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HO fttft gLt&& 'tt* (Saturday,
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Spain has long ceased to have a national...
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SYDNEY SMITHS MORAL PHILOSOPHY. Skntchvi...
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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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German Literature Presents A Deplorable ...
mind moves through the airy regions of wit , satire , and fun . Here is Der Anecdotenj ' dger , a journal for " facetious Germany , " and so successful that das lustige Deutschland has given it a broad grin of approval for six years . The dead march in Saul may be a mirth-provoking composition after this ! Then there is the Leipsiger Charivari—a . weekly instalment of sixteen pages of facetiousness , to which the editor now magnanimously promises to devote " all his time and talents" : the excellent Dogberry threatens their worships with all his tediousness—and fulfills his threat ! Die fligende
Blatter , published at Munich , is more like our Punch ; and though not startling in its wit has at least the merit of tolerable illustrations . The very best joke we have met with in these funny journals is appended to one of the illustrations , and is called the Good Samaritan . A village schoolmaster is haranguing his boys in bland and moral strains . " Now boys , you have all heard the story of the Good Samaritan . Johnny , what would you do now if you were to find a man lying on the ground , covered with wouirds i" Johnny supports his chin with his thumb , and in perfect stupidity meditates this answer , " I'd finish him ! ( Volli t ' dudt macha ) . "
Of serious works we can mention but two , Count Ficquelmont ' s Avfkl ' drungen iiber die Zeit ( the name of the author will be enough to call attention to it ) and the minister Bekk ' s Bewegung in Baden 1848-9 , which to those not already wearied with the 13 aden revolution contains matter of interest .
Ho Fttft Glt&& 'Tt* (Saturday,
HO fttft gLt && 'tt * ( Saturday ,
Spain Has Long Ceased To Have A National...
Spain has long ceased to have a national literature . It lives upon imitations and translations from the French , We were , therefore , not surprised to hear that Le Comte Hermann of Dumas has just been produced in Madrid with great success \ nor that Ciienu has been translated for the benefit of the reactionary party there . But the Ijook of books just now is a social novel—imitated from the French of course—called Rich and Poor ( Pobres y liicos , o la Bruja de Madrid ) by Ayguals X > e Izco . Four thousand copies of this novel have been sold , which in Spain is equal to twenty
thousand in France . It is , in fact , a Spanish Mysteres , and is employing the ingenuity of illustrators as Eugene Sue ' s works employed it . In another shape the same topic is handled by JEl . Curioso Paklante ( the nom de guerre of Don Mesoneko Homanos ) under the title of Scenes of Madrid Life ( Escenas Matritetises ) , which , as the production of one thoroughly conversant with Madrid life under all aspects is of rare interest to the foreigner . This book also has produced a " sensation ; " but although national' in its material nothing can be less Spanish in its form . Another work by Don Sehafin Calderon is also mentioned as
forthcoming . Mr . Ticknor has yet a long and not uninteresting chapter to write for hia History of Spanish Literature , wherein he could give us a succinct account of the modern writers so strangely omitted by him . Apropos of modern writers , as literary intelligence on Spanish matters is so exceedingly difficult to be obtained , it may be worth stating here , for the benefit of our Castilian scholars , that the works of the best of the modern dramatists , IlARTZEMnuacii , have been collected into one volume by Don Ochoa , and published in the Paris edition of Spanish writers .
Sydney Smiths Moral Philosophy. Skntchvi...
SYDNEY SMITHS MORAL PHILOSOPHY . Skntchvi of Moral Philosophy rtalitwetl at Iho lloynl Institution in the years ISO 1 , !> , ami 0 . Uy the late ltev . Sydney Smith , M . A . l . onyman and Co . This book is so modest in its pretensions that it ¦ would bo pedantry to insist very closely on its shortcomings ; on the other hand it is in many respects so charming , and bears so admired a name on its title-page , that we should mislead our renders if we did not rmulily the praise we feel bound to bestow on it , by a distinct expression of our disappointment
at its deficiencies . Perhaps no one ever expected a profound or novel exposition of psychology from Sydney Smith ; but we had n right to expect , and did expect , a more thorough mastery of what was already known with something like i \ n indication of original thought , and by original thought we do not mean novel thoughts , we mean that the ideas although discovered by others should have also been discovered by him . Jt is in all senses of the word a superficial book . Scanty knowledge , and the absence of speculative power do nut make a popular lecturer , although the necessity of being " popular" is everywhere assumed ns the excuse for not being profound . We
feel very certain that had Sydney Smith been addressing a graver audience he would have added no solidity to his discourses , simply because he was not sufficiently master of the subject to do so . When Faraday addresses popular audiences he never betrays ignorance , he merely keeps to himself such considerations and such demonstrations as the audience may be supposed incapable of appreciating . Any experienced auditor can judge whether Faraday is master of his subject or not ; and so will any experienced student in philosophy detect , by a hundred significant trifles , that Sydney Smith is but himself a pupil of the science he professes to teach .
