On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (4)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
ifartfoiin.
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
duction to the study of Natural History , and is arranged so as to form a companion to the visitors of the British Museum Collection . Four hundred and fifty woodcuts—well executed , as cuts , but not always very accurate as drawings—and a variety of new anecdotes , illustrate these pages . The scientific name is always affixed to the popular name ; and the descriptions are precise and intelligible . , It will be a delightful book Among republications , let a place be assigned to The Working Man ' s Way in the World ( W . and F . G . Cash ) , earned by its interest . It is the autobiography of a Journeyman Printer , and will be remembered by most of our readers as having appeared in Tail ' s * Magazine . The stamp of reality marks out this autobiography from ordinary publications .
Only the other day we noticed the repUblieation . ot Popes Iliad ; we have now a companion volume , The Odyssey of Homer , by Pope . With Flaxmans Designs ( Ingram , Cooke and Co . ) . Mr . Buckley has also edited this volume , and made it very acceptable . But what shall we say to the new edition of Thackeray's chefd ' aeuvre , the incomparable Vanity Fair ? Here it is in one portable volume , at a Sr ice to lure thousands ; and here also the same publishers ( Bradbury and Ivans ) present us with a compact quiver of wit , observation , and suggestion , in the fifth volume of Douglas Jerrold ' s Collected Writings : it comprises Punch ' s tetters to Ms SonPunch ' s Complete Letter Writer ,
, and the Sketches of English Character contributed to the Meads of the People . Every one vividly remembers these writings of pur strange satirist —( strange , we say , for is not Jerrold sui generis ?) and every one will be pleased to have them thus gathered into an accessible volume . Mr . Bohn endows the public with a volume of Bacon ' s Physical and Metaphysical Works , to which the attention of all students is directed . It containB the Dignity and Advancement of Learning , and the Novitm Organum ; the former newly translated by Mi * . Joseph I > evey , who has been at the pains of translating all the numerous quotations which Bactm
has scattered over his text ; and has , moreover , furnished some very suggestive philosophical notes , for which the student will thank hitou This is truly a valuable work , published at a very small price . Readers of " old books" will , however , welcome even more eagerly the republics tion of Roger de Hovendens Annals , which Mr . BileV has translated for JBohn's Antiquarian Library . It is to be in two volumes . That there can be found readers ( or purchasers ) numerous enough to reward Mr . Bohn for his enterprise in such directions , is a tnarvel ; yet instead of slackening he increases his enterprise !
Untitled Article
"We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethe .
Untitled Article
XV . Seven Hills , April 9 , 186 ft . f ^ g ^ ftOW I have longed this day , my most beloved friends , that I dOttld IlSli convey Yseult to Valperduta , and place her in your safe keeping ; ilUli kut slhe is > at P resent ) * hands which are called those of " the law /* Ug 5 l and cannot be snatched away , —at least not yet . Alas > that hands so vile , should hold that which is so noble ! And how shall I make what has passed intelligible to you , when it is
scarcely so to myself . I had better , however difficult it is to see back beyond the one event that absorbs us all , relate things as they happened . I had told you how altered the manner of Yseult had become : the alteration grew more striking , and her manner was not only different from what it had been , but continued to differ from itself , almost every hour ; as time went on , it became , while more capricious , also more constrained , and even studied . And she always so nobly direct and unaffected , to a degree
seldom met with in England , though we not unfrequently meet with it in Italy ! By the merest chance , it came out that some one had been to see her some " gentleman ; " and her new change evidently dated from that . She made no secret of his coming ; and I suspect that she had told Edwardts , towards whom her caprice was most exhibited . Towards myself there was a studied kindness and eonsideratcness , very different from the natural and familiar friendship on her side , which had made my own affection for her so tender , tlmt I feared she might see it , and retract a
friendship the loss of which I should have deplored—as much as yours , my denr Elena . No , I am wrong to say that it was her friendship which made me conscious ' of a tenderer affection in myself ; and , in saying so , I have fallen into the stupid dulncss of apprehension that I find so often here . In England , where love between man and woman is treated originally as a wrong which both must bide with shame , and which can only be excused by certain authoritative sanctions—where it must only be exercised " , ¦ *„ , „ ,. » ., « -., »// . „ , '< - > " lw « immission of the parish officers—a direct perauctoritatc <> t privilef / io" bpermission of the parish officers—a direct
per-, y sonal friendship between man and woman is regarded almost as an imposs .-l » ility . " It will always degenerate into something more equivocal , " they say You may know a man as your friend , and , through him , his wife , bin sister , or his daughter ; but lie is a kind of " chairman" over your intercourse , and is always supposed to be the controuler and intermediary . I do not . know why a people who are , to begin with , so cold , and are then so studious in repressing their feelings , should presume the feelings to bo so uncontroulctl : but I do know that they are always ready to presume
" harm , " agaiimt the , proverbial precept borrowed from the order which traditionall y owes its origin to an " equivoool" incident — " Horn soit
qui mal y pense . " Unless you presume evil , says English social philosophy , you shall not be safe ; and said philosophy proceeds to justify itself , by calling things " evil" which God ' s own land creates and blesses , and by supposing much even of their own " evil / ' which has no existence . What is the reason ? Are these English prone to render good things vile by their own treatment ? Their ideas of " pleasure" justify the supposition . Or , is it the reaction against unnatural repressions ? Perhaps something of both . But it is very revolting . It is one of the marks of the collar which make me grateful that I am not yet quite so domesticated an animal as I seemed to be growing .
