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working men , are equally unable . If Members of Parliament were paid , as they ought to be , there would be no difficulty in rinding men who would really represent the People . The expense to the public would be a mere trifle—a drop in the ocean compared with the annual income of the clergy . Hardly a word is said about giving an ecclesiastical overseer £ 10 , 000 or £ 12 , 000 a-year , and yet we cannot afford to pay our legislators at the rate of a few hundreds a-year .
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NEW BLOOD FOB THE MINISTRY . A cogent question is put by an esteemed correspondent , whose long experience is informed by a large and manly heart : — " Is it not a grievous thing that no suggestion is thrown out of introducing into the Government the practical and staple mind of the country from the democracy ; that the commerce and the interests of this great country should be transferred to an aristocracy uneducated for the purpose , who are essentially behind the age ; who know nothing of Government but as it has come down in practice from their class , —that class knowing nothing as a class , but the system of patronage- « -place—waste ? Surely we ought now to insist upon the necessity of commercial men , and of men having the confidence of the People being admitted into the Government .
" The difficulty the aristocracy find in forming a Ministry shows that the ki } owledge and exigencies of the People are growing beyond the capacities of the aristocracy as a class . ¦ «• We want practical men who know something of the business of life ; they would give us men who have been mostly born to fortunes , educated in creeds and the dead languages by the priests of a sect ; men who have been educated in the past , whose teachers believed that the Creeds of dead men were still to rule the quick as though society were still in long clothes , and that the silk apron and silver spoon-school is always to nurse it and keep it in mental babyhood ?"
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THE LIBEL LA . W AGAIN . Another case is reported in our paper to-day , in which the iniquitous operation of the libel law is . signally exhibited . The alleged libel consisted of a report of certain proceedings which had taken place in the Thames Policecourt , and which were said to be garbled . The reporter by whom it had been written was produced for the defence , svnd proved the general accuracy of the account ; even the warrant officer of the police court , who was produced on the part of the plaintiff , deposed that " the report was fair and accurate , and that the terms in which the statements of the witnesses were reported were very moderate . " And yet , notwithstanding all this , the jury thought proper to return a verdict of one farthing damages , the effect of which is to make each party pay their own costs . By the same rule , every publisher of a newspaper in the kingdom might be found guilty of libel any day in the year . How long is this state of things to last ?
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WHY D 0 N * T THEY BUILD MO III ; CHURCHES ? At a dinner given by Charles James , of London , to some of his clergv , the convtisation turned upon the new Army and Navy Club , the ground for which cost the sum of thirty thouHand pounds . A heavy sigh escaped from the over-burdened bosom of the prelate ( he had dined ) as he exclaimed , " that money would have built two churches ! " It is a fearful thought . Thirty thousand good honest pounds which might have been no much better employed ! Carlyle has told us how churches multiply as religion decays ; but considering that the bishop cannot keep hin existing churches in order , what rage for ecclesiastical architecture in it which makes him sigh , because more are not built ? And , if the demand is for churches not religion , why does he not justify hid taste by building them on his own ample grounds at Fulham ? There is room for a dozen churches there , all in a bunch !
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TUB CAUCASIAN MY 8 TJEIIY . This significant announcement appears in the formal accounts of the Ministerial Critiis on Thursday u" It is Raid that Mr . Disraeli lias been » o clotcly engaged during' the past three days , at hin munition in I'urk-Iaiie , that no other perHon thuii Lord Stanley haw been admitted to ait inter , view with the honourable member . " " Significant" wo call the announcement , because it evidently signifies something , though what we ennnot divine . It seems too profound for penetration . What
was the Author of the Wondrous Tale of Alroy doing in that strict seclusion ? Composing a programme for Lord Stanley ' s refusal ? Writing a Royal Speech for the opening of the next Parliament ? An address to his own electors ? A manifesto to foreign Courts ? A history of the present crisis ? A proof of Lord John ' s having said " that which , on reflection , he would acknowledge not to be founded on what really occurred . " Or a new novel in the intervals of crisis ? It tantalizes conjecture to know that the great statesman-romancist is at work , and not know at what .
We have it ! It was a plan for creating a new-old Anglo- Venetian office , eupecially for himself—to disarm objection * successively urged against his taking any of the existing offices : we are to have a State Gonfaloniere , « r standard-bearer , in Venice yclept Pianta-leone , or l lant-lion . The chief Protectionist commoner is going to hoiat the British Lion , Venetianiaed , and endowed with a hjgh CaupaaUm nose . From Pianta-leone we English derive Pantaloon ; but Mr . Disraeli will prefer the less degenerate title of Gonfalonier .
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If ever there was a peaceful , honourable career , modest amidst its laurels , and dignified in its seclusion , surely the career of Joanna Baillie , now closed in its eighty-ninth year , deserves that praise . From her seclusion she sent forth anonymously , while yet a girl , works in the highest class of composition , which took at once a lofty place among the works of her contemporaries—those contemporaries having names that" bear an emphasis "—and , although she gained a poet ' s name , a renown "
loud , but deep , " not the blatant , placarded , noisy renown , which is noisy from its very emptinessbut genuine , quiet , enduring admiration felt by competent admirers ;—although her name came to be associated with those of our literary giants , Joanna Baillie preserved the same unobtrusive dignity , and to the last kept aloof from lionizing circles and literary cliques . That quiet Scotch girl , reared in a Manse near Glasgow , was not to have her head turned by the incense of a world she
divined rather than saw . And yet—strange contradiction !—this sequestered mind did not choose for the sphere of its creations pastoral scenes of idyllic quiet , but plunged into the great tumultuous world of Passion as agitated in the intenser forms of tragedy ! She who knew nothing of the world , except what was mirrored in her own feelings , boldly chose the subjects which , for adequate treatment , demand intense and comprehensive knowledge of the varying forms of life—and chose ,
moreover , ' that peculiar Art—the dramatic—which being in its nature an applied form of poetry demands a thorough knowledge of the stage , its conditions , its perils , its artifices , and its effects . Genius is great and will prevail . It is the peculiar privilege of genius to anticipate the tardy conclusions of experience , and to see as in a flash what others learn in years of observation ; therefore , ' could Joanna Baillie write plays which are remarkable
as poems , and exhibit a real tragic power . But no Genius can dispense with experience in the applied forms of Art . Astronomy is not navigation . Herschell must give place to a Gravesend pilot in getting a ship out of the channel . Joanna Baillie could not , therefore , write successful dramas ; although her poetic reputation caused several experiments to be tried with her plays , and John Kbmble with Mrs . Siddons gave De Montfort the aid of their talents .
