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. ' ¦' ¦ : ;' " [ T S ' W | | | i ^$y,::...
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^tiitmuit.
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rritics are not the legislators, but the...
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"We have only this Week learned that an ...
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The origin of The Men and Women of Franc...
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THE EABTH AND MAN. The JSafth aitd Man: ...
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" At a later period, Humboldt also calle...
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.
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^Tiitmuit.
^ tiitmuit .
Rritics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
rritics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—tEey interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Beview .
"We Have Only This Week Learned That An ...
"We have only this Week learned that an Italian Protestant magazine is published in London , and ^ appears to have lived six years under the . titleof Jj'JEco di Savonarola . Three numbers were sent to us , wherefore we cannot conceive ; surely not because we can be supposed to sympathize with its tqne ? The very first article we read bore this attractive title , Christianityrfromthescientific point of view , and the opening sentences declare that the article is not addressed to " apostles of incredulity , whom the writer ( with modest sagacity ) says it would be a waste of time to attempt to convince ; adding that " doubts do not arise in their minds simply from their weakness of intellect , but also from their vanity and corrupted hearts
non nascendo in essiil dubbio da solapocchezza d'intellettofma bensl da vanita e corruzipne del cuore I" How long is this injurious and irreligious cant to continue ? How long are the preachers of a religion of charity thus to continue their uncharitableness to all opponents ? For , observe this dilemma : either theologians believe that heterodoxy is the consequence of a depraved morality and corrupted heart , or they do not believe it . If they do not believe it , how contemptible they must be to utter it ; if they do believe it , how inexpressibly narrow-minded and how incompetent to teach others I To think of men who have lived and thought , to whom the
great mysteries of existence have ever suggested the notion of their helpless ignorance and incompetence , to whom the doubts and difficulties of belief must have been made familiar by daily and almost hourly experience , declar ing that those who differ from them in creed differ because their hearts are perverted by vanity and bad impulses ! The man whose ignorance of human nature is so profonnd as that , ought to be ashamed to set up as a teacher ; the man whose nature is so ungenerous as that , ought to be ashamed to call himself religious- Narrow hearts and narrow brains may preach theology , they will never found religion ! The article which opens withthe sentences we are combating is written by one Mapei , and its gross stupidity is such as we might anticipate . The writer undertakes to show that Science only confirms the language of Scripture . As a specimen , what think yoii . of
this ? In the Mosaic account light is created before the sun , and Signor Mapei considers this a proof of the divine inspiration ; for if Moses had not written under the impulse of Eternal Wisdom , he would / not Jhave written that which must have been so repugnant to his ideas , as to him the sun must have seemed the source of all light ! Without pausing here to inquire whence Signor Mapei learned that Moses imagined the sun to be the source of all light , we pass to his explanation . Science , he informs us , has proved the truth of Genesis , by proving that light does not emanate from the sun , "but exists in the atmosphere ( esiste nelV atmosfera ) , and the solar disc exercises an influence on it by setting the molecules in motion . * ' We leave this theory of light to Baden Powell or Erewster . Meanwhile who does not see that if the solar disc is requisite to cause the molecular movement named light , the blunder in Genesis remains unexplained as it did before ?
The Origin Of The Men And Women Of Franc...
The origin of The Men and Women of France , reviewed by us last week , turns out to be , as we insisted , purely French . The work is a translation of Ars ^ ne Houssaye ' s . collected sketches . Why the authorship was concealed it is difficult to divine , since the original is neither rare nor inaccessible . Of literary gossip we have two or three stray fragments worth setting down . The one is , that Tennysojn is busy with a new poem , of a totally different order from any he has yet published , unless the fragment of the Morte d'Arthur be counted ; another is , tha t the gay and brilliant author of The Bachelor of the Albany has nearly completed a hew novel of a philosophical and satirical turn . Thackeray , whose historical novel was to
have been published last Christmas , has not finished much more than half of his work , so that even Easter will not smile a welcome to its welcome pages S For a long while the Memoires of George Sand have been eagerly expected , but no sign is yet given of their appearance . It will calm your eagerness somewhat , perhaps , if we tell ypu , which we can confidently , that these Mdmaires will contain no confessions . Like Goethe , she has written her life in her works . All she has seen , thought , suffered , has found its expression under imaginary forms . More explicit she will not be . To transmute experience into poetic forms is the office of an Artist j but to use experience as nfriandise for curiosity is what few Artists would
condescend to . She is not of the few . The idea of writing Mtinoires at nil was suggested by her discovering , among some old family papers , a vast number of her father's letters addressed to her mother during the campaigns ot Napoleon , to one of whose brothers her father was aid-de-camp . lliescwill be given in extenso , and are said to paint a yivid picture of the times . Gicorgk Sand will nlso describe Wfr childhood , spent mainly under the eye of a grandmother , who tried to remedy the misfortune of Jior having come into the world a girl , when a boy was wanted , by " making a man of her ; " she will tell us of her studies , and her dreams , —in short , she will trace for us some outline of the history of her mind . As to the rest , she may say with Mdlle . Del a un ay , je me peins en buste . Worthy of a remark is the fact , that Dumas and George Sand ,
opposite in all things but celebrity , should both be writing their Memoirs it the same time , and both be filling the earlier volumes with elaborate biographies of their fathers , who were both high in Napoleon ' s favour . But Dumas has been urged by the temptation of book-making cjuite as much as by filial love : a fact we see illustrated in the subsequent volumes —^ r-four and five are juskout- ^ -wherein every person is seized on as a pretext for digression ; Let us add , also , thjit Dumas has justgiven us . the second volume of his gay and facile Olympe de Clhoes , a very pleasant novel , worth your reading .
