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ally becoming more moral and upright , and oar parliamentary oratory more mild and gentlemanlike . Some curious illustrations and anecdotes are introduced , from -which it does appear that the political corruption of last century -was colossal compared with anything we now see , and that we have lost the art of parliamentary Billingsgate . The writer , however , makes an onslaught on Lord Debbt ' s Administration as retrogressive in both these particulars ; as having " derogated from the amended political morality characteristic of our times , " and as having , in the person of , at least , one of its chiefs , " re-introduced into party warfare an unscrupulous malignity which its higher class of combatants had long discarded . " Of course , it is Mr . Disbaeli that is meant . The reviewer hardly verifies his own remark
when he thus speaks of this much-abused Shemite , sketched , we must say , in this passage , from a point of view which many must think totally wrong : —¦ " Mr . Disraeli aspires to be the Juntas of St . Stephens' , to speak as that great assassin spoke . There is the same indiscriminate and comprehensive hostility , —the same readiness to make or to suggest the most outrageous accusations—the same sinister care in polishing and sharpening his envenomed darts—the same necessity for a victim to mangle—the same deliberate and cruel vigilance to discover what point ¦ will be tenderest , and what weapon will be sharpest . There is also the same absence of any strong convictions or fixed opinions ; the same merging of principles in personalities ; the same reduction of the great game of politics to a mere fencing match , where the object is not to pass a law , but to wound an adversary . Mr-Disraeli is not a statesman ; he is not even a . politician ; he is simply a gladiator . No invective is too savage for his cold and artificial indignation ; no sarcasm too bitter for his petty spite ; no allusions top indecorous for his taste ; no character
pure enough to be sacred from his charges and insinuations . From the day when he endeavouted to obtain access to the sanxe Parliament , first as « Radical , and then as a Tory ; from the day when , under the signature of " Bunnymedej" he addressed a series of letters to the public men of England , of which , it is difficult to say whether the adulation or the abuse is the most repellent ; from . the . day when he repaid the scurrility of O'Connell with Billingsgate like his own , as vulgar , but far less effective ; from the day when he fastened upon Peel ; as the glutton fastens on the noble stag , and baited and worried him with the gusto of tie torturers of old-i-to the day when he received the reward of his achievements in the leadership of his party , and a lesidence in Dowuing-street , and indulged first in the insolence of the triumphant official , and then in the impotent fury of the defeated and discarded minfeter j—Mr . Disraeli has been consistent and unique ; he has never once deviated into right ; he has never once , so far as we remember , been surprised into an unseemly fit of generosity or candour ; he has never for a moment sacrificed personal
gratification or a party triumph to a political object or a moral principle ; dur ing a public life of nearly twenty years , he has never belied his antecedents , or stained his reputation by one noble sentiment , or one disinterested deed . That such a man should have been the chosen chief of a great , and once a not ignoble party 5 that he should have been not only tolerated but cheered on in his gladiatorial displays , by so large a section of the gentry and nobility of England ; that he should have been able to make himself Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons , over the heads of all his rivals , by the simple influence of a bitterer temper and a sharper tongue—these things constitute , we were about to say , the most disgraceful fact in the modem history of our country ; but unhappily we can remember one in some respects analogous , but still more discreditable : — the generation which witnessed the . worship paid to Mr . Hudson need scarcely blush at the elevation decreed to Mrv Disraeli . The statue designed for the one is a fit pendant to the pedestal erected for the other . " ¦
