The whole object and aim of the civil authorities is the advancement of their faith. And since they are clothed with despotic power to accomplish this end, we should suppose they would wield an overpowering influence for the spiritual benefit of the people." There is some spirit in Mr. Kip's observations, but they sadly overlay one another with manifest contradictions. Christmas in the Olden Time, or the Wassail-Bowl. By John Mills, Author of the "Old English Gentleman," &c. &c. With Illustrations by Duncan, Engraved by Dinton. London: Hurst. not, in particular, afford us anything like the amount of | one—that of rendering everything subsidiary to religion. personal observation we were entitled to expect from one who, after having accompanied two of the only three embassies to China, had fortified his knowledge of the country by a lengthened residence. By comparing it with the previous works of Du Halde and the Jesuits, Martanus, and Marco Polo, we find it little other than a compilation. It is gratifying, therefore, to find Mr. Montgomery Martin addressing himself at once to the most striking deficiency in British-Chinese statistics and intelligence the great commercial topics which the subject involves. The time may come when the importance of our having a hold on China for colonial purposes can no 1846-7 has received no better Christmas story-things longer be overlooked. And, although the first part of his publication before us relates only, as yet, to a porwhich now happily appear as regularly in December as tion of this department, yet, as involving the topography, turkey and chine, roast beef and plum-pudding—no better population, productions, government, revenue, and bank- Christmas story, if any so genial and purely English, as ing system-and the treaties and intercourse with EngIt pictures the revival of "a right land, Russia, France, America-description of the consumerry Christmas" by the Squire "a fine old English lar ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, and Shang-gentleman"-who assembled his neighbours, tenants, and hai; also of Hong Kong, Chusan, Macao, and Keachta it brings out a valuable mass of important matter. author's painstaking character and accuracy are establishHis style is clear and unembarassed, if not brilliant. And a work under his name cannot fail in taking rank as an authority on a subject like this. The present part is illustrated with a fine map. But we cannot say much for the typography. ed. The Christmas Holidays in Rome. Edited by the Rev. THERE is no mistaking the character of this little volume, to which the Rev. Mr. Sewell, "to make assurance doubly sure," has attached his name. Heralded by a poetical motto from the Lyra Apostolica; with one preface dated from Exeter College, and another dated from Albany on Christmas; and written by a reverend gentleman who announces himself as author of "The Double Witness of the "Wassail-Bowl." dependents, to feast and revel in his ancient baronial hall as his forefathers long before the battle of Hastings had done. That nothing may be wanting, sufficient diablerie, or spiritual machinery, is brought into play, while the great moral of steadiness and temperance is inculcated by one of the actors, Tom Bright by name, having been in early life subjected to all the fantasies and agonies of delirium tremens, and relating his own history in his reformed old age for the benefit of the amazed listeners by the Squire's Yule log. In Tom's tale there is a good deal of wild and bold, but, at the same time, illregulated imagination. It is so much easier to complicate marvellous incidents of this sort than to unravel them. description of the popular Christmas games of Merry Old The "Wassail-Bowl" is wound up with an animated and is further enlivened with some joyous carols. England, in which young and old, rich and poor, engage; guage. Alto gether, there is a heartiness and warmth about this story "for an English fireside," which ought and will secure it a cordial welcome. the Church," "The Lenten Fast," &c., the book is likely volume edition of Mr. Mill's popular "Old English We rejoice to see a very neat oneto be regarded as edifying in Puseyite circles, where the Gentleman"-a fiction as original as it is racy and tendimus in latium will always secure it a welcome. The national-and the first, as it is likely long to remain the via media is, however, observed throughout with toler-best tale illustrative of English Field Sports in the lanable decency. The writer states that he has "endeavoured to look at the Church of Rome without prejudice; and while his investigation strengthened the unfavourable view he before had of the practical working of that system, he still has not withheld his tribute of praise from anything he saw which was truly Catholic." Mr. Kip avowedly had for his primary object in visiting Rome" "to witness the Christmas services," his notion of what is Catholic is easy to be defined. And yet he quotes irreverently of friars "White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery." And talks scornfully of indulgences: As "One of the most fatal of their doctrines is that of indulgences. It seems to be expressed so broadly and unequivocally; and there can be but one way of understanding it. Over the door of almost every church is the inscription-INDULGENTIA PLENARIA QUOTIDIANA PERPETUA PRO VIVIS ET DEFUNCTUS."