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^JT guY 14, 1855.] THE LEADED ^^ 675
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W&MiftttVt
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Critics are-not tho legislators, bat the...
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The function of the Quarterly Reviews ha...
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
^Jt Guy 14, 1855.] The Leaded ^^ 675
^ JT guY 14 , 1855 . ] THE LEADED ^^ 675
W&Miftttvt
; ICttorare ,
Critics Are-Not Tho Legislators, Bat The...
Critics are-not tho legislators , bat the ju < 3 : jc ; 3 and y ) olice of literature . They do not - make Laws— they interpret and try to enforce thorn . —TSdinburrfii Bevieto .
The Function Of The Quarterly Reviews Ha...
The function of the Quarterly Reviews has long ceased to be a reviewing ftmetion . Instead of pronouncing verdicts on new Looks , a Review rarely flevotes ' its space to a new work , and when it does so , makes the work the excuse for an essay . The change has been gradual , and has mainly grown op from a feeling ( hat the weekly and monthly organs of criticism anticipate and take from the hands of a Quarterly its ancient office . But there are certain things which the Quarterly can , and its smaller rivals cannot do : its greater space , and more deliberate publication , enables it to perform many offices in Literature , among which must be reckoned that of retrospective
reviewing . From time to time it is well that the great names of literature should be reconsidered in an essay ; and a Review is the only medium for such retrospective studies . No one would read a pamphlet published about Dbtden , but hundreds will be glad to read such an essay as that which opens the new Edinburgh ; no one woTild buy a volume of criticism on Cowper , but even the busiest may spare half an hour to read the delightful paper on Cowpeb in -the National Jievieir . It would be well if editors contrived in each number to give at least one such retrospective article ; the space so filled would be better filled than with so many pages of meije political speculation and declamation .
The Edinburgh is decidedly more agreeable this quarter than usual . B £ sides the article on Dbydkn , there is a pleasant paper on Villemaijt ' s " Recollections of History and Literature ; " an interesting paper on the deaf and dumb— " The Land of Silence ; " no lack of political matter , which we pass over ; and a paper of the highest importance just now on " Modern Fortification , " which is treated in a style so masterly and so popular , that the intenscst civilian will be able to understand it . This is the great art of review-writing : to get a subject of interest , and to know how to interest readers in it who -would be repelled by technical language ! This art the writer of " Modern Fortification" possesses . Nothing can be clearer than his exposition . He records how and why the Russians failed before Silistria , and the Allies before Sebastopol ; and how the Allies smashed Bomarsund : —
On comparing the siege with that of Silistria , we find the results so widely different OS to shake our faith entirely iu a science which could produce effects so strangely opposite . In the one instance , we find a miserable earthwork , which , with all its material aiul the ground it stood upon , could not have cost 1 OUU / ., resisting for thirtytWO days an army ton times more numerous than its garrison , and from before which they were ultimately beaten off with s » "e : it slaughter . In the other case , a great fortress , which could not have cost less than 200 , 000 / ., falls iiigloriously before a body of men only half as numerous as its garrison , in about the same number of hours ! and
tiris , not because there was anything new or unexpected in the mode of carrying on these sieges—for everything happened as it had always happened before—but simply because the art was at a dead lock , ami no one knew what was right and what was wrong . If any service was prepared for those results , it ought to have been our own , f ( fr they knew well that the Castle of Uurgos , which was a mere earth-work like the Arab Tabia , with a garrison of only 2000 men . defeated as line an English army as em took the field ; while the regular fortifications of Ciiulad Rodrigo , of Badajoz , and San Sebastian fell inevitably before the attack of the same men .
The result of all this experience on our engineers has been , that after the siege of SBiatria was raised , and Homar .-tind had fallen , they came to Parliament for increased estimates to > erect masonry towers <"« la Bomarsund along our coasts , choosing especially places wlicTe the water wns deepest close in ^ hore , and whore they were most completely commanded from the high lands behind ; and , as is usually the case , the House of Commons passed these estimates without asking n single question . Re shows how the Russians availed themselves at Sebastopol of the lessons learnt totlieir cost at Sili . stria . The whole paper should be carefully studied by military and civil readers .
& n > NEY / Smith is the favourite topic with reviewers just now , and we etpectod from the Edinburgh a brilliant article , rich with new matter . It tarns out to bo an article of no peculiar value , and of only average ability , bringing nothing new as its contribution , and inferior in treatment to the very lively and able article in the Jiritish Quark >! t / , which is written with rauraal vivacity and discrimination . Another paper in this Review also fomves warm commendation : it is on the works of Dr . Thomas Yovva — Widaborote , yet popular exposition of his discoveries and achievementsflle aort of paper we look for in a Rovuw , because , unattainable elsewhere . OtWwiao , the numlier is heavy with polities and polemic * . " Russian Aggression and British Statosmumhii > " » * vigorous and useful as an historical survey .
