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VARIETIES. TWO OB THREE CHILDREN'S BOOKS...
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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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The New Quarterly Is Decidedly Superior,...
x i ^ wi ^ ntj . inour grandfather ' s portfolios in the library , and in some Inthosegreatcolo ^ pr ^^ ur ^ ndt ^^^ ^ ^ d ^^^ Oth ^ £ 255 ? J £ ^ ron ^ uTcomprehension . Boney was represented as a fierce ¦ we fwnd things quite beyona our CK tricolourea plume , a crooked sabre , JiSres ^ presenting Boney and his family in rags , J ^ W ** *»? SiSS ? huf Boney murdering the sick at Jaffa ; Boney with a hookah and a large rarDan , ^ vinfadoW the Turkish reliion & - ) - *« Corsican monster nevertheless had Gillray set of
g , ^ nT ! er ^« e ^ ln ¥ ng « -cording to the chronicle ,- ^ vUL ^ a who loved atheism , tyranny , plunder , and wickedness , in general , like their French Snd ? In SepictuS th < £ men were all represented as dwarfs , like their ally . The Sreants got into power at one time , and , if we remember ng h £ . ^ caUed the Broad-backed Administration , One with shaggy eyebrows and a bmtlybeai ^ the hirsute ringleader of the rascals , was , it appears , called Charles James Fox ; another miscreant , with a blotched countenance , was a certain Sheridan ; other imps were h % S Ersline , Norfolk ( Jockey of ) , Moira , Henry Petty . As in our childish innooeice we used to look at these demons , now sprawling and tipsy in their cups , now scaling heaven , from which the angelic Pitt hurled them down ; now cursing the light ( their atrocious ringleader Fox was represented with hairy cloven feeVand a tail and horns }; now kissing Boney ' s boot , but inevitably discomfited by Pitt and the other good angels , we hated these vicious wretches , as good children should ; we were on the Jide of Virtue and Pitt and Grandpapa . But if our sisters wanted to look at the
portfolios , the good old grandfather used to hesitate . There were some prints among them very odd indeed ; some that girls could not understand ; some that boys , indeed , had best not see . We swiftly turn over those prohibited pages . How many of them there were in the wild , coarse , reckless , ribald , generous book of old English humour ! Mr . Thackeray ;( for in so clear a case there is no use in being anonymous ) then goes on to show , by reference to Mr , Leech and his friend Punchy how caricature has become civilised since Gimjray ' s time . The following passage , in which Punch is made to represent modern caricature , is capital , and the concluding reference to " Jeames , "—considering by whom it is written , is exquisite . It is a happy stratagem of Mr . Thackeray to break the force of criticisms , against himself by anticipating them .
This book is better than plum-cake at Christmas . It i 3 an enduring plum-cake , which you may eat and which you may slice ' and deliver to your friends ; and to which , having cut it , you may come again and welcome , from year ' s end to year ' s end . In the frontispiece you see Mr . Punch examining the pictures in his gallery-r-a portly , well-drgsssd , middle-aged , respectable gentleman , ii _ a white neckcloth , and a polite evening costume—smiling in a very blandand agreeable manner upon one of his pleasant drawings , taken out of one of his handsome portfoliosr Mr . Punch has very good reason to smile at the work and be satisfied with the artist . Mr . Leech , his chief contributor , and some kindred humourists , with pencil and pen have-served Mr . Punch admirably . Time was , if we remember Mr . P . ' s history rightly , that he did not wear silk stockings nor well-made clothes ( the little dorsal irregularity in his figure is almost an ornament now , so excellent a tailor has he ) . He was of humble beginnings . It is said he kept a ragged little booth , which he put up at corners of streets ;
associated with beadles , policemen , his own ugly wife ( whom he treated most scandalously ) , and persons in a low station of life ; earning a precarious livelihood by the cracking of wild jokes , the singing of ribald songs , and halfpence extorted from passers-by ; _ He is the Satyric genius we spoke of anon : he cracks his jokes still , for satire must live ; but he is combed , washed , neatly clothed , and perfectly presentable . He goes into ' the very best company ; he keeps a stud at Melton ; he has a moor in Scotland ; he rides inthe ParkT ' hasThis - stall at the Opera ; isconstantly dining-out-at clubs-and in private society ; and goes every night in the season to balls and parties , where you aee the most beautiful women possible . He is welcomed amongst his new friends the great ; though , like the good old English gentleman of the song , he does not forget the small . He pats the heads of street boys and girls ; relishes the jokes of Jack the costermonger and Bob the dustman ; good-naturedly spies out Molly the cook flirting with policeman X , or Mary the nursemaid as she listens to the fascinating guardsman .
