BOOKS.
DEAN STANLEY'S LETTERS.* THIS volume amply confirms the impression we derived from the letters published in Dean Stanley's Life,—of a graphic power almost unique after its special kind. From early boy. hood Arthur Stanley appears to have made up for certain mental and physical defects of perception by a truly extra- ordinary sensitiveness to the dramatic aspects of the life through which he passed, and to have habitually given vent to his highly stimulated imagination in letters to his friends. A total absence of musical ear is only one instance of his deprivation of faculties which are to many a constant means of realising the poetry of life. His utter incapacity for the simplest mathematical reasoning shut off from him truths which are apt to stimulate the imagination quite as much as the reason. And yet we doubt if the published correspondence of any single Englishman can show such a sustained imaginative sensibility to the drama of his own life, or to the drama of history as recalled in the scenes he visited. He found the dramatic everywhere. Even the ordinary scenes of daily life stereotyped themselves on his fancy as the moving pictures of a play. A game of foot- ball, or the recitation of a poem before his Rugby school- fellows, is pictured in his home - letters with the same vividness with which in later life he describes the sacred memories which crowded around him in the Holy Land, the awful and aimless pageant of the interminable Egyptian dynasties which was called up in such detail by his visit to Thebes, the historical significance of the Papal Court and of the Palace of the Patriarch of Moscow, the scenes and pages of history reconstructed and revivified in a moment by his sojourn in Ravenna. Even a visit to the Zoological Gardens sets his mobile and in a sense unstable imagina- tion aflame ; and it finds on all sides suggestions and analogies. The brown bear in the cage recalls the picture of the brown bear fiddling in the German fairy- tales. When a monkey picks the fleas from the coat of his mate, Stanley sees in them two fellow-creatures, the one deeply earnest, the other all submission ; when the peacock appears, his hop reminds Stanley " so exactly" of the movement of "exceedingly silly people." In the first half of the volume, at least, the selection is so admirably made, that it is like a series of vivid dissolving views, scene succeeding scene, each as clearly defined and touched with colour as lifelike as its predecessor.
Augustus Schlegel, Bishop Wilberforce, Jenny Lind, and the parents of Benjamin Jowett, are drawn with graphic touches which make one wish for more specimens of such pictures of men and women ; while the bulk of the book depicts rather scenes and events with which Stanley came in contact, and the crowded associations they suggested to him. One gets sometimes the impression of something in the writer akin to the exhaustion of a clairvoyant or of a constant subject of hypnotism, consequent on his absolute possession by the scenes through which he passed ; and one feels as though this quasi-possession were due to a passive receptivity rather than an active power of recalling events and drawing their picture. They are, in this respect, almost more photographs than sketches. But the result is an extraordinary collection of photographic impressions, in which wide reading and knowledge of history blended spontaneously and instinctively with the historical scenes which he constantly visited. The outcome is not a critical reconstruction of history, but the venture of a mind—critically trained, indeed, in its own past historical study, but in the present spreading out all its organs of sensitiveness, and painting a far fuller picture than criticism with its negative methods could ever give. This impression is confirmed in the very interesting correspondence between Stanley and Grote, in which Grote expresses his own fear of going too far in historical recon- struction of the pictorial sort lest he may become untrue to fact. Yet probably in Stanley himself the peculiar instinctive power of reconstruction guided him so truly that he could venture where many historians far greater in critical power and sounder in their explicit judgments, might fail.
It is difficult to give in isolated quotations an idea of the
Prothero, M.A. London : John Murray. 1$35.
manysidedness of Stanley's sensitive imagination. We will give three instances, one from his schoolboy life, one from his visit to the Sistine Chapel, a third from his visit in 1853 to Thebes.
