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The revelations of Gladstone ' s pamphlet on Italy have startled the Party of Order , accustomed to treat all previous intimations of the frightful despotism of paternal Governments as the cry of " factious" and " misguided" men . But Gladstone ' s name is a guarantee . No one will accuse him of republican tendencies ; no one will accuse him of abetting anarchy ; and , therefore , what he
deliberately reports of Italy comes with terrible and damning force . In a little while we may expect to hear another influential voice on this subject . It is understood that Seniok has been investigating it ; we know not what may be the conclusions he has come to , but if any qualification be honestly possible it will come f rom him ; meanwhile , we suppose we must wait for the pages of the Edinburgh Review .
Apropos of the Edinburgh , its last number is more varied than usual , and contains a learned critical paper on the Greek texts of Scripture , a good review of Johnston ' s Notes on America , a damaging review of Dixon's Life of Penn , an elaborate and thoughtful article on Grate ' s History of Greece , and an entertaining exposition of the progress and extent of Modern Chemistry , with some excellent remarks on Liebig and his school .
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Academies are never popular bodies , and never will be free from corporate abuses . Our Royal Academy of Arts is certainly no exception to the rule . A circular of grievances , " addressed to the British Legislature , " has been placed in our hands , the object of which is , by exhibiting the abuses , to call for " a thorough reform . " We know of only one reform . When a poet brought his verses to Martial , begging him to suggest any erasures that . a fastidious taste might demand , the wit replied , " una , litura potest — one erasure will
suffice" ! and of this kind is the reform needed by the Royal Academy , the Hothouse of Mediocrity . The complaints in this circular point to the dismal fact that eighty years ago , when there were Bcarcely one hundred artists in the country , the number of Academicians was forty ; and now with upwards of a thousand exhibitors in London alone , the sacred forty still form the oligarchy . Is it really believed that an increase of Academicians would reform the Academy ? Les quarante qui out de Cespr it eomme quatre are not to be so
reformed , for the <> vil lies in the system , not in the number . While touching on this subject let us not forget to call attention to Ruskin ' s forthcoming pamphlet on the Pras-Raphaclites . There has been so much angry discussion respecting the audacities of these young artists who set at defiance Academic proprieties and all the " traditions , " that the pamphlet of a writer like the author of the Modem Painters—wilful , exaggerated , and contemptuous though he be—cannot fail to be interesting .
In the little churchyard of the German Chapel m Savoy-street , the remains of tho lamented journalist Dr . JirMUM , were last week deposited , in presence of many of the German exiles , who mourned a comrade and a champion . Dr . Juhuh was editor of the Herlin ZeitutujshaUe during the Revolution of 18-18 , and was greatly respected for « w talents and courage . Kinkki , pronounced a touc hing oraison . funebre over hi . s grave .
' 'us mention of Kinkki / h name in connection * vi < h public speaking-, reminds us that his Lectures ' « v « been no profitable to him that ho is to deliver ' » " » m Manchester and Hradford , whore some of our »« ul « rn will he glad to know he it , coming . ^ > n several occasions wo have had to speak « V ( -r ( jl of Lamaiwink ' h undignified traffic of 13 groat reputation . There is nothing in the
trade of Literature at which he seems abashed . To put money in his purse is so absorbing an aim , that he seems almost reckless of the means . What will the reader think of Lamartine —once the greatest name in France—now reduced to such straits that he bribes the subscribers to his paper by the offer of a free passage to London , so that that they may see our Crystal Palace , and read his eloquence for one year ' s subscription ! A theatre once tried to lure unwilling audiences by the premium of " a glass of gin and an apple " to each visitor ; and in the same spirit Lamartine j placards the walls
with" Voyage a Londres sans rien payer ! Abonnez vous au Pays par A . de Lamartine . " Is not this pitiable ? What a degradation of a great name ! Is it then so ? All that eloquence , all those sounding periods , all that self-laudation , magnificence , heroism , —and no readers unless you lure them with a trip to London ? Through
Grecian Literature there runs a boding voice , ' Count no man happy till you see his end ; " for the end may efface the heavenly brightness of those early years ; the noon may ruin what the morn began ! Who that applauded Les Meditations , Jocelyn , Les Harmonies , ever thought to see the poet dragging his name thus servilely through the dirt ?
Such cobweb s to catch flies will not prepossess readers in favour of his Histoire de la Restauration , the two first volumes of which lie on our table ; and yet those volumes are the least egotistic and offensive of all his writings , and may be commended as fascinating romance of history , if not very grave and instructive . We shall examine them more fully next week .
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Among the new books on Dulau ' s counter there is one which will have peculiar interest to many of our readers—the first volume of Auguste Comte ' s Systemc de Politique Positive . This is to be taken as the complement of his previous work . His Philosophic Positive , being occupied with the sciences , gave many the impression that the Positive Philosophy was a dry and incomplete system , excluding Religion , Morals , and Art . Attentive students knew better . They saw that not only did the Positive Philosophy admit of universal application , but that Comte himself had certain I
vague glimmerings of Religion and Art , in accordance with the new system . These glimmerings have " broadened into da )' . " The subjective aspect of Positive Philosophy he now undertakes to exhibit . In his former work he was forced by his method to proceed objectively—from the world up to man ; he now proceeds subjectively—from man to the world . This system of Positive Polity he calls a Treatise of Sociology , instituting the Religion of Humanity .
