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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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There arc many of our readers who -will be glad to v learn that the fourth and last volume of Auguste Comte ' s Systeme de Politique Positive has" appeared ; a volume which contains the Tableau synthetique de Vavenir humain , for the benefit of those who delight in arranging the Future according to systematic views , and who have accepted the Religion which Comte assures us he has " founded . " Into that vast subject we cannot enter ; we have neither space nor interest . Utopias from Vl . ato to Cabet have had but a mediocre charm for us ; and Gomte as the founder of a Eeligion is quite a different kind of personage from Comte the teacher of Philosophy . It appears , moreover , from the conclusion to this volume , that Comte finds himself in a dynastic difficulty : he is a Prophet without a successor . The
Religion is founded , the Catechism is arranged , the worship is instituted , and yet the Founder , now that age suggests the necessity of his appointing a " worthy successor , " declares himself incapable of finding such a successor . The three disciples of his Philosophy on whom his hopes were founded , have all refused to accept his Religion ; whereupon he calls them three Litterateurs—a name of reproach from his lips . He thus speaks of them : " A celebrated Logician was the first to proclaim the mental superiority of the new philosophy , especially in reference to Method . He was soon followed by the clever writer who , placed in the centre of civilisation , was better able to . seize the ensemble of a mission no less social than intellectual . After him came the young Hellenist , who created
the History of Philosophy in connecting it always with the necessary advent of Positivism . But although all three have justly augmented their importance by popularising the new doctrine , we can verify in their exceptional cases the impotence of the literary class to furnish true apostles to the regenerating faith . " The three writers alluded to are John Miix , Littre , and LEWEsf He was very proud of his colleagues while they propagated his views ; but when he shot ahead , and passed from philosophy into priestcraft , and they refused to follow , he saw that his hopes had been baseless : they were litterateurs , and he disowned them . " All three , "_ he says , "in spite of partial affiriities ^ which seemed to be decisive , have finally shown themselves incapable of surmounting their Protestant origin and their
revolutionary habits . Although he had nobly commenced the public appreciation of Positivism ,-the first of the three soon invented the tactics of opposing my philosophic foundation to my religious construction . . The second , some months after I had proclaimed him my principal colleague , abandoned threr Positive Society . Less incomplete than these two , the third , nevertheless , showed a more deplorable verification of the want of consistence peculiar to litterateurs by his irrevocable adhesion to the most despicable of all systems of theological hypocrisy . " What these gentlemen will say to being thus deprived of a succession for which they seem to have manifested no ambition , we do not know ; but it will form a piquant detail in the anecdotic part of the history of philosophy to narrate how the French Mahomet was in want" of an Axt , —and an ally ! - -. - _
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The last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes contains an article on the Zouaves , which will be read with considerable interest now those brilliant soldiers are almost as interesting to England as to Fx-ance . The article narrates the origin and progress of these regiments , and their fails et gestes . It was in 1830 , when General Clauses took command of the armee d'Afrique , that the two first battalions of Zouaves were formed . They were composed of the Arabs from the Kabyles , with a nucleus of adventurous enfants de Paris and officered by young Frenchmen of ability and tried courage . The
name of Lamoriciere is enough to show what these officers were . Since then , Duvivieb , Bessieres , Canrobert , Leflo , Saint Arnaud , and Cavaignac have commanded these troops . Their costume is typical of the union of the oriental and Parisian elements ; their habits of warfare are partly those of Arabs and partly of Frenchmen . They can do everything , and do it . They " climb like cats to fight like lions . " They can cook , sew , garden , bivouac , march , and fight better than any other troops in the army and their history , as here narrated , is a real romance of war .
In the same number there is an article , by John Lemoinne , on " England nnd the War , " in which the strong as well as the weak side of our situation is felicitously indicated . We have ft method of cure , ho says , which , excellent for robust constitutions , would be futul to one less robust ; and that method is our pitiless publicity , our inexorable insistance to know the whole extent of our disease . Unlimited publicity is , in itself , a proof of strength ; un peuple qui se traite aussi tfnergiquement est sHr cfe . se rclever . Ho points out how utterly unprepared wo wore for the war , how unwilling the ministry was to go to war , how nothing but national feeling forced the Ministry by " pressure from without , " and how much more national the war feeling is in England than in France . Ho docs not sny that the French pcoplo nro not possessed with this feeling , but ho says they fire less so than the English . Wo believe it is nearer tho truth to say the French people are not at all enthusiastic about
the war . He attributes the difference to our gigantic publicity . In France there is no such thorough filtration of news , down to the lowest classes , as in England . With us every cottage finds the name of one who sat at its hearth become a part of history . History no longer confines its dignified narrative to the exploits of generals and mighty names . The common soldier has his chronicler ; very often the common soldier is the chronicler himself . The people has ceased to be anonymous . Mj . Lemoinne tells the old story of our wretched military organisation and our splendid military
heroism . If the system is miserable , the race is matchless . The system is a bureaucracy , and M . Lemoiotse is justly astonished that the most progressive people on the earth should be so obstinately attached to its conservatism of old trivialities . He would leave us the Lord Mayor ' s coach and the Speaker ' s wig , if we could be satisfied with them and not demand the conservatism of more pernicious remains of the past . He sees , however , that our conservatism , in many directions , is all of a piece with our constitution . Ours is an aristocratic country ; this renders purchase in the army possible , and rising from the ranks impossible .