She has now passed away . Honourable and honoured has been her career , its placid uniformity untroubled by the distractions of feverish popularity , untroubled by the jars and discords of literary life , mixed up in no cliques , living like an English gentlewoman , and dying as she lived . One cannot deplore her loss as an event . She has lived her time . But if the news of her death falls not like a calamity , it will yet bring a shade of sadness over many minds , recalling their first acquaintance with De Montfort and Hcnriquez .
We have little else to recprd . luose who remember the extraordinary freshness of pictorial beauty , and the fine remark which illustrated the strange papers in Fraser ' s Magazine , under the quaint title of Yeast , will bo glad to learn that they are being reprinted , and on the eve of publication in a more convenient form . Ah the authorship is not avowed —( it is no secret in literary circles ) —we must withhold the name : but we have little
doubt that the public will soon detect the signature in every puge . Another book is eagerly expected , Hokiiuck ' s History of the Whigs , of which we . hear enough to excite great curiosity . Madame Pulhzky has finished the last Hheets of her new Hungarian Legends , which we announced some time ago an in preparation ; and Professor Gallknoa ( better known aH Mariotti ) is speedily to give us—for the first time—a full and true history of Italy in I 84 H .
Of continental gossip we have only this : On the 27 th January , 1686 , the Canton of Fribourg despatched Colonel Gady and the Burgomaster Reyft to Paris . Their mission was to obtain a repayment of the sums of money lent by the Canton to Francis I . and Charles IX . At Paris they were kept dancing attendance , put off with
every possible and impossible excuse , till January , 1688 . During the whole two years Reyft had the laudable patience daily to enter in his journal an account of every stage of the negotiation , as well as the things which struck him in that strange city of Paris . The MSS . entitled Diarium der Parisiscken Verrichtung has just been discovered , and all lovers of history will welcome its publication .
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The " scandals of literature" need a Disraeli , Among the most unjustifiable are those wherein a writer ' s works are wrenched from their true sphere into the service of personal or political malignity , and are made the missiles by which his reputation is assailed . To judge of a man by his works is scarcely just , the more so when , the judgment is formed upon your interpretation of his works . You do not measure a parson by his sermons !
• The Morning Chronicle of Thursday calls for these remarks by its wanton and disgraceful attack on Lord John Russell in the shape of a review of the novel he wrote when a young man . Our readers know the little sympathy we feel for Lord John as a statesman ; but with all our antagonism , we have not yet descended to such polemics as those of the Chronicle , and at such a time ! The article is extremely clever , and insinuates poison into the wounds it makes while smiling— " C ' cst mddire avec art : C ' est avec respect enfoncer le poijjnaril . "
But when we inform you that the drift of the article is to exhibit Lord John as the writer of licentious fiction , " anticipating Madame Dudevant and Eugene Sue" ( a writer who piques himself on knowledge should not repeat this vulgar error of calling Madame Sand Madame Dudkvant ) whom it is insinuated he influenced as "Hume influenced Voltaire !" : also as
anticipating Puseyism , and cultivating generally a low tone of morals ; when we inform you that this is the kick given to the dead minister \ ty the livingjournalist , you will appreciate the honourable warfare to which politicians will descend ! The article is one to make a " sensation ; " but it is a blot on the chivalrous escutcheon of a paper generally conducted on such high principles as the Chronicle .
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LETTERS ON MAN ' S NATURE AND DKV 1 CLOI'MENT . Letters on the Law * of Man's JYaturc and Development . ] l > U . G . AtkiiiBou , P . G . & ., and Harriet Murliucaii . John Chapman . " Among the few things of which we can pronounce ourselves certain , " nays Miss Martineau , " is the obligation of inquirers after truth to communicate what they obtain : and there in nothing in the . surprise , reluctance , levity , or disapprobation of any person , or any number of persons , which can affect that certainty . It may he , or it . may not be , that there are some who already hold our views , and many who are prepared for them and needing them . It is no part of our business to calculate ; or conjecture the reception that our correspondence is likely to meet with . " Brave and noble language , to which we respond with our whole heart , though we are among those who must unequivocally dissent from the opinions it ushers in . Space renders it impracticable to discuss the numerous and interesting questions opened by this volume ; we shall , therefore , restrict ourselves to the brief consideration of two only , viz ., the . existence of a Deity and the Immortality of the . Soul ( both of which are emphatically denied in these Letters ) , reserving for u subsequent paper more , special account of the contents of the work . There is a formula we have frequentl y used in this Journal which now more than ever seeniN to demand iteration , and it is this : The soul is larger than Logic . ¦ There are more avenues to the soul than those of syllogism . There are many things which we can truly be said to know , which , nevertheless ,
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March 1 , 1851 . ] type ULtabCt . 201
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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Leader (1850-1860), March 1, 1851, page 201, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1872/page/13/
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