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«. . • - . . « "-¦ ¦ ¦ • ;Febbuakt 3, 18...
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• f>*X X •. ILITErilllirw.
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CiiticS are not the legislators, bat the...
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Fichtk says, in his Characteristics of t...
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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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«. . • - . . « "-¦ ¦ ¦ • ;Febbuakt 3, 18...
« . . - . . « " - ¦ ¦ ¦ ; Febbuakt 3 , 1855 . ] THE IiEADEB , 113
• F≫*X X •. Iliterilllirw.
literature . '
Ciitics Are Not The Legislators, Bat The...
CiiticS are not the legislators , bat the juages and police of literature . They do ot make law *—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
Fichtk Says, In His Characteristics Of T...
Fichtk says , in his Characteristics of the Present Age— "It is to be mentioned as an advantage arising from the creation of the critic species , that he who has no great pleasure in reading , or has not much time to devote to that purpose , no longer requires to read books ;—but by mere reference to the Learned Journals finds the whole Literature of the Age brought within his grasp;—and in this way , indeed , it may be said that books are only printed that they may be reviewed ; and there would no longer be any need for books , if reviews could" be fabricated without them . " This was said fifty years ago;—this , and a great deal more about the use and abuse of reviewing in Germany . The noble-minded , democratic Transcendentalist might have said it all last week , in an English lecture-room . The " ever-whirling wheel of change" has produced no alteration in the Reviewer ' business ,
" the leading maxims" of which Fichte states to be the following : — " That the Reviewer shall * always find something to censure ; and that he knows everything better than the original author . " It was doubtless ordained so from the beginning . When the Book of Job first came out , and when the first Arrow-headed author wrote on Nineveh marbles , the Chaldaean and Arrow-headed reviewers brought out articles " after their kind , " talked over the poor authors' heads , accusing the grand old patriarch of too much invective and digression , and Nimrod ' s lithographer of too great solidity and stiffness of style . Accepting , then , the ' great fact that Reviewers ought to know more than other authors , we break into a pile of new Magazines with becoming reverence , arid throw our minds into a posture of supreme dignity-r-since it is our business to review the reviewers—to take stock of their infinite store of knowledge .
The North British Review contains several excellent articles . " The Continent in 1854 " is , if we mistake not , the work of a man whose opinion is highly valued in political and literary circles , both here and abroad . The " MS . Notes of an Englishman made in Paris in 1854 , " which ' stands as a gwajfi-published-bpok-to be reviewed at the head of his article , is , we believe , hia own work . The extracts here given lead us to regret his determination not to publish the whole . This article is the best collection of thoughts about the war , its proximate and remote causes , its prime movers and its nearest results to Europe , that we have yet seen . The reports of his
conversations with Signor Manin , the ex-dictator of Venice , whom he pronounces to be " one of the wisest and honestest , and therefore one of the most moderate of the Italian patriots , " and with the Polish General Chrzanowski , who " has passed thirty years fighting against or for the Russians , " are especially worthy of attention . The English military system is denounced more completely in this article than it was in Mr . B . Os bound ' s speech the other night . How long will it be before an English General of division can do with his Colonels as a French general does ? " He sends back without ceremony , without excuse , all whom he finds too old , or too negligent , or too ignorantror too dull r for real fighting . " _ _
Canrobert has the same freedom of action as his master . He not expected , to distribute his doses of praise among his officers according to th rank . He can mention in his despatches , without apology , captains and subalterns , and even privates . There is something grand , something magnanimous , in the unnoticed , unrewarded heroism of the English soldier ; but France does not think it wise or magnanimous to let the heroism of her humbler sons remain unnoticed and unrewarded . Nothing but the unusual worth of this article on all points which it touches could have induced us to say a word in this page about the war ; and although there are papers of historical and speculative merit on the subject in all the Magazines before us ( particularly in Fraser ) , we merely mention the fact—reserving our brief comments for matters not quite so
grave . The writer on " The Continent in 1854 " is master of a clear , hard , compact stylo—manly , gentlemanly , in spite of a loud dictatorial tone and a little too much dogmatism here and there—in short , it is thoroughly English in feeling and in manner . It supports what we were saying last week concerning Magazine and Review writers in France and England . Supposing this article could have been written in the Revue des Deux Mondes , it would have contained less matter and more art . Its author , by the way , has ably expressed an opinion of the intellectual status of modern French cultivated society * , so unlike that generally entertained here , and implied rather than expressed in our last week's Summary , that we feel tempted to set it before our reader—just reminding him , however , of Sir Roger x > e Co verity ' s immortal aphorism , " Much may be said on both Bides . "
There existed in the highest Parisian society towards the close of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and inquiry , a freedom of opinion , an independence and soundness of judgment never seen there before or since . Its pursuits , its pleasures , its admirations , its vanities , -were all intellectual . Let ua recollect the success of Humo : his manners were awkward , ho was a heavy , though an instructive , converser , he apoke bad French ; he would pass in Paris now for a most intelligent bore ; but such was tho worship then paid to talents and knowledge , especially to knowledge and talents employed in the destruction of received opinions , that Hume was for years the lion of all the salons of Paris . The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat philosopher . Nor was their admiration or affection put on , or even transitory ; he retained some of them as intimate friends for life . Wo may infer , indeed , from tho autobiographies of that time—from those of Marmontel , for instance , and
llouaseau—that even the inferior bourgeoisie were then educated . Every country town had its literary- circles ; many of them had Academies in which the great writers ot France and Italy were studied . The French were not so engrossed bythe serious cares of life as to disregard its ornaments . Now , the time that is hot devoted to the struggle for wealth or power , to place-hunting or to money-making , is spent at the cafe * or the spectacle . Few read anything but the newspapers , or , of them , anything but the feuilleton . If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were to return to life , we dp not believe that gas , or steam , or chloroform , or' the electric telegraph , would so much astonish them as the comparative dulness of the greater part of modern French society , and the comparative mediocrity pf the greater part of modern Freneh books .
