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IClferHtltn ^UllUlUlW
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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.
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One of the best illustrations of the manner in which the -war is engulphing all other interests is the fact that day after day the daily dapers are devoting all their "leaders" to topics connected with the war , affording not one to other topics . We are now , however , in the very thick of the crisis ; and the public will probably demand refreshment soon from these incessant " rumours of war . " Meanwhile , as we have already said , the war is originating a whole literature of its own . This literature divides itself into two kinds—the descriptive literature of the war , and the speculative literature of the war .
Of the descriptive literature we have abundance and to spare . By far the most valuable part of it is the correspondence direct from the seat of the war . The correspondents of the different newspapers seem to be competing with each other in the vividness and accuracy of their battle-paintings and scene-paintings ; and in the mass of well-written letters from officers and privates which every post brings over , there are excellent minor touches of description , filling out the accounts received from the professional writers . After all , however , it is the most difficult thing in the world to describe a battle . We have read vexy good accounts of sieges , and it is possible for a non-military reader to understand a siege if tolerably well described ; hut we have never yet met with an account of a battle—we mean a
real pitched battle , and not a mere fight or skirmish—which flashed the scene before us so as to niake it conceivable and intelligible . Napier ' s Peninsula War is universally admitted to be a book pre-eminently good in its descriptions of battles ; but we cannot say that even the pages of that work , with the inserted plans of the battles , ever made the whole phenomenon of a , battle quite comprehensible to us—while , on the contrary , we fancy we picked Tip the sieges pretty well from the pages of -the same work . The newspaper correspondents are doing their best to teach us to conceive battles better . Seated on tops of eminences these
gentlemen survey battles going on , and send them home mapped and coloured . Some of them by this time must have over and over again gone through Goethe ' s celebrated experience of the bullet-fever . Anxious to know what the sensation of being in a battle really was , Goethe , when he accompanied the German army in its invasion of France during the French revolution , took an opportunity to ride out in a skirmish when the bullets were whistling and men were dropping . His description of his sensation was , that everything about him seemed of a brown colour ; the brown air in which he moved seeming also to be hot , while his own body seemed also to have its temperature raised to that of the brown medium .
We cannot say that the speculative literature of the war keeps pace with the descriptive literature . A good exposition of those generalities , historical , social , and political , which are involved in the present war , and give it its importance , are still much needed . For example : the Greek Church question , and its bearings on the war , has hardly yet been stirred in any competent manner . Again : the whole doctrine of Panslavism , of winch the present war is but an exemplification , and the right intelligence of which is necessary for a comprehension of the relations of Poland and other parts of Eastern
Europe to Russia , is still caviare to most of us . Tho English are always slow in mastering generalities . With Anglo-Saxon stolidity they seize fast enough the plain fact that the tyrant Nicholas , a man with , a big stomach compressed by a belt , wants to get what he ought not to have , and is having thousands butchered to get it ; but of Nicholas , in the grander historical aspect of him as a man in whose person large principles and tendencies are incarnate , and who believes he has a " mission , " they have no conception . The French are far bofore us in this respect ; and their speculative literature of tho war is superior to ours .
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The students of Glasgow University have clocted tho Duke of Arqyive to succeed Lord Eqlinoton as their Lord Rector—the Duko obtaining a large majority of votes over Mr . Disraeli . Mr . Carjlyi-k was nominated , but was afterwards withdrawn . From the circumstance that the post has been occupiod for a series of past years by some of the most notable men in the country , tho Rectorship of Glasgow University is considered ono of the highest honorary distinctions in the country . The students are the electors , and , generally , the young men make a political use of tho occasion , and divide into two parties—the one with a Whig , the other with a Conservative
candidate . On one or two occasions—as when they elected Cami'iinxl , tho poet—they have had the senso to throw politics n « iilc , nnd select a man purely on the ground of his intellectual fame . They have missed a splendid opportunity of so showing their sense on this occasion . INIv . Ca . ki . yl . io is a man whose notions and phruBes at this moment visibly pervade our whole intellectual atmosphere ; and even many of those who delight in antagonising him , fight him with a mild detritus ol" his own principles and sayings . It is , perhaps , a huv of tho Jictivity of such n miin that ho shall stand ulooi from tho chance of honorary distinctions , uuch as baronetcies , invitations to
Windsor Castle , solicitations to stand for boroughs , and lord-rectorships of colleges . " He looks and laughs at a' that . " It is not the less to be objected to the students of Glasgow , that with the possibility of having such a man—a Scotchman , too—as their Lord Rector they should have so much as named the Duke of Akoyle . The Duke of Argyle is a meritorious young nobleman , with a cultivated mind and serious tastes—that is all ; his election is referable to local influence : and Glasgow University " returning" him displays the same faculties as Tavistock when Tavi stock elects a Russell .
