has gained what is infinitely more valuable, influence. A journal is no longer a Jupiter Tonans, shaking the world with its thunders, and hurling its bolts right and left at the instigation of an individual caprice. No newspaper is now strong enough to fly in the face of the national feeling. If it does so, it becomes the obscure organ of a narrow clique or unpopular party. The great increase of newspapers during the last few years has in some degree placed the journalist in the position of a candidate for a seat in Parliament. He must represent, if not exactly the views of his readers, at least common sense. Common sense, enforced with ability, is the great strength of a free and independent press. The wide diffusion of enlightened and rational views on such matters as politics and religion is attested in a remarkable manner by the moderation of tone which we now see in journals that, ten or a dozen years ago, were notorious for their scurrility and violence. The evil passions which required to be fed with abuse of the Crown, the House of Lords, the Bishops, and all things exalted and respectable, have calmed down since then; and it is no longer a recommendation to any class for a newspaper to be known as an assailant of the aristocracy, or a reviler of parsons. There were several publications, a short time since, which openly professed atheism and disbelief. There is not one now. Journals of the Satirist class have long been consigned to the limbo of disgust. The organs of Chartism and rabid democracy have been obliged, for dear life's sake, to become respectable. Some of them are now so respectable that decent people take them in, and are not ashamed to leave them lying exposed on their tables. General literature, too, has become manifestly healthier with the growth of the last decade. The young generation of authors, who were making their influence felt when the Forties went out, were wont to decry High Art, to vote Shakespeare a bore, and to exalt La Bagatelle at their expense. Those young authors did a vast deal of harm to the generation of lads who were just then bursting from school. But they have repented, recanted their errors, and are now making amends by doing good, honest, useful work; and as High Art and Shakespeare have escaped from their ban to shine forth more brilliantly and be better appreciated than ever, we are willing to forgive their error as an indiscretion of youth and inexperience. This great Reformation in manners and morals, which we have been seeking to attribute to the influence of the Great Exhibition of 1851, has been shown by many other outward signs, some of them of an apparently trivial character. Let us instance costume: and we desire to speak exclusively of the costume of the male sex. What dreadful things, in the way of coats, and shirt-collars, and stocks, we used to wear a dozen years ago! We wonder now that we could ever have tolerated those wisps of satin about our necks; that we could have been proud of those Niagaras of sarcenet, that flowed down our chests to the uppermost of those three buttons which fastened that ridiculous "vest." And that rampant collar, with strings, which was a perpetual guillotine threatening our ears! How could we ever have worn such a thing, or tolerated the distracting ineffi ciency of those streamers of tape, in an age of steam and invention? And the Wellingtons and the straps, which we cherished as indispensable appliances, and means to boot, of a gentleman's costume! How they are all simplified in the plain and easy, yet graceful and becoming suit of the present day! It will be remarked that this simplification of costume has tended greatly to abolish old-fogeyism. Formerly, when men grew old, they thought it incumbent upon them to adopt old-mannish clothes. Now our old boys are as juvenile in costume as their sons. In this new era of active and bustling life, men begin to find that it will never do to be old and look old too. And so the elderly gentlemen of our day renew their youth with peg-tops and lay-down collars. We have purposely excluded the ladies from consideration under this head, because we scarcely know how to interpret the change, the marked change, which has taken place in their costume. If we recall the costume of our women-folks in 1848,-that bad year, when every thing was at its worst, and compare it with what we see to-day, it will not be easy, we think, to come to the conclusion that the change which has taken place is for the better, as an indication of either modesty or morals. We saw many improper things in 1848, including Revolutions and Chartist riots; but we were not accustomed in the public streets to see ladies' legs exposed half-way up the calf. A lady's foot then was a poetical thing, in a delicate sandaled shoe; and one might have sung of his sweetheart, with Sir John Suckling, "Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice, peeped in and out, But now your sweetheart, your wife-ay, your very grandmother-indue their legs in the particoloured hose of a harlequin, encase their feet in miniature highlows, and appear perpetually to be about to perform a saucy dance in a burlesque. This, and crinoline, and embroidered petticoats, elaborately stitched to be shown off, and cockle-shell and scoop bonnets, do not appear at first sight to be signs of the moral progress of womankind. Still we should be sorry to judge the matter rashly. There may be some occult purpose in a distended petticoat which we do not perceive; and, after all, miniature highlows may be calculated to take a step in advance towards achieving the Rights of Woman. Our theory, then, is, that the ameliorations which we have pointed out, and many others besides, are to be ascribed to the influence of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which awakened us all to a new life, and set before us new objects of ambition, and a wider field for active life than we had ever dreamt of before. If we are correct in our deductions, the result is a literal and remarkable illustration of the familiar precept of the Latin Grammar: "Fideliter dedicisse artes emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." And if so much has been accomplished by this new Engine of Civilisation at the outset of its career, retarded by the friction of a fresh start, what may we not expect to see ten years hence, now that it is about to derive fresh impetus in the midst of its increasing force and speed! A Castle in Spain. I. LITTLE girl with the down-drooping eye lid, Where fern in the woodland is fair,- While cloud-shadows course over the plain, II. Shall we dwell where the music of ocean There's delight where the great cliffs are keeping Stern guard by the mists of the main; But there's peace where the bright lakes are sleeping,Pleasant site for a Castle in Spain. III. A fantastic Alhambra-like villa, With terrace and fountain and lawn; A balcony, where one's Manilla May be smoked, when the dinner-cloth's drawn, And you're singing some ballad, my fawn. Light wines on one's table to sparkle,- New books every day by the train, Which we'll read under trees patriarchal, That are grouped round my Castle in Spain. IV. The few friends who know us shall quote us (Real friends, e'en in visions, are few) As happier eaters of lotos Than the bard of the Odyssey knew, Than appeared before Tennyson's view. I'll shake off grim Industry's fetter, Or a song for our Castle in Spain. V. Ah, darling! the visions that glitter MORTIMER COLLINS. TEMPLE BAR. FEBRUARY 1862. I The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous; A NARRATIVE IN PLAIN ENGLISH, ATTEMPTED BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. CHAPTER THE FOURTH. MY GRANDMOTHER DIES, AND I AM LEFT ALONE, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A NAME. HAVE sat over against Death unnumbered times in the course of a long and perilous life, and he has appeared to me in almost every shape; but I shall never forget that Thirtieth of January in the year '20, when my Grandmother died. I have seen men all gashed and cloven about -a very mire of blood and wounds, and heads lying about on the floor like ninepins, among the Turks, where a man's life is as cheap as the Halfpenny Hatch. I was with that famous Commander Baron Trenck when his Pandours-of whom I was onee-broke into Mutiny. He drew a pistol from his belt, and said, "I shall decimate you." And he began to count Ten, "6 one, two, three, four," and so on, till he came to the tenth man, whom he shot Dead. And then he took to counting again, until he was arrived at the second Tenth. That man's brains he also blew out. I was the tenth of the third batch, but I never blenched. Trenck happily held his hand before he came to Me. The Pandours cried out that they would submit, although I never spoke a word; he forgave us; and I had a flask of Tokay with him in his tent that very after-dinner. I have seen a man keel-hauled at sea, and brought up on the other side, his face all larded with barnacles like a Shrove-tide capon. Thrice I have stood beneath the yardarm with the rope round my neck (owing to a king's ship mistaking the character of my vessel). I have seen men scourged till the muscles of their backs were laid bare as in a Theatre of Anatomy; The Austrian, not the Prussian Trenck.-ED. This does not precisely tally with the Captain's disclaimer of feeling any apprehension when passing Execution Dock.-ED. VOL. IV. t |