In 1832, when a boy of seventeen, he recited before the whole school his prize poem on Charles Martel. He writes to his sister the following account of the scene :— " I washed my head very properly, and made it quite decent, I think, without the help of artificial curls : took two glasses of wine, and 'than rushed abroad to meet the dreadful hour.' The day had luckily cleared up, so that I had not the splashing through mud and wet as I had expected, and I arrived safe at the school with nothing forgotten, with my prize-essay to read ; my two poems were neatly rolled up, and tied with three blue ribbons (by the housekeeper), and one to prompt from. The people now began to flock in, and as Dr. Wool and Mrs. Wool came in (the late master you know) there was a thundering peal of clapping. But, however, this was nothing to me, and when the people were settled, the first speaker (i.e., Latin poet) began to speak. I was all this time not in a very great fright, not near so much as in my fifth-form essay, but still in a very great tremor. I spoke second, so as soon as the first boy had done, I got up with my roll in my hand, and, trying to look at no one, I set off as loud as ever I could, and did not feel very much alarmed, except when I forgot it every now and then; but my prompter prompted very loud—too loud for all but me—and so I got on without many blunders. Per- haps you will like to hear particulars. The first place where I used any distinct action was the sea-like plains of France,' where I waved about my arms over the plains ; the most vehement part was 'On, Christians, on.' Then it had been suggested to me that, if the old opposition master, Mr. Moor, was present, I should point at him as The Moor, the Moor ; ' and there he was when I got up, just opposite me, but I dared not use the action. I was very near leaving out four lines beginning with 'perchance above,' &c., but I just remembered in time ; and I said' the unknown ocean, and the boundless shore;' and, lastly, I forgot my first bow before I walked up for the prize (which was two large folios, Diodorus Siculus, a fine edition of a Greek book ; and though not very useful now, yet a, good and venerable book to have), which it was all I could do to carry back. Then there intervened the Latin essay, and then I was again quite comfortable for the essay. I think it could scarcely have been that ; but, just as I was beginning, I felt such a queer sensation at the top of my head, just as if my hair was standing on end : but it very soon went down, and I went on in a strenuous tone to the end, and then, as I went up to get tho last prize, there rose from all sides a tremendous peal of clapping. Those few moments certainly gave me as much pleasure as I have ever had, I think. And it fully repaid me for all the trouble I had had. My essay prize was a very venerable old folio, bound in Chroniques de Monstrelet ' of 1603. After the speeches came the dinner ; and as the Latin poem boy was not there, I bad to sit at the head of the table, which in one point proved fortunate, as I sate before veal, and had not a single slice to carve. Afterwards I had to propose the customary toasts, all of which I cut very short, with- out bestowing any praise on the persons proposed. And then the day was over : to quote again, it leaves a blank upon the wind, like that depression of spirits which so frequently follows vehement mirth.'" To Hugh Pearson—in whose company he had visited Rome in highest pitch, is the meeting of the Cardinals in the Sistine
1841 and been deeply impressed by the sight of Gregory XVI, in his old age—he writes in 1852 an account of the Papal ceremony which he witnessed on All Souls' Day in the Sistine Chapel :—
"I never had before realised fully that the Sistine Chapel is simply a chapel of the Papal Court. No one else is supposed to be present, and so rigidly is this enforced that Swiss guards are stationed to prevent you even from putting your fingers on the inside of the barriers. Nothing but your head is allowed to appear above. Meanwhile the chapel itself remains vast and empty. At last the Cardinals dropped in one by one in crimson and purple, this being a substitute for scarlet in honour of the funereal character of the day Each kneels for the moment; an attendant priest clothed in purple unwinds his train; he rises, bows to the altar, and seats himself on the long seats that run round the chapel. Another, and another, and another, each kneeling, and rising, and bowing, first to the altar and then to the Cardinals already seated, who in return rise, and bow, and sit again, the purple priests sitting at their feet and readjusting their robes. The name of each was whispered by some one among the spectators. There was the little Barberini, a lively little old man; Antonelli, chief secretary of state, in full vigour of age, very striking, strong, clear, yet not malevolent features, seated himself in a moment, and talked incessantly till the service began ; then came old Prince Altieri, oldest of the Cardinals; and, though not the oldest, yet the most infirm, tottering in, the com- panion of Gregory, our own Gregory, old grey-headed Lam- breschini. The rest were ordinary enough ; some read their books, others took snuff, others talked. Any one who has seen the heads of Houses drop into Adam de Brom's chapel before the University sermon has a very fair notion of the aspect of the conclave. There is just the same mixture of a few very able with many very weak faces ; the same look of ecclesiastics, yet not ecclesiastic.; the same appearance of an ancient institution out- Letters and Verse. of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D. Edited by Rowland E. living itself, yet determined not to dio. All this, carried to the Chapel.' You will perceive from this description that, with each successive entrance, the show, or game as it almost seemed, became more and more complicated, all rising as the others entered. At last the great catastrophe arrived. The door on the left of the altar, after having poured in a host of magnificently arrayed canons round the Cardinal Archbishop who was to perform the service, and of scarlet prelates, opened finally. IL Pontefice,' whispered the spectators ; the cardinals rose en masse. In walked Pius IX., with a high white mitre, white, but with a richly embroidered coat, a long train borne by two scarlet Monsignori, one of whom was our old acquaintance Talbot of Balliol. What with the turning inwards of the whole body towards him, the robes, the train, and mitre, and also a, portly person and large. featured face, there was something almost colossal about him— something very different from the dead corpse-like figure of Gregory XVI. Behold him, then, at last deposited on his throne, right of the altar, the service being commenced the very instant he entered the chapel ! There was the usual ceremonial, which after being seen many times still seems as strange as over. Thrice at least he descended from the throne to be clothed and unclothed, mitred and unmitred, spread and unspread, and the whole service seemed to move in equal relations round him and round the altar. Never for a moment were you allowed to forget that the highest potentate of this earth was present in the chapel ; never could you forget that you looked on an aged human being, living in this passing generation of the nine- teenth century, but laden with the traditions and courtesies, end, must I add 7 superstititions and falsehoods, of fifteen hundred years. The last words of the service he read himself, or rather chanted. Once, too, he tossed the incense, and thrice he shook I know not what. Two parts of the service were, however, truly impressive, irrespective of the pontifical presence. Almost at its very 'beginning the choir burst forth with the long sustained chant of Dies bee, dies ills.' A thrill passed through me as I caught dimly the words, Teste David cum sibylla,' under that immortal roof, alive with the prophets and sibyls who vainly tried to sound the depths of their own prophetic thoughts, and when the whole judgment was unrolled in the presence of that great malediction, miscalled a judgment, on whose deep blue sky and central figures the November sun was shining full and bright over the altar. This was the first point. The second, as of course it always must be, was the moment of the elevation. I saw the attendant snatch off the white skull-cap from Pio's head and dis- close the bare tonsured hair, and then saw no more ; for down went every head, cardinals and guards, and all but one or two sturdy ProtestanCs in the background, and all was for a few moments both silent and invisible. The day was marked by a large velvet coffin being placed before the altar. The assembly broke up in a moment. The Pontiff vanished; the cardinals and attendants instantly twisted up their long trains, and so the pageant dissolved."