The Prospective Review ( by-the-by , is there not a little bit of a bull m the name ?) has this fine motto from St . Bernard on its cover : " Respicet Aspice , Pbospice , ' the relative importance of the three imperatives being marked by the circumstance that " Respice" is printed in small italics , " Aspice" in ordinary Roman letters , and " Prospice "> in Roman capitals . In this number , at least , the Review is hardly true to its motto . Of six articles , three—one on Milman ' s History of Latin Chinsiianity , one on the poets Gbat and Mason , and one on , Lessing ' s Tluology and Times— be taken as representing the " Respice : * the other three—a notice of an American
book on Regeneration , a paper on Ruskin ' s Lectures 011 Architecture and Painting , and a batch of Notices of Recent Publications , do justice to the " Aspice ; " but the " Pbospice ' remains unpresented . Perhaps it is meant that the Prospective tendency shall be represented by the spirit breathed into all the articles . And certainly the opinions pervading the articles are in advance of those to be found in most theological organs . The -writing is also careful , thoughtful , scholar-like , and even sometimes beautiful ; the chief want ( a considerable -want in an organ with such aims ) being emphasis , or what is irreverently termed " go . "
Fraser , as usual , is great in the military department , and in that of Natural History . The opening article is an elaborate one on The Russian Army , the object of the writer being to disabuse the public mind of the exaggerated ideas entertained of the military resources of the Czar . He
says : — "When twenty or thirty battalions of Prince Gortschnkoff ' s forces crossed tho Danube into the Drobrutcha . the public bolieved that Bulgaria was in danger , that Varna would Go besieged , and Shumla turned . Whon Prince Puuldcvitoh sat down before Siliatria with 50 , 000 men , it was confidentially asserted , in ' well-informed quarters , ' thtvt the Balkans would be shortly forced , Constantinople taken j the Rosphorna nod Durdannelles occupied b y Cossacks ( to tho great inconvenience of the allied fleets ) , and that a variety of other calamities would fall upon Turkey , Great Britain , and Franco , amongst which was specially noticed the extinction of tho contingent under St . Arniiud nnd ltnglaji . Those who indulged in aucli anticipations now learn that this fonnidablo army lms boon baffled in tho attempt to tnko possession of a fortress of the third class , although nil tho nttneks were conducted on the grandest possible scale , and with a total disregard ot the sacrifice of human life which iiugjit bo theroby entailed . And it ia now beginning to bo understood that this dreaded military phantom is inferior to his adversaries , not only in cflicionoy but in numbers—that tho commanders of th « allied army will bo ablo to take tho field with overpowering forces , and that if wo do not achieve the grandest results , it will bo tho crime of our rulers , and not tho misfortuno of our generals and udimrnls . "
The exaggerated ideas entertained of the military forces of the Cznr , tho writer traces to tho wretchedly imperfect accounts given in journals and periodicals . In order to do away false impressions in the most satisfactory manner , he publishes a detailed analysis of tho Russian army , compiled from authentic sources , giving tho names of the regiments , their numbers , the names of their officers , &c . Tho analysis occupies about twenty pages , and ia not finished . It is dry to look at , but is evidently important . After all , however , wo tire not quite sure that oven tho writer ' s statistics , however accurate , juBtifybis contemptuous way of disposing of the Russophobia .
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He says , " Phrenzied fanatics may still hail their dupe ( i . e . Nicholas ) as the Slavonian Messiah , but history will gibbet this most sanctimonious Vandal . " The probability is that the Czar represents , and is strong by reason of , more things than his armies—i . e ., Russian fanaticism , Slavonian political speculation , the acutest diplomacy in the world , and—what is as important as anything—the want of aim and forethought among his opponents . Napoleon could calculate the power of armies , and knew the statistics of the Russian army as well as any man ; and yet he believed in the possibility of a Cossack empire in Europe . The article on the Aquarium , or tank for water-animals , is one of those pleasant and instructive papers of Naturalists ' gossip for which Fraser is famous . There are a variety of articles besides —literary and other—of which the concluding one , on the Politics and Pronunciamentos of Spain , will , perhaps , be most read . It is an interesting and well-compiled account of Spanish politics , explanatory of the recent revolution .
