her going to the bottom every moment. At prayed, there would not have been uttered by him This alleged motive of so much crooked conduct and dissimulation for the preservation of a little property is of ineffable meanness, but we do not believe it to be true. Burke said of some one that he made his vices a cloak for something worse, and Lord Brougham makes this confessed He meanness a cloak for something worse. assumes a vice which he has not. He never was a covetous or avaricious man, and has never been charged with any failing in the direction of money. Few men would feel less the loss of a little property, and few would be at so little trouble to preserve it by any constraint upon conduct, or violence to opinion. There is no tincture of avarice or covetousness in Lord Brougham; his overweening failing is a vanity, a lust for display, which when thwarted takes an intensely malignant turn, and rages with a vindictiveness absolutely insane. Naturally he is not an ill-natured man ; but the slightest wound to his vanity, if any wound to his vanity can be slight, festers and inflames and stings him to excesses of the most preposterous sort. All his faculties seem lost in these paroxysms of mortification; he forgets the acts and professions of the day before; he forgets that memory has a place in the world; all antecedents are blotted out of his mind; he is alive to nothing but resentment, and has but one study or aim, one passionate desire to say the very worst of what has offended him. air we breathe are made of the same materials. WONDERS OF CHEMISTY.-Aquafortis and the Linen and sugar, and spirits of wine, are so much alike in their chemical composition, that an old Lord Brougham's declaration that he is no re-shirt can be converted into its own weight in sugar, publican has not the inconsistency in it which may seem, as he would have been a republican if the republic would have admitted him on the necessary terms. It seems certain, or at least as certain as anything can be in the conduct of Lord Brougham, that if he had been naturalized a French citizen as he and the sugar into spirits of wine. Wine is made of two substances, one of which is the cause of almost all combination of burning, and the other will burn with more rapidity than anything in nature. The famous Peruvian bark, so much used to strengthen stomachs, and the poisonous principle of opium, are found of the same materials.-Scientific American. 1. Music and the Modern Opera, 4. Gossip about Sharks, 5. Fowling in Faroe and Shetland, 6. The Marshal D'Ancre, 7. The Dark Lady, 8. Charles V., 9. Crotchet, 10. University Reform Begun, 11. The Peace Congress, SHORT ARTICLES.-Ancient City of Bameean, 539.—Pedestrianism in the Brick Yard, 546. -Flannel next the Skin, 567.-Indian Salt Tax Revenged, 572.-Brougham's Defence; Wonders of Chemistry. 575. of the condition and changes of foreign countries. And this not only because of their nearer connection with ourselves, but because the nations seem to be hastening, through a rapid process of change, to some new state of things, which the merely political prophet cannot compute or foresee. PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of | now becomes every intelligent American to be informe Attell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader. The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Speclator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tail's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make use of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies. The steamship has brought Europe, Asia, and Africa, into our neighborhood; and will greatly multiply our connections, as Merchants, Travellers, and Politicians, with all parts of the world; so that much more than ever it Geographical Discoveries, the progress of Colonization, (which is extending over the whole world,) and Voyages and Travels, will be favorite matter for our selections; and, in general, we shall systematically and very ullv acquaint our readers with the great department of Foreign affairs, without entirely neglecting our own. While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Lawyers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified. We hope that, by "winnowing the wheat from the chaff" by providing abundantly for the imagination, and by a large collection of Biography, Voyages and Travels, History, and more solid matter, we may produce a work which shall be popular, while at the same time it will aspire to raise the standard of public taste. TERMS. The LIVING AGE is published every Satur- Agencies. We are desirous of making arrangements day, by E. 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In this shape it shows to great advantage in comparison with other works, containing in Binding.-We bind the work in a uniform, strong, and each part double the matter of any of the quarterlies. good style; and where customers bring their numbers in But we recommend the weekly numbers, as fresher and good order, can generally give them bound volumes in ex-fuller of life. Postage on the monthly parts is about 14 change without any delay. The price of the binding is cents. The volumes are published quarterly, each volume 50 cents a volume. As they are always bound to one containing as much matter as a quarterly review gives in pattern, there will be no difficulty in matching the future eighteen months. volumes. WASHINGTON, 27 DEC., 1845. Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind a the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS. LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 241.-30 DECEMBER, 1848. From the Edinburgh Review. 1. L'Europe depuis l'Avènement du Roi Louis Philippe. Par M. CAPEFIGUE. 10 vols. Paris: 1846. 2. Le Congrès de Vienne dans ses Rapports avec la Circonscription actuelle de l'Europe. Par M. CAPEFIGUE. Paris: Jan. 1847. 3. European Remodellings, a Plan with a Varia tion. London : 1848. 4. Sketches of the Progress of Civilizatian and tem which is composed by their reciprocal action; in fact it is simply impossible, as Europe is at present constituted, to look at any one of its component powers irrespectively of its relations with the others. The existing system of Europe may be termed, with almost perfect strictness, as indeed it has been termed by German publicists, a Federal system; and the fortunes of France or Prussia can be no more separated from those of the states around them, than the affairs of Unterwalden can be distinguished from the affairs of Switzerland. It happens, too, that this system itself has been brought, and that not unintentionally, into greater WHATEVER may be the character finally com- peril by the recent movement, than could have remunicated to the historical school of our own gen- sulted from any shock short of a general war; eration, it must surely be rescued from sinking into and though modifications of its character are perantiquarianism, by the influence of the events petually in operation, yet its entire demolition, or, which are passing around us. It is scarcely pos- in other words, the subversion of all those political sible that any person in these days should overlook compacts and usages which have been received as the present to exist solely in the past. From a regulating the intercourse of nations, is an event of period of tranquillity, during which the pacific the rarest occurrence and most momentous import stagnation of European politics was visibly dis--being equivalent in its effects upon the whole turbed only by the squabbles of diplomacy or the European commonwealth to those revolutions which mutterings of discontent, we have been suddenly subvert the political fabric of any particular state. precipitated into a chaos of revolutions, which have This, therefore, would naturally be the first point threatened to subvert the constitution and the re- to be attended to in considering the state of Eulations of almost every state, except our own. rope. Besides this, however, it will be found From an age of repose we have been transferred that by thus looking at each state as part of a at once to an age of living history; and indeed, in whole, the several events, which are now indissome sense, the records of the past offer no such tinct and confused, will admit of being classified scene for observation as that which is now being and characterized according to their real importance. gradually unfolded before our eyes. It is at such Some parts of the machine may bear a good deal periods, however, that history becomes susceptible of rough handling without any serious consequenof its most comprehensive and instructive applica- ces; in other parts a slight derangement may be tion; and the more so when, as in the present fatal to the whole. In order, therefore, to convey case, the progress of civilization has apparently the most intelligible and comprehensive idea of the raised its judgments above that argument which present state of Europe, we propose briefly to reused to be the ultima ratio of kings. Within view the system on which European relations these last eight months history has been appealed were based by European consent at that last arto in sanction of the most fundamental changes rangement of such affairs which has been thought over half the continent of Europe; until, indeed, to regulate our national duties; to specify the it seems almost necessary to protest against an ex- modifications subsequently introduced; to ascercess of scholasticism, and practical statesmen have tain the functions attributed to each particular state to take heed that historical reveries do not termi- in the body politic; to discover the principles which nate in some such extravagance as occasionally determined the action of the whole; and thus, by results from unqualified antiquarianism. In the elucidating the state of things under which we had spirit which is hurrying the Germans across the been living, and to which we had arrived, to conEyder, might be found a strong analogy to that sider with better understanding, and from a better which has conducted certain young English priests point of view, not only the character and course to Rome. of those events which are now so strangely affecting the condition of each particular member, but the extent to which the general system has been disturbed, and the results which any probable modifications of its form may be expected to produce. However circuitous this route may appear, the reader may be assured that more quickly and surely than any other will it lead him to the In constructing for our readers a synoptical view of the present state of Europe, we have adopted the scheme which appeared to promise the most general, as well as the most available, information. At such a crisis as this, besides the respective conditions of the several states, there is to be considered the condition of that political sys 37 |