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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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w _ Bhould do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful for the Useful encourages itself . — Goethb .
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CARLYLE ON STERLING . As he looks up at a house , inhabited by friends or relatives only a few years since , what a strange shock the revisitor of the place often receives ! It scarcely seems yesterday that your friends lived there— were smiling to you out of that windowon the other side of yonder door were hands outstretched to meet you , dear faces , the warmest welcome ! You have perfectly in your memory the sound of the voices and laughter , the cheery figures round the table , the smiles of the children , the flavour of the wine . Now you look up and the
windows are hlack and blank ; the lamp of love or friendship that used to he lighted there for you is out , never to shine more . There has been a death of your friend , or your friendship . Where are they , the faces that looked over that garden wall ? Where are the flowers that bloomed last summer ? Reading Mr . Carlyle ' s book will give to many people still among us such a sensation as this we describe . Here are the friends who were with us only yesterday ; the talk of former years comes back again . George IV . is just dying , and we are beginning to welcome the " Sailor King" in place of " the first gentleman of Europe" ; the July revolution is breaking out in Paris ; the Birmingham
Political Union is menacing the capital ; Waterloo is not a score years old , and the warriors of that day are still strong and hale , and garrulous after dinner ; your place is taken to go home by the mail coach . What a distance since that time , and how near it is ! A generation has risen since then , of young men ardent and generous , of yo ung women ready to leave mothers' homes and live , love , suffer , be happy in their own . With the sadness and kindness of fresh affection , Mr . Carlyle speaks of just departed friends of his and others , who were living with us , and playing their part in the world only yesterday ; and who are as far removed from it now as the subjects of any other tombstones : as the Druids or the Ninevites .
"Who , that lias gone througii tlie world , has not thought , with a wholesome scrutiny of humiliation it may be , or with a pang , bitter but consolatory , of his own success or failure ? A man wins , and can't but own to himself that a hundred of his comrades , his equals , his betters , have struggled harder and got no place : he loses ; empty , loud quacks are triumphing where he gets no hearing ; small pretenders are lifted up , and he in the crowd unnoticed . In a man of generous heart his very good fortune should serve to make him humble ; as to aim and miss , to stake and lose with good
humour , to be unfortunate and yet in charity with those who win , is an immense , ennobling task , bringing with it its private reward and silent consciousness of victoiy . And how many a comrade must every man have known , who has been just upon the heels of Fortune—within a length of winning the race—the favourite at the start—highly trained , full of blood , and eager , with admiring backers and a crowd of friendly reputation !—the struggle comes , and a slip or a strain , a previously unknown weakness , a bolt from the course , and the favourite is beaten ; and behold a thousand
flying pigeons arc carrying the news over the country that Mr . Nemo ' s Outis has won the cup . Sterling ' s life is the history of one of the highmettled losers . The contemporaries of his youth expected the greatest things of him . The legend of hia genius , no doubt , exists at the Cambridge University still , where ho Kpoke the most eloquent amongst the men of his time ; leaving their university for the great city , their young tmcccsHor » looked out after them from the academy , expectant till these great geniuses should begin to move the world . There came no news of any such revolutions . This man was not Prime , Minister , nor
that loader of the Opposition . Who remembers now the name of the fjrreat young Cambridge speaker of JH' 2 <) -30 ? Only a few hundred men who were lads of that day , and having heard , perhaps , the chief public men since , have heard no one like S , of Trinity . Sterling was said to be even greater than the great S . One laughs at using Huch an epithet about an unknown lad in a blue- college , gown . Hut for circumstance , but for Physical obstacle , a < Ukwu »« of th « brain , or the heart , or the lungs—tho want of a patron—too Uttle money or too much—too fastidious and delicate a training and culturo , perhaps—many of these
greatest men whom the world knows nothing ofj might have risen to command a reputation—might have been cheered in senates , attacked in leading articles , undergone all the delights and penalties of fame , and have secured names in future histories , and slabs in St . Paul's , instead of unknown monuments in obscure and solitary country churchyards . More than . one of those brilliant opening careers was destined to end so . And suppose it had ended otherwise ? It is the old querulous comment of cui bono ? Why not sleep in Bonchurch , like Sterling ; or Clevedon , like that beloved and gifted friend of Tennyson ' s youth , over whom the poet has erected his splendid In Memoriam , as well as at Westminster , where Buller
lies among titled statesmen , sinking just at the threshold of honour ? It is not the genius , or the success , or the failure of these young men , all friends at the outset of life and called away untimely , that much avails now . It is said of Buller that he was gentle and kindly , truth-telling and loving ; of Tennyson ' s friend , that he was , in the touching words of his epitaph , carissimus , dulcissimus j of Carlyle ' s , that he was generous , faithful , affectionate , manly , and tender . Suppose his poems had run through a score of editions , his novel had been a masterpiece , and what then ? and what more ? What " smells sweet and blossoms in the dust" is the love and honesty of the man , of which the biographer speaks out of his own fond and faithful heart . When the latter ' s turn comes ,
too , and he takes his place in the Biographie Universelle , the writer of the article , * ' Carlyle , Thomas , " will take into no small account this work . It tells even more about Carlyle than about Sterling . When the universal biographer comes to inquire , What manner of man he was ? this public Accuser , this Executioner of Shams , this Hudson-Statue Smasher , and ruthless trampler on windbags—he ( the Biographer ) will , doubtless , turn to the life of John Sterling , and will find herein recorded with what a true and simple , and
most kind and loving nature said Carlyle , Ihomas , was endowed ; how faithful his regard towards his friend ; with what gentle care he soothes and watches him ; how hefondles his memory ; and now and anon fights round it when assailed : telling hia story "in a swift scribbling , very swift and immediate , " but only the more charming for its honesty , and because the swift and immediate manner is surely the best in this case , where the rhetorician finds his best effects in nature , and in speaking artlessly , rapidly , and of a full heart .
