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_ No. 429, June 12,1858.} _ T a E L E A ...
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THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM. The Passionate J...
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A MATTER OF FACT ROMANCE. Self-Help hy t...
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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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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Forester's Rambles. Itambles In The Isla...
manners and rites among the people—a circumstance'which has also been particularly noticed in France . Concerning both islands , Mr . Forester interweaves his narrative , although sparingly and judiciously , with , fragments of history which have nowhere the character of digressions . He has related , too , a few local stories , which cast much light on the social life of the Corsicans especially . We will make two or three extracts from this very fascinating book : —
A COB 8 ICAN KVKHING . A pleasant thing is the evening stroll on the outskirts of town or village , where life offers so much novelty . How graceful the forms of those girls at the fountain , dipping their pitchers of antique form and a glossy green ! Poising them on their heads with one arm raised , how lightly they trip back to the town , laughing and talking in the sweetest of tongues— -sweet in their mouths even in its insular dialect ! A lazy Corsican is leading a goat , scarcely more bearded and shaggy than its owner . Others , stilllazier , and wrapped in the rough j ) elone hanging from their shoulders like an Irishman ' s frieze coat , bestride diminutive mules , while their wives trudge by the side , carrying burdens of firewood or vegetables on their heads and shoulders . Waggons drawn by oxen and loaded with wine-casks , slowly creek along the road .
It is dusk as we lounge up the suburb , and the rude houses piled up round the base of the citadel look gloomier than ever . Light from a blazing pine-torch flashes from the door of a cave ; it is a wine vault . The owner welcomed us to its dark recesses . Smeared with the juice of the ruddy grape , he is a very priest of Bacchus ; but the processes carried on in his cave arc only initiatory to the orgies - Here are vats filled with the new-pressed juice ; there , vats in the various stages of fermentation . Jolly , as becomes his profession , he gives us to taste the sweet must and drink the purer extract . He explains the process und tells us that the vintage is a fair average , though the vine disease , the oidion , has penetrated even into these mountains . JZvoe Bacche ! The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads , the floor is slippery with the lees and trodden vine-leaves . We reel to the door , glad to breathe a fresher atmosphere . Mr . Forester observes , that the French Government , having lately shot . some hundreds of the brigands , has at length delivered Corsica from their terrorism . But he has , nevertheless , ruany anecdotes to relate of recent outrages . _ . . ; ;¦¦ - : ¦ , . f . \ ¦ . ¦ . . \ ; "¦ ¦¦ ¦ ¦¦ ¦ . . ¦ In connexion with the brigandage of Sardinia , he states : —¦
Even now , numbers of the jiiorusciti find shelter in the fastnesses of the Gallura ; the remnant of bands once so formidable that they spread terror through the whole province , bidding defiance alike to the law and the sword . Oaly within the present century the government las succeeded in quelling their ferocity , but not without desperate resistance to the troops employed , eighty of whom were destroyed by a party of the bandits in a single attack . Still , though a better spirit begins to prevail , and outrages have become less common aiid flagrant , wefound , in travelling through tlie island , a prevailing sense of insecurity quite incompatible with our ideas of the supremacy of law under a wellordered government . Some of the mountainous districts were in so disturbed a state that we were cautioned not to approach them ; and every one we met throughout our journey was armed to the teeth .
