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The Christmas number of Household Words is a delightful contribution to the means of a genial fireside enjoyment of the present season . It ought to be read aloud in all families on Christmas Eve ; or , as Christmas Eve falls on Sunday , any other eve in Christmas week will do . We like the literary method or form of the number—that of giving to a number of distinct stories a common dramatic setting . This is Chaucer ' s method in the " Canterbury Pilgrimage ; " Boccacio also used it ; and , indeed , there is a natural fitness in it which will always make it popular . In the setting of the " Seven Poor Travellers , " and in the first story , told by the host of the night , we think we discern Mr . Dickens ' s own pleasant , and kindly , and poetical vein . The second story , that of the Jew " Acen Virlar , " is extremely good in a peculiar style of the fantastic ; and the fourth , or brokendown attorney ' s story , is one of the very best and most amusing little stories of plot and incident we have ever read .
WVmusfccall attention to the merits of Punch ' s Almanack for the newyear . The text is , as usual , a perfect mass of minute puns and facetiae crushed together in small marginal type round the illustrations ; and the illustrations themselves make the number , perhaps , the best that has been issued . Mr . Leech ' s versatility is here apparent—particularly his equal facility in the domestic or ih-doors form of the comic , and in out-of-doors scenery with a dash of comic human interest across it . One of the illustrations—representing two fellows fishing hopelessly in a heavy rain , in a dreary out-of-the-way place , with night coming on , both being miserably wretched , but the one anxious to go home , while the other won ' t hear of it—has been haunting us since we saw it . There is more real genius in that sketch than in many a much-praised painting .
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It-is a fact for these columns , devoted as they are to the news of the intellectual world , that , on the 8 th of December last , the Pope- and his assembled Cardinals and Bishops 'promulgated , in St . Peter ' s at Rome , the decree of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin-r-thus adding to the beliefs of tie world that new speculative ingredient the want of which has caused all our woes , all our wars in the East , all our political convulsions , and the authoritative decree of which can only be compared to the letting loose from the dome of St . Peter ' s and from the hand of the Pope of a subtle " and intense oil of such virtue that , diffusing itself through the atmosphere of our planet , it will restore health to the soul of the race and peace to all the relations of peoples . Yes , this proposition , that Mary was conceived
immaculately , promulgated on Friday , the 8 th of December last , is to be the universal solvent , the spiritual counteractive to all that is morally and politically wrong . Already the world moves in sunshine ; and we are all , whether we know it or not , sweeter men . Curiously enough , as the Catholic Univers informs its readers , the scene which took place at Rome on the 8 th was prophesied two centuries ago . It was prophesied that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception would be settled at a time when there would be a revolution in China , convulsion in Turkey , and wars among Christian kings —also , that it would be settled in a -week without a Friday . The fulfilment of the main part of the prophesy is obvious ; and as in honour of Friday , the 8 th of December , the Pope absolved all Catholics from the-usual fast on that day of the week , the rest may bo said to have been fulfilled too 1
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France has just lost one of her celebrated men , M . Leon Faucheb , for many years distinguished both as a statesman and a writer . The career of M . FAtfOUEB is in many respects typical of the manner in which Francediffering so much from our own country—xises the abilities of her eminent journalists , authors , and scholars . We know who are our " governing classes" in this country 5 they are the members of our aristocratic families , and the members of that wonderful class from which these families recruit themselves by marriage—our capitalists of the second and third generation . France has its " governing class , " £ 00 ; but its composition is peculiar . There ia a dash of the old noblesse in it ; commerce and capital are also represented ^ bu t the real strength of the governing class are those young men grooving up every year all over the provinces , and educating themselves with an express cyo to public life in Paris . I ^ ow Fattcimcr , for
example , was born in one of the southern departments , the son of poor parents ; but from the time he waa a pupil fit the school of Toulonse , ho looked forward to being a minister of state . Ho camo to Paris first in the capacity of tutor in a family , but soon be be gan to write for the newspapers . After contributing to the Temps , and other liberal journals , ho became * principal editor of the Courrier Fran fats . The publication of his important work on the social condition and political institutions of England ( Etudes sur VAngletcrrc , 1845 ) , raised him still higher in tl » o ranka of authorship . He wns immediately elected a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences—in which society'ho continued , till hia death , a vigoroxis expositor of the English policy of Frcetrado , and generally of English economics . In 1847 ho was elected Deputy for &heims to the Assembly . After tho Revolution of 1848 Rhoima elected
him again , and as his peculiar economical doctrines made him firm against the tide of socialistic reform which came in with the Provisional Government he was one of those who came into power during the Presidency of Louis-Napoleon . He waa Minister of the Interior -twice during this period , and in that capacity became very well known over Europe . The coup d ' etat , however , broke his connexion with Louis-Napoleon ; and , indignant at the subversion of Constitutionalism in France , he retired from office . lie was one of those who , since Louis-Napoleon ' s accession to the empire , have most boldly used the restricted liberty of sceech and writing allowed in
France ; and among his latest writings ate some articles on the war resources of Russia , France , and Great Britain , published a few months ago in the Revue , des Deux Mondes , in which he ventured , in a very independent manner , to review the finance policy of Louis-Napoleon ' s Government , more particularly its lavish expenditure in the vaunted public works now going on in Paris , at the same time testifying his continued faith in political liberty as the true strength of nations , and his continued respect for Great Britain as the single representative of such liberty in the Old World . Broken in health , he was on his way to Italy , when an attack of typhus at Marseilles carried him off .
