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September 1, 1855.] THE LEADER. 843
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^LUKlUUUI.
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Critics are not the legislators, bat the...
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We are a great nation, there is no one d...
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Travellers write upon Timbuctoo, but dis...
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HEINE'S POEMS. Pictures of Travel. Trans...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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September 1, 1855.] The Leader. 843
September 1 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . 843
^Lukluuui.
Xtttttitnxt .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, Bat The...
Critics are not the legislators , bat the j adges and police of literature . They do no make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
We Are A Great Nation, There Is No One D...
We are a great nation , there is no one disputes the fact ; but there are some things which we do not understand , and which it seems impossible for us to learn even with abundant examples before our eyes : we do not understand how to produce a public building , how to conduct a war , or how to recognise and properly employ a man of genius . Great men we have had in abundance ; these great men have , for the most part , received their meed of applause and honour—when dead ; but how to fitly honour and employ their genius has been a problem above our powers . It is not that we are stupid , insensible to merit , or niggard with purse and praise ; but we don ' t know how to set about even the simplest plan of securing men of great faculties such opportunities for the development of their powers as shall best suit them and best reward us . Let a man of ability fall into distress , and at once a liberal " subscription" i 3 made ; but the begging-box must go round before our sympathies are moved ; we are never prospective in charity .
It is clear as daylight that the higher departments of Science and Literature are necessary to our social advancement , but are incapable of themselves securing remuneration , from a public which pays only for what it immediately uses and in proportion to its use . That the Principia is of quite infinite value to the world , compared with Uncle Tom's Cabin for example , is a proposition which even Mrs . Stowe would heartily accept . But if the author of the Principia is to be paid by the number of copies sold , and if his existence and the existence of his family happen to depend on the produce of the sale , this infinite value becomes almost infinitesimal . How are we to rectify this ? If all philosophers were rich , or only the rich were gifted with philosophical faculty ( neither of which hypothetical cases have much support from fact ) , the matter would be simple enough . But as it is , England says to the philosopher : Get rich—or starve ! The philosophers , for the most part , try the former alternative ; and when they succeed , it is at the expense of philosophy .
We are led to touch upon this subject by observing that Mr . Heywood has given notice of his intention to move next session for a Select Committee to inquire " What public measures can he adopted to advance science and improve the position of its cultivators . " Surely a very momentous inquiry ! It must embrace Literature as well as Science—for the cause of the two ie one . But to confine ourselves for the present to cultivators of science , let us glance at the inevitable loss of power which our present indifference entails . If John Bull boldly said science is of no use—let it take care of itself , his present system , or no system , would be perfectly wise . But he admits the importance of science—and still leaves it to shift for itself !
A single illustration will best enforce our argument . In England a distinguished surgeon or physician finds no great difficulty in making an income of three to five thousand a year , by practice ; but if this same man happen to be gifted ( or cursed ) with that order of mind which fits him and impels him to be a distinguished investigator of Science , he will be fortunate indeed if his labours secure him an income of three to five hundred a "year , and that precarious . It was but the other day that the friends of a distinguished comparative anatomist , Professor Ghant , had to appeal to the sympathies of the public to compensate in some measure for the want of that reward which in Italy , Germany , and France would have been tenfold ; and at the last meeting of the Society of Arts , in reference to the very question we are mooting , the greatest comparative anatomist England has ever had—Richabd Owen—had thus to state his own case : —
And finally , in reference to the topic touched upon by the noble chairman , viz ., the social position , national relations , recognition , and rewards of scientific merit in this country . What these were of old—how they were once viewed—we see in tho provisions made in mediroval times for tho duo dignity and independence of such masterminds as might achieve tho higher posts at our Universities—such positions , for example , as tho Deanery of Christchurch , Oxford , tho Mastership of Trinity College , Cambridge , which the wisdom of our ancestors established for those men who won renown in tho sciences , which alone wore recognised in tho time of tho foundation of those and tho like independent and dignified offices . Tho human intellect has shite extended its conquests over a wider range and different fields ; more congenial , perhaps , to its true aims and powers than tho scholastical , logical , and theological atudies which represented science before Galileo and Bacon . Has England continued to cherish and foster in tho same spirit tho now and fruitful Natural Sciences , as sho honoured herself and manifested her wisdom by doing , in relation to tho older forms
of human knowledge ? What , for instance , at tho present period of her unexampled wealth , duo mainly to tho application of tho abstract discoveries of . science—what is tho national relation of her Faraday ? What is my own ? Are wo labouring , lecturing , in national institutions in fixed positions , absolutely exempt from the annoyance of individual interference or caprice , in the pcace-ffiviw / certitude of the continuance of hardly-earned emoluments , with tho cheering conviction of a suitable retiring provision when the wearied brain begins to fail in its wonted and oxpocted efforts ? As working men , in our lino , with broad to earn by the work wo do , England owns us not ; sho ignores us in tho senao in which sho recognised and provided for her mcdiiwval teachers . Wo are merely tho servants of particular chartered bodioa . As a comparative anatomist , indeed , I deem myself fortunate among my follow-wovlcers in tho place I hold , but it needs only that a majority of tho Council of tho College of Surgeons should so will and vote It , and after nit / A thirty years' service I must beyin the world ( fresh . My masters are irresponsible , or only remotely responsible , to public opinion . Hitherto England has dovised no othor or bettor position for tho man whom sho may delight to honour by calling ' her
Cuvier , " than the curatorship of a museum belonging to one section of the Medical Profession . In my own case , indeed , the Council of the Surgeons' College have done me the honour to re-elect me annually , for some years past , to a professorship not previously held by the curator of their museum . But this position has none ofthatjixed ness and-independence which my brother professors of the same science on the Continent enjoy . Great ia the pleasure with which I can state , that the short-comings of our national arrangements for analogous cases have been well understood by the moat illustrious personages and individuals of the State , who have generously endeavoured to remedy and compensate for them . The noble lord at the head of foreign affairs , in the most handsome terms , gave my son a clerkship in his ofiice . Sir Robert Peel , in assigning to me , a short time before his lamented death , a pension of 2001 well the of
. a year , appreciated acceptability such a provision in the exemption from anxiety flowing therefrom . I shall never cease to gratefully cherish the memory of the wise and benevolent statesman , who created for me the satisfaction of feeling that , -whatever might possibly cause a termination of my present appointments , I do not thereby fall into utter destitution . Her Most Gracious Majesty , measuring my humble merits by the standard of her own greatness of mind , was pleased to offer me , as a residence , the mansion of the late King of Hanover , at Kew . On my respectfully representing to her illustrious consort , your gifted and philosophic president , the disproportion of my means to the fruition of that royal gift , he was pleased to suggest the assignment to my use of a beautiful cottage , in which the most healthful and delightful hours of my life have been spent , and which daily renews a grateful sense of the happiness and privilege we enjoy in the benign reign of Victoria .