Besides the main figure of J . Sterling , the book contains a hundred sketches and portraits , in the Carlyle manner , of Sterling ' s relatives and friends , people known in their time , and but just slipt away into the past . Coleridge returns , and his misty Umbra crowns Highgate-hill : Sterling ' s father ( Carlyle ' s " Captain Whirlwind " ) , the old original Thunderer of the Times it would appear , lives again in Knightsbridge and reigns in
Printing-housesquare , wielding the famous bolts , that " of late o ' er pale Britannia cast " and that banged once with such a deadly uproar . Torrijos sallies from Somer ' s-town to have one more struggle for Spain , and to be shot at the Parade at Malaga ; Sterling is in Cornwall with the Buller family , amidst the woods of Morval , and the flowers and sunshine of Polvellaw . Who knows what new inhabitants people that beautiful , tranquil country , in place of those dear and familiar whom we knew ?
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FULL-MOON NIGH T . ( from ookthk . ) Lady , say what mean tho . se whispers ? What plays lightly on thy lip ? Ever art thou lisping there , Sweetly as when wine you sip . Tlunk'ttt thou to those cherry-sintera , To allure another pair ? 1 will kins him ! kiss him ! said I . See "« t thou , in tho quivering twilight , ( j littering hhines euch hi finch and bou ^ h ? Sparkling down m star on Htar ; . And througii hushes emeralds f !; low , Thousandfold-carbuncle-bright — Idit thy spirit still is Car . I will kiss him ! kiss him ! said I . Thy beloved , far , in tasting , . Like- tine , lady , bitter-sweet ; Feels a strange , unhappy blins . 'Neat . h the Full-moon here to meet , Has he promised to he hasting , And the [/ lighted hour is this . I will kiBH him ! kiss him ! may I . S .
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Oct . 25 , 1851 . ] Mtft % , t ** 9 V * 1021
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THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL . Part I . | It is a saying , not without some repute , that the beautiful requires more encouragement than the useful , because the useful encourages itself . In thinking of this subject I have had reasons to doubt it , and some reasons also for asserting , a very opposite apophthegm . What the mind seizes upon as a truth may nevertheless be false ; we grasp at what accords with our principles . One man to save himself will seize a wooden block , but another
may see fit to choose a piece of iron as more like to swim well , being filled with air . Sometimes a distant deduction from our principles is greedily caught hold of as a kind of inspiration . It is like the refined product of a machine contrived to work up certain raw material , it is beautiful , and is at first surprising ; but we soon learn the steps of the process , get accustomed to them , and begin even to find fault with the result . But we do not so readily seize on results of the life of other men , if they have fed on different food from us . It requires more information of a different kind to know that iron may swim . There are facts to be known which are not wanted to understand the floating of wood .
To encourage the beautiful seems to call for our assent at once , we feel the need of it so much . Let us imagine ourselves in a dreary part of Germany , where Goethe might be ; or let it be in our own England , in a district neglected ; or let it be in an active district in Lancashire , where people have increased as rapidly as some of the lower animals ; we see everything wear a cheerless aspect . There are dirty bricks chiefly visible ,
blackened with smoke , the sky tinged of the same colour , at the very best somewhat grey ; each man living in his little dwelling , the same size and shape as his neighbours , of which the boundaries are so painfully distinct , where there is no room apparently for fancy , but marked with a lonely circumscribed ness even to the daily work , which never fails to begin at the ringing of the six o ' clock bell , except when something still worse interrupts it .
The eye looks around for the beautiful . It seems to be thoroughly neglected ; the useful is taking care of itself . Then there is a dreary undrained country , a series of fields , not protected or ornamented by trees or by inclosures , a mere place for growing food on , with a hut rising abruptly from the ground , a mere covering for the workman when it is damp . Such places are seen in great numbers , and travellers who search for scenery , pity the inhabitants . The useful has built the house and tilled
the ground , it is a sister of necessity so thoroughly does it encourage itself ; whilst the beautiful is entirely lost sight of as a thing too high to be attained . Indeed , I remember being struck with this very feeling in the fields which nurtured the early manhood of Goethe himself . There was a small , ruinous town with the ghost of its official importance seen through the broken windows of untenanted buildings , looking down on its dull streets . The inhabitants struck one as living alone , supporting their lives by some encouragement only of the most necessary arts of life .
The countrywoman working in the fields , a brown mass , having little of the beautiful , and seeking little of its appearance . When the beautiful and the desirable are both gone , why do men live ? The stranger in Huch places sees nothing to admire or to hope for , and ho looks at dull villages with melancholy . We can only look on those as happy in whom there is some visible sign of a life of hope , somo appreciation of beauty or of excellence , to whom work haa taken a higher form than au absolute necessity .
Again , when we go to the great working-places of the world , to the miuoH of coal or of metal , and how beautiful , from contrast , does a fine city appear or a nice park ! yet thene cities and parks are rarely made , but the mine everywhere nourishes , because the useful , as our proverb would say , needs no encouragement . Every village , too , has its shoemaker , but few have their artist or their poet , or their gardener
cvon , or wiseman , who will teach them a higher and more beautiful life . The best builders in the town may draw the plan of a church after the model of a barn ; but there will be workmen enough to finish it well , the inferior work beiii tf skilfully done . There may be no schools , a damp church , a crumbling steeple ; , ami cracked bells ; hut there will he a good supply of potatoes at the shopH , and beer at some of the houses . Now , let a new- family come into the neighbourhood , let
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 25, 1851, page 1021, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1906/page/17/
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