For ourselves , we felt no apprehensions , and took no precautions . In the iirst place , we-were not to be easily frightened by possible dangers ; and , i n the second , we knew that a peaceable guise , in the character of foreign travellers , was our best protection . The violences of the fuQrusciti are , it is well understood , mingled and tempered with a strong sense of honour . I imagine , indeed , that they originate for the most part in that principle , developed in vendetta , though degenerating into rapine and robtery . Outlaws must find means of subsistence as well as honest men , and are not likely to be very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining them . Among such characters there will be miscreants capable of any crime , and therefore there is always danger . But , still , the virtue of hospitality to strangers , so inherent amongst the Sardes , as in most semi-barbarous races , is not extinguished in hearts which are hardened against every other feeling of humanity . As the stranger is secure when he has " eaten salt" in the tent -of the Bedouin , theCaffreVkraal , or the wigwam of the Red Indian , so there are numerous instances of the Sarde outlaws having afforded shelter and assistance to strangers throwing themselves on their honour" and hospitality . He remarks a novelty in feminine manners amoag the Sardes : —
The Tempiese women have the singular habit of raising the hinder part of the upper petticoat , the suncwinu , when they go abroad , and bringing it over . the head and shoulders , so as to form u sort of hood . So far from this fashion giving them , as might be supposed , a dowdy appearance , it is n 4 t inelegant when the garment is gracefully arranged . It lias generally broad stripee , and is often of silk or a fine material . The under-petticoat , of cloth , is either 6 f a bright colour , or dark with a Lright-coloured border . Both of tliem are worn very fu . ll . The jacket is of scarlet , blue , or green velvet , fitting very tightly to the figure , the edges having a border of a different colour , and sometimes brocaded . The simple head-dress consists of a gaily-coloured kerchief wound round the head , and tied in knots before and behind . ^ There is an interesting chapter ou the Nuraghe , concerning which Mr . Forester insists upon no special hypothesis . He says , however : —
The Sardinian Nuragho are probably among the oldest structures in the world , and may therefore bo reasonably considered the works of an aboriginal race ; but their origin , and that of the founders , arc equally involved in impenetrable mystery . Their ru . de , but massive and shapely , cones have survived the ruin of the sumptuous edifices of Babylou and Nineveh , of Ecbatana and Suua , of Tyre and the Egyptian Thebes . A volume of travel so original and varied as Mi " . Forester ' s , is a rarity in our days .
_ No. 429, June 12,1858.} _ T A E L E A ...
_ No . 429 , June 12 , 1858 . } _ T a E L E A D E IV __ _ _ 569
The Passionate Pilgrim. The Passionate J...
THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM . The Passionate JPilgrim ; or > Eros and Anteros . By Henry J . Thurstan . . ¦ ¦ Chapman and Hull . It is rare now-a-dnys to meet with such a literary curiosity as the Passionate Pilgrim , The volume of some 240 pages is the outpouring or confession of one who hopes to iind pity , if not pardon , from all who know lovo by trial . It is a book that will be both admired and s « ofled at ; but we doubt whether any one should open it who does not give love the first place in the things of this life , and he may be disappointed . The wlioW work is one lqng shudder of passion , one continued paroxysm of hope alternating with the black fever of despair . It is not a history of the events that compose a lifetime , but a mainuiiL of sensations and spiritual experiences . When a child , the Pilgrim falls in love with another child named lJesireo . Ihe moment he eeos her , his fate is sealed . « Paradise , by the simple opening of" door , has let itaelf in upon him . " He has touched the
deepest depths of grace , and nothing can ever turn his thoughts from this " miracle sent to earth from . heaven . " " Desiree was all womanhood to me . " When with others , I laughed to myself in triumph to think by what immeasurable space any and every other was distanced from lier . I might have met the ladies of Arthur ' s Court , H-elen and Beatrice , Perditap and Una , and the interest to me would have been only their privilege of sharing her sex , and reflecting so much of her excellences as allowed me to recognize how far she exceeded them . " The mode of telling the story is as peculiar as the subject . -Mr . Thurstan has a capacity for emotion , and a capacity for expressing emotion ; but , strange to say , he does riot tell the tale of his love in language that proceeds straiglit from his own overcharged heart . He either mistrusts
himself , or- he is making a'literary experiment . His mind is " wrenched with , a woeful agony " which forces him to tell hi s tale ; but instead of following the natural impulse which makes all sorrow eloquent , he has gathered together the finest passages that have been written by the greatest of the fre at , and crammed them into the narrow compass of his own experience , t is the Ancient Mariner speaking all in quotations . He skims the pages of Dante , Petrarch , Shakspeare , Tennyson , Wordsworth , and Keats , and any noble thought that applies to bis own case he weaves into the history of his love . In a single page the reader will recognize the blended workings of many master minds ; but this appropriation is carried to excess , and throughout this anthem of endless dolour there is a want of sequence and reality . The Pilgrim goes on worshipping his lady at a