Having discharged our critical consciences on this score , and warned our readers not to look for metaphysics in this charming volume , we proceed to render a slight account of its contents . The opening lecture is a defence of the study : it is full of pleasantry , but of slender tissue . When he says " Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo , " the pleasantry is so irresistible that we almost forget its profound misconception , of Berkeley ) , who did not deny the evidence of his senses , who did not deny the existence of the streets into which he walked . As a wit Sydney Smith is justified in leaving Berkeley unread ; but as a lecturer ?
The two succeeding lectures give an historical survey of Moral Philosophy : a school girl would have done it better , could she have given the exquisite style and the pleasantry which make it , meagre as it is , delightful to read . What does the reader think of this , as a bit of history ?—" Socrates was , in truth , not very fond of subtle and refined speculations ; and upon the intellectual part of our nature , little or nothing of his opinions is recorded . If we may infer anything from the clearness and simplicity of his opinions on moral subjects , and from the had received for the useful and
bent which his genius the practical , he would certainly have laid a strong foundation for rational metaphysics . The slight sketch I have given of his moral doctrines contains nothing very new or very brilliant , but comprehends those moral doctrines which every person of education has been accustomed to hear from his childhood ; but two thousand years ago they were great discoveries , —two thousand years since common sense was not invented . If Orpheus , or Linus , or any of those melodious moralists , sung , in bad verses , such advice as a grandmama would now give to a child of six years old , he was thought to be inspired by the gods , and statues and altars were
erected to his memory . In Hesiod there is a very grave exhortation to mankind to wash their faces : and I have discovered a very strong analogy between the precepts of Pythagoras and Mrs . Trimmer;—both think that a son ought to obey his father , and both are clear that a good man is better than a bad one . Therefore , to measure aright this extraordinary man , we must remember the period at which he lived ; that he was the first who called the attention of mankind from the pernicious subtleties which engaged and perplexed their wandering understandings to the practical rules of life ;—he was the great father and inventor of common sense , as Ceres was of the plough , and Bacchus of intoxication . "
We quote this because an admiring critic has given it his approbation . Comment would be misplaced . He then enters upon his subject considering first the Intellectual Faculties and secondly the Moral Powers . IJriefly of course , and yet not so briefly as to interfere with the exposition of leading principles . The lectures on Wit and Humour , on Taste , on the Sublime and Beautiful , on the Faculties of Beasts , and on the Conduct of the Understanding , are as ample us one could desire . It is doubtless a grave defect in a work when it loaves no distinct impression behind it save that of the charm with which its stylo invested it ; and such a defect has the present volume ; but yet so great is the charm that we could for ever be reading such books , as young ladies read novels ! There is a lambent lire playing through it ; a genial humour and felicity of phrase such as Sydney Smith always brightened the dullest topic with ; a diction so easy , graceful , idiomatic , and perspicuous , as to fill critics with admiration , and writers with mitigated despair ; an eloquence never dragged in , but always the natural exaltation of the tone with the exaltation of the subject , the grander chords and solemn harmonies breaking forth as solemn exponents of deeper feelings , and not the rhetorician ' s trick of display . Here is one example , among many , on the love of knowledge : — Some men may bo disposed to ask , ' Why conduct my understandinj ? with such endless care ? and what is the use of so much knowledge ? ' What is the use of so much knowledge ?—what is the use of so much life ?—what are we to do with the seventy years of existence allotted to us ?—and how are we to live them out to the last ? I solemnly declare that , but for the love of knowledge , I should consider the life of the meanest hedger and ditcher as preferable to that of the greatest uud