-p. 274. The admiration of our author for the Papal Government is boundless and breathless. "The theory on which the Roman Government is founded is," he says, "a noble The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. London : SLIGHTLY Curtailed of its fair proportions-and endowed with all the external advantages of Mr. Burns's admirable taste as a publisher-we have here a new edition of the immortal work of Cervantes, divested of cumbrous matter, and revised for general reading. The object was, to place in the hands of the mass of our reading population—and especially of the youth of England-an edition of Cervantes in a convenient yet not too condensed form; and that object has been accomplished. Reflections on the Career of the late Premier. Black- that he could ever have screwed up his resolution to the pitch of undertaking these lucubrations, since it is hardly possible he could have expected anybody to differ from him on the subject. The author, of course, is triumphant in carrying his point; all that we have to say is, that it is one of those points on which every one is agreed. The publishers have done their part. No work could be more handsomely got up. EDUCATIONAL AND JUVENILE WORKS. Simple Arithmetic, as connected with the National Coinage, Weights, and Measures. By Henry Taylor (3d edition). London: Groombridge. 1847. SUFFICIENT attestation of the merits of that part of this work which relates to the current coinage of the realm, is the fact of its having originally found a place in the Banker's Magazine. Its object is to establish a decimally-arranged scheme of calculation for money, weights, and measures. pendium. The Geography is of great merit as an initiatory work, from the simplicity and effectiveness of its construction. It is amply illustrated with little skeleton maps; has tables of heights of mountains, lengths of rivers, and even an index; and will be found a useful first book. PAMPHLETS AND TRACTS. The Doctrine of Jehovah. Addressed to the Parsis. A MR. WALKER is favourably known for his analysis of public acts. His pamphlet on the recent Poor Law is of acknowledged usefulness. The present analysis, amidst the rush of applicants for drainage loans, cannot be much 1. Elements of Geometry, symbolically arranged (2d less so. Digested into proper chapters, according to the edition). London: John Murray. 2. The First Principles of Algebra. Murray. nature of the provisions; and accompanied by an ApLondon: John pendix containing the Act itself, with all its necessary official forms and documents; as well as an ample Index; we can securely recommend Mr. Walker's Exposition. Remarks on the Consequences of the Entire Change of our Colonial Policy in British North America. Blackwoods, Edinburgh and London. 1847. 3. Progressive Geography for Children (4th edition). London: John Murray. THE two first of these little school books are published by command of the Lords of the Admiralty, for the use of the Boys of Greenwich Hospital. The Geometry, by means of its abbreviations and symbolical signs, forms a highly condensed epitome, equal to Euclid's Elements, consisting of eighty-six propositions, advancing as near Euclid towards the unsoluble problem of the Quadrature of the Circle. It is followed up by a short set of exercises. The Algebra, besides all the simpler rules, fractions, involution, and evolution, presents the several theories of the equations, arithmetical and geometrical progression, and the operations on Surds; and is, with the few exercises appended, an excellent School Com-extended, as it ought, to all the markets of the world. THE faint struggle which the Canadas made in resistance of Free Trade has, now that it has passed irrevocably, changed, and most naturally, into a demand for free trade in its fullest extent-not the shadow without the reality. This is but just. And the author has shown, by a careful consideration of all the restrictions still left affecting the Canadas, that their position under the new measures is an unfair one, so long as the Navigation Laws are unrepealed, and their intercourse restricted almost exclusively to Britain, instead of being POLITICAL REGISTER. THE topics of public interest during the month have been famine, fever, railways, the factory bill, the budget, the French quarrel, and the Mexican war. General Taylor, who was, till recently, Appropriatorin-Chief for the United States in the expedition against Mexico, sent a letter to a friend, who transmitted it to a newspaper, and thus it came out that the General could not do what he was required to accomplish, from the want of money and of men. The letter discloses several State secrets, and may serve to enlighten the Americans respecting the cost of a fighting character." They have now passed a resolution of thanks, and voted medals for Monterey; and, before going farther, they should call in the bills and square the accounts. General Taylor says that they cannot afford to capture the city of Mexico. Ile bas neither men nor money-nothing to fit him for the task but the will; and no man could be more willing to rub his neighbour for the purpose of his party than the unworthy successor of Washington in the command of the United States forces. 