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hensive grasp of his subject , strong feeling , and powerful eloquence . The journal is likely to give a new elevation to the literature of the democracy .
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It is sometime since Mrs . Norton has published anything . There is always so numerous a public to welcome what she puts forth , that the announcement of a new novel by her will be good tidings . "We observe also that the charming author of Margaret Maitland , of Sunnyside , has another volume ready—both of which announcements will be received with superb disdain by those peculiar and " highly intellectual" persons who " never read novels !"
Now , there are two reasons for not reading novels : one being want of time ; the other an affectation of superiority . Those who are forced to plead the former , we condole with ; those who assume the latter we are apt to despise , having generally found them among the most stupid , most narrowminded , and most ungenerous of natures . To put the question on this ground : surely the works written by great men , and by men whom the persons we are addressing would consider even
still weightier examples—statesmen—cannot belong to a class altogether frivolous ! Goethe , the greatest of modern intellects , wrote novels ; Voltaire wrote them ; Diderot wrote them ; Boccaccio wrote them ; Lord John has tried his hand at them ; Lord Normanby has succeeded ; so has Chateaubriand , the ambassador ; and Remusat and VilIjEMAIn , both Ministers and grave professors : probably Guizot , who has written a tragedy , has somewhere the MS . of a
romance in his austere portfolio ! Surely these men—by no means among the best writers of fiction—have given that department of literature enough " respectability and gravity" to make it a venial error if we sometimes condescend , from our great altitude , to " look into" these frivolous works ? And , after all , is it not desirable now and then to relax somewhat of our austere superiority ? But there are some men who never relax , —they fear lest they should fall to pieces !
This by way of preface to the announcement that the Novelists have another ministerial addition . In that " world , " which is to the actual world what our globe is to the universe , there is gossip about Le Dernier D'Egmont , a new novel , by the Cornte de Jarnac ( he will not , we hope , consider our betraying him a coup de Jarnac ?) who has also the credit of having written a novel in English ! Beside his volumes lie the concluding volumes of Ijcl Bonne Avanture , by Eugene Sue ,
and the third volume of that " seizing story , " Dieu Dispose , by A . Dumas—flanked by a grave and attractive volume : Etudes Biographiquett sur la Revolution d" Angleterre , by Guizot : it contains s ixteen biographical " Htudies" of the remarkable people of that period , Denzil Hollis , Ludlow , May , Sir I'hilip Warwick , John Lilburne , Fuirfux , Mrs . llutchirison , Sir Thoinua Herbert , Price , Clarendon , Burnet , Buckingham , Rerenby , &c , and will bo greedily cuught at by all historical readers .
Whoever has been recently at Berlin will remember a noble bronze group— " the Amazon "—which Ktands on the pedestal near the ntairca . se of the Museum . It is fourteen feet high , and as a work of Art has won the Huflragcs of all connoisseurs-Professor Kiss , the sculptor , has now executed another castof thin group in bronzed zinc ! The novelty of this material , and the great suggestion it aH ' olds to artists in future , will render the Amaz < mengrupj ><> an interesting feature amidst the crowded variet y
of the Kxhibition—to say nothing of its attraction as a work of Art ; for were not zinc Iuhh valuable than bronze this cast would be equal to the original in Berlin . Heir Gkihh , of Berlin , \ a , we believe , the originator of this novel employment of zinc , and has cHtahliuhcd in Berlin a manufactory for the preparation of this material- which is abundant in the Silcsian mountains—and ban brought over to our Exhibition casts of Baily ' h " Eve at the Fountain , " Canova ' h " Hebe " aad other works .