-Heavy also is tho new Review , The Motional ; with one exception , the "Wolesbelong to the roapootublo , but not inviiinp ; < rl «« s ; that exception is » i agreeable study of Oowim-. h , written with vivacity sum ! out of love of the "Vbjeot . It is happily mud that—JU all other information n « to Cowpor hud perished nave what his pocius contain , £ « attention of the critic would be diverted from the 8 poci . il oxninmiUion ot their totarior olmract « nHticH to n conjectural dissertation on H »> porson ., 1 fortunes oi the * » tfior . The « ornmn « would hav « imirh to say . It would be debated u , J t" »» K ™ "too wwatho three hares , why " The HolV was written , why John Uilpin wob not ^ Willia m . Hallo would Hhow with great cleans flint thero ™ w no waeon jgfctodlcwM bo called William ; that it appeared by the bills of mortality that *« V « raVothor persona torn iftout the onmo period had ulno been culled John ; and the
ablest of all the professors would finis ! the subject -with a monograph showing" that there was aspecialfitness in the Tiamre John , and that any one with the aesthetic setose who ( like the professor ) had devoted many years exclusively to the perusal of the poem , would be certain that any other name would be quite " paralogistic , and in every- maiiner impossible and inappropriate . " It vxndd take a German to write upon the hones . The editor of this Review made as fortunate a selection when he chose the " Gowper" as he was unfortunate wkn he chose the paper on " The Planets . " In the present state of the discussion , a Review which occupies twenty pages with rambling remarks on a topic bo abundantly written about , and in these l'emarks presents no new facts , no new arguments nor even a new mode of considering the subject , commits a serious mistake . The
article is written by an able man ; but it is the article of an able man writing about and about a subject . The review of " Ewald ' s Life of Christ " is useful as a good account of the book , but in itself is a second-rate article , although by a writer admirable when in his happiest moods . " Goethe and Werther " is a somewhat meagre account of the recently-published correspondence between Goethe and Kestkeb . " The Novels and Poems of Kingsley " are discussed by an admirer ; and this concludes the list of the articles we have read . What may be the merits of the " Administrative Problem , " " Romanism , Protestantism , and Anglicanism / ' and " International Duties , " we cannot say . The London Quarterly has a very attractive programme . It opens with a sketch of the " Influence of the Reformation upon English Literature , "
which carries us agreeably over the successive epochs of taste ; it is succeeded by an essay on " Robert 2 fewton , " specially addressed to the sect to which the Review appeals . " Animal Organisation is a rambling paper not distinguished by first-hand knowledge ; the " Science and Poetry of Art " is an interesting aesthetical essay ; and the " Chemical Researches in Common Life " will be read for its curious facts and illustrations . The Journal of Psychological Medicine contains a good criticism on Mr . Swax , in a paper on the " Brain in Relation to Mind ; " a paper of harrowing interest , entitled " Autobiography o the Insane , " in which are given some extracts from a work describing the sensations which preceded a » attack of insanity , and the experience of an insane man in an asylum .
Metaphysicians will be interested with the article the " Psychology of Berkeley ; " but the most important article in the number is the " Case of Buranelli , " by Dr . Forbes Winsjlow , which must remain as evidence of our Medical Jurisprudence . We cannot here enter upon so complicated a case ; we ifotice it for the sake of noticing the appalling ignorance which medical men in our country may publicly display without loss of caste . N ' or is the word " appalling" a word let drop at random ; it expresses no more than our meaning ; for surely ignorance becomes appalling when the lives of our fellow- creatures depend on it ? We select , therefore , Dr . A . J . Sutherlandas ati example . Lie is one of the physicians whose opinion was demanded on the important question of whether the murderer Bdbajselli was or was not insane . His opinion carried a life with it . That he gave it
conscientiously , we do not for an instant doubt . That he gave it with appalling ignorance we will now proceed to show . Let the reader understand that we have ourselves no opinion on tue question of Buranelli ' s insanity ; he may have been insane , he may have been sane ; our indignation is not with Dr . Sutherland ' s verdict , but with the culpable ignorance Physiology upon which he bases his verdict . On being interrogated , he declared it to be his opinion that Buranelli was labouring under an tflusion produced by hypochondriasis , but not under a t / elnsion produced by insanity . He was then asked , " Where is the seat of hypochondriasis ? " and he gives a sufficiently va ^ ue answer— " In the nervous system . " This not being precise enough for the questioner , he is asked , " Is it not in the mind ? " And now listen , to his answer : " It is seated generally in the stomach ; it is the effect of the nerves
of the stomacli conveying false notices generally through the system , to ( 7 ic brain : ' In the first place hypochondriasis , a mental condition , is said to be " seated" in the stomach ; a proposition which Akistoti ^ might have received with favour , and Galen with a smile , but which every physiologist of the last two centuries would condemn as ignorance too gross for refutation , too obvious for detection . " In tlic ° second place , if , allowing every latitude to the language of a man whoso conceptions are so vague , we follow his explanation , wo learn that hypochondriacs is the effect of the gastric nerves convening false notices . Now the nerves convey nothing but stimulus , as a telegraph wiro conveys the electric current ; that stimulus may be strong or weak , the sensation
produced may bo agreeable or disagreeable ; but to suppose that a message" is conveyed from the stomach along the telegraph wires of the brain , and that under certain conditions this message will be false , to suppose tins was left to Dr . A . J . Sutiikblatjd , who is ignorant enough of physiology to be the dupe of grosB metaphors ! We speak metaphorically of the etomacu conveying notices to the brain , Imt Dr . Sutherland has realised the metaphor , and arguesthat these notices may in some cases bo " tnlse , amiw Ihcy arofulsS , hypochondrias is the effect of the f J « hood ; boca c the brain . deceived by the notices thus falsely conveyed , labours ll " ! " ™* ° U respecting things with which neither the stomach nor Us notices has anything to do ! This is the fin * time we ever heard ^ % »™^ . ^ *' SoTn . HF . AKi > . If ever it should appear again in a trial for insanity , we may know what to expect .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 14, 1855, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14071855/page/15/
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