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f Sy dney , by attempting to set up a sort of brass-fartMng Peerage , but by enabling the worth , substance , and manliness of the colonists , to get themselves embodied in the tissues of her political frame . Meanwhile , as a ountry for the strong and indefatigable , the working-men , of Great Britain , Australia still offers the best chances for the acquisition of indenenieace , social status , and substantial wealth .
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CHILDREN'S BOOKS . A pile of "books lies before us vividly recalling the days when Christmas brought to us not only mince pies , such as now are never made , and " presents " no one thinks of making , but also the eager possibility of exchanging those presents for the treasures of Soho Bazaar . Among those treasures foremost stood Books , with apple-cheeked girls in blue frocks , and odious " good " bojSj who made virtue hateful to the young rebellious mind . What a change since then ! ( we mean in the books ) . No such splendours awaited us as those which now await pur children ; few such really good books , no such excellent p ictures . Literature has become democratised ; colliers read
Plato , and artisans of all kinds are not only omnivorous readers , but vigorous thinkers ; the railway stalls are richer now in thought and poetry than libraries were in those days ; and even the nursery has its " march of intellect . " -A terrible juvenile in our own , announced his intention the other day of poisoning his nurse " with the fumes of sodium and mercury , " and , in a milder mood , advised her not to drink too much filtered water , for the earthy ingredients of water were necessary to the perfect structure of her bones . If grandmothers have imperfect views of Ovology , it will not be the fault of grandsons !
As it has never been our wont to pretend to have read the books we have not read , and as it will be obvious that we have had much more pressing calls upon our time than the reading of a pile of children ' s books , you will please to understand that in the following remarks , we are , for the most part , guided by juvenile critics who have read them , and pronounced very unbiassed , if not very discriminating , verdicts . Messrs . Addey and Go ., send us the second volume of The Cliarm , a magazine for boys and girls , well-written , well-varied , and wellillustrated . We have on two or three occasions expressed ourselves on this charming work , and have only now to say that it keeps up to its original mark . The Picture Pleasure Book , for its cheapness as
well as for its merits , deserves hearty commendation . We have seen children aged ten and two lingering over its pages with delight . It is simply a collection of engravings taken from the works published by Messrs . Addey . Miss Martineau ' s ^ P / a ^ r / t / Zo tt ; appears in a new edition of four small volumes . Is there any reader of ours unacquainted with this work ? Let him buy it for his children or godchildren , and read it first himself . She has written nothing in the way of fiction to surpass Feats on the Fiord ; and Miss Edgeworth has written nothing superior to The Crofton Boys . In All is not Gold that Glitters , we have a story by an American lady , in which California is
brought upon the youthful stage . Natural History in Stories is a pretty little book for pretty little children , abundantly -illustrated by Harrison Weir . A book to be bought ! The Ice King and the Sweet South Wind , by Mrs . Caroline Butler , is a sort of German romance for older boys , pronounced " so stunning" by a fascinated critic , from whom it was with difficulty secured , for the purpose of notice . Pretty Poll is the autobiography of a parrot ; and Pretty Plate is the history of a bit of crockery , setting forth how honesty is the best policy . The Adventures of a Doc / , and a Good Dog too , is a companion to a former volume , the Adventures of a Bear , illustrated by Harrison Weir .
David Bogue sends us a real boys'delight in the spirited volume by Captain Mayne Reid , The Young Voyageurs ; or the Boy Hunters in the North , "with twelve illustrations by Harvey . It is full of adventure , natural history , and American scenery . Emphatically to be recommended . The Footprints ¦ of Famous Men is a compact volume of biographies , " designed as incitements to intellectual industry , " by John Edgar . It comprises Men of Action , Men of Letters , Men of Art , and Men of Science . If , as Longlellow truly sings , 11 Lives of great men all remind us , We can live a life aublime , " fchen such books as these arc influential as w . cll as interesting . . Nathaniel Cooke gives us in the Illustrated Library , a new edition of that immortal work , . White ' s Natural History of Sriborne , Avith Sir William lardiiic ' s notes , and seventy engravings , beautifully executed . Nor should 'lacoh Abbott ' s Histories be passed over without a word of recommendation . "i shilling , volumes , separate yet serial , the lives of great men sire popularly , ?] S gingl y written . Alfred the Great , Pyrrhus , William the Conqueror , and Alexander the Great , have already appeared ; tho series will extend to four-&nu-twent y . Flowers from the Garden of Knowledge is a collection of prose rh ymes for very young children , with abundant illustrations .
Messrs . Dean and Son , great publishers of such books , have sent Beauty ™ ul t / ii : Jicas % by Miss Corner , which is to be the first of a series of Little ¦ j ^ iiys for Little Actors . It i > s the old fairy tale thrown into a dramatic or in rhyme , and illustrated bv Alfred Crowquill .
Messrs . Ifcoutledgo and Co ., among their endless enterprises , have not ¦ jnutted books for children . Tho Oriental Fairy Tales ; or FdmufH Wan-< : p ' 'KQs in the Fast , luus not only thirty-two illuatratioiiH by Harvey , hut has "Weiruition of fiction which will keep a school-room of boys quiet . Uioro are still some works on our table , but they are of tho kind named t ^' gious , and of them wo are suspicious ; so , without speaking of them , 0 close this ramble through nursery literature with the Loves of an Pothecary ( Clrtrice , Becton , and Co . ) , ' which is a story of more pretension , ' !• ^ dressed to older boys and girls . N " ofc having read it , nor hoard an ' ) Uu ° u of it from our ethics , wo must confine ourselves to this announcement .