The Eabth And Man. The Jsafth Aitd Man: ...
THE EABTH AND MAN . The JSafth aitd Man : or Physical Geography in its Relation to the History of Mankind . Slightly abridged from the work of Arnold Ghii / ot . J . W . Parker and Son . Looking abroad upon the vast complexity of phenomena , apparently unconnected , which Nature presents in ever-renewing variety to our bewildered gaze , what a deep feeling of man's magnificent endowments , and of the grand simplicity of Creation , nioves the heart , as we reflect that all those varied phenomena are reducible to a few constant laws , and will doubtless , in the " process of the suns , " be reduced to one law . At a first glance how hopeless it must seem to attempt the discovery of such a complex mystery ! Yet Philosophy—which , as Plato profoundly says , is
nothing but the search after the One in the Many—b y directing its earnest gaze only at Resemblances , at last is enabled to find the Ariadne-clue to the great labyrinth , and to move amidst the multiplicity of phenomena with a sure and steady pace . Just what the phenomena of Nature are , on a grand scale , to the uninstructed mind , a Map is to all but scientific geographers . Cast your eyes upon a Map of the "Worldj and imagine what a hopeless task it would seem to interpret the significance of its endless variety of lines , indentations , elevations , its rivers , seas , mountains , plains , and waving Coasts ! Yet , as surely as this world was not the Chaos
caprice of Chance—an . accident in the aimless life of —as surely as it and all that lives upon it are subordinate to Law , so surely are those varieties of dotted lines significant of some great processes in iTature , and needful therefore to be understood by Science . Let this Map be studied closely- The eyes of one man , of one generation of men * will not suffice ; the film of death will intercept the reading before a page in -that book is clearly read j—but what one man cannot do , Humanity can do . After thousands of observations , there appear amidst the irregularities . which at first seemed accidental , certain features of resemblance and a general disposition of their parts due ta the presidence of some formative Law j let us see what these resemblances-jnay mean .
" Lord Bacon , the restorer of the-physical sciences , first opened the way by remarking , that the southern extremities of the two worlds ^ terminate in a point , turned towards the Southern Ocean , while they go on widening towards the north . "After him , Reinhold Forster , the scientific and judicious companion of Captain Cook in his second voyage round the world , took up the observation , and developed it to a much greater extent . He points out substantially three analogies , or coincidences , in the structure of the continents .
<* The first is , that the southern points of all the continents are high and rocky and seem to be the extremities of mountain belts , which come from far in the interior , and break off abruptly at the shore of the ocean . America terminates in the rocky precipices of Cape Horn , the last representatives of the already broken chain of the Andes ; Africa ends in the Cape of Good Hope , with its high plateaus and its Table Mountain , rising-from the bosom of the ocean to a height o f more than 4000 feet ; Asia , in the peninsula of the Deccan , sends out the chain of the Ghauts to form the high rocks of Cape Comorin ; Australia ., lastly , presents in its southern extremity , at Cape Southeast , Van Diemen ' Land , the same abrupt and massivo
character . " A second analogy is , that the continents have , east of tlio southern points , a large island or a group of islands more or less considerable . America has the Falkland Islands ! Africa lias Madagascar and the volcanic islands which surround it ; Asia has Ceylon and Australia , the two great islands of New Zealand , and the numerous groups of Australasia . " A third character of configuration , common to the continents , is a deep bend of their western side towards tho interior of the mass . Their flanks ore , as it woro , on this side , hollowed into a vast gulf . In America , tho concave summit of this inflection is indicated by tho position of Aricfl , at tho foot of tho high Cordillera of Bolivia . In Africa , tho Gulf of Guinea expresses more strongly still this characteristic feature . It is more feebly marked in Asia by tho Gulf of Cambaye , nnd the Indo-Persian Sea ; it ro-appears fully in Australia , whero the Gulf of Nuyts occupies almost tho whole southern side .
" At A Later Period, Humboldt Also Calle...
" At a later period , Humboldt also called our attention to tho singular parallelism existing between tho two sides of tho Atlantic . The salient angles of the ono correspond to tho gulfs and bays of tho other ; Capo St . Roquo in America , answers to tho Gulf of Guinea ; tho headland of Africa , of which Capo Verd is tho extreme point , to the Gulf of Mexico ; so that this ocean takes the form of a great valley , liko those of which mountainous countries furnish us with many examples . " StofFens pushed his observations farther . Ho noticed that tho lands approach each other , and expand , towards tho North , while they separate and narrow doiun to points in tho South . This is true not only of tho continental masses , hut of all tho important peninsulas connected with
thorn . Greenland , California ., Florida , m Amcnca ;; Scandinavia , p Spain , Italy , ' and Greoco , in Eurojx ); and . tho Indies , Corca , and Ttnmstehatka , in Asia ;~ all have thoir points- turned ' towards tho south . Steflbns also observed that tho continents are grouped two by two ,, in throo double world ? , of ouch of which tho two component parts are united togotlior by an isthmus or chain of islands ; and moreover , on ono side of tho isthmus is found an arohipolago , on . tho other side a peninsula . These aro great facts in geography : they invest the Map with a new and peculiar interest , for no sooner does man begin to traep resemblances and group facts , than his speculative instinct becomes active in the search after causes . To Germany we owe all tho important discoveries in geographical science . Forater , Pallas , Steffens , and Humboldt , are the only
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 27, 1852, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27031852/page/17/
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