distance . At last he approaches her on the " faint heart never won principle ; but even then his heart fails him , and be defers his trial : — And to this pleasure was here added the exquisite sense that not only was I lying within shelter of the same house , but that , by the fact of her parents' absence , that house might be considered hers : there was holiness in . the walls , and peace in the timbers : —the very furniture , I extravagantly thought , bad something sacred in ita certain sweet personality . Now , however , came the heart-quickening conviction , shouted by many voices at once—by that day ' s delight in her undivided companionship , by growing sensations of life , by approaching entrance on what I might not unjustly call life itself , and loudest and purest , by the voice of love ; that though there could be but two answers , and one—I could not think of that- —yet it might be timely time to speak ; that the hour had struck ; that , fox fear of risking all , I must
risk something . Silent I had hitherto been , in part from the mere fact of youth , in part from a familiarity dating almost before youth itself . There seemed no room to say o > ne morning , Liove me more than yesterday . Desiree was in truth so identified with every thought- —so incorporated , I might say , in the actual texture of my heart — so much myself—that I hardly had words to address her . Thus circumstanced , even could I have doubted her love , had I not this day proof the strongest and the most exquisitely winning of her frank and confiding affection , of interest which ' er itrustcd me with every incident of lier life , and asked my story in return , her soul open to mine , and no veil interposed ; how should I ask more , or how ask at all ? It is long before he thinks it necessary to renew his application in explicit terms ; and then he discovers that the lady loves him " like a sister . " She marries somebody else , and he compares her to Dante ' s Beatrice and Petrarch ' s Laura . The world immediately becomes a wilderness , and with ¦
the '' . profoundest renunciation of hope , " the rejected loves his mistress more . He delights to dwell upon that " sorrow ' s crown of sorrow , the remembering happier moments in the midst of wretchedness , " and he turns even the love that has loved and lost into a " pure or-ganicpleasure . " Alas that millions of prayers and no prayers should lead to the same result . Although we hnv « no doubt he has some basis at least of intellectual truth ibr a foundation , Mr . Thurstan cannot have gone through all the emotions he has put upon paper . It is strange , in the midst of passionate ravings on unrequited love , to alight upon deliberate criticisms and reflections about poets , university life , travels and travellers , all graceful , often well said , but bringing together the remote ideas of Dante and Murray s Ilandboolcs in a strange way . He quotes with great ability and taste , and he is extensively read in poetical literature , so that hot all the inaptness can quite spoil the book , which seems sincere though artificial . Carlyle would , perhaps , call him a poet , for lie says all may claim that title who
read , a poem well . Women will feel nattered by our author ' s extravagant idolatry of Desiree , since all compliments paid to one woman are a sort of tribute to the sex . And . women will , perhaps , have patience to follow him through the long analysis of the sensations he experienced ; but it certainly requires a very sensitive mind to sympathize with the " Passionate Pilgrim , " for his style is heavy-laden , and clogs the palate like " honey , loathsome in its own deli * iousnes 9 . " He says that , " to die unsatisfied , is the-worst bitterness of death ;" , but the truth is , that while seeking for the ideal , the real slipped from his grasp ; kooking incessantly for a vision among the stars , he has missed the real lifearound him on earth . He has made a not uncommon mistake—that of supposing that the " ideal" being created by his own closet fancy can be incrG beautiful , wise , and perfect than its prototype from God ' s own hand . Dante overwrought one idea , but with how many other ideas did he surround it ! Petrarch played more exclusively on n monochord—but then he sang in numbers . And if Haslitt made a mistake in giving us a prose Liber Anioris to telL ua that the young lady of his lodgings was not Beatrice , he was at least brief .
A Matter Of Fact Romance. Self-Help Hy T...
A MATTER OF FACT ROMANCE . Self-Help hy the People : History of Co-operation lit . Rochdale . By George Jacob Ilolyouke . Ilolyoake and Co . Mk . Hojlyoake has given the charm of a romance to a veritable narrative , illustrating a great problem of social and political science , and no one can read his cheap and brief history of the " Rochdale Equitable Pioneers , " without growing hopeful of the future , and seeing something more than a . glimpse of a sound way out of the harsh warfare of competitive struggles , to a higher form of industrial co-operative life . The story of the liocndale Pioncers is a noble one , and we have it before us in all its reality of hardship , devotion , endurance , perseverance , triumph , facts , figures , and even the greatest facts of all sketched with a bold , free hand , the whole enlivened by warm-hearted sympathy and touches of sly , quaint humour , worthy of D « ifoo . The llochdrtlo PionecrB , although by no means the earliest of their
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 12, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12061858/page/17/
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