richest man here present : for the fire of our minds is like the fire which the Persians burn in the mountains — it flames night and day , and is immortal , and not to be quenched ! Upon something it must act and feed , — upon the pure spirit of knowledge , or upon the foul dregs of polluting passions . Therefore , when I say , in conducting your understanding , love knowledge with a great love , with a vehement love , with a love coeval with life what do I say , but love innocence , —love virtue , love purity of conduct , —love that which , if you are rich and great , will sanctify the blind fortune which has made you so , and make men call it justice , —love that which , if you are poor , will render your poverty respectable , and make the proudest feel it unjust to laugh at the meanness of your fortunes , —love that which will comfort you , adorn you , and never quit you , —which will open to you the kingdom of thought , and all the boundless regionsof conception , as an asylum against the cruelty , the injustice , and the pain that may be your lot in the outer world , —that which will make your motives habitually great and honourable , and light up in an instant a thousand noble disdains at the very thought of meanness and of fraud ! " And here is a fragment of his description of t he sublime , worth quoting for the music of its march : — " It is a feeling of pleasure , but of exalted tremulous pleasure , bordering on the very confines of pain ; and driving before it every calm thought , and every regulated feeling . It is the feeling which" men experience when they behold marvellous scenes of nature ; or when they see great actions performed . Such feelings as come on the top of exceeding high mountains ; or the hour before a battle ; or when when a man of great power , and of an unyielding spirit , is pleading before some august tribunal against the accusations of his enemies . These are the hours of sublimity , when all low and little passions are swallowed up by an overwhelming feeling ; when the mind towers and springs above its common limits , breaks out into larger dimensions , and swells into a nobler and grander nature . " It is not easy to convey an idea of the attractiveness of this volume unless we compare it to the charm of personal influence . There are men to whom the erudite and informing conversation of " strong-minded women" has but mediocre attraction ; yet they can listen for hours to some less "instructive , " but more genial woman , though she talk of matters which no treatment could render of any intense importance , and her observations on them throw no new light upon society in general . Just what such a woman is compared with her informing rival , is Sydney Smith ' s volume compared with treatises on metaphysics . A kind , genial , human nature smiles in its pages ; a cultivated intellect , conversant rather with men than with books , irradiates it with beautiful illustrations both of fancy and of wit ; and collaterally many wise remarks and excellent sentiments are brought forward , which give a real value to the book . As may be expected , it is in the practical rather than in the speculative part that he i 3 strongest . His observations on the pissions are observations , though rarely extending so deep as the causes . Thus what he says of grief seems to us very imperfect as an analysis : — " A singular circumstance respecting grief , is , that there is not always , in the suffering person , a very ready disposition to get rid of his sorrow : he clings to the remembrance of it ; gathers round about him everything which can recall the idea of what he has lost ; and appears to derive his principal consolation from those trains of ideas which an indifferent person would consider as best calculated to exasperate his affliction . The reason of this , I take to be , that it is pleasant to be pitied , pleasant even to think how we should be pitied if the world were well acquainted with all the minute circumstance of our loss , —with all the fine ties and endearments which bound us to the object of our affections . We are fond of representing ourselves to our own fancies as objects of the most profound and universal sympathy . Death never took away such a father , such a husband , or such a son ; we dwell upon our misfortunes , and magnify them , till we derive a sort of consolation from reflecting on that exquisite pity to which we are entitled , and which we should receive if the whole extent of our calamity were as well known to others as to ourselves . " He liere overlooks two determining causes , one direct and the other derivative , namely , the organic affection of the brain i ' . self , and the delight we feel in sensation merely as sensation . Grief has a tendency to perpetuate itself , not only from the te ndency of all intense emotions to recur and to become per manent— " fixed ideas " —bat also because all strong emotion is in itself desirable . We love clanger , in youth , for danger ' s sake—or rather , to speak more accurately , for the sake of the excitement , the emotion which danger communicates . We delight in the pain of tragedy , though it wrings from us sobs and tears ; wo delight in the pain of music , though it makes every nerve quiver . Not as pain , of course , but as intense sensation . So greedy are we of sensation that "vto welcome pain rather than be without emotion . A wearied citizen , wasting from ennui ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 27, 1850, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_27041850/page/14/
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