This is how England treats her greatest man in one department . Had Owen taken orders , and edited Greek plays , what would his position have been ? Had he eaten dinners in Lincoln ' Inn , and applied his marvellous faculties to Law , what would his income and title have been ? Would he even but keep within his own profession , and not To Molluscs give up what was meant for Mankindthat is to say , had he cared less about the laws of organisation , and more about Lady B . ' s " nerves" and Viscount C . ' s liver , what would his income have been ? Unwise Professor !
Travellers Write Upon Timbuctoo, But Dis...
Travellers write upon Timbuctoo , but disdain the Netherlands . The manners and customs of Peru or Pekin are sketched in uncountable volumes , but we do not remember any detailed account of the Dutch . Yet surely our Dutch neighbours are a specific and singular people . M . Esqciros , in Jthe Revue des Deux Mondes , gives us a very pleasant sketch of them , which , in default of better , may be read with interest . He is , it is true , a Frenchman , and Frenchmen are the liveliest , but not the most trustworthy pencillers of national peculiarities . The Gaul is , of course , perplexed by the placidity of the Hollander . He cannot understand the want of vivacity , and the insensibility to ennui which the Hollander manifests . Above all , he is amazed at Dutch cleanliness . "In Belgium , " he says , " for some
years past they have established Prizes for cleanliness ; in Holland , people are clean without knowing it , et sans gu ' aucun Monthyon s ' en mele . " The days of scJioorimaking ( cleaning days ) are Wednesday , Friday , and Saturday ; On these days the houses are en grande toilette . The mop is in possession of the street . Red-armed domestics swarm into the streets , and you see them dashing their pails of water against the walls with a sort of exaltation astounding in a race usually so phlegmatic , and ( to use the phrase of picturesque amazement extorted from M . Esquiros ) they " look like the Bacchantes of cleanliness . " " En Hollande on brosse le mur comme ailleurs on brosse son habit . La facade et rinterieur des maisons , tout est lave , frotte , e * cure avec tin soin impitoyable . "
Heine's Poems. Pictures Of Travel. Trans...
HEINE'S POEMS . Pictures of Travel . Translated from the German of Henry Heine . By Charles G . Leland . Trubner and Co . Nature one day resolved to make a witty German . But as this supreme paradox was not to be achieved all at once , it happened that in the ardour of a great purpose she mistook Hebrew blood for German , and while she was busy adding the wit , allowed the best moral qualities of the German to slip out of her hands . So , instead of the witty Teuton she intended , she would have produced merely a Voltairian Jew speaking the German language , if she had not , perceiving her mistake before it was too late , superadded , as some compensation for the want of inorale , a passionate heart blending its emotions with the most delicate and imaginative sensibility to the beauties of earth and sky , and a supreme lyrical genius , which could weave the wit , and the passion , and the imagination into songs light and lovely
as tho rainbows on the spray of the summer torrent . # Thus it came to pass that we have that wonderful human compound Heinrich Heine , a writer who is master of a German prose as light and subtle and needle-pointed as Voltaire ' s French , and of a poetical style as crystalline , as graceful , and as musical as that of Goethe's best lyrics ; but a writer who is destitute of tho distinct moral conviction which often inspired Voltaire , and still more utterly destitute of the profound wisdom and the depth of love and reverence which roll like a deep river under the sparkling , dimpling surface of Goethe ' s song . Indeed , we know nothing more likely to impress a reader with tho grander elements of Goethe ' s mind than a comna " " , ° * his lyrics with Heine ' s , for tho very reason that Heine quite oqualBUootuo in all tho charms of mere song , and has one quality mingling itself wj ' » lyrical power which Goethe had not-namely , wit ; or ™ . thor , Jo oxpraw * more specifically , French esprit . For , alien ns this quality J »> g * ^^ passionate love-songs and thrilling legendary ^^ ' ^^ fLnt , it 8 nevertheless « l «» ost oyoi vw i , it inoveri
majority of Heine ' s poems , > , , majority o Heine ' s poems , s , - »«««™ , «» --- , - d boforo y giving V ° ur rising tears tho accompaniment oi u ! " »„ * j gj ^ jy fcavcloat the colS shudder at his "peetrol vwionB , ^ po ^^ "J ^^ to your sense of fun . Wo cannot agree wit » £ ™ / Ho certainly has translator that Humour is Homo ' s ^ " ^^^ 'SniuB a 8 a humourist-^ Z ^^^ ZSZ f ^ ^^ ° *« ° & * P-e , and most or
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 1, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01091855/page/15/
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