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nod grounds for their belief as men in our day have for their opinion of Socialists , viz ., the interpretation of a few detached phrases from the point f view of the interpreters ! The denial of the Mythological Deities was thus naturally enough held as equivalent to a denial of all deity ; because the interpreters , heli < svinff in these deities , could only deny them atkeisticallv * wot haying a belief out of which such denial could spring . Thus , n ourday are men called irreligious whenthey withdraw from the rehgioh of their accusers . A . , B ., who believes in Qhristianity , feels that if he were to deny it , he would be without a religion ; anil does not suspect that C . Pv ' s denial results from a belief in some other form of religion . The Clouds is very interesting in this as in so many respects . Here is an amusing bit of ridicule , wherein we see the incipient Positivism of Socrates interpreted in a spirit very similar to that which greeted the Vestiges . Socrates introduces Strepsiades to the Clouds : — -
Stb epS . Oli Earth ! what a sound , how august and profound ! it fills me with wonder and awe . SocB . These , these then alone , for true Deities own , the rest are all God-ships of straw . Steeps ' . Let Zeus be left out : He ' s a God beyond doubt : come , that you can scarcely deny . Socb . Zeus , indeed ! there ' s no Zeus : don't you be so obtuse . StbbpS . No Zeus up aloft in the sky ! Then , you . first must explain , who it is sends the rain ; or I really must think you are wrong . Soce . Well th ^ n , be it known , these send it alone : I can prove it by arguments strong . Was there ever a shower seen to fall in an hour when the sky was all
cloudless and blue ? Yet on a fine day , when the Clouds are away , he might send one , according to you . Streps . " Well , it must be confessed , that chimes in with the rest : your words I am forced to believe . Yet before I had dreamed that the rain-water streamed from Zeus and his chamber-pot sieve . But whence then , my friend , does the thunder descend ? that does make me quake with affright !
Soce . Why'tis they , I declare , as they roll through the air . Steeps . What ! the Clouds ? did 1 hear you aright ? Soob . Ay : for when to the brim filled with water they swim , by Necessity carried along , They are hung up on high in the vault of the sky , and so by Necessity strong , In the midst of their course , they clash with great force , and thunder away without end . Steeps . But is it not He who compels this to be ? does not Zeus this Necessity send ?
Socb . No Zeus have we there , but a Vortex of air . Steeps . What ! Vortex ? that ' s something , I own . I knew not before , that Zeus was no more , but Vortex was placed on his throne ! But I have not yet heard to what cause you referred the thunder ' s majestical roar . Soce . Yes , 'tis they , when on liigh full of water they fly , and then , as I told you before , By Compression impelled , as they clash , are compelled a terrible clatter to make .
Stbeps . Come , how can that be ? I really don't see . Socb . Yourself as my proof I will take . Have you never then ate the broth-puddings you get when the Panathenara comes , round , And felt with what might your bowels all night in turbulent tumult resound ? Sxbeps . By Apollo , 'tis true , there ' s a mighty to-do , and my belly keeps rumbling about ; And the puddings begin to clatter within and to kick up a wonderful rout :
, Quite gently at first , papapax , papapax , but coon pappapappax away , Till at last , I'll be bound , I can thunder as loud , papapappapappax , as They . Soob . Shalt thou then a sound so loud and profound from thy belly diminutive send , And shall not the high and the infinite Sky go thundering on without end ? For both , you will find , on an impulse of wind and similar causes depend . Steeps . Well , but tell mo from Whom comes the bolt through the gloom , with its awful and terrible flashes ; And wherevor it turns , some it singes and burns , and some it reduccB to
ashes ! For this 'tis quite plain , lot who will sond the rain , that Zeus against porjurers dashes . Hook . And how , you old fool of a dark-ngea school , and an antediluvian wit , If tho perjured they Htriko , and not all men alike , have they never CleonymuH hit P Then of Simon again , and Theorns explain : known porjurora , yet they escape . But ho smites his own shrine with those arrows divine , and " Sunium , Attica ' s capo /* And tho ancient gnarled oaks : now what prompted those strokes ? They never forsword I should say .
Aa to what is so often said about Aristophanes having substituted the Well known figure of Socrates for tho typo of tho Sophists , he at tho same « mo not believing Socrates to he a Sophist , a little reflection and inquiry wiU scatter that notion into thin air . Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates because Socrates was tho most prominent of tho innovators . That ho did not tako himas a typo of tho Sophists is shown in tho single fact that « uieh of his ridicule turns upon tho physical speculations of Socrates ; m Sophists notoriously scouted such ^ peculations - , and although
Socrates himself , later in life , scouted those speculations ( even pronouncing the study of astronomy to he impious ) , yet nothing is more certainly known of him than that he did occupy himself with physics at the time Aristophanes wrote . But we must not be seduced further into this large subject . Anew translation of The Clouds lies before us : the work of a scholar , and addressed to scholars . Of the translation as a translation we cannot speak very highly , unless the enormous— -may we not say insuperable P ~ difEculties be taken into account . The poetical passages ( and what exquisite poetrv there often is in the choruses of Aristophanes !) are beyond
comparison the best , Athenian fun is not so easily rendered , and this translator does not seem gifted with the requisite command of humorous language , but runs into vapid colloquialisms when he would catch the bantering tone of the original . The note 3 , as usual in such works , are an . olla joodrtda of fragmentary erudition , good and bad , curious and worthless , thrown together without much system . In One of them , the author forgets himself so far as to speak of the " able but unscrupulous volumes of Mr . Grote , " a sentence which must jar upon every ear . The author is at liberty to reject Mr . Grote ' s defence of the Sophists , if he see grounds ; but to apply the epithet ¦ " unscrupulous" to a writer of Mr . Grrote ' s character can onlv be regarded as a bit of collegiate coxcombry .
