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254 THE LEADER. ESatPrday,
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Xittutuit,
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It will be pleasant news to hear that al...
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Messrs. Macmillan, the Cambridge publish...
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BANCROFT'S AMERICAN REVOLUTION. History ...
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" While the world of mankind is accompli...
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
254 The Leader. Esatprday,
254 THE LEADER . ESatPrday ,
Xittutuit,
Xittutuit ,
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<^ S £ ^ Sl ^ S ^^^^^ g ± ^^^ ' ^ ^
It Will Be Pleasant News To Hear That Al...
It will be pleasant news to hear that all Sydney Smith ' s papers have been placed in the skilful hands , of Mrs . Austin , to arrange , for publication , it being his widow ' s desire that every scrap should be published . Sydney Smith was one of those thoroughly delightful minds whose very fragments have their interest : valuable or trivial in the thought , they ore certain to be charming in the manner .
Messrs. Macmillan, The Cambridge Publish...
Messrs . Macmillan , the Cambridge publishers , have issued a prospectus of a series of Essays on the Restoration of Belief , intended to counteract the rapidly spreading doctrines rejecting Christianity—doctrines which assail orthodoxy even in its very universities , as we have the best of all reasons for knowing . We are heartily glad to see this undertaking , and promise its author the most deliberate and emphatic recognition . He has a distinct conception of the difficulties , as may be seen in these sentences from his prospectus : —
" These facts are however beyond doubt ; and they call for the most serious regard : —1 st , That disbelief * under a somewhat new guise , is at this time openly avowed by perhaps a larger proportion of the educated ' classes than it heretofore has been : 2 ndly , That a settled disbelief claims as its own some who refuse to make any such avowal ; but whose state of mind can be no secret to their intimate friends : and 3 rdly , That many in all circles are much troubled and disquieted , and are robbed of their comfort , and are in danger of losing for ever what they hold with a trembling grasp . " The writer , in the present instance , has no inclination to attempt the recovery
of those who belong to the first-named class ; and yet the recovery even of these , he would think less improbable than that of those who take their place in the second . But it is in the confident hope of rendering a timely aid to the many around and near us , belonging to the third class , that he now comes forward ; and what he means by the Restobation op Belief , includes vastly more than the bringing back into minds that have lost it , a logical conclusion to this effect— - that Christianity is from God . What the writer desires to do for those who will listen to him , is to lead them , without reserve , into the cordial approval of Christianity , and its amplitude of doctrine , as held and professed by the Faithful
of all times . " We welcome this attempt , as we welcome all free deliberate discussion —the only final way of settling difficulties . Inquisitions , auto-da-fes , censorships , and press laws may intimidate Truth- —they cannot finally destroy it ; like a cork pressed under water , it is sure to bob up in some other place . As to the evil of free discussion—that it gives publicity to errors and follies which mislead mankind—it must be accepted with the good . The same objection may be brought against the universe itself ;
and yet we are tolerably content to accept it . The only healthy method of suppressing error is by setting truth at liberty . To imagine error can be suppressed , or eliminated altogether , is chimerical ; and , as Rover Collakd sarcastically said , when the censorship was under discussion in 1830 , — " There must have been a great want of foresig ht at the Creation , otherwise man would never have been suffered to go forth into the world free and intelligent , for thence have evil and error issued . A higher wisdom now undertakes to repair the fault of Providence . "
If the lessons of history did not fall upon ears deaf as adders , the present absurd crusade against a free press on the Continent could never be sustained . Is Louis Napoleon to succeed where all have failed ? The ancient monarchy of France refused liberty to the press . We know how it perished . Napoleon inaugurated the reign of the sabre ; yet the press dethroned him by disheartening France . The Restoration certainly spared no restrictions on the press ; yet its fall was occasioned by the protests of the journalists . The Monarchy of July would not suffer a free prcss—where is it ? Louis Napoleon , by his alliance of the sabre and the surplice , hopes , no doubt , to suppress opinion . Yet the very priests whom he calls round him could assure him that the Christianity they
profess is a striking example of how a doctrine may triumph without a prcss , and in spite of sabres and surplices ! The mention of Louis Napoleon rccals a sentence of his , quoted in the Bulletin Franpais , which ought to be placarded on all the dead walla of France : " Le titre que j ' ambitionne le plus , e ' est le titrc d'honn & e homme—I have but one ambition , that of earning the name of a perfectly honourable man ! " Certainly after this it is idle to set a limit to the extravagance of ambition !
The Bulletin Franpais , from which we have just quoted , is now a newspaper , published in London by Mr . Jeffs , its proprietors being resolute , and not to be put down . Driven out of Belgium , they pass over to England , and here securely print their journal , and circulate it largely in France , Germany , Belgium , and England . " ( jJSorgu San » has made another unsuccessful dramatic experiment , Pandolphe en vacances , which distresses the admirers of her genius , who desire to see her renounce a stage to which that genius is clearly not adapted , in spite of Le Champi and Claudie . In the last Revue des Deux Mondes is commenced a skilful translation of Mrs . Norton ' s beautiful novel , Stuart of Dunleath , by Em ilk Fohgues ; and an intimation is given of this vein being actively worked . It is but right wo should furnish France with some return for all we take from her . Lovers of epigrammatic writing and sparkling aphorisms will bo glad to
learn that the works of Chamfort are collected into one octavo volum of the " Charpentier format , " ( or , as the French call it , " format Anglais " \ with a preliminary essay by Arsene Houssaye . These writings abound in anecdotes , and sharp sentences , picturesque , ear-catching , brief and suggestive phrases , which may , to quote Boileau , " . ¦ ' .. " Par le prompt effet d ' un sel rejouissant Devenir quelquefois proverbes en . naissant . " . , : ¦ \
Bancroft's American Revolution. History ...
