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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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musket , and the fire becomes nothing- but noise , smoke , and stench , while the soldiers become more demoralized and stultified every minute that it continues : blind , dizzy , Kiddy , confused , without a purpose or an idea beyond loading and firing as fast as possible , they know nothing that is passing around them , and ace soon , with the exception of a very few men of extraordinary coolness and presence of mind , fit for nothing but a short dash to the front , or a disorderly rush to the rear , and the slightest circumstance may decide which direction they will take .
But the excitement of action and danger , which soon renders the destructive power of the musketeer so contemptible , does no harm at all to the fighting qualities of the swordsman . His weapon will be plied with no less effect , but rather with more because his blood boils within him ; he can see what he is doing , he knows what he wants , and will take no denial ; every step in advance brings him nearer to his vengeance and his victory .
Within 250 yards alone is musketry at all dangerous ( and the sharpshooters will begin to fire faster and worse the nearer the assailants approach ); that distance will be passed over at a quick march terminated by a charge in two minutes . During this time the musketeers can only get at the most three or four hurried shots ; and the more overweening their confidence at the commencement of the affair , the more will their bad qualities as fighting men be exaggerated , the more terrible will be their confusion and panic when they find themselves met by men who do not allow them to expend
their cartridges , but who coolly and perseveringly advance , covered by their skirmishers to a convenient distance , and then rush upon them and place the matter at the arbitrament of the sword against the musket and bayonet , the most clumsy , crooked , rickety , unvCieidly , awkward weapon that ever was invented . One thrust parried or avoided , if the musketeers have the courage to await or meet the charge , all resistance is over , and the sword is plied with a rapidity and vigour that puts an end to all thoughts of priming and loading , and the slaughter , disarmament , capture , and dispersion begin .
But this work is only to be done by men determined to conquer or to die , to take no denial , to advance in spite of noise and fire , in spite of death around them and among them ; men who can make up their minds , when artillery is making havoc in their ranks , that the nearer they are to a battery , the safer they " are from , it , and that twenty minutes of sharp work to gain a complete victory are better than six or eight hours of reciprocal slaughter and exhaustion , to end in a drawn battle or an orderly retreat . ¦ E . V .
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Among the novelties we ought to have noticed last week , but did not , for a reason which some will consider fastidious , viz ., because we had not read it—is Mr . Soapey Sponge ' s Sporting Tour ; anew serial wonderfully illustrated by John Leech , and very smartly written by the author of Handley Cross , &c . It is , as its name indicates , a sporting novel ; but written with more finesse and observation than those works usually are .
Among the novelties that are forthcoming let us call attention to one which promises to be very important , called Lord Palmerston— -L * Angleterre et he Continent , by Count Ficqublmont , formerly Austrian Ambassador at Constantinople and St . Petersburg , where he had occasion to experience something of Lord Palmebston ' s diplomacy . It is , we are told , a vigorous attack on English policy .
Another work is La VcritS , a pamphlet containing the true history of the coup d ' etat , with the production of authentic documents which could not get printed in France . This coupd'Stat has set all the servile pens at work . Mayer announces a Histoire du 2 Decembre j Cbsbna , a Histoire d * un Coup d'JEtal j and Romieu , the infamous trumpeter
of the Caesars—Romieu , who in his Spectre Rouge exclaimed , " I shall not regret having lived in these wretched times if I can only see a good castigation inflicted on the mob , that stupid and corrupt beast which I have always held in horror . " Romieu has bad his predictions fulfilled , and he , too , announces a History of the event .
Meanwhile , Brussels is the Coblentz of the exiled . There the Constitutional writers have founded a weekly journal , Le Bulletin Frangais , in which they can communicate with Europe ; there Victor Hugo is revising his work in three volumes on La Misire du Peuple , and writing the history of his political career ; there Alexandre Dumas superintends the reprinting of his Mtmoires , which , in France , are hacked by a sensitive censor ; and there , also , the great dramaturge has written a play which will be produced in Brussels before it is played inParis—an unheaid of event in that city of contrefacon !
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We continue to receive letters about Alexander Smith ' s sonnet , and the question of " animalism " raised by W . M . One of the writers insists upon our printing his letter ' * unmutilated in next Saturday ' s paper . " In the first place he must be informed that , were his letter perfectly acceptable , we could not undertake to print it , or any other letter , in the " . next Number" : our correspondents are
numerous , and exigencies of journalism compel us continually to postpone for weeks together letters that otherwise we should gladly insert . In the second place , the writer ought by this time to have learned that the tone of his letter rendered it altogether unfitted to our columns . We court objection ; but the objection must be written in more measured language with respect to others than S . L . has employed .
