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BOOKS OK OUR TABLE .. Miles Tremenhere . By A . M . Maillard . ' 2 vols , Routledgo and Co . Handley Cross ; or , Mr . Jorrockss Hunt . Part I . Bradbury and Evans , Bleak House . Ka . XIII . ^ „ ,. Bradbury and Evans . Writings of Douglas Jerrold . —Sketches of the English . Punch Office . The Dodd Family Abroad . No . VII . Chapman and Hall , Household Narrative of Current Events . 16 , Wellington-street . Tatt ' s Edinburgh Magazine . Partndge and Oakey . TAe Reckoner . Part II . , J-Wats ° - 2 % e Monthly Christian Spectator . W . Freeman . 7 % e Some CiVeZe " - Johnson Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa . By J . Eichardson . 2 vols . Chapman and Hall . Z 7 ( e Indian Archipelago ; its History and Present State . By Horace St . John . 2 vols . Longman and Co . The Private Journal ofF . T . Larpent , Esq . 3 vols . R . Bentley . Banncrford ; or , the Valley of Gold . 3 vols . R Bentley . Wanderings through the Cities of Italy in 1850 awrf 1851 . By A . L . Von Rochan . 2 ^ j ^^ A Poet ' s Day Dreams . By H . C . Andersen . R . Bentley . Common-Sense Tracts . Vart II . —Lady Mury Pierrepoint . By C . Sinclair . R . Bentley . Lawxon ' x Merchants' Magazine . T . P . A . ^ ay . 77 ie British Journal . ^ ¦ * - A . Day . y /; e Scottish Educational and Literary Journal . James aore . Diogenes . Part II . Pipor . Brothers , and Co . Poems . By Alexander Smith . ^ ¦ D ! }' Bo - The Odi / ssey of Homer . Translated by A . Pope . Ingram , Cooke , and Co . Researches into the History of the Roman Constitution ; with , an Appendix upon the Roman Knights . ByW . ^ . W . Pickering . r ^ e Musings of a Spirit . A Poem . By G . Marsland . W . Pickering . The Holiday , and other Poems , Songs , $ c . W . Pickeriug' . A Broken Echo . A Poem . W . Pickering . Marie Louise ; or , the Opposite Neig hbours . By E . Carlen . Ingram , Cooke , and Co . The Universal Library . Parts VIII . to X . Ingram , Cooke , and Co . Reading for Travellers . —The Village Doctor . Chapman and Hall . The Romance of Military Life . By Lieut .-Colonel G . P . Cameron . G -PS , - The Midland-Metropolitan Magazine . Arthur Hall , Virtue , and Co . The Charm . Addey and Co . The Picture Pleasure . Book . . Addey & Co .
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AN ITALIAN HEEETIC . A Historical Memoir of Fra Dolcino and his Times . Being an account of a general struggle for ecclesiastical freedom and of an anti-heretical crusade in Italy in the earli / part of the lUTi century . By L . Mariotti , Author of Italy , Fast and Present , &c . Longman and Co . The name of Dolcino the heresiarch will no longer be unfamiliar to our ears . Signor Mariotti has shaken away the ecclesiastical dust which buried that name in obscurity , and has dug from among the ruins of the past a statue to be henceforth placed in some con 3 picious niche in the Temple of Great Reformers . He ha 3 moreover produced a work of singular interest , wherein erudition illustrates and does not overlay the subject matter ; and as a specimen of historical biography we can scarcely name a more successful work .