He used rather to laugh at guardsmen , " plungers , " and other military men _; and was until later days very contemptuous in his behaviour towards Frenchmen . He has a natural antipathy to pomp , and swagger , and fierce demeanour . But now that the guardsmen are gone to war , and the dandies of . " The Rag "—dandies no more—are battling like heroes at Balaklava and Inkermann by the side of their heroic allies , Mr . Punch ' s laughter is changed to hearty respect and enthusiasm . It is not against courage and honour he wars : but this great moralist—must it be owned ?—has some popular British prejudices , and these led him in peace-time to laugh at soldiers and Frenchmen . If those hulking footmen who accompanied the carriages to the opening of Parliament the other day , would form a plush brigade , wear only gunpowder in their hair , and strike with their great canes on the enemy , Mr . Punch would leave off laughing at Jeames , who meanwhile remains among us , ' to all outward appearance
regardless of satire , and calmly consuming his five meals per diem . Against lawyers , beadles , bishops and clergy , and authorities , Mr . Punch is still rather bitter . At the time of the Papal aggression he was prodigiously angry ; and ono of the chief misfortunes which happened to him at that period was that , through the violent opinions which he expressed regarding the Roman Catholic hierarchy , he lost the invaluable aervices , the graceful pencil , the harmless wit , the charming fancy of Mr . Doyle . Another member of Mr . Punch ' s cabinet , the biographer of Jeames , the author of the Snob Papers , resigned his functions on account of Mr . Punch ' s assaults upon the present Emperor of the French nation , whose anger Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse . Mr . Punch parted . with these contributors : he filled their places with others aa good . The boys at the railroad stations cried Punch just as cheerily , and sold just as many numbers , after these events as before .
To a clever bnt inefficient paper on Sir Benjamin Brodib ' s " Psycological Inquiries , " there succeeds an article on " Clerical Economics , '' in which the household ways and accommodations of clergymen both in England and Scotland are treated in the light easy stylo peculiar to this species of papers In the Quarterly . Then there is an article on " The Open Fire Place , " in Which , the history of improvements in grates , chimneys , fire-places ,, and stoves is traced from the rough old times to the last invention of Dr . Arnott ; the concluding pages of the article aro devoted to an exposition of Dr . Arnott '§ " new grate "—alread y , as allJcnow , making a sensation in London , nnd promising to cure all the ilia that grates have hitherto been prone to , and to
effect an incalculable savingof money . anticipates that Dr . Abnott's grates will become universal . ^ ^ Besides an article on " ProvidentInstitutions , " and one giving an account of the recent history and present state of «; Corsica , "i there are two articles relating to the war and its conduct—the one historical in ., its form , and entitled " Campaign in the Crimea ; " the other more critical and political , and entitled " The Conduct of the War . ' * This last article is a direct counterblast to the similar article in the Edinburgh , being an attack upon ministers , and a denunciation of their incompetency . From a postscript alludino- to the Czab ' s offer to negotiate , we quote the following : —
******^^ O _ _ < a •» ^_ »—J f * ¦¦¦ in ¦ ¦» i - iii II We believe that there will be greater need than ever for vigilance and firmness . We dread the diplomacy of Russia more than her arms . We are apprehensive that her suWsion is S device for detaching Austria from the alliance , and for paralysing ™ r Preparations for the next campaign . Hostilities , it is affirmed , are not to be toSS butweare alarmed lest the Government should repeat their former Sore and lulled into false security by the negotiations , should relax in their efforts toToViX armaments against the spring- ^ . such suspension in our ^« he the height of folly and false economy . The mere pecuniary cost of preparing for is vaffiy less than that of war itselfand should Russia really yield to our
war , demands it will only be because we hold ourselves in readiness to exact what she Ses In ignorance of the guarantees that will be asked of her , and the amount of the indemnitv which will be required for the expenditure we have incurred , we can give no opinion upon the conditions of peace proposed by our Ministers . We trusted tiiemto provide for the contingencies of war , and found ourselves deceived . If , taking advantage of the secrecy with which the negotiations must be conducted , they should again disappoint the reasonable expectations of the public and assent to m-Sequlteier ^ hey will not , we venture to predict , be able to withstandthe sto ™ of reprobation which is justly due to men who , through weakness and incapacity ,
have betrayed their country . The Quarterly , it will be observed , is more spirited and popular in its style of thought about the war than the Edinburgh . Both , however , agree in thinking that the war should be made to go on exclusively to the interest of the " balance of power" among the great states , and that all talk about " the nationalities , '' & c , ought to be kept down .