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LIFK OF PBNN . William Perm . An Historical Biography . With an Extra Chapter on the " Macanlay Charges . " fi £ William Hepworth Dixon . Author of " Life of Howard . " With a Portait . Chapman and Hall . "The Life of William Penn" is in many respects an admirable book . If it presents us with a somewhat shadowy and mythical figure in place of the living flesh and blood—sublimating the Hero , and losing sight of the Man—it more than compensates for this very general biographical , defect by the abundance and picturesqueness of its materials , the diligence of its compilation , and the energy of its narrative . By looking into sources which Quaker biographers never thought of consulting , Mr . Dixon has brought together a mass of facts of direct and collateral interest , which make his book substantially a new one . At the same time we must caution the reader against placing too great confidence in the display here made of independent research ; a variety of indications suggest this suspicion , the most striking of them being the strange silence with respect to Mr . W . E . Forster ' s pamplilet in answer to the charges against Penn in Macaulay ' s History . To the evidence furnished bv that pamphlet , Mr . Dixon has not added
much in his swaggering " Extra Chapter on the Macaulay Charges , " wherein he takes the celebrated historian roundly to task ; yet he has nowhere made the slightest acknowledgment of his predecessor ' s labours ; he treats the subject as if it were now for the first time opened by himself ( " Alone , I did it" );—he makes no allusion to Mr . Forster amid the ostentatious acknowledgments of the preface ; indeed , except on one occasion to point out a " mistake , " he never mentions Mr . Forster ' s name , and then he avoids naming the pamphlet ! To put the mildest construction on this silence , it is strangely at variance with literary
etiquette . This , however , in no way diminishes the value of Mr . Dixon ' s book , which is a solid piece of biographico-historical composition , well grouped in its details , interesting in its matter . It aims at bringing before the mind a picture of the times , as well as a narrative of Penn ' s life ; and not the least successful portions are those which critics of a former day would have pronounced mere digressions . Testing the book by the standard it seems to claim , we should say : It shows that the author knew what ought to be done , rather than
that he knew how to do it—the intention is picturesque , the materials are picturesque , but the artistic power is wanting . Algernon Sidney , Locke , George Fox , Tillotson , Sunderland , Charles II ., James II ., and men of all types are disposed in groups ; but the groups are not animated , the figures do not move . In a word , Mr . Dixon has no dramatic faculty . Yet if , instead of testing his " Life" by a high standard , we test it according to the standard afforded by ordinary biographies , then we say it rises into positive excellence , and deserves our hearty prai . se . We knew nothing of Penn as to " what manner of man" he was , before reading this volume ; nor can we boast of any clear view of his character now . Yet certain points of it are brought out in these pages so as to excite curiosity . Mr . Dixon has dexterously given due prominence to the courtly elegance and scholarly accomplishments of his hero . Penn was no respectable gentleman in drab colour : •—" Meek , and much a liar !" he was a scholarly Quaker , a fine gentleman , and an earnest man , who united in a curious manner the diplomacy and tact of a courtier and a lawyer with tlio unshaken constancy of a martyr and the fervent conviction of a fanatic . Wt ; never lose sight of this characteristic . Mr . Dixon manages without ostentation to keep us aware of it throughout ; and it is the one great point for which wo are most grateful to him , as it gives us a new idea of Penn . There is by no means too much Quakerism in tho book . Knough , however , to indicate tin ; true position of Penn , and the intellectual troubles of the masses : — "la looking buek to that period it i ' h too much the habit to confine attention to the extraordinary variety of opinions whioh prevailed in politic * -. —the Ho < : iul » tato was even nioro anarchical . Between Ilainpden and Falkland the apace wan narrower than between Laud and Fox . If in political ideas , from tho school of divine right , through the educated democracy of Milton down to the . wild republicanism of the Fifth-Monarchy Men all was confusion , —tho religion of tho iiuintierleHH nectaries wuh mill less reducible to order The mere names of the leading « ects into which the Church had dissolved itself in a lew years are suggeHtive . Only to name a few of them , there were : — . Anabaptists ,
Antireign on earth , and in his "behalf they were anxious to put down all lawgivers and magistrates . The Levellers were at least as mad as any sect of Communists or Red Republicans of modern date . The national mind was in a paroxysm of morbid activity ; and the bolder sort of spirits had cast away every restraint which creeds and councils , laws and experience impose on men in ordinary times . Institutions which , are commonly treated with a grave respect even by the unbelieving , were made the subject of coarse jokes and indecent mummeries . In the cant of the time a church was a tabernacle of the devil , the Lord ' s Supper a twopenny ordinary . St . Paul ' s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were both used as stables for horses anl as shambles for butchers . Hogs
nomians , Antiscnptumts , Antitrinitariang , Arians Arminians , Baptists , Brownists , Calvinist s , Enthusiasts ' Familists , Fifth-Monarchy Men , Independents , Libertines , Muggletonians , Perfeetists , Presbyterians , Puritans , Ranters , Sceptics , Seekers , and Sociniana . Feakes and Powell , worthies of the Anabaptist faith , openly preached at Blackfriars a war of conquest and extermination against th 3 . continent of Europe . Their eyes lay more especially on the inheritance of the . Dutchman : ~ - God , they proclaimed , had given up Holland as a dwelling-place for his saints , and a stronghold from which they might wage war against the great harlot . The Fiith-Monarchy Men protested against every kind of law and government : Christ alone , in their opinion , ought to
and horses were taken to fonts filled with foul water , and baptized according to the established ritual , for the amusement of common soldiers and the painted women who attended the camp as their paramours . Mares were allowed to foal in cathedrals , and the lowest troopers to convert the most sacred edifices into beer-shops . Even our venerable abbey , the Testing-place Of kings and heroes , was for a time used as a common brothel . The sarcasm of the soldiers Was—that as the horses had now begun to attend church the reformation was at length complete . Sober and religious men were equally insane .
