GLEANINGS.
Brighton is unenviably notorious for rudeness to the Queen. The Times publishes an extract of a letter written at Brighton Palace on Sunday last, which mentions a new instance. " Her Majesty and Prince Albert cannot take a walk from the Pavilion up to the Chain Pier and return again to the Palace, without being hemmed in, and most rudely obstructed in their progress by a mob of well-dressed men, women, and children, and then absolutely hunt. ing the Sovereign and her consort to the very gates of the Royal residence. Such a scene occurred this day, to the very great annoyance of the Queen and the Prince. • " • Her Majesty, who has more than once expressed her feelings on the subject, is not likely to give the ill-bred mob another chance. How different is the case at Windsor; and how extremely different was the behaviour of the public at Weimer, during the Royal visit last autumn. Unless the Brighton people mend their manners, I very much question if the Queen will often honour them with a visit."—There is much bad taste in such discourtesy ; but the people are not alone to blame. Royalty makes itself the spectacle, the sight of sights; and it is not surprising that sightseers run after gratuitous exhibitions of it. The appropriate remedy would be, for royalty to be made less of a mere spectacle, and better known in the living person to the people. At Windsor, where the many are more familiar with the sight of the illustrious residents, there is not this pushing. Walmer is scarcely a case in point, because it cannot be crowded by so miscellaneous a throng as Brighton. If royal personages were to persevere in going more about among the people— as Prince Albert has done, when he went bathing alone at Brighton—there would be less of this vulgar hustling to see a wonder.
The Asiatic Journal has a useful account of " the Scinde Papers," a pon- derous Parliamentary Blue Book, which contains a mass of correspondence extending over the space from 1836 to 1843. The heap of undigested materials is unreadable to most people; and the sixteen octavo pages will suffice to put them in possession of the spirit of the vast original. Some of the salient points come out more distinctly for the brevity of the review. In 1836, the British Government interposed between Runjeet Singh and the Ameers of Scinde ; and, obtaining for the Ameers some advantage, forced their consent to admit a British Resident into Hyderabad, with an "escort." Frequent dis- putes with the petty Princes of Scinde, who stood in the way of British com- merce and military movements, were the pretexts for successive encroachments : five months after the consent to admit a Resident, the Ameers were told ,that the British would interfere in the succession of their principalities—that the share in the government of Scinde held by those who were hostile would be "transferred to the more faithful members of the family," and that a British subsidiary force should be maintained in Scinde : in June 1842, Lord Ellen- borough charged the Ameers with endeavouring to throw off their "allegiance": in 1843, he proclaimed the British occupation of their territory. These few words convey the moral of the whole tale. The Ameers were selfish bar- barians, intent solely on preserving for their amusement certain hunting. grounds on the banks of the Indus, which the British plans threatened with violation : but the British had not the shadow of a claim upon them. The same periodical speaks with deserved severity of growing licences in the correspondence of official people. "The subordinate agents seem to think that their diligence is measured by the length, number, and minuteness of their epistles, which record the most frivolous circumstances, and even dress up a conversation in a sort of dramatic dialogue. A kind of slang, too, quite un- suited to the decorum of official correspondence, seems to be growing into nee. Some of the documents in the volume before us, written in this strain, could not, indeed, have been intended to be recorded. When the Political Agent in Scinde, writing to his assistant, tells him to keep back his letter to somebody till he had 'established a raw' on somebody else, and when the assistant writes to his superior that such a one 'is the man that gives all the newspaper yup that is twisted into queer forms by these people,' neither could have expected that these specimens of their colloquial style would be 'presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty."
"The desire of securing popularity for the moment, to effect the object for the moment desired, has been through life the policy of Louis Philippe. This is one of the weak points of this character. '1 think the Republican govern- ment is the nwst perfect in the world ! ' said Louis Philippe to Lafayette, at the Hotel de Ville of Paris, in July 1830; and by that phrase he obtained the silent acquiescence of the Republican party in his favour. But what was the consequence ? They afterwards reproached him as a traitor, and for ten years &night to take away his life, because the programme of Republican institutions was necessarily abandoned as incompatible with a Monarchy. You are my brethren,' 'exclaimed Louis Philippe to the National Guards : 'I am only one of your comrades.' What was the consequence ? His ' comrades ' took the liberty of dictating to him what line of conduct he should take in his political government ; and his ' comrades ' in other places, when he did not Follow their advice, took up arms against him, and fought day by day against his throne, himself, and his family."—Fraser's .Magazine.
The Christian version of the story of Count Julian and his daughter has rendered the tradition on which Southey founds his poem of Roderick the Last of the Goths familiar to most readers. In the Dublin University Magazine, Dr. Cooke Taylor adduces evidence to show that the tradition is not so apocry- phal as it has sometimes been considered. He argues, that the existence of the alien and persecuted Jews in Spain, of Arians also persecuted, and the know- ledge of other religious sources of internal dissension, predisposed-the Saracens to invade Spain ; the apparently inadequate cause of Count Julian's private wrong being merely the pretext already desired. In evidence, he brings the Arabian historians' version of the tale : which is very close to that of the Christians. "Ilyan, a name which seems to resemble Allan rather than Julian, was the Gothic Governor of Ceuta when the Saracens were advancing against the province of which that city was the capital. He applied for aid to his Suzerain ; and as the allegiance paid by provincial governors in those days was little more than nominal, Roderick demanded that the Count should in- trust him with his daughter as a hostage before sending the required succours. The young lady, whom the Spaniards call Florinda and the Saracens Cabe, was accordingly sent to the court of Toledo, which was at this period the most brilliant in Europe. According to the Arabs, Florinda was kept by her father's friends in Oriental seclusion, until accidentally seen by the King; but the Christian writers declare that she mixed freely in the pleasures of the court, and encouraged the attentions of Roderick, who lived very unhappily with his Queen. When solicited to become a royal mistress, she peremptorily refused; the King had recourse to violence : and then, stung by the bitterness of her reprcaches, kept her under strict guard, lest she should communicate her wrongs to her father. With some difficulty she obtained permission to send llyan some robes embroidered with her own hands; and in the parcel she en- closed a withered flower, emblematic of the blight that had fallen on her fame. Ilyan understood the hint ; he hastened to court to bring hie daughter home, that she might see her mother, who was dangerously ill. Roderick, having pre- viously bound the lady by an oath of secrecy, consented; but she embraced the first opportunity of revealing to her father the author of her disgrace. At the audience of leave, Roderick urged llyan speedily to return, and to bring with him some of the celebrated hawks of Africa. The Governor replied- ' Doubt not, 0 King, that I will soon be back, and bring thee such hawks as thou never sawed in thy life.' No sooner did he return to Africa than he entered into communication with the Saracens, and induced them to under- take the conquest of Spain."
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