66 The discussion on the Montpensier marriage has generated a miserable squabble between M. Guizot and the Marquis of Normanby; in which M. Guizot, although Premier of France, does not seem to have acted like a diplomatist." We, of course, do not mean that either of the contending parties should have followed the example of a late Irish Attorney-General; thrown down his brief, trampled his wig, cast away his gown, bought powder and a pistol, and sought the aid of "a friend;" but M. Guizot has confessed a shabby transaction, and that is not diplomatic. The sting of his crime rests in the confession. M. Guizot might have cheated his rival; and few of his order would have censured his conduct. Diplomatists live to cheat each other; and a Prime Minister of France could not be blamed for pursuing his vocation; but it was worse than a crime-it was a blunder to confess. The French Court are irritated now with the Marquis of Normanby, because they believe that he favours the opposition. They even wish for a treaty of peace with the British Court, if a clause be inserted for the removal of Normanby. The clause will not be inserted, and the treaty will not, therefore, be signed; but a war between the courts, fortunately, does not break the peace between the nations. The Budget shows the usual fortune of the Whigs. With a surplus of nearly three millions on the year's transactions, they are obliged to borrow largely to meet the calls from Ireland. A sum of two millions has been already paid for Irish relief; and the estimate until harvest is eight millions more. This is the great fact of the Budget-an increase of the national debt by eight millions, and the repeal of no taxes. Mr. Hume was anxious to free copper ore from a small impost yielding £40,000 yearly; but even that sum could not be spared; and, as in the estimates for next year, the ends scarcely meet, there is little hope in the future for the tea associations for the anti-malt tax societies-for the repeal of the window tax-the reduction of the duty on wood-the abolition of the paper duty-or the commutation of the tax on newspapers; while the income tax is a perpetuity. Mr. Muntz, the member for Birmingham, the boldest man in the House, proposed to meet the difficulty with "cash down." He insisted that every year should stand on its own merits, and that we should pay now instead of hereafter for our benevolence. The rule would be useful. It would have been well for us if our immediate ancestors had only obtained the benefit of Mr. Muntz's advice, and followed it. If the last war had been paid for in cash, its expenses would have been reduced by onehalf or three-fourths. have employed Commissioners-to have paid money-and, in January last, to have held Cabinet Councils for the promotion of this bad system; for the whole project must have been viciously bad; because the details could have been altered in Committee. So far as we comprehend the scheme, it included— 1. Power to lend not more than £16,000,000 to railway companies in Ireland during the next four years. 2. On condition that these companies paid one-third of the cost of their works from other sources, as the shareholders' guarantee for the Government's two-thirds. 3. And that the line was approved by a Government Commission. 4. That the Government claim should be considered as a first mortgage, preferable to all other debts. 5. That the advance should bear interest at three and a-half per cent. So we concluded that our share of the public money to be involved in Irish railways would be safe, if the returns paid even two and a-half per cent. We knew, of course, that large sums of money had to be paid for Ireland, and we thought it more reasonable that the people should be employed in doing something-making a railway even-than in carrying stones from one plot on a hill, for the profitless exercise of removing them back again. The most virtuous indignation was, however, expressed against the plan, as being a horrid system of spoliation. The member for South Lancashire called it a scheme to tax the industrious people of England for the benefit of Irish landowners; forgetting, evidently, that the industrious people have been taxed ere now, in the same way, for the benefit of Liverpool merchants. Even the Member for Renfrewshire insisted that the landlords of Ireland should be compelled to perform their duty before relief was sought for the people of that country; although relief had sometimes been sought for Paisley, while yet the landlords of Renfrewshire had only done their duty "indifferently well." The second reading of the ten hours' bill was carried by a large majority. The bill may be amended to eleven hours by the Government, but with that exception it will be passed. It appears that 1 in 13 of all the Manchester mills are standing; that one-third of the number are working short time; that 1 in 15 of the operatives are idle; and one-third of the remainder are on short time. The operation of the ten hours' bill would equalise this state of matters, and would take no more from the aggre- Finally, 332 members voted against the second reading, gate working hours, or the collective wages, than the thus depriving the country of the amusement to be derecent speculations in cotton and the stagnation in busi-rived from a Bentinck Ministry, destroying the iniquitous ness have taken already. Lord George Bentinck's railway resolutions produced the great debate of the month, and, we suppose, of the session. A ministerial crisis was produced. Meetings of the Irish Members were held at the Premier's. The Cabinet threatened to resign; and the country party intimated their willingness to take office. Many hard words were exchanged; and the thinking part of the world were amused to find the Whigs, who have been manufacturing great railway schemes for Ireland, during the last ten years, so crotchetty on the subject at last. During the debate, the minor Whig speakers denounced the scheme as visionary and utopian. The Chancellor of the Exchequer even declared that one-fourth of the money required for constructing railways, and only one-fourth, would be paid for labour! After reading the speeches, we were tempted to ask what could have induced the Whigs in past years to bill, and convincing most people, out of the House, at the same time, that the success of a motion depends more upon the mover than the measure. We understand that some changes are to be made on the Government plans, and that a part of this hated bill may be ingrafted on them. Notwithstanding the noble efforts made by private individuals and public benevolence—a benevolence measured by millions, a million monthly, an advance that few communities could meet-famine and fever are thinning the hovels, and crowding the grave-yards of Ireland. Even in the north and west of Scotland, where, for the summer, more than two hundred thousand persons must be supported by private benevolence, there is reason to fear that disease has, in many instances, sprung from absolute want; while, in Ireland, nothing yet told equals, we fear, the horrors that may be revealed before harvest time, PRINTED BY GEORGE TROUP, 29, DUNLOP STREET, GLASGOW. TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE, APRIL, 1847. 