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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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We hardly know how to express the feeling which fills our . mind at the thought of the death of Mrs . Nicholls of Haworth , the author of Jane Eyre , It is as if we had lost some one near and dear to us . And is it not bo , really ? Do not those whom God has blessed with genius come nearer , make themselves dearer to our hearts , than many of our own kith and kin ? To-day her death is announced—yesterday , we took part in a conversation concerning her works , and every one hoped for another book from her before the year ' s end , although she was married so recently . But a few short
months ago all the literary coteries were full of curiosity about her marriage . Now , she has gone " where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage , " but she has not gone beyond the range of thankful and admiring hearts that she has won . To most of these she is not dead , nor can ever dieshe has only ceased from writing . How different it is with that quiet household and the two desolate hearts to whom her presence was as daily bread ! Daughter and wife gone from them ! They are alone on the earth ; and to them her books are but the works of Currkr Bell .
Charlotte Bronte ' s career as a literary woman commenced with the publication of a volume of poems conjointly with her two sisters , whose lives and early deaths she relates so touchingly in the preface to the last edition of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey . In that volume , the best verses were hers ; and of the novels written by the three sisters subsequently , the best , by far , were hers—though we acknowledge in Wuthering Heights power of writing quite preternatural—in other words an abnormal , diseased power , very remarkable , but not exemplary . Jane Eyre was published at the end of the year 1847 , after the MS . had gone the round of the chief
London publishers , and had been rejected . To the discerning eyes owned or employed by Messrs