at Tiberias, and yet more, whose chief desire is now to be allowed so to till the land of their fathers. Many independent causes seem to be co-operating to turn the tide of the new emigration to Palestine and Syria. Overpopulation in England, the jealousy of the Americans as to suitable colonists, the anti-Semitic movement on the Continent, the Russian persecution, the Palestine-hunger' among the Jews themselves, and the antagonism of Turkey to Russia, all seem to work in one direction. The distance from Odessa to Syrian ports is short. The conditions of life in Oriental countries are nearer than any in the West to those which prevail in Moscow; and the misgovernment of the Sultan's dominions is less oppressive than that of the Czar's policeridden Empire. Much must depend on the Sultan's good will, but this has been already shewn by the asylum offered in Albania to the fugitives from Corfu. The more ambitious expectations of those who would fain see Palestine remodelled on the basis of the Lebanon Constitution may perhaps be doomed to disappointment, but the conviction having once taken root, as it has, that the best course, in the interests of themselves and of those whom they would protect, lies, in the opinion of the Jewish leaders, in establishing their poorer brethren in Palestine, money will not be lacking, nor influence such as is most powerful with the Turks. So much accurate information is now in their possession, as to the advantages and drawbacks of a peasant life in Syria, that the Jews are able to form a just conclusion on the subject. Travellers and merchants from among themselves have recently come home convinced that this settlement presents the true solution of the present difficulty, and the next few years may witness an historic episode of no small interest, in the readjustment of Jewish population, and the formation of a national nucleus in their own land, which will materially change the status of the Jew, and perhaps lead to important results in the working out of the Eastern question. C. R. CONDER. (24) ART. II.-A PUBLISHER AND HIS FRIENDS. Memoir and Correspondence of the late John Murray, with an By SAMUEL SMILES, LL.D. Two Volumes. Portraits. HESE volumes carry us back to one of the best periods in English literature, and set it before us in a singularly clear and attractive light. The publisher whose life it chiefly records had dealings with most of the wits of his time. His legal adviser was latterly Sharon Turner, the accomplished historian of Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. Among his friends and correspondents were Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, Moore and Campbell, Rogers and Coleridge, George Canning and Sir John Borrow, Gifford, Lockhart, and Croker, the elder D'Israeli, George Ellis, Sir Francis B. Head, and George Borrow, Southey and John Hookham Frere, Henry Hallam and Dean Milman, Thomas Carlyle and Benjamin Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone. All these were men of remarkable ability; some of them were men of genius. It is rare, exceedingly rare, that a publisher has had the good fortune to gather around him such a brilliant array of commanding intellects, and to stand towards them not simply in the mercantile relation of publisher and author, but in that as well of host and guest, correspondent and friend. The Life and Correspondence of such an one was assuredly worth publishing. It forms, as need hardly be said, a most important contribution to the history of modern English letters. Dr. Smiles, to whom we owe the preparation of the volumes, is a veteran biographer. The work has led him out into a new line, and into a field which hitherto he has been little accustomed to travel. The cunning so conspicuous in his Industrial Biographies appears here, but scarcely with the same masterliness either of method or narrative. If anything, he seems to have been overweighted with a plethora of material. The task of selection and condensation appears to have been particu larly heavy, and here and there are signs that the pruning knife has been vigorously used, and not always with advantage. The method which has been adopted is not altogether above criticism. The volumes have too much the appearance of a collection of essays. Instead of a narrative in which the events are related in their chronological order and illustrated by the correspondence, after the manner, say, of Lockhart in his admirable biography of Sir Walter Scott, successive chapters deal with incidents and circumstances which are often synchronous. In other words, the incidents are not presented in the order in which they occurred, but are grouped round individuals, and the chapters have often the appearance of disjecta membra. This method has no doubt its advantages, but it is outweighed by its disadvantages. One result of it is the necessity for frequent repetitions; another is, that one has often to hark back in order to find out whereabouts, in the fifty or seventy-five years covered by the volumes, one really is, to say nothing of the difficulty, often irritating, of recalling the exact position of the incident under notice in the political or literary affairs of the time. To use a phrase of Sir Walter Scott's, there is an absence of general views in the volumes, and their instructiveness as well as the pleasure of their perusal is thereby impaired. On the other