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Aug. 2, 1851.] #£<> %t**tX> 731
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litttatntt.
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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The revelations of Gladstone's pamphlet ...
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Academies are never popular bodies, and ...
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^ <>» several occasions wo have had to u...
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Among the new books on Dulau's counter t...
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ST. GILES AND ST . JAMBS. St. Giles and ...
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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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Aug. 2, 1851.] #£<> %T**Tx> 731
Aug . 2 , 1851 . ] #£ <> % t ** tX > 731
Litttatntt.
litttatntt .
Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review ;
The Revelations Of Gladstone's Pamphlet ...
The revelations of Gladstone ' s pamphlet on Italy have startled the Party of Order , accustomed to treat all previous intimations of the frightful despotism of paternal Governments as the cry of " factious " and " misguided " men . But Gladstone ' s name is a guarantee . No one will accuse him of republican tendencies ; no one will accuse him of abetting anarchy ; and , therefore , what he
deliberately reports of Italy comes with terrible and damning force . In a little while we may expect to hear another influential voice on this subject . It is understood that Senior has been investigating it ; we know not what may be the conclusions he has come to , but if any qualification be honestly possible it will come from him ; meanwhile , we suppose we must wait for the pages of the Edinburgh , Review .
Apropos of the Edinburgh , its last number is more varied than usual , and contains a learned critical paper on the Greek texts of Scripture , a good review of Johnston ' s Notes on America , a damaging review of Dizon ' s Life of Penn , an elaborate and thoughtful article on Grofe ' s History of Greece , and an entertaining exposition of the progress and extent of Modern Chemistry , with some excellent remarks on Liebig and his school .
Academies Are Never Popular Bodies, And ...
Academies are never popular bodies , and never will be free from corporate abuses . Our Royal Academy of Arts is certainly no exception to the rule . A circular of grievances , " addressed to the British Legislature , " has been placed in our hands , the object of which is , by exhibiting the abuses , to call for " a thorough reform . " We know of only one reform . When a poet brought his verses to Martial , begging him to suggest any erasures that a fastidious taste might demand , the wit replied , " una litura potest — one erasure will suffice" ! and of this kind is the reform needed
by the Royal Academy , the Hothouse of Mediocrity . The complaints in this circular point to the dismal fact that eighty years ago , when there were scarcel y one hundred artists in the country , the number of Academicians was forty ; and now with upwards of a thousand exhibitors in London alone , the sacred forty still form the oligarchy . la it really believed that an increase of Academicians would reform the Academy ? Les quaraute qui ont de I ' esprit comme quatre are not to be so reformed , for the evil lies in the system , not in the number .
While touching on this subject let us not forget to call attention to ltuskin ' s forthcoming pamphlet on the Prcr-Raphaelites . There has been so much angry discussion respecting the audacities of these young artists who set at defiance Academic proprieties and all the " traditions , " that the pamphlet of a writer like the author of the Modern Paw / ers ~ w \ Uul , exaggerated , and contemptuous though he be—cannot fail to be interesting
lii the little churchyard of the German Chapel in Savoy-street , the remains of the lamented journalist Dr . Julius , were last week deposited , in presence of many of the German exiles , who mourned a comrade and a champion . Dr . . 1 i / i . i us wa . s editor « f the Berlin Zeitunijshalle during the Involution of J 81 H , and was greatly respected for ms talents and courage . Kinuki , pronounced a touching oraisou funt . bre over his grave .
' 1 * 1 " > c mention of Kinkkl ' s name in connection with public speaking , reminds us that liin Lectures have been > so profitable to him that ho is to deliver < he . u in Manchester and Bradford , where some of our i-wu Utb will I ,,, i ; ui to ] ul () w 1 m , iH comm ^
^ <>» Several Occasions Wo Have Had To U...
^ <>» several occasions wo have had to upeak J- « verely tJf Jmmaktink'm undignified traflic of us great reputation . There ia nothing in tho
trdde of Literature at which he seems abashed . To put money in his purse is so absorbing i an aim , that he seems almost reckless of the means . What will the reader think of Lamartinb —once the greatest name in France—now reduced to such straits that he bribes the subscribers to his paper by the . offer of a free passage to London , so that that they may see our Crystal Palace , and read his eloquence for one year ' s subscription ! A theatre once tried to lure unwilling audiences by the premium of " a glass of gin and an apple " each visitor ; and in the same spirit Lamartine I placards the walls
with" Voyage a Londres sans nen payer ! Ahonnez vous au Pays par A . de Lamartine . " Is not this pitiable ? What a degradation of a great name ! Is it then so ? All that eloquence , all those sounding periods , all that self-laudation , magnificence , heroism , — and no readers unless you lure them with a trip to London ? Through
Grecian Literature there runs a boding voice , " Count no man happy till you see his end ; " for the end may efface the heavenly brightness of those early years ; the noon may ruin what the morn began ! Who that applauded Les Meditations , Jocelyn , Les Harmonies , ever thought to see the poet dragging his name thus servilely through the dirt ?
Such cobwebs to catch flies will not prepossess readers in favour of his Histoire de la Restauration , the two first volumes of which lie on our table ; and yet those volumes are the least egotistic and offensive of all his writings , and may be commended as fascinating romance of history , if not very grave and instructive . We shall examine them more fully next week .
Among The New Books On Dulau's Counter T...