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BOOKS ON OUR TABLE . Tracts Illustrative of Vhsectarian Christianity . By Henry W . Crosskey . " The Past and Future of Christianity" is the subject of the first Tract , which ia ardently and earnestly written . A Popular History of the British Ferns , and the Allied Plants , comprising tlie Clutmosses , Pepperworts , and Soi'setails . By Thomas Moore . Keeve and Benham . This , th 6 latest volume of the series of popular scientific books , published by Messrs . Reeve and Benham , is one of the most useful , if not tho most interesting . It lacks the interest of physiological inquiry , and is of a more rudimentary character than was absolutely necessary ; but it is plain , copious , and minute in its descriptions , and eontains twenty coloured lithographs illustrative of the text .
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Grammar of the Hungarian , Language . By Sigismund W ^ key . Trelawney Saunders . Clouds of Aristophanes . F . Maepherson . Our Antipodes . By Lieut .-Colonel GK C . Mundey . 8 vols . R . Bentley . Sixteen Months in the Danish Isle * . By A . Hamilton . 2 vols . K . Bentley . Bentley ' s ShilUng Series—A Glimpse at the Great Western ) , Repitblic . K . Bentley . Narrative of a Residence at the Capital of Siam , By T ? . A . TSeale . ., * ., ' National Illustrated labrary . Life of Napoleon Bonaparte . By William Hazlitt . Illustrated Library . Gardener ' s Record . Gropmbridge and Son . Policy of Retaliation . ¦ J . W . Parker and Son . Exercises adapted to the Complete Lathi Grammar . By J . TV . Donaldson . J . W . Parker and Son German Phrase Book . By A . Bernays . J- W . Parker and Son Life of Roger Williams . By Borneo Elton . „ „ . A . Cockshaw , The Bible , and the Working Classes . By A . Wallace . W . Oliphant and Sons , Notes on the Isthmus of Panama . By A . Dunlop , F . R . G-. S . J . Thomas , Bohn ' s Scientific Library : —On the Power , Wisdom , and Goodness of God . By the Kev . W Kirby . vol . 1 . ¦ " ""• Bonn Bohn ' s Illustrated Library :- ~ Rome in the Nineteenth Century . By C . A . Eaton . Vol . 1 . H . Q . Bohn Bohn ' s Classical Library : —Oeid , Literally Translated . By H . J . Kiley . _ H . Q-. Bohn Bohn ' s Standard Library : —Vasari ' s Lives of the Painters . By Mrs . J . Foster . Vol . 2 . H . Cx '• Bonn Latcson ' s Merchant ' s Magazine . Parti . E . Hastings Transactions of the Co-operative League . J J' - » ezer
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethe .
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VIVIAN" FLIRTING WITH THE MUSE . Poetry I once before defined to be " a sort of moral measles . " We all have it in youth , but get over it when Years that bring tho philosophic mind ( and tradesman ' s bills !) warn us that Varna and Fames are nearly allied , — that poetry and poverty have only the difference of the letter v ; and what does that mean but veto ? We get over it ; as we " get over" our youth , alas ! irrevocable youth . But even as the dulcet accents of youthful joys ever and anon recur to charm us during the anxious days , so does poetry , like a silver thread running through our tapestry of life , ever and anon emerge into fugitive distinctness , to charm awhile , and then be lost again . I thought of this the other day as I rambled among the gorse , under a bright joyous sunlight , with the birds singing above and around me , and a little song that would keep murmuring itself into shape within me . The silver thread would reappear ! I walked on , and verses came "thick and fast , " vanishing almost as swiftly , and leaving behind them in my memory not more than half-a-dozen stanzas . When I came home I tried to write them down ; they were almost all gone ! With great difficulty I remembered some , and patched up these lines , which , when you have rend , you will say were not worth remembering . SONG . Let me fling out this current of thought into Song , And give vent to this passionate music of pain 1 I have felt tho tide rising in silence too long , Till the painful delight has set whirling my brain . Let me fling out my song to the echoing hill , And shout it exulting where two vallevs meet : " Oh ! I love her ! I love her ! Her heart is my will , For I bend my fierce nature to move at her feet I " When her antelope eyes , deep as love , dark as night , Droop their softness upou mo they make my soul thrill
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MAYm , i& 52-l : THE LEADER , 495
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Leader (1850-1860), May 22, 1852, page 495, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1936/page/19/
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