To give you an example of what I mean i I am convinced that many who have seen Margaret and myself together may have supposed that we were " more familiar with each other ; " presuming one kind of love from the existence of another ! The perfect frankness in her would make them presuppose deceit ; the grateful devotion which I owe to her unrestrained affection and kindness , they would ascribe to a cause different from my sense of her grand qualities . It is selfishness partly that makes them thus suspicious ; they hardly understand loving one for the sake of qualities manifested to others as well as yourself . Nay , I believe that the same suspicions would arise were I seen with you !
It is not friendship that made me love Yseult ; perhaps her name first made me think of her with love ; perhaps it was the colour of her hair , as it hang * over her softly glowing cheeks , and shades those dear eyes which would be brilliant if they were not so soft—which would be so gay if they were not so tender ; perhaps it was her voice . But I did my best to hide the consequence * of her engaging tenderness and her beauty , lest I should alarm her English feeling , and lose her friendship . Perhaps I disguised myself too well , and have seemed brutally unconscious of kindness I did not merit . I do not know ; but from whatsoever cause , her estrangement comes over me like a black cloud ; and yet it seems as nothing in comparison to the anxiety I share with Margaret for her .
It happened thus . I have told you how it began with the visit of that unknown gentleman , —or rather was increased by that visit , for it began even before our arr ival here . It increased again With another arrivalthat of Fanny Chetham . Yes , Fafcfiy is released from her troubles . I went down to the trial , early this week , and helped to sustain her . It was terrible at the best , but perhaps the worst part of the whole scene was its falsity . _
" The pr isoner appeared to be about twenty-four Or five years of age , but she might be younger ; she was very attractive , and almost ladylike in her manners , and possesses a singularly mild countenance , quite incapable , one would suppose , " says the report of the papers , " of committing a crime so atrocious as murder . " Why ? what did the learned barrister who penned that report , and received his honorarium for it , know of Fanny ' s capabilities in the direction of fierceness ? Had he seen her when she declared to me that it was she who had killed her child—or when she said , with a blush of defiance in her face , that she loved me ? " Mild !" Yes ; she is a tender , loving woman ; but there is a fire in her heart , which might be the fire of life , and was , for once , a fire of death . Did the
learned court solve that riddle ? We had engaged the best of counsel for her particular case—a man eminent in defending Tory principles—or what you in Italy would call Austrian principles — and prisoners with hopeless prospects ; and succeeding indifferently with the principles , he lias concentrated his attention more on the criminal court . He has a strong voice and a strong conscience , and is exactly the sort of low comedy tragedian to master the feelings of English juries . The bench sat and frowned , not because Mr . George Judson violated truth , but because , in his boisterous gesticulations , he
knocked his elbows against etiquette . He succeeded , however , in bringing off Fanny , on the plea of " temporary insanity ; " and a moment after his being " almost unmanned , " he obtruded his congratulations upon her friends with a coarse expatiation of chuckle . " Temporary insanity ! " Yes , if total failure of life ' s expectation is insanity ; if total perplexity , or revenge against fate itself is insanity . And yet what is crime save ignorance , or ?
inborn incapacity , or subjugation to circumstance Especially m one so simple and natural as poor Fanny . She was no more insane than I have ever been ; but the result came nenrer to the justice of the CAse than a more accurate interpretation of the English law . the English like to approach a truth by the circuitous path of a lie ; it saves them from the discredit of following " first principles" " abstract ideas . " They establish a law which disclaims the dealing with motives , and professes to deal only
with acts ; but finding that that will not work , they then set themselves , not to discover the real motives , but to presume them from the acts ; ami in Fanny ' s case , the motives stated before the court not being such as would have induced either of the worthy men in the jury-box to strangle his own child , with the sanction of the judge they presumed " insanity ;" and thus tumbling headlong down the well , they fished up something so like the truth , that " practically , " as the English say , it did as well . Only it stifled the whole of the real case ; and thus it kept on that false presentment which conceals the causes of a whole class of crimes common . among the English , and precludes them from ever dealing with the reality . Mr . Jmlson ' 8 bailiff eloquence did not rescue any future Fanny Chctbam from her Satan William , or from her inhuman desertion to uninformed despair by William and Co . —the Company being •< Society ; " but it taught the future Funny Chetham how to evade the law ugainat infanticide .
Untitled Article
$ m THE LEADER . [ S ^ pbday ,
Ifartfoiin.
ifartfoiin .
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), March 26, 1853, page 308, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1979/page/20/
-