A sect arose which professed to believe that a woman has no soul , no more than a goose . Another body of grave men believed there is no difference between good and evil . Atheists became numerous ; # and , as usual , atheism , was attended with the lowest and most debasing superstitions . In more than one part of the country prostitution was practised as a religious ordinance . One fellow was found with no less than seven wives , another had married his father ' s wife , a third , after having seduced a wretched woman , gave out that she was about to be delivered of the Messiah . "
We like Mr . Dixon better as a compiler than as a philosopher ; his remarks seldom wander from commonplace , and when they do we cannot compliment them for sagacity . Two pages after those just quoted he thus philosophizes : — " The very year in which Penn ' s father had so fondly welcomed his birth , a rude , gaunt , illiterate lad of nineteen , a shoemaker by trade , and affected with the religious fervour of the age , being at a country fair in his native Leicestershire , met with his cousin and another friend there , — and the three youths agreed to have a stoup of
ale together . They accordingly adjourned to a tavern in the neighbourhood and called for drink . When this first supply was exhausted , the cousin and his friend called for more , —began to drink healths , and said that he who would notdrink should pay theentirealescore . The young shoemaker was alarmed at this proposal—for he was low in purse , and honest in his dealings : whereupon , as he explained the circumstance afterward , he put his hand into his pocket , took out a groat , laid it down on the table , and said— ' If it be so , I will leave you . ' And so he went home .
" This simp / e village alehouse incident was one of the most important events which had yet happened in the history of the Anglo Saxon race ; for out of it (!) was to come Quakerism , the writings and teachings of Penn and Uarclay , thn colony and constitution of Pennsylvania , the republics of the west , and in no very remote degreo tlie vast movement of liberal ideas in Great Britain and America in more modern times . The illiterate and upright shoemaker , who would drink no moro ale than he could pay for , uras George Fox . " This is the sort of " historical causation" we find commonly enough in some sceptical writers of the last century , and in tho writings of Paul de Kock ; but , although
" Creat events from trifling causes spring , " the philosophy of hiatory now accepted aiitfltfig thinking men is certainly not one to trace tho genesis of a great religious movement toanalehouno incident ! But let us pass on to Quakerism ( merely adding a note of admiration to tho clause about Origen and the Neo-1 'lutonistM ) : — " Fox had got an Idea in his mind , —and Ideas rule the world . It wan not his own in the first instance ; nor did he ever perceive its true relation to other systems of thought uud religious creed * . It was the ancient mystic
idea , —adoptt ! i by Origen and faintly to be traced in the speculations of the Neo-Plntonuts , that there lies concealed in the mind of every man a certain portion of Divine light— n realnparkof the infallible Oodhcad . In this mynterious light the Myniicd had found the highest guide of hunuu conduct , and Fox liad somewhere caught at the doctrine . It united hi * rt'Htl « MH and imperious iiiBtinots : it iiiuilc of man a god . Whtn he begun to preach tho doclrinc , he took ith boldest forms . The inner lig ht , ho said , wuh above any outward teaching . Law , history , experience , revelation iuelf was liable to error ; tho Divine light wuh ulono infallible . Of the diagnosis of his oaaehehad but a confused and imperfect notion ; whether this inner light wuh tho thing bouio men call conscience
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346 Jf |) * ^ Leatje t . [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), April 12, 1851, page 346, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1878/page/14/
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