We have only space left for a portion of Stanley's descrip- tion of the gigantic statue of Rameses II. of Thebes, who flourished probably fourteen centuries before Christ, being the last of the eighteenth dynasty, or the first of the nine- teenth, of the Egyptian kings :— " Nothing that I have ever been told has given me any adequate impression of the effect, past and present, of the colossal figures of the kings. What spires are to a modern city—what the towers of a cathedral are to its nave and choir—that the statues of the Pharaohs were to the streets and temples of Thebes. The ground is strewn with their fragments. There were avenues of them, towering high above plain or houses. Three of gigantic size still remain. One was the granite statue of Rameses IL himself, who sate, with his hands on his knees, on the right side of the entrance to his palace. By some extraordinary catastrophe, the statue has been thrown down, and the Arabs have scooped their millstones out of his face. But you can still see what he was— the largest statue in the world. He must have been, even sitting, a hundred feet high.. Far and wide that enormous head must have been seen—eyes, nose, and ears. Far and wide you must have seen his vast hands resting on his elephantine knees ; the toes, even without the nails, are two feet seven inches long. You sit on his breast and look on the Osirid.e statues which support the temple, and which, anywhere else, would put to shame even the cherubs and statues of St. Peter's. But they seem pigmies before him. His arm is thicker than their whole bodies. The only part of the temple or palace at all in proportion to him must have been the gateway, which rose in pyramidal towers, now broken down. Nothing which now exists can give any notion of what the effect must have been when he stood erect. Nero towering above the Colosseum may have been something like it; but he was of bronze, and Rameses II. was of solid granite. Nero was standing without any meaning; Rameses was resting in awful majesty after the conquest of the then known world. No one who entered that building, whether palace or temple, would have thought of anything else but that stupendous being. who thus had raised himself up above the whole world of gods and men. Kehama, as he entered Padalon, is the sort of notion he suggests, if you can substitute the Egyptian repose for the Indian fanati- cism. And when from the statue you descend into the palace the same impression is kept up. It is the earliest instance of the great historical glories of a nation, such as Versailles and the Vatican. You see the king everywhere, conquering, worship- ping, ruling. But everywhere the same colossal proportions are preserved. He and his horses are ten times the size of the rest of thearmy, as he appears in battle. In worship he is of the same' stature as the gods themselves. You see the familiar gentleness with which, one on each side, they take him by each hand, as one of their own order, and in the next compartment introduce him to Ammon and the lien-headed goddess, All distinction, except of degree, between divinity and royalty is entirely levelled, and the royal majesty is always represented by making the king—not, like Saul or Akeiffiemnon, from the head and Shoulders, but from the foot and ankle upwards—higher than the rest of the people. It carries one back to the days when there were giants in the earth.' It shows how the king was, in that first monarchy, the visible god upon earth. The only thing like it can have been the deification of the Roman emperors, and it appears to me to shatter to pieces Miss Martineau's representation of the old Egyptian religion. No pure monotheism could for a moment have been compatible with such an intense exaltation of the reigning king. I am Pharaoh,' 'By the life of Pharaoh,' 'Say unto Pharaoh, Whom art thou like in thy greatness P '—All these expressions seem to me to acquire new life from the sight of this monster statue."
These specimens must suffice, although one striking feature in the volume is that they are not exceptional instances, but represent the level maintained in nearly all the letters in the first half of the fascinating volume before us.
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