BANCROFT'S AMERICAN REVOLUTION . History of the American Revolution . By George Bancroft . Vol . I . Bentley . A solid and brilliant book : conscientious' in . its research and winnowing of evidence , lucid and splendid in its exposition . Only the first volume has appeared , and that is introductory to the great subject , opening with an excellent survey of the state of affairs in 1 ^ 48 , when first America claimed legislative independence , and relating the history down to the year 1763 , when the Revolution maybe said to have fairly begun , although the War of Independence did not break out till 1775 . To those who possess Mr . Bancroft ' s valuable ^ History of the United States , this volume will be a most desirable continuation and companion ; but the work will be complete in itself . # . . A writer so rhetorical , so musical , and so graphic , is apt to inspire an uneasy suspicion that he may be "dressing up for effect . " "We can scarcely name a writer of whom that can less truly be said ; and we place Mr . Bancroft ' s conscientiousness foremost among his qualities , because we see how completely the truthful historian has kept the " fine writer " in abeyance . Let Bancroft be compared with Maeaulay in this respect ! Whatever style can do to animate the dead past , Bancroft rightly aims at ; he makes no attempt to coerce history into an epigram , or to sacrifice truth to antithesis . Beyond this general truthfulness he has a high , impartial view of history , and , while truly national in feelings , he recognises that truth which takes the edge from national prejudices and asperitiesthe truth that the human race is one , and that Humanity has a common life working onwards to a common , end .
" The authors of the American Revolution avowed for their object the welfare of mankind , and believed that they were in the service of their own and of all future generations . Their faith was just ; for the world of mankind does not exist in fragments , nor can a country have an insulated existence . All men are brothers ; and all are bondsmen for one another . All nations , too , are brothers , and each is responsible for that federative humanity which puts the ban of exclusion on none . New principles of government could not assert themselves in one hemisphere without affecting the other . The very idea of the progress of an individual people , in its relation to universal history , springs from the acknowledged unity of the race .
" While The World Of Mankind Is Accompli...
" While the world of mankind is accomplishing its nearer connexion , it is also advancing in the power of its intelligence . The possession of reason is the engagement for that progress of which history keeps the record . The faculties of each . individual mind are ' limited in their development ; the reason of the whole strives for perfection , Las been restlessly forming itself from the first moment of human existence , and has never met bounds to its capacity for improvement . The generations of men are not like the leaves on the trees , which fall and renew themselves without melioration or change ; individuals disappear like the foliage and the flowers ; the existence of our kind is continuous , and its ages are reciprocally dependent . Were it not so , there would be no great truths inspiring action , no laws regulating human achievements ; the movement of the living world would bo as the ebb and How of the ocean ; and the mind would no more be touched by the visible agency of Providence in human affairs . In the lower creation , instinct is always equal to itself ; the beaver builds bis but , the bee his cell , without an
acquisition of thought , or an increase of skill . ' By a particular prerogative , ' as Pascal has written , ' not only each man advances daily in the sciences , but all men unitedly make a never-ceasing progress in them , as the universe grows older ; so that the whole succession of human beings , during the course of so many agerf , ought to bo considered as one identical man , who subsists always , and who learns without end / . " It is this idea of continuity which gives vitality to history . No period of time lias a separate being ; no public opinion can escape the influence of previous intelligence . We are cheered by rays from former centuries , and live in the sunny reflection of all their light . What though thought is invisible , and , even wlion free and
eftective , seems as transient as the wind that raised the cloud ? It is yet indestructible ; can as little bo bound in chains as the aspiring flame ; and , when once generated , takes eternity for its guardian . We are tho children and tUo heirs of tho past , with which , as with the future , wo are indissolubly linked together ; and ho that truly has sympathy with everything belonging tonmn , will , with his toils for posterity , blend affection for tho times that aro gone by , and sccK to live in the vast lifo of tho nges . It is by thankfully recognising thoso agCH tw a part of tho great existence in which wo share , that history wins powor to move tho soul . She comes to us with tidings of that which for us still lives , of that wind has become the lifo of our lifo . She embalms and proserves for ua the lifc-bloou ,
not of master-spirits only , but of generations of tho race . From one arrived at that lofty point of view wo regret to see an occasional phrase escape , which implies a lower and a narrower conception o human history—e . g ., " For it always holds true , that Heaven plants division in tho council of the cnomios of freedom . " Wo arc ashamed w have to ask Mr . Bancroft if ho really thinkB that Heaven dorogatos m far as thus with potty interference to meddle in human affairs—h , - ho row y thinks that only in tho councils of tho enemies of freedom aro divisions caused by Heaven , and that tho divisions in , the councils' of tho jrten ** of freedom have another parontago P > . , . _ We turn to more pleasant pages . While the country is agitated moi "
or loss by tho cry of protection , it may bo amusing to read tins mubuu """ of ih , which takes its place in Miv Bancroft ' s narrativo : — " America abounded in iron ore ; its nnwroughf iron waa excluded by »¦ ( " ^ from the English market ; and its pcoplo wore rapidly gaining skill at tho "" ' " and tho forgo . In February , 1750 , tho subject engaged tho attention of tho no of Commons . To chock tho danger of American rivalry , Charles Townshona * placed » t tho bowel of a committee , on which Horatio Walpole , senior , and smw
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 13, 1852, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13031852/page/18/
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