Among the new books on Dulau ' s counter there is one which will have peculiar interest to many of our readers—the first volume of Augusts Comte ' s Systeme de Politique Positive . This is to be taken as the complement of his previous work . His Philosophic Positive , being occupied with the sciences , gave many the impression that the Positive Philosophy was a dry and incomplete system , excluding Religion , Morals , and Art . Attentive students knew better . They saw that not only did the Positive Philosophy admit of universal application , but that Comtk himself had certain
vague glimmerings of Religion and Art , in accordance with the new system . These glimmerings have " broadened into day . " The subjective aspect of Positive Philosophy he now undertakes to exhibit . In hia former work he was forced by his method to proceed objectively—from the world np to man ; he now proceeds subjectivel y—from man to the world . This system of Positive Polity he calls a Treatise of Sociology , instituting the Religion of Humanity . tt
Although it is impossible for so eminent a thinker to put forth any work that shall not contain matter of great value , we do not hesitate ; to declare our belief that this second portion of his system will hi : many many degrees below the first portion , and that he will find but few adherents to the forms of his new religion . Jn the very nature of things this part of his task must be more open to cavil ; he has to construct a . science of society , and commits what we cannot hut regard as an enormous blunder in attempting to regulate the details of the future . He here falls into tho trap of all the Socialists Ny stem-builders .
Hut no reservations of criticism will damp tin ardour of true postivistes to see this new volume , which is curious in many respects , and in none more so , perhaps , than in the story it presents of a love profound as that of I ' ktka kcii for Laura , forming , as it were , the turning-point of the philosopher ' s career , taking him hy the hand just as he emerged from Tartarus , and conducting him to Paradise , as Dantk found himself l ( , d there ]) y Bkathm .-k . There is much that will make the English reader smile , in the naivete with which Comtk thua l >« rea his heart to the public : but tho
incalculable influence exercised by a woman ove r the destiny of a philosopher , as indicative of the part Woman truly plays in the world , is worthy of profound attention .
St. Giles And St . Jambs. St. Giles And ...
ST . GILES AND ST . JAMBS . St . Giles and St . James . By Douglas Jerrold . ( Formini ? Vol 1 of the Writings of Douglas Jerrold , collected EdS ) Bradbury and Evans Polemics are rarely distinguished by generosity . Were it otherwise , we might stigmatize with indignant emphasis the ungenerous insinuation by which the " party of order " endeavours to paralyse the effect of any vivid picture of social disparity and political wrong , by attributing to the painter a vicious desire of " setting one class against another . "
Douglas Jerrold has evidently felt the keen injustice of the insinuation . It has been flung at him times out of number , and is meant to have all the force of an answer . His tone is so constantly the tone of indignation—honest , righteous indignation against the evils he sees tranquilly accepted or systematically preached—that the charge has a somewhat plausible air . He is so exasperated by the consecration of wrong in high places—he disbelieves so profoundly in the wisdom and nobility
of those who sit in high places—that his utterance is uncompromising and defiant ; and his writings , therefore , carry with them enough to make the charge not primA facie a false one . It is-monstrous , however , to read those writings , and see any less noble animus than that of vindicating truth and justice . Though a satirist , ay ^ and a " bitter" one when his blood is roused , he wages no war against persons ; the abstract injustice and unholiness of the wroag he fights against is all , and enough for hi w .
In the preface to this , the first volume of his Collected Writings , he touches briefly , and without bitterness , though with evident pain , upon the charge we defend him from . He is right to await confidently the verdict of a dispassionate reader . It can be but an emphatic Not Guilty ! Here , in this very tale of St . Giles and St . James , where the subject itself was a pitfall into which a careless writer would unconsciously have fallen , he has been betrayed into no " setting of one class against another , " he has idealized no scoundrel , vilified no nobleman , set forth no social evil as the
consequence of bad passions in the governors acting upon the virtues of the governed ; but shown it as a result of the deep-rooted ignorance of governors , or their fatal disregard of the claims which the poor and ignorant have upon them . Indeed the antithesis of the title is not borne out by the book . We have St . Giles vividly painted . Of St . James wo have newt to nothing , and that not politically or socially characteristic . Instead of giving us u virtuous St . Giles , resisting all the bad influences of hiH education and circumstances , and shaming by his generosity the selfishness of St . Jaines—a scoundrel in purple and fine linen—instead of contrasting thus the heroic
poor Wlt . il t . lir * r > irMt ml w > vi <* li . »< . - > 1 .. v .... l . t * i 1 u-ith the egotistic rich , as he ought to have done iiccording to the critic ' s charge of setting class against class , Jerrold has given us a real St . Giles —sharp unprincipled , reckless , " a human waif of dirt and darkness , " and a real St . James—careless kindly , spoiled , self-willed , with no other theory of hie than that it was meant for amusement . And as we said , of this St . James we have but faint glim ,, KCs : he fills no space in the book ; he , docs not f « , rm a legitimate contrast with St . Giles . Indeed here criticall
y speaking , we have , an objection to enter 1 'or a philosophical fiction like , this , StJamcs plays too insigm / icant a part . The . objeet , is to show the ellec , ol brutish ignorance and criminal associates oni the young pauper whom the State so shamefully disregards —to show how a child left to fight Jfs way through life without , moral training of any kmd , but Mich as it , can pick up from the alleys of crime , becomes one of the " dangerous classes . " hither this object should be effected direct / , / , without aid ol contrast , or if contrast be employed , tho type chosen . should eilecL its purpose . JVow St . Jmuch is meant , as u contrast , but in not one . St . Gilew
standing as the representative of Vice growing up from want , of culture , St . Jaines should nUmd « a the- representative of . ICxcellcnee growing up from such culture an society furnishes , llcm the two poles , positive and negative , would f ind tlunv Hcvcnd illustrations . Or if the author rejected tme ' n seesaw construction , and wished for freer movement more resembling life , he might liuve , used St . . Jmue . s : in the type of Vice growing ii ;> from h-elf-iiidul geiu'o and luxury , to which culture fftivn nothing but refinement—a poliwh not a discipline—and thua tho
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 2, 1851, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02081851/page/15/
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