Although it is impossible for so eminent a thinker to put forth any work that shall not contain matter of great value , we do not hesitate to declare our belief that this second portion of his system will be many many degrees below the first portion , and that he will find but few adherents to the forms of his new religion . In the very nature of things this part of his task must be more open to cavil ; he has to construct a science of society , and commits what we cannot but regard as an enormous blunder in
attempting to regulate the details of the future ; . Ho here falls into the trap of all the Socialists system-builders . Hut no reservations of criticism will damp tinardour of true postivistes to see this new volume , which is curious in many respects , and in none more so , perhaps , than in the story it presents of a love profound as that of Pictuaiuh for Lauua , forming , as it were , the turning-point of the philosopher ' s career , taking him by the hand just an he emerged from Tartarus , and conducting him to Paradise , as Dantic found himself led there by Bkatiucic . There in much that will make the Knglish reader smile in the naivete with which Comtk thus bares his heart to tho public : but the
incalculable influence exercised by a woman over the destiny of a philosopher , as indicative of the part Woman truly plays in the worldj ig worth of profound attention .
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ST . GILES AND ST . JAMBS . \ Si . Giles and St . James . By Douglas Jerrold ( v ^ m - v i i I of the Writings of Douglas Jerrold , collated KdH !) Bradbury and Evans Polemics are rarely distinguished by generosity . Were it otherwise , we might stigmatize with indignant emphasis the ungenerous insinuation by which the party of order " endeavours to paralyse the effect of any vivid picture of social disparity and political wrong , by attributing to the painter a vicious desire of " setting one class against another . " Douglas Jerrold has evidently felt the keen injustice of the insinuation . It has been flung at him times out of number , and is meant to have all the force of an answer . His tone is so constantly the tone of indignation—honest , righteous indignation
against the evils he sees tranquilly accepted or systematically preached—that the charge has a somewhat plausible air . He is so exasperated by the consecration of wrong in high places—he disbelieves so profoundly in the wisdom and nobility of those who sit in high places—that his utterance is uncompromising and defiant ; and his writings , therefore , carry with them enough to make the charge not prima facie a false one . It is monstrous , however , to read those writings , and see any less noble animus than that of vindicating truth and justice . Though a satirist , ay , and a " bitter " when his blood is roused , he wages no war against persons ; the abstract injustice and unholiness of the wroug he fights against is all , and enough for him .
In the preface to this , the first volume of his Collected Writings , he touches briefly , and without bitterness , though with evident pain , upon the charge we defend him from . He is right to await confidently the verdict of a dispassionate reader . It can be but an emphatic Not Guilty ! Here , in this very tale of St . Giles and St . James , where the subject itself was a pitfall into which a careless writer would unconsciousl y have fallen , he has been betrayed into no " setting of one class against another , " he has idealized no scoundrel , vilified no nobleman , set forth no social evil as the consequence of bad passions in the governors acting upon the virtues of the governed : but shown it as
a result of the deep-rooted ignorance of governors , or their fatal disregard of the claims which the poor and ignorant have upon them . Indeed the antithesis of ( lie title is not borne out by the book . We have St . Giles vividly painted . Of St . James we have next to nothing , and that not politically or sociall y characteristic ! Instead of giving us a virtuous St . Giles , resisting all the bad influences of his education and circumstances , and shaming by his generosity the selfishness of St . James—a scoundrel in purple und fine linen—instead of contrasting thus the heroic poor with the egotistic rich , as he ought to have done according to the critic ' s charge of setting class against class , Jerrold has given us a real St . Giles
--sharp unprincipled , reckless , " a human waif of ( hit and darkness , " and a real St . James—careless kindly , spoiled , self-willed , with no other theory of life than that it was meant for amusement And as \ ve said , of this St . James we have but faint glimpses ' - he fills no space in the book ; he docs not form a legitimate contrast with St . Giles . Indeed , here critically spunking , we have an objection to enter , l'or a philosophical fiction like , this , St . James i . ] a VH ISl / Witldllj ^ vtlVk . h ^ h ib . l .- A fill ¦ - _ ¦ J too iiisgnmcant The
. a part . object is to show the eilec , ot brutish ignorance and criminal associates on the young pauper whom the Stale so shamefully disregards-to show how a child left to fight its way through life , without , moral training of any kuul , but such as it , ca . i pick up from the alleys of crime , become .-, one of f , l , c " dangerous .-lasses . " IMtlicr tins object should be , effected directly , without , aid ol contrast , or if contrast be employed , the . type , chosen should died , its purpose ; . NowSt . Jaiuc « is meant an n contrast , but i . s not one . St . Giles
standing as the representative , of Vice growing up from want of culture , St . James . should nl ; uid ux the , representative of K . xcellmeo growing- up from such culture as society furnishes . Here the / no poles , positive and negative , would n"ii ( i t / ieir several illustrations . Or if the author rejeeied such seesaw construction , and wished for freer movement more resembling life , he . might have used St . James as the type of Vice , growing up from . self-indulgence and luxury , to wludi eulttne gave nothing but refinement a polish not a ilim-iplum- and tliua the
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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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Avg . 2 , i 85 ij © fie aeairer . 731
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 2, 1851, page 731, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1894/page/15/
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