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Aram 7,1855.] THE IBOEB, 329
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l 4T > rh>t*iT"fit1*i> |LIl?rUiur*#
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Critics are not the legislators/but the ...
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We hardly know how to express the feelin...
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"When last week we congratulated Psychol...
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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Aram 7,1855.] The Iboeb, 329
Aram 7 , 1855 . ] THE IBOEB , 329
L 4t ≫ Rh≫T*It"Fit1*I≫ |Lil?Ruiur*#
iCtteraturt
Critics Are Not The Legislators/But The ...
Critics are not the legislators / but the judges and police of . literature . They do not mkelaws-toy interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
We Hardly Know How To Express The Feelin...
We hardly know how to express the feeling which fills oar mind at the thought of the death of Mrs . NiCHfoixs of Haworth , the author of Jane Eyre ! It is as if we had lost some one near and dear to us . And is it not so really ? Do not those whom God has blessed with genius come nearer , make themselves dearer to our hearts , than many of our own kith and kin ? To-day her death is announced—yesterday , we took part in a conversation concerning her works , and every one hoped for another book from her
before the year ' s end , although she was married so recently . But a few short months ago all the literary coteries were full of curiosity about her marriage . Now , she has gone " where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage , " but she has not gone beyond the range of thankful and admiring hearts that she has won . To most of these she is not dead , nor can ever dieshe has only ceased from writing . How different it is with that quiet household and the two desolate hearts to whom her presence was as daily bread ! Daughter and wife gone from them ! They are alone on the earth ; and to them her books are but the works of Curbbb Becx .
Charlotte Bbonte ' s career as a literary woman commenced with the publication of a volume of poems conjointly with her two sisters , whose lives and early deaths she relates so touchingly in the preface to the last edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey . In that volume , the best verses were hers ; and of the novels written by the three sisters subsequently , the best , by far , were hers—though we acknowledge in Wuthering Heights power of writing quite preternatural—in other words an abnormal , diseased power , very remarkable , but not exemplary . Jane Eyre was published at the end of the year 1847 , after the MS . had gone the round of the chief London publishers , and had been rejected . To the discerning eyes owned or
employed by Messrs . Smith and Euder we owe the publication of the most original novel of our day ; they had the gift to know it when they saw it as beyond all question the best novel by any Englishwoman since the days of Mabia Edgeworth , and in passion and poetry ( though not in characterpainting ) , far beyond Miss Edgewokth , or indeed any other woman , save , perhaps , George Sand . Shirley ., the second novel , would not haye produced so vivid an impression as Jane Eyre , even if it had been as good , because it was the second . Villette , the last , in the opinion of many critics , here and there gave promise of something yet to come nearer to perfection in this department of literature than we are accustomed to read . __
The Empire was in a bad state when the Emperor sought the applause of a " Roman Holiday" by descending himself into the arena , as if he had been a professional Gladiator . It was a terrible blow to the divinity which doth hedge a king ; a blow more fatal than fifty regicides . On a lower scale , but in the same suicidal direction , is the attempt of our aristocracy to secure popular favour by descending from its " halls of dazzling li ght" into the lecture-room , competing with popular lecturers . What would the Barons of England ) who could not sign their names , have said to an aristocracy which , not content with making an extremely "" poor figure inthe ' world" of tetters ^
has finally come to present a still worse appearance in Mechanics Institutions ? Our old nobility looks very well in its Halls , Parks , and quiet House of Lords . If not a very beneficial Institution it is at least venerable , historical . But if it aims higher—if it desires to be what it seems—an aristocracy , it must undergo a thorough change in its training . An historical name or broad acres will necessarily command respect . But a name will not reason , acres have no eloquence ; and Lord Carlisle or Sir Robert Peel , who would assuredly throw Geobge Dawson in the background at a county ball or election meeting , would assuredly sink into insignificance beside him on the l ecturer ' s platform . Sir Robert Peel bas undertaken to lecture at the Marylebone Institution . Wo are glad of it for the Institution ; but if Sir Robert thinks he has a vocation , it would be desirable that he should take his stand on something more intrinsically solid than his social position . What his ideas are on the subject may be gathered from this programme : — ^ Programme . AN EYEKING WITH THE POETS , With recitals of beautiful and powerful passages . SHAKSPEARE . As You Like It . Hamlet . Othello . Henry IV . MILTON . Description of character . DBYDEN , QOLDSMITn , JOHNSON , BYBOW . POPE . "War . Russia . Poland . The Prisoner , The Soldier ' s Grave , Victory , Liberty . The Sen , The Navy . SOUTIIEY , BYRON . The Storm , Shipwreck . Description of personal adventure . Description of Scenery , & c , & c To commence at Half-past Eight o'clock .