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However the war may affect Literature during the coming year , it is pretty certain that we have already outlived the tremendous rush of " Books on the War . " That subject is tolerably exhausted . Russians and Turks , the Crimea and the state of the Danube , need no more slip-slop and compilation . The money we have to spend on books may be spent on good books . The time we have for reading may be given to what is worth reading . Even Philosophy may hold up her head again ; her placid countenance will be welcome . Nay even Psychology seems to have taken courage , for we learn that Hekbeet Spencer has at length gone to press with his Principles of Psychology , a work many readers of this journal will look forward to with unusual interest .
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M . Ponsard , the dramatic writer , the author of Zucrece , Charlotte Corday UHonrieur et VArgent , Agnes de Miranie , one of the chiefs of that Scale du bon sens which may be generally described as a bourgeois-classical school , being less a reaction in favour of the pure classicists than against the romanticists , has been elected as the successor to the vacant chair of M . Baotjb-Lormian in the French Academy . M . Baour-Lormiait was an academician ofthetime of the First Empire , a translator of the Bible and of Tasso , and , we believe , the author of a tragedy , but better known for his unpublished epigrams . The competitors of M . Ponsard were M . Emile Augier and M . Liadieres . M . Augier having had the misfortune to occupy a quasiofficial position under the present-regime , only obtained five votes ; M . Liadieres , also a dramatist of some distinction , seven ; and M . JPonsabd , sixteen .
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RICHARD LALOR SHEEL . Sketches , Legal and Political , by the late Right Honourable R . L . SJieil . Edited , with Notes , by M . \ V . Savage . Hurat and Blackett . At a party at Lady Blessington ' s the conversation turned upon fame ; the conversation was interesting , for the majority present were famous men . " For rny part , " said Mr . Benjamin Disraeli , " 1 have always entertained a profound indifference to posthumous fame . " " Ah , " said Mr .
S L , with a severe sneer , " you can afford that contempt—you are so sure of immortality , Mr . Disraeli ! " It seems to us that this suggests the method by which men determine the old question of the value of fame . A Napoleon now and then appeals to posterity ; a Wagner here and there , being unintelligible to his contemporaries ,, composes for the benefit of the longer ears of a more distant epoch . But the average famous man lives in the present and for the present—with as small a conception of posterity as he has of heaven . The idea of after-judgment upon him never crosses him ; he would shudder if he thought his works or de * eds were to be criticised apart from Mm—separate from the influence of his individuality . And of the great mass of those who obtain eminence it is only fair to judge of them by the estimation in which they were held in their own time . A man ' s book is but a moderate and modified revelation of himself : for instance , what rank would Dr . Johnson hold now-a-days , if we were to judge of him merely by his writings ? or how ridiculous would appear the Whig party ' s exaltation of Charles Fox , if we were to look mereJy to his speeches and bit of History
instead of to his enormous personal inflnence ? In the cases of those— -mid Richard Lalor Sheil is among them—who , conscious of their deficiency in that strength which carries a name into the future , lmve alone laboured to be the personages of the hour , a great injustice is done by the fussy executors who insist upon disentombing the notoriety nnd protruding pleas for fame . Sheil was known simply as an Irish politician and a House of Commons debater ; he delighted m his reputation in these capacities ; and , being dead , his friends come forward , uninvited , and to show what an admirable person he wns—reprint his mngazine ar « - cl ! Here , in these two wretched volumes , nro some sketches he wrote when he was about thirty ; in very large type , but still very poor stuff , and
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Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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March 24 , 1855 . ] THE LEADEB , 281
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Mr . Thackeray ' s Lecture on Humour and Charity , delivered at theMary lebone Institution on behalf of Angus Reach , may be counted among the happiest appearances of our great humorist . He might have taken for his text that admirable saying of Vauven argues , " Les grandes penstes viennent du coeur . " That peculiar quality of the Anglo-Saxon genius which we call humour , and which is . so little understood abroad , has never , > ye thinkj been so perfectly denned as by Mr . Thackeray on this occasion : " a combination of wit and love . " " ~ —
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), March 24, 1855, page 281, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2083/page/17/
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