There is nothing wonderful in the obscurity of Fra Dolcino ' s name , for even in Italy it was for many years a forbidden subject , and when Muratori little more than a hundred years ago brought into light two historical documents on this subject , " he did so with many a profession of heartfelt detestation of this and of all other heresies and with all due submission , even against his own good common sense , to the decrees by which Home had proscribed the memory of Dolcino and his sect to all eternity . " In the present state of free inquiry , and in the savage partisanship which ransacks the past for evidence against Home , Mariotti ' s book will be very welcome , botli to freethinkers and Protestants . Yet the book is a sad book , and the reflections it suggests are bitter . One cannot help noting once again how the purest doctrines " establish" themselves into
corruptions , and how * all heresies are at bottom but ono and the same thingviz ., the desire to bring back the Church to that state of apostolical innocence and discipline from which it started , and which while it has ever been the proud standard and boast of the Church , has also been its terrible rebuke . Of course the Church resented this desire . No heresy could be blacker . That Koine had wandered widely from the Apostolic path , — that it had amassed enormous wealth and coveted boundless power , —that its priests in ( heir daily lives were flagrantly contradicting their daily teachings—all this was what Dr . Johnson would call •* too gross for observation , too evident for detection ; " accordingly whoever ventured iv . return to Primitive Christianity was a heretic , and the tactics of the Church wore then , as now , and perhaps ever will be , the convenient plan of accusing their antagonists of immorality : —
" A . certain looseness of principle , deliberate lewdness and debauchery , was for a loii £ time considered as the invariable consequence of the least doviation from the incontrovertible truth , that is , of the slightest dissent from the Kstablinhed Church . The priests were aware thut the pnssions of the multitude could hardly be aroused in detestation of mere abstract theories . The most startling , most revolting , most absurd and pitiful stories , were therefore got up by the zealous denouncers of heresy : from mere disregard of fast-days to cannibalism , no sins were too atrocious for them , said the priests ; and as either from fear or other reasons , the most prudent of those dissenters met in secret , and involved their transactions in mystery , the darkest suspicions , the most obvious calumnies , gained an easy credit ; and that terrible word , ' heretic / soon came to be associated , in the people ' s mind , with the worst outrages that either abandoned villany or ranting madness could perpetrate in defiance of all the Jaws of <<< id and men . " Si < nior IVlariotli gives n , vivid picture of tin ; state of I tuly as a theutro for abundant heresies : —
" Indeed , the liberty enjoyed by the Kalians in religious matters was but too early pushed to the verge of dangerous licentiousness . A tendency to infidelity by the side of abject superstition , has been unfailingly evinced by tho Italian mind at all times . VVe find it developing itself in the age of Innocent III . himself , when people could listen with a mule to the ribald anecdote of the 'Three Rings , ' which ( heir story-tellers had recently imported , together with crosses and relics , from the Hunt ; a story which J { occ : u : cio borrowed from them one hundred yenrs later , and a ( ierma . li philosopher did not disdain to dramatise in our own times , and a story which could not take a more liberal view of all revelation , and makes the law of . lew Christian , und Moslom of einuil value in tho cyea of a common father ; when
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The writer of an agreeable article in Blaclcwood , for this month , on Clubs and Clubbists , has drawn a curious picture of the change which has come o ' er the spirit of the dance , though it would have been even more striking , liad he gone farther back than the modest quadrille , and traced the progress from the freezing minuet to the romping polka . " Madam , when you first came out , or made yotir d £ but- *~ -for that was then the term in vogue—do you happen to remember what wore the manners of the ballroom ? Let us refresh your memory . The staple dunce was the quadrille , perliaps : i ) t a very lively piece of pantomime , but one which , from its nature , afforded ample opportunity for conversation , ( you may call it flirtation if you like , ) and was neither , in its form , too reserved nor too familiar . It was all grace and decorum . It admitted of a sli ght and tremulous pressure of the hand—nothing more—between parties ripe for dur-lai-ation ; and often , during the pause before tho last figure , tho attitude of some blushing beauty , plucking unconsciously a spfcndid camellia to pieces , left little doubt of the nature of those whispers which her partner had been pouring into her ear . Like Margaret in the Faust , the sweet girl was "but essaying to prove her destiny from the petals of the flower . For those in a less advanced stage of understanding , there was the contre-dansc , and the reel , with various other gymnastics , all of a harmless nature . But Satan had en tercel into paradise , though in a mild form . We may now , our clear madam , recall , without anything like bitterness of feeling , the days when we indulged together in the eweet intoxication of the waltz . It was really—we confess it with a touch of the old Adam—a most fascinating innovation . You danced divinely ; and a more