Is not this attractive ? What a fine flowing incoherence it has , and how it suggests a Victoria playbill I The Lecture was of a character accordant with the " bill . " A few old remarks on the old poets , some stale quotations in a stagey manner , and then the " Honourable Bart . " proceeded to narrate—it occupied an hour or so—the story of his shipwreck in the Mediterranean ! Well , we laugh at all this . But'the lecture-room was . crowded , and the " Honourable Bart . " was " vehemently applauded ! " Alas , for possible British democracy , is it not but too evident that our cry to sweep aristocracy from Downing-street cannot be very consistent while we entreat Honourable Barts . to be our Iecrturers too , and , on the plea of " poetry , " to talk about—their honourable selves !
"When Last Week We Congratulated Psychol...
" When last week we congratulated Psychology and its students on the increasing attention which is paid to Physiology as the only true basis on which the science can be raised , we ought to have warned the reader against the source of danger which lies in the very method of the Psychologiststhe danger , namely , of facile hypothesis . An article in Blackwood this month , and a very interesting article too , makes us aware of the danger . It is professedly a review of Bbodie ' s Psychological Inquiries ^ but is really an original essay , in which , by the aid of very hypothetical anatomy , and some bold disregard of fact , the writer undertakes to prove that the proper seat of sensation is not in the brain but in the nerve , and that the brain is simply the organ of Memory . All instincts , appetites , emotions , the writer distributes over the whole nervous system . All the higher intellectual processes not included under Memory are without any organ , are , indeed , not conceivable by the writer as possible to be represented by an organ . He strangely adds : —
We can understand the cerebrum being the organ of memory ; at least we can as easily comprehend this as that the eye should be the organ of vision , or nerves spread through the hand the organ of touch ; each fibre or each particle of neurine repeats its peculiar impression . But if there is anything higher than memory in the mind of man , if there is any power of reason classifying the contents of the memory according to its own laws , we find it utterly impossible to represent this as acting through fibres or particles of neurine . The following passage we leave to the judgment of the reader : — There are few , if any , who would bestow upon the lower animals the same immaterial spirit which we believe to be-immortal in ourselves . There is no one who would that of them combine
deny to them the faculty of sensations ; we see very many , with the noble sense of vision , some measure of representative thought or memory . Were it not the wiser plan , then , to admit- at once that the vital organism in them is , to this extent , sensitive or conscious , rather than insist on it that sensation itself must imply _ a dualism of mind and body ? Our solution would run thus : —A . n _ immaterial spirit , a higher principle of consciousness , assumes or takes upon itself , in man , what in other animals is the sensitiveness of 4 he vital organism ; it feels in-the nerve , it sees in the eye , it remembers in the brain ; but the still loftier , and especially human attributes of mind , have no instrument or organ ; they can only be described as the energies of the soul itself , exercised on the materials or in the organs of sense , of vision , of memory .
In spite of this unpromising passage , there is much in the article deserving attention ; especially what is said about Instinct as the simple action of the organism . Charles Dickens is the subject of a long and elaborate criticism in the same Magazine , and although it is difficult to say anything novel on a topic which for so-many-years . has . been iRQes _ santly _ discussed , the article will be read with interest . Some of its opinions will excite surprise ; none more so than the writer ' s avowal of inability to see the humour of Captain C / UTTI . E J Magazine poetry is seldom the poetry which " repays perusal . " Out of one ' s teens , one assiduously avoids it . But Fraser contrives to make brilliant exceptions . We read the poetry in Frascr , and were not space so exigent we wouid often quote it . This month there are poems by Matthew Arnold and JTbederick Tennyson , which we should like to give entire ; nay , the latter ' s poem is short enough to insist on a place being found : — WINDS OF SPRING . If sudden Summer shone with all her light , Who could abide her coming ? and what eyes Awaking could affront the flaming skies Of morning , and not tremble at the sight ? Slowly She bends unto us from the height Of her enthronement , and unveils her crown With sovran sweetness as She ateppeth down ; Love shades her triumphs , Mercy stays her might . If , like the frosts of Winter , Woo and Pain , And sharp Misfortune , like the winds of Spring , Were not , some flowers , most sweet in blossoming , Would not be gather ed in the world again . Hope would not , like the early primrose , blow ; Nor Charity , like the violet on the plain } Nor Faith , like the bright crocus daah'd with ram ; Nor Pity , like the pale bolls in the enow-Men would bo Gods in their unchanging bliss , If Joy ' s midsummer zenith could bo still Unshadow'd by a passing cloud of ill— _ And the high worlds unseen for light of this . But , if the star of Gladness rose no more , Self-centred hearts would harden into stone ; Life ' s sweetest lights from good and evil thrown Rise , like the rainbow , ' twixt the sun and shower . Very curious and apropos is the paper on " Military Hospitals a Century
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 7, 1855, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07041855/page/17/
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