. The real point of the dispute resolves itself into this : Are we to take the human or the ascetic view of life ? In the ascetic view Love itself is a grossness and an " animalism , " and Art a pander . But we repeat our conviction , that it is only the grossest minds whose sensualism is excited by Art ; and not for them does the Artist work . It is quite true
that nude statues and voluptuous verses may be the suggestion of " animalism "; but their natural effect upon all healthy minds we take to be analogous to the effect of that insensible , inappreciable sexual feeling which lies at the bottom of the tenderness and reverence we feel for all women , whether we love them or not . A healthy mind is no more conscious of the sensual effect of a work of Art , than he is of the effect of ft pretty woman ; and
certainly if the one ought to be banished because of its " animalism , " the other ought to be shut from the gaze of man , as in the East . Turning over our Ariosto quite casually the other ; day , we alighted upon a passage which contains an image similar to thajb which originated this discussion ( " Her bosom white , That came and went beneath me like a sea" ) , and we quote it as a " parallel passage "— - " II petto eolmo e largo Due pome aeerbe , e pur d ' avorio fatte , Vengono e van come ondaalprimo margo Quando piacevole aura ilmar combafte . " The right point of view is indicated in the following letter :-
—" Sib , —I have read with delight the comments jn your current Number on the question raised by W . M . ' 8 exception to the morality of Alexander Smith ' s sonnet , and cannot understand how any person of moderate capacity can resist the conclusion , that if the sensuous side of the passion of Love be legitimate , it must be allowed an expression and a voice in verse . People of ordinary training , however , are very slow to recognize the dignifying influence of Art , and to connect with , the idea of beauty such thoughts of sanctity and purity as always environ it in minds of kindly , genial mould , placed in circumstances favourable to . the harmonious
development of all the faculties . A ' whole man is a rarity ; your next door neighbour is , in all probability , a spiritual defonnity , ~ or , / athing of shreds and patches , '—a creature with some sympathies exuberantly active , and some beaten down into deadness and torpor ; never rising into that glorious phase of moral dignity expressed in the language of an Apostle : —' All things are lawful to me , though all things may not be expedient . ' " The first of the Haythorne Papers' has also given me almost passionate pleasure , and has led me into a muse' upon that remarkable fact , that present actualities , however much of the elements of poetry they may involve in their own nature , never wear the ' rose-odour' garments which clothe things distance
past and things to come . How is it that ' lends enchantment to the view , ' to such a degree that however happy I may be in my present occupation , my recollection of it this day twelvemonth shall be so much more poetical , or that nay anticipations of a future hour ' s employment shall be so too ? But the case of the future does not at the moment strike tny mind with such force as that of the past ; the circumstance that , though a paiticular day of my existence may have involved a good deal of pain as well as pleasure , memory will one day treat me to a picture of it , softening down all harsh tints , and producing ^ sweet , romantic landscape out of what was actually a very prosaic bit of scenery indeed ! Whence the mellowed sunshine that hangs over our remembrances of past pursuits and incidents ?
'VI might not have written to tell you that I am indebted to your columns for many happy hours , and cheering , may I not say bettering , thoughts ; but that I want to ask the writer of the ' Haythorne Papers ' what he means by one sentence : — ' The essential prerequisite to all beauty is contrast . ' I can understand that contrast is a requisite for artistic effect in some cases ; but I should like to have it made clear that ' Beauty' demands it as a prerequisite . " But I must not trespass on your space . «« GoLDING PENItOSB . "
Mr . Penrose seems not clearly to have separated the idea of contrast as a prerequisite (» . e ., one of the conditions ) to Beauty , from the idea of contrast as in itself beautiful . There may be , and often is , contrast without Beauty , but no Beauty without contrast , present or implied .
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JOHN DRAYTON AND THE LEADER . John Drayton . A Novel . Second Edition . Bentley , In September last a very remarkable novel was published under the title of John Drayton , purporting to be the early history and struggles of a Liverpool engineer . In No , 77 we reviewed that novel . Our emphatic praise of its singular beauty and power was accompanied by a condemnation as emphatic of its intolerance and its misrepresentation . A secorid edition of the work is now issued ; , and with it a strange , almost
touching , preface , in which the writer defends himself against his critics and against us in particular . That the notice in the Leader should have given him pleasure is an unfeigned pleasure to us ; but we cannot allow it to blind us to the conclusion that his defence is not a sound one ; and , as tho subject reaches far beyond this individual instance , we are tempted to recur to it . In our notice of John Drayton , we said : — •' Having recognized its excellence , we must arraign its author before the bar of justice to answer
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Critics are not ttie legislators , but the judges and police cf literature . They dp not make law&—theyinterpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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60 3 Efl * %# &Htt * ISat ^ day ,
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Ltjthbr on Cubed and Conduct . —A Christian cannot , if he will , lose his salvation by any multitude or magnitude of sins , unless he ceases to believe . For no sins can damn him , but unbelief alone . Everything else , provided his faith returns or stands fast in the Divine promise given in baptism , is absorbed in a moment by that faith . — Westminster Rev ., No . 111 . Colours in Ladies' Dress . —Incongruity may be frequently observed in the adoption of colours without reference to their accordance with the complexion or stature of the wearer . We continually see a light blue bonnet and flowers surrounding a sallow
countenance , or a pink opposed to one of a glowing red ; a pale complexion associated with canary or lemon yellow , or one of delicate red and white rendered almost colourless by the vicinity of deep red . Now , if the lady with the sallow complexion had worn a transparent white bonnet , or if the lady with the glowing red complexion had lowered it by means of a bonnet of a deeper red colour—if the pale lady had improved the cadaverous hue of her countenance by surrounding it with palo green , which , by contrast , would have suffused it with a delicate pink hue , or had the face * ' Whose" red and white
Nature ' s own sweet and cunning hand laid on , " been arrayed in a light blue , or l ight green , or in a transparent'white bonnet , with bluo or pink flowers on the inside , how different , and how much more agreeable , would have been * the impression on the spectator 1 How frequently again do wo see the dimensions of a tall and embonpoint figuro magnified to almost Brobdignagian proportions by a white dress , or a small woman reduced to Lilliputian size by a black dress ! Now , as the optical effeot of white is to enlarge objects , and that of black to diminish them , if the largo woman had been dressed in black , and the small woman in white , tho apparent sisse of oaoh would have approached tho ordinary stature , find the formor would not have appeared a giantess , or the latter a dwarf , —Mrs , Merr \ fialdt in Art-Journal .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 17, 1852, page 60, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1918/page/16/
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