1 THE COUNSELLOR'S FAMILY, A TALE ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE DOMESTIC MANNERS OF GERMAN SWITZERLAND, BY MADAME WOLFENSBERGER. Ir was the last day in June, when, with many | tears, and an infinite deal of pleasure, I bade adieu to my schoolfellows at a German boarding-school, where I had passed two years in learning, under a sort of military discipline, every variety of accomplishment, from the making of artificial flowers and paste-board boxes, to philosophy, ballet-dancing, and metaphysics, with good German and tolerable French. In the two last I had My brother Albert, a handsome youth of sealone made any considerable progress, when I was venteen, came to meet me as far as Strasbourg; recalled to my home at Z-, one of the prin- and I shall never forget my joy, when, at the end cipal towns of German Switzerland; for my father of my journey, I sprang from the Diligence, and thought he had already spent too much money on was clasped in my mother's arms. My father had my education, and my mother was impatient to left his office an hour sooner than usual, to acclasp me again in her arms. For my part I soon company her and my little sister Cleopha to reforgot my schoolfellows in the joyful hope of meet-ceive.me in the great yard of the post-house, and ing her, and my favourite brother Albert, and my his broad happy face was bright with smiles as little sister Cleopha on the morrow. he kissed me in his turn; and even our maid Rosa, who was there to carry my baggage, shook me like an old friend by the hand. pounds a year, my father was a rich man. Yet, excepting the extraordinary effort he had made in sending me, to please my mother, to a German academy, he rigidly maintained the customs of his ancestors, like the rest of his fellow-citizens; which, I had learned enough from my schoolfellows to know, were very different from the habits of great towns in other countries. Of my father I had no very distinct idea, for, according to the usual habits of most of his fellow-citizens, he was all day, except at dinner, in I thought our white-washed house had never his office, and all the evening in a coffee-house, or looked so bright and gay, as when, surrounded by a club. I knew that he did not belong to one of my family, all laughing and talking together, we the five or six rich families who consider them- approached it, and entered its old paved passage. selves the chiefs of our little world, and, priding The walls of the staircase were only white-washed, themselves on a certain indefinable kind of nobi- but though it was common to three families, the lity, devote their principal energies to maintain walnut tree steps and huge linen closets on the their money undiminished, which they have landing-places were all bright with hard rubbing. mostly gained by trade, and their blood, without Nor did the extraordinary cleanliness of our the contamination of inferior alliances. But still dwelling-house on the third story strike me less he was a town-counsellor, and one of the most forcibly. My German school had been clean and respectable and wealthy citizens of Z- His orderly, but my father's house was the perfection father had been burgomaster, or chief magistrate, of neatness, and tears filled my mother's eyes and he had inherited a property of not less than when I admired it-for all the niceties of the five thousand pounds, with a handsome old house household resulted from the labour of her own in a principal street, near the outskirts of the hands. She, and a charwoman, and her servant, town, with a pretty garden, court-yard, and run- had all been busily employed for more than a ning fountain. It contained two flats, or apart-week in putting things in order for my reception. ments, besides that occupied by his family, which were together let for sixty pounds a year, so that, with the profits of his business as a silk merchant, (a trade in which even the five or six noble families are engaged), and his place of town-counsellor, which brought him somewhat less than twenty "Now I have got you to help me in my household affairs, dearest," she said; "I need no longer get up at five o'clock in the morning." I looked at my mother anxiously. Pale, delicate, and prematurely old, she seemed little equal to labour of any kind, and yet her small hand * Late Miss Burdon, authoress of " the Forresters," "the Ward of the Crown," &c. &c. VOL. XIV.