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It deserves to be noted , as a fact signally illustrative of the present intellectual condition of the world , that at the present moment a number of able and highly-educated men are assembled in Rome , devoting their best energies to the solution of a question which they entitle " The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin . " Besides the Pope himself and the resident Roman ecclesiastics , some thirty-five prelates from different parts of Italy and from Germany , France , England , Ireland , and America , are busy , laying their grey heads together in order to frame a final settlement of this question , which has been left undecided until now . The result "will be that before the end of the present year , the one thousand millions of human beings who inhabit our planet will be furnished with definite instructions as to what they are to believe respecting the conception of the Virgin . There will no longer be tbat agony of suspense which has everywhere so visibly prevailed on this important subject ! Strange !
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It is hinted that . Cabdhstaxj Wisbmax , who is now in Rome , may be appointed Librarian of the Vatican in the room of Cardinal Mai * deceasedthe English Cardinal having the reputation of being the most book-learned man among the Cardinals . In such a post the Cardinal would have an opportunity of carrying into effect some of his views as to what kind of literature should be preserved , and what suppressed . Most probably , however , the appointment "will not take place , if it involves a residence away from England .- —Mb . Mackeady is coming forth from his retirement so far as to undertake a series of dramatic readings in aid of local charities in
Manchester and Birmingham . He is to read selections from the English poets in Manchester on the 27 th , and in Birmingham on the 30 th . Some go so far as to hope that he may once again tread the stage ; but this is not likely . —t-Mb . Dicjceks is to read his Christmas Carol at an educational meeting at Bradford on the 28 th of December—a graceful mode of serving a good cause . Lord Aberdeen is made a Governor of the Charter House—a foundation in which there sire many abuses to be reformed . —The announcement of Babnum ' s Autobiography , which we made last week , is , of course , creating a sensation .
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The recent reception at the Palais AIazabin of the Bishop of Orleans was interesting and notable in many respects . The Bishop disappointed a few and conciliated many by the generous elevation of thought with Avhich , in the name of the Church , he affirmed the divine origin and the immortal destiny of Letters , and resumed with glowing and graceful eloquence the services rendered to civilisation by men of learning even in Pagan times-The Bishop declared himself a humble link in the chain Avhich tvus destined to unite Literature and the Church , the Episcopate and the Academy . There were passages in the Bishop ' s address of so large smd liberal a tone , so full of the spirit of charity and kindness , that the applause of that select
audience could scarcely be restrained during their delivery . The composition of the address was in a style of scholarly severity tempered with a moat winning and persuasive sweetness : the unction of the priest merged in the sympathy of the man . Altogether , the Bishop ' s language was a surprise , a charm , a reconciliation . But it was all the more welcome and romarkablo that it was a bishop of Ultramontane rather than of Gallicnn tendencies ( and who was on the eve of departure for Rome , to support with the authority of his learning and influence that dogma of tne Immaculate Conception , which the Gallican Church disavows ) who protested so warmly and bo nobly in favour of the Pairan literature which n section of Ultrumotitanists would fain bivnish
from tho education of the youth of the nineteenth century , to give place to the Latin of tho schoolmen and a few scraps of Grudc from the Fathers . By the sido of the Bishop , who spoke of Plato and of Virgil n . s of men in some sort inspired , sat Count Montalkmuhrt , and M , Victor Cousin , the deserter from philosophy into the boudoirs of the seventeenth century , was gaily recanting his liberty of thought in the midst of a group of discarded and fallen ministers of impossible monarchies , and political apostates of ollbte rdstimes . Count Saxvani > y , ex-Grand Master of tho University and
President of the Academy , replied to the Iliahop of Orleans . Hi * reply would naturally , we might suppose , bo u dignified eulogy of tho new acadomician , and a luymiui ' .-i response to the priest ' s vindication of tho human intellect . Little do they know of tho colaricn that compose tho Forty of the Paluis Mazarin , who imagine such a reply ittj llii . s fn > m Count Sai . vandy . The speech of the ex-Minister of Public instruction vrns a tinsuo of feeble and <| uomlous ruornninaliona agiiin . st tho French Revolution , but ; for which , most assuredly , Count Sai . vandy would never have been even un exminister . Count Salvanuv insisted , by the way , on thu necennity of learning
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judge 3 and police of literat-ure . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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November 18 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER . 1095
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 18, 1854, page 1095, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2065/page/15/
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