On this page

• Departments (1)
  • 
• Text (10)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    ICttnntttn.

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Untitled Article

    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 .

    Untitled Article

    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 ?"

    Untitled Article

    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 ?

    Untitled Article

    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 !

    Untitled Article

    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 .

    Untitled Article

    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 .

    Untitled Article

    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 .

    Untitled Article

    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 ,

    Untitled Article

    March 1 , 1851 . ] type ULtabCt . 201

    Untitled Article

    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 .

    Icttnntttn.

    ICttnntttn .

• Citation
  • 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/