Next in place in the North British ,-and equal in value , comes an article on a very different subject—Finlay ' s three works on the Byzantine Empire . The Reviewer evidently knows more of his subject than mo ' st people , and gives , amusing instances of the i gnorance of cultivated and literary men on all points connected with the history of the middle ages in the east of Europe— -where " the language of Thucyiudes and Aristotle and the polir tical power of Augustus and Constantine" were preserved , " till the nations of the west were once more prepared to receive the gift and to despise the giver . " Like the rest of the world , we have lived by the little light which Gibbon was able to throw on that long and important period of the world ' s history ; but we will say this for ourselves , that unlike the rest of the world we have never been contented with our ignorance . It was an
" aching void , " through which the grand names of Justinian , and B asix . Leo , and Belisarius sounded occasionally , but they called up no distinct ideas and historic fancies like the names of Cha . blbmjl . gne , St . Louis , and the Cm The writer of the article in the North British gives Mr . Fisx ^ ir the honour which seems due to him—viz ., that of being the only great and sound authority on Byzantine history in this country—but he warns us that Fini-ay is as dry as he is erudite—that his history will never attain even the small popularity ofGBOTK ' s , and that he does not appeal to the sympathies of the many . Now , if any enterprising young scholar would set about popularising Fini . ay , there were a young scholar to command the sympathies and the sterling coin of the many ! We beg to inform all those whom it may concern , on the authority of this Reviewer , that " the Lower Empire" is " a strange sobriquet , " the exact meaning of which nobody knows . We are very glad to hear this , as we have always thought it sounded like ah absurdity . '
There is a capital paper on the " Curiosities of the Census , " written by one who fully understands the fictitious value of facts and figures as we ll as their real value . Those who are accustomed to look below the surface of our social system for the causes , of its strange and sad phenomena , will find nothing absolutely new-in this article . Of all the women between twenty and forty in England . / brty-OH per cent ., and in Scotland forty-eight per cent ., are spinsters . , This fact suggests some admirable reflections On certain conventional mistakes in the art of living , which cannot be too widel y promulgated . It became with the majority a matter of wisdom , and often ot conscience , to forego
or to postpone marriage till a provision for a family bad been secured ; and when that period at length arrived , the habits and tastes of a solitary and unaccommodating life were irrevocably formed . Now , happily , a wiser system has given a wonderful elasticity to every branch of industry , while emigration has relieved our redundant numbers , the demand for labour has once more overtaken the supply ; and not only haa its remuneration , ^ cpnsequeptly risen , but every man , not actually suffering under physical or moral inability , may feel secure that hisT p 6 wers , ~ "h 6 nestly and steadily exerted , will suffice to maintain him . Few men now , we sincerely believe , need to remain unmarried after the age of thirty . If they do so , accidental incapacity apart , it must be a matter of preference or of indolence .
Numbers , however , do and will remain unmarried , especially among our upper classes , from necessities artificially created or gratuitously supposed . Younger sons are constantly doomed to celibacy , not because a marrying income is unattainable by them , but because prejudice , custom , pride , or laziness forbid them to toil for its attainment . By inheritance , or by public employment , they possess , perhaps , just sufficient to permit them to enjoy the pleasures and amenities of a London life ; miscellaneous society stands them instead of a domestic circle , —the club supplies the place of a home , —vagrant and disreputable amours ( or amours that ought to be disreputable ) make them unambitious of and unfit for wives , and they prefer to rest satisfied with a pleasant , rather than labour for a happy and worthy existence . Others , again , possess an income amply sufficient for tho support of a wife and family , but will not believe it to be so . Their ideas of the style and comfort in which it is necessary to live , are formed on a conventional and unreasonable , standard . They will not condescend to the fancied indignities , or they cannot endure the trivial privations , of economy , —they will not ask the woman of their choice to share with them any home less luxurious than she has
been accustomed to , and they condemn her to live without love rather then expose her to live without a carriage . God only knows how many noble creatures have their happiness sacrificed to this miserable blunder , —how many pine away existence in desolate and dreary singleness , amid luxuries on which they are not dependent and splendour which confers no joy , who would thankfully have dwelt in the humblest cottage , and been contented with tho simplest dress , and have bleat tho one and embellished the other , if only tho men to whom they have given thoir hearts had possessed less false pride and more true faith in woman ' s lovo and sense and capacity of self-abnegation . A higher and more just conception of the materials which really relative value of
make up the sum of human enjoyment , —a sounder estimate of tho earthly possessions , —a more frequent habit of diving down through the conventional to the real , and a knowledge of how much rofincmont , how much comfort , how much eioreno content are compatible with the scantiest means , whoro thore ia sense and courage to face the fact and to control tho fancy , —would in half a generation reduce tho million and a quarter of t ' spinstcrs wo have spoken of to a few hundred thousands , and ra . lso into tho condition of honoured happy wives tho vast majority of those " beautiful lay nuns" ( as they have beoncallod ) , whose sad , unnatural , objectless existence , whose wasted powers of giving and receiving joy , it makes the heart bleed to witness . This passage is as true in fact aa it is beautiful in feeling and expression .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03021855/page/17/
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