Blackzoood has an article on The Insurrection in Spain which is , in some respects , more interesting than the corresponding article in Fraserbeing the contribution of a writer resident in Madrid , and narrating from pei'sonal knowledge and observation . The article was written while the insurrection was still going on , and before its issue could be exactly known ; but it fully explains the causes of that event , and gives a very vivid idea of the state of feeling ia Madrid before and during the rising . By far the "best sketch we have seen of the misdemeanours of the Sartorius or St . Luis administration —the administration whose conduct provoked the rising , and which has been swept away by it—is contained in this article . Another article in the number , containing valuable information and suggestive speculation on pending questions of foreign politics , is that entitled , Tbicoupi and Alison on the Greek Revolution , The writer discusses five points in succession— the character , conduct , and position of Uussia at the outbreak of the war of Greek independence ; the conduct of the Turkish government
on that occasion ; the character of the Greeks themselves , as shown during their five years' struggle ; the conduct of Russia towards the Greek people since ; and the conduct of the Greek people since the accession , of Otho . The result is a moderate vindication of the Greeks , and a temperate appeal in their behalf to Europe . In the beginning of the article we find a reasseveration of an important fact already brought before the public , with characteristic enthusisam , fay Professor Bl-ackie , of Edinburgh—to wit , that the modern Greek language is , to all intents and purposes , the same as the ancient Grreek , so that the notion that Greek requires to be learnt as a dead language is to be regarded as a mere fallacy of pedants and pedagogues . Introduced into a political article , the following passage seems to hint that , were it for no other purpose than , to have a school to which our young men could go to learn Greek , we ought to do our best to keep up the nice little nationality of the JEgean , and to fence it in ( a little extended , perhaps ) both from Turks and Russians .
" Now , with regard to this point , Mr . Tricoupi ' s book furnishes the most decided and convincing evidence that the language of Aristotle and Plato yet survives in a state of the most perfect purity , the materials of which it is composed being genuine Greek , and tho main difference between the style of Trjcoupi and that ofXenophon consisting in tho loss of a few superfluous verbal flexions , and the adoption of ono or two now syntactical forms to compensate for the losis—the merest points ot grammar , indeed , which to a schoolmaster great iu A ' ttic forms may appear mighty , but to the general scholar , and the practical linguist , are of no moment . A lew such words of Turkish extraction , as gclixiov , a mosque ; ( fripfidviov , a firman ; fiegtptjs , a vizier ; ytvlrcrapos , a janizary ; paytddrjs , a rajah , so far from being any blot on the purity of Mr , Tricoupi ' s Greek , do in fact only prove his good sense ; for even tho ancient Greeks , ultra-national as they were in all their habits , never scrupled to adopt a foreign word—such as yit £ a 7 rapdbeto-os , clyyapog — when it came in their way , just as we have Kodpdvrrjs , ktjvctos , a-ovbapiov , and a few other Latinisms in the New Testament . Tho fact isthat tho modern Greeks are rather to
, bo blaracd for the affectation of extremo purity in their stylo , than for any undue admixture of foreign words j such as wo find b y scores in every German newspaper . But this is their affair . It is a vice that leans to virtue ' s side , and springs manifestly from that strong and obstinate vitality of rnco which has survived tho political revolutions of nearly two thousand yoars ; smd a vice , moreover , that may pvovo of tho utmost uso to our young scholars , who may h . ivo tho sense and tho enterprise to turn it to practical account , For , as tho pnro Groelc of Mr . Tricoupi ' s book is no private invention of hia own , but tho very samo / dialect which is at present used as an organ of intellectual uttoranco by a lurgo phalanx of talented professors in tho University of Athens , j » nd ia in fact tho language of polite intercourse over tho whole of Greece , it follows that Greek , which is at present ahnont universally studied as a dead language , and that by a most laborious and tedious process of grammatical indoctrination , may bo inoro readily picked up , like Gorman or French , in tho courso of tho living practice of n fow months . "
In domestic politics we have an article on u Conservative Reascentictnci / Considered , "" in winch tho Coalition Government is severely handled , ami the doctrine asserted that " only by the renscendancy of tho Conservative party can tho blessings of , &c . &c . &c , be secured to tho country . " Thereis also a learned article on tho Ethnology of Europe . We must not omit to notice tho Assurance l \ r < ig < izine and Journal , of tin Institute of Actuaries . It is addressed , of courso , chiclly to the business classes , but in these days , when the whole subject of assurance engrosses so lm'ge u share of public interest , an " assurance" magazine , ably written and published under authority , can fairly claim something beyond a class circulation . Tho present number contains several articles of interest , and among others u paper lately road by Professor Do Mokcjais , before tho Institute of Actuaries , on the '• Demonstration of Formula ) connected with Interest and Annuities . " Wo must reserve the remaining magazines amd periodicals .
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736 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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Mr . Almxatswkr . J . Ejuus , well-known for liis labours nnJ expenditure of
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 5, 1854, page 736, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2050/page/16/
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