hand, looking at the volumes as a series of semi-independent chapters, and considering them in this character alone, they are deserving of uncommon praise. They are full of anecdote, interesting side-lights, and rare information. The modern world has two holy of holies, a banker's parlour and a publisher's office, and into the latter the world is here admitted on the freest terms. The mysteries of the 'Anak of Publishers' are here for the first time unveiled to the profane gaze, and we are told all about the price paid for books, and the hopes, joys, and disappointments of author and publisher, not in any niggardly, sophisticated way, but as the private and confidential correspondence of author and publisher alone can inform us. Dr. Smiles' old skill comes back to him here, and the reader, if he reads only for enjoyment, is carried on with an interest that never flags. At the same time, the instructiveness if not the interest of the chapters would have been heightened, if the commentary on the letters had been somewhat fuller, and written from a wider knowledge. But to find fault is easy. In the present instance we are free to confess that it is almost ungracious. Nothing short of our very high appreciation of the value of the two volumes before us and an imperative sense of duty would have induced us to pass the remarks we have. At the same time, we are bound to express our sense of the difficulty Dr. Smiles has had to contend with. With the materials he has evidently had at his command, to have expanded his biography to say twice its size would have been comparatively easy. But a biography in two volumes appears now to be the utmost that the public will accept, no matter how interesting or instructive it may be; and if the public will insist upon its limits, it must put up with more or less imperfect work. John MacMurray, the father of John Murray, was a lieutenant of Marines, and, as his name indicates, of Scottish descent. He belonged to the Murrays of Athole. His uncle, Colonel Murray, was out in the rising of 1715, under the Earl of Mar. The Colonel's brother, the lieutenant of Marines' father, adopted a safer course. He prefixed the Mac' to his name, adopted the profession of law, settled in Edinburgh, and became a Writer to the Signet. Lieutenant MacMurray was the younger son of the writer. Six years after the treaty of Paris, tired of the monotony of barrack-life, despairing of promotion, and anxious to push his way in the world, he retired on half-pay, and resolved to set up in business in London as a bookseller. During his residence in Chatham, where the Marines were quartered after the treaty of Paris, he had married Nancy Wemyss, daughter of Captain Wemyss, and renewed his acquaintance with Falconer, the author of The Shipwreck,' also a native of Edinburgh. He had at first hoped to secure Falconer as a partner, but after finishing his Universal Marine Dictionary, Falconer had accepted the post of purser to the Aurora' frigate, and MacMurray's letter, asking him to become his partner, did not reach him till he arrived at Dover on board the Aurora,' then on her way out to India. Falconer would appear to have declined the overtures. Anyhow, he continued his voyage on board the 'Aurora,' which, after touching at the Cape of Good Hope, was never heard of again. Lieutenant MacMurray, however, was not to be deterred. His father supplied him with the capital, and in November, 1768, he began bookselling, dropping the Mac' from his surname, and putting a ship in full sail at the head of his invoices. Among the first books published by 'John Murray (successor to Mr. Sandby), Bookseller and Stationer, at No. 32, over against St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street, London,' were new editions of Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead, and History of King Henry the Second, and of Walpole's Castle of Otranto. His old friends and brother officers supported him, and he seems to have had many orders from abroad. His friendship with Falconer brought him into connection with the Rev. Dr. Cartwright, for whom he published Armine and Elvira,' a poem now forgotten, but greatly admired at the time, seven editions of it selling in little more than a year. Through Dr. Cartwright he became acquainted with Dr. John Langhorne, for whom he published the Fables of Florian and then Plutarch's Lives, by which North's translation from the French of Amyot was soon superseded. His fast friend was Mr. William Kerr, Surveyor of the General Post Office in Scotland, who helped him to the best of his ability with money and advice. In 1769 the quondam naval lieutenant employed Thomas Cumming, a Quaker, mentioned in Boswell's Life of Johnson, as his agent in Ireland. Of Dublin the worthy Quaker wrote him: This is not a reading, but a hard drinking city,' and described his prospects of doing business as almost hopeless. He succeeded in selling the right to publish one or two books in Ireland, but notwithstanding his zeal and the sanguine expectations of the friends on whose advice Mr. Murray had acted, the Irish business did not prosper. English books were pirated by the Irish booksellers then, just as they are by the Americans now. In 1770 Mr. Murray formed the acquaintance of Professor John Millar of Glasgow, and gave him 100 guineas for the first edition of his Observations concerning the Distinction of Ranks in Society. |