clipsome waist than yours we never spanned . Once , indeed , we thought—but no more of that ! You married , of your own free will and accord , that red-haired monster M'Tavish , in virtue of liis imaginary rent-roll ; and , long ago , our agony of mind , like the remembrance of an old toothache , has departed , lint it was pleasant to revolve , linked with you , over the floor of the Assembly-rooms when Spinilier was in his glory , and when the waltz was kept at least within something like decent limits . Long before then , Byron , who certainly was not strait-laced , lad published his poem of ' The Waltz ; ' and without subscribing to his views upon our peristrephic performances , we must needs own that his satire is of double value now . " We mairftuin , now , that Lord Byron , writing under the name of Horace Horneni , was fully justified in the utterance of every couplet . The poet is a seer ; and though we , perhaps , in our younger days , could descry no impropriety in the waltz , which merely admitted us to a nearer degree of contact than the former Terpsichorean evolutions , the prophetical eye of the bard foresaw the necessary consequence . The character of the waltz gradually became changed . From a graceful rotatory motion , it degenerated into a Bacchic movement , similar , no doubt , to the first Thespian performances , which were intended , as scholars tell us , to be in honour of the young Lyuuis . Then came the galoppe , which was a still further manifestation of the triumphal procession of Ariadne . Dancing , as one of the fine arts , now received us virtual death-blow . You saw an infuriatcd-looking fellow throw his arm round a girl ' s waist ,, and rush oil' with her as if he had been one of the troop of llonmlu . s abducting : i reluctant Sabine . Sabina , however , made no remonstrance , but went along with him quite cordially . They pursued a species of ba ( -like race around the room—jerking , flitting , backing , and pirouetting " , without , rule , and without any vestige of grace , until breath failed them , and the punting virgin was pulled up short on the arm of her perspiring partner . Ghost of Count Hamilton ! shade ; of !) e ( Jramniont ! has it really come to this ? You knew , in your day , something about the Castleinaincs and others ; but nover did you witness , in public , at . leas ! , such orgies as British matrons and mothers now placidly contemplate and approve . "This , however , called for a reform ; nnd it was reformed . By what ? By tho intrudiicl ion of Use polka—( lie (" ivouri'e dance , and no wonder , of tho Casinos . View it philosophically , and you find it fo bo neither more nor less than the nuptial since of ! 5 :: cc ' ius and Ariadne . Our mothers or grandmothers wen ; staggered , and . some of them ; -hockcd , at the introduction of the ballet in the opera-houses . What would ( hey say now , could they see one of their female descendants absolutely in the embrace of some hairy animal —fronting him—linked to him—drawn to himher head reclining on his shoulder , and he perusing her charms—executing the most , ungraceful o ( all possible movements , at the will of a notorious Tomnoddy ?" We agree in what is said of the want of grace in the rapid , waltz and riotous polka , but , for the rest , houi soil qui ma I y p enso . The qujulrille was once as " shocking" as the dear temps now , and y et we have not found it ' subversive of social order . " in the same number then * is an entertaining article on the VvyctahU-, Ki ))(/(' o ) n , apropos of Scui . kidkn ' s Hioiihaphy of 'Vhc . Plant ; and a dial I , v review of three French Tourists , by one who has introduced several i'Yeneh works to the readers of Mtuj < t . Frar . cr continues its erudite and p leasant papers on Fishes , this month , with a . survey of the ScomIhts ,- viz ., Mackerel , Sword-fish , l'ilol .-iish , Ciunnx , J ) orv , & <* . If ; i . l . so ;; ivc . s : m ingenious review of the new discovery made by Colmkk , which llir . ius more light upon Sn a kspkakk ' s text than the labours of tuo eendirirs had done before . The writer surest * one v < M"y p lausible re ; : so : i for the numerous errors in a text said to he printctl from ttn akhi-ka rn-: ' s own 1 Y 1 SS ., " that a person was employed to read the J \ 1 S . < o a . t ' omposilor , us Ik ; put up the types , and so tin ; eye-bliin-\ t v \ 'v 4 y * > Wi ^ hM ^ due (> 1 ' U" 1 (> : u ' ' ' llIH ' ' IC Wll ' -hhnulers to the compositor . " ^ <^ W" ^ V ^ TT ^ ^' H' f- ' * U ) k | 1 ( nv '' ' Hlu ' n were tuc l ) rac ( i (" ol printers in those ; feri ^ 'i ^^ fi « l ^^ v ^! V '" ' ' ' ;/ ' '' ' ' • " '• Vl r 1 ' lilS nion < l 1 < MJin 1 IS 11 a ' - Tn ( - 1 > 1 H ' 1011 'Ity r 4 <^ J « t ^ r ^^ ff ' ^^ l '' ' '" { " ; 1 : i '" l ; i 1 ^ pi'ils and humourous description ; that ^^^ S ^ te ^^^ aSr "'¦" ' 'U iu << 1 UU > t () o'hers on natural history which have aj :-S ^? vP' ~ r fPPfwIJ ^^ ra niaj-a / . iue , and very much below tlu : " subject . Well may the I ^ H ^ avai
lively writer of The Lewis—What is it ? wonder how many people in London are familiar with the name of The Lewis , and ask them if they know whether it be fisli , man , or place . However , not many will remain in ignorance , when they can have so pleasant a cicerone . ,
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not * rnakelaws—they interpret and try to enforcethem . —Edinburgh Review . -
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232 T H E L E A D E R . [ Saturday ,
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Leader (1850-1860), March 5, 1853, page 232, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1976/page/16/
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