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besidesThe writer of the article THE LEAD EB , [ Saturday , —— - —^ - ^—« ^^ ~~ mr ^ _— £ * . « . **¦(? + li £ k ottri / tla
Varieties. Two Ob Three Children's Books...
VARIETIES . TWO OB THREE CHILDREN ' S BOOKS . " Give me the making of a nation ' s ballads , and let who will make the laws . " We would almost say the same of books for children , and of the literature Of maturer a <» e . We know no art more delicate , more serious , more responsible than the art _ of writing " children ' s books . " There is no art , we must add , more desecrated by the pedantry of bunglers and jthe cant of killjoys . . What ischildhood intellectually considered ? Is it not the simplicity , the intuition of genius , without its sorrow and its bitterness ? What is genius in after-life but the simplicity , without the ignorance * ofchildLood blossoming amidst the brambles of the jvorld ? To write for childhood , then , is to address an audience of untainted senses , unclouded souls , uncorrupted hearts , ears pure as living streams , eyes tfresh as the earliest flowers . The first quality in writers for children should be reverence ; the
second , simplicity ; with these let humour , invention , fancy , spring from the pen as from an enchanter ' s wand ; the child ' s imagination will nil up the barest outline with visions of wonder and terror , of beauty and strength , and glory unknown even to the brains of men . No doubt we cordially disagree with the excellent Mr . George Cruikshank when he converts Jack tAe Giant-killer into a member of-the Peace-Society , and ^ a , Temperance Apostle : that is not the way , we believe , to win the sympathies of little readers for whom " the bottle" has been something maternal and persuasive , not something remorseful and destructive , and who , never having suffered the ill effects , do not need the warnings of venerable converts . Nor do we condemn the warlike exploits of the Giant-killer , as of a pernicious tendency , and likely to instil a barbarous ferocity into the tender breasts of eventual Great Britons : on the contrary , we rejoice in the due and seasonable cultivation of that combative instinct which ,
however of the earth , earthy , seems to be part and parcel of our poor human nature , and therefore respectable , and even sacred , and which makes a nation of soldiers , not , let * us remind Mr . Cruikshank , a nation of peace principles and standing armies . Still , with all our affectionate gratitude to Jack the Giant-killer and Co . ( a tolerably long-lived firm , it appears , and likely to do a grent stroke of business for many years to come ) , we do not consider them the ne plus ultra of excellence in the literature of childhood ; and we have no difficulty in conceiving a better . If we had not believed in the possibility of superseding the Iliads and the Epics that stirred the infant souls of the heroes of the Alma and of Inkerman by stories scarcely less exciting , equally undidactic , and infinitely more pure , moro simple , more inspiring , we should be rebuked by this beautiful little gem of a "Child ' s Story , " The Three Boys , written nnd illustrated by Jane Eleanor
Hay . ( Bosworth . ) Wo have only met this book by mere chance . Had it come to us in the ordinary course , wo should not have been silent so long on its rare and peculiar merits . But if we mistake not , it will survive many a Christmas . This story is , we do not hesitate to say , the model of what stories for children should bo . To write it was not only a happy inspiration , it was a good action , and it bears at every line the sweet impress of the hand and the heart of a loving mother , the touch of a sincere artist , the tone of a true poet . We shall not commit the cruelty of robbing these thirty-two pugos of their gentle secret . Only thirty-two pages , and enough of beauty to be a joy for over to the child that listens to the story ! We can imagine the little reader or the little listener asking for The Three Boys again and again , pondering on it in secret , getting it by heart , putting the precious volume under an innocent pillow , as a talisman of lovely dreams—the dreams of childhood 1 No child taking to heart this story can fail to grow in grace and ' in , strength . For what is its teaching—Perseverance * Faitlt , und Purity . Those immortal precepts arc not made harsh and hateful by we know not what' theological terrors and condemning toxts : there is no thought of frightening the child into love of God , but as a guide and com-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 20, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_20011855/page/16/
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