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We have been much interested by an article in the Siecle of Monday last , bearing the signature of M . Loris Joukdan , singularly illustrating the fact that the passion for free speech is growing all but ungovernable among the best minds in Franc . On Monday last the annual meeting of the Institute of Mox * al and Political Sciences took place in Paris . The business of the meeting was not in itself very promising or spirit-stirring . M . Gtjizot , the President , was to read an ' enumeration of moral , political , and philosophical questions for Essays , for which the Institute have this year proposed prizes ; and M . Mignet , the Secretary , was to read an historical sketch of the life and works of M . De Gjsrando . That was all ; but the intellectual world of Paris seemed to think it attraction enough . Freedom , put down , everywhere else , had still a kind of refuge in the Institute ; and beref t of the normal means of utterance in Parliament and in
newspapers , the spirit of liberty might ooze out even through a list of subjects for prize essays and an historical memoir ! The meeting was ^ therefore , crowded . Nor were the audience disappointed . " When M . GkrizoT in a few words went through his part of the business , " says the Siecle , " the words of the orator , so firm , so well-delivered , so vibrating , recalled the memory of old parliamentary days ; and with what skill -was the least allusion seized by the audience , and how freely by their applauses did they detect the speaker ' s hinted thought , and , in a manner , develop it ! " Describing M .
Guizot ' s speech more particularly , the writer says : " He uttered a fine enlogium upon liberty . Yes , like those lovers who never adore their mistress so much as when she is absent , the statesman , the minister , who so long defied the Opposition from the tribune , and ended by rousing a revolution tvhiuh swamped at once tribune and orator , royalty and the throne , now , in his pacific guise and under palm branches ^ found noble and warm words to speak on behalf of freedom . O , fickle Athenians that we are ! In all this crowd that hung on the lips of this John Goldenmouth , there was not one who had not in his mind the recollection of the past , who remembered
not the immense unpopularity of this man , his haughtiness , his acts injurious to that very goddess whom he now invokes ; and yet we gave ourselves up to the charm of that thrilling and sonorous voice as it proclaimed the immortal principle , the imperishable rights of human liberty and genius . It has in old times been said of M . Guizot that instead of practising his maxims , he made maxims of hia practices . He is no longer the same man , and we prefer mucli the maxims of the academecmn to the practices of the statesman , especially when the former calls on the sciences to raise spirits degraded in the dust , and when ho affirms , ho -who knows it in his own experience , that a nation -which God has made free and intelligent cannot remain long under the yoke ofmatei'ial force . " The memoir read by M . Migstet , it appears , was no less full of tho spirit of freedom than that of M . Guizot . Under the form of an historical sketch of
M . i > b Grkaxdo , M . Mxonkt , according to the account in the Siacki pronounced a eulogy on tho much maligned eighteenth century , reminded France of how much she owed to tho spirit of inquiry then awakened , and , when he came to the year 1789 , spokowith filial gratitude of tlio Revolution . The state of things in Franco , as descr ibed in this article in tho iSidote , is indeed curious . Usually it is tho Conservatives , the partisans of force und power that vonerato tho past and cherish the antiquarian sentiment . In Franco at present , it is different . It is tho lovora pf freedom , tho opponents of the existing order of things , that have most of tho sontimont of tho antique . Only in tlio past cun liberty bo found ; hence these longing , lingering looks into the times gone by 5 hence tho odd event that the eighteenth conttiry , which did all it could to root out rovorenco for the post from vaon'a minds , is now itself a kind of golden ago dtuir to the memory o ( tho French .
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A work , entitled Portraits Biographiqucs e . t Critiques des Hommes da «« Qucrre tt'Orient , has just boon published in Franco . Tho author is M . Ajutiuod djjs Efi 8 , utT 8 , and from accounts of the work which wo have bcoxi , it appears to be decidedly superior to the catchpenny publication !) of n
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws— tney interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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1214 , THE 1 UIEE , [ 9 ATOBDA . T ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 23, 1854, page 1214, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2070/page/14/
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