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethe . ^
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Dabk . is this Christmas—dark on every quarter of the horizon , physically , socially , politically . The sun of prosperity which shone upon the summer ' seems now , in looking back , only to have excited the passion of grasping in the masters , or hope in the men , to entail upon us the strife which is carried on into the winter of adversity . That movement which was the " rise o wages" in the sunny season , is now the bitter " strike , " which arouses bad passions in the wealthy , bitterness in the industrious . ; threatening one side with the workhouse , and the other with some unannounced retribution . The poverty is aggravated in its suffering by a climate which abates its rigours only to try the frame with the incessant diversities of a pitiless sky . War is raging in the East , and our Government , professing to side with the
weaker and with justice , permits the wrong of the stronger . We are beginning to doubt whether our rulers are strong enough , and wise enough , to resist that invasion of despotic iniquity which is encroaching in Europe , and may , one day , come to fight the battle upon our own shores . And the wrong is done in the name of that faith which htis its birthday at this season Some two thousand years ago , a scene is familiarly pictured to have occurred in the humblest of places . An event happened such as visits the home of the humblest of mortals—the birth of a little child . That little child was born of a parent flying from persecution , and the home in which he was born was beneath that which the humblest of English , householders owns—he shared his cradle with the ass and the ox . Strange , when we look back upon that scene , thefate of tbat little child . Before his birth andafter
it , events were as strange as those which attended his life . Before him came prophesies and persecutions—prophesies of his divine mission , and persecution for the sake of that mission . In order to suppress his life before it began , Herod—the Nicholas of that day—sent forth an order to put down the life of all the first-born in his lands—an Austrian edict ; a Russian ukase , But , for all the slaughter in the cities of Herod , there , in the manger , unharmed in its humility , embodied in the frailest shape which humanity can . present , that divine spark of life came to worldly existence . Our painters now picture a light emanating from that cradle : whatever may have been seen by the eyes that then watched the dawning life , the light which arose from that tender couch has indeed spread throughout the whole globe , and has been seen by eyes century after century . Yet for all
that certainty , descending to our own day , we are disputing , not only the truth embodied in that light , but the existence of the child . The light , say nice philosophers , who analyse it with their prisms , is not substantiated bylegal evidence , and the Registrar-General of Births , Marriages , and Deaths cannot produce for you the certificate . It is an invention , says the philosopher ; as if he could produce in the whole round of fiction anything that could approach the stupendous idea of the divine principle which that little child came forth to utter for the world ; any history that could so thoroughly embody that principle , in itself , in all that went before it , or in all that came after it ! Fiction is not capable of creation . To have invented the history of a Jesus , it would have needed a Jesus to be born to conceive , and to write it . It took more than humanity to create that history or to be it . '
Humbler men have told it in their rude and erring accents , and baser men have fallen to quibble upon the mistakes , instead of seizing the body of the light , and carrying it forward with simple faith . The prism of pedantry may split the light into many rays , and one shall be of blood red . That is the light of Christianity which Russia is casting over the East ; and the same lurid glare of sectarianism conceals the truth of Christianity amongst ourselves , who arc fighting to convict each other of heresies , when we might unite to discover so much of tho truth us it is in humanity to know . We cry out that we are in the dark , and in the dark we thicken the midnight by our own scuttling . The light still exists , and will exist for ever , for those who choose to turn to it . And they may so turn to it , whether they
have knowledge or have it not ; whether they are taught or untaught . For those who speak in sectarian language , and tell you that truth cau only reach you when you lmve grace in your heart , utter a g reat truth iu the midst of their huge falsehood . The heart of grace is the gift of nature , or of that divine power which restores nature when it faints . It does not need book learning or dogmatic teaching to perceive the life which could survive the hurtling slaughter sent forth by Herod to destroy it ; as the snowdrop can rise to life through the storm of tho elements which socin to threaten its frail tenderness , but which form its native atmosphere . If neither Herod nor tho orthodox Jews , Knox nor Calvin , Tope nor Czar , have been able to crush the ilower which seems so frail , assuredly it has a chartered life which belongs to centuries yet to come .
Life is stronger than destruction . The darkest hour which we undergo at this moment is destined to burst upon a spring of vitality . If Turkey and Russia are now slaying each other on the Danube , the Bulgarian , who lies between , the two , has caught the idea of industry and education , and in at this moment roaring tho products of a fertile soil , and tho ideas of an awakening mind , which will one day possess the happy federation traversed by that great river , when Turk and Russian shall have passed away into the tomb of history . It is possible for tho dread laws of nature sometimes to surprise us with gifts or blessings out of eur . scs : thus the conflict which
is raging upon the Black Sea and tho inud-impe . ! od river , may bo hastening the clearance of the day for that sunnier period . And so at homo , we are perplexed by many troubles that press upon us for solution ,. Next door to uh , a great practical philosopher has , with hia sword , presumed to cufc the Gordian knot of representative government , and has given to his country government by g ift ; of dictator ; while our own Minister . ? , dallying with reform , are trying to discover how far it is safe to entrust the freeborn Englishman with tho franchise . Masters and men are fighting , in the battle of combination , the great problem of competition or co-operation-
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December 24 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER . 1243
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 24, 1853, page 1243, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2018/page/19/
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