-NO. CLX. Q was spoilt by toil. Her sweet unpretending manner, though it could not be called graceful, was as decidedly that of a gentlewoman as any one I had seen since my absence. I remembered she was gifted with an extraordinary talent for music, which, as no singing societies existed in her time, had never been cultivated; and, even as a child, I had venerated her for the calm good nature with which she had ruled our rebellious humours. I kissed her, and told her "it was pleasant to me to think the time was at last come when I could be useful, I hoped, to her in many ways." The following day was my father's name-day, which it was the custom to celebrate as a fête, by giving what is called a family party, to which none but relations are invited. As eating and drinking are the principal amusements on such occasions, we were all very busy during the day in making the necessary culinary preparations. My little sister was sent into the town on different commissions, which greatly delighted her, because the pastry-cook gave her a tart, and the grocer a handful of raisins. It was my task to go in search of the most important articles, and especially of certain little cakes resembling wafers, called huppli, which are an indispensable part of a desert. They are sold for ten a halfpenny: and a good woman who made them was in the habit of coming once a fortnight to fill the little tin box in which my mother kept them on her stove to preserve their crispness; but for some reason she had delayed her visit, and at the last moment I was sent in quest of her. The great difficulty in Swiss house As I looked around me, it seemed not a day had passed since my departure. All things remained the same. Our household consisted only of one maid, and a lad, who, when not employed in the office, kept the garden in order. Rosa was a native of Aargan, and wore the white linen sleeves, black boddice, and two long tresses of plaited hair down her back, which are the costume of her canton. Whilst I was a child, neither my brother nor I had ever known the imprison-keeping is to know where things can be purchased. ment of a nursery, nor the tyranny of a nurserymaid; and I found my little sister was allowed to run alone to and fro to the town day-school, and to play on the street during holidays with her companions, or to do little errands for her mother, just as I and all my playfellows had done half a dozen years before. Her hands and arms had lost their beauty for want of gloves, but nobody cared for that, for she was the best knitter and reader of her class, and the merriest little creature living. | If you want a piece of roast pig you must clamber up a dozen flights of dark stairs, where your nose is regaled by a combination of refreshing odours, till, after knocking at half a dozen wrong doors, you arrive at a bed-room, heated to suffocation by an enormous stove, where an old woman in a night-cap will undertake to furnish you not only with the pig in question, but with every variety of wild swine, and tame swine, of venison, game, and poultry, hot and cold, with sauces, or without; and in spite of the stairs, and the smells, and the stove, and the night-cap, when the old woman's productions arrive on your table they would tempt the appetite of the most fastidious epicure. Though I saw shoals of fish in our lake basking happily in the sunshine, I began to imagine that not a single fish out of water was to be found throughout the whole town, when I discovered by accident that an ample supply was to be procured, not at a fishmonger's, for that with us is an unknown trade, but in a shipmaster's cellar. Mushrooms I purchased at a milliner's; whilst, in another shop, I found pens and candles, oil colours, and Parmisan cheese on the same shelves; and though the grocer would have supplied me to my The walnut tree chairs and tables wore as bright a polish as formerly-the stuff-covered sofa, and the small square carpet, spread under the table before it, were still as good as new-the geraniums and cactus were in blow, as in former years, in the window-my father's spitting-box stood in its accustomed corner-and the huge old blue and white stove, which had warmed our forefathers, still occupied nearly a quarter of the room. My father's mother, an old lady in a clean lace cap, cotton gown, and silk apron, who arose to welcome me, held the same eternal stocking in her hand which she had been knitting ever since I remembered her. It was her custom to sit all day in a little projecting window, command-heart's content with tea and Bologna sausages, ing a view up and down the street-nor did she leave it till my mother told us that supper was ready in the dining-room. She then led the way through the adjoining bed-rooms, which were those of the family; though the curtainless beds, covered down flat, with white coverlids, trimmed with lace and embroidery, had no appearance of ever being occupied, and no other evidence appeared of the chambers being used as dormitories. In fact, I well knew that in my mother's establishment the affairs of the toilet were conducted with the utmost simplicity, and that all the bedrooms were open as passage rooms to all the family from an early hour of the day. We spent a merry evening; though our supper only consisted of soup and a fried omelette-and we were all in bed and asleep before half-past ten o'clock. he could not furnish me with an ounce either of barley or rice. Almonds and raisins he condescends to sell, but dates and figs he leaves to the apothecary, who likewise keeps a plentiful supply of pot herbs, which are not to be discovered in any other corner of the town. The varieties of bread are without end, and every individual baker excels in some particular kind. One has a reputation for short bread, another for long; one makes tea cakes, another twist; the conductor of a Diligence sells the best white bread in the town, and the depôt for country brown loaves is in a tailor's front parlour. My last task was to purchase the huppli. I naturally concluded they were to be found in a shop. But in vain I walked up and down the steep old narrow street to which I had been directed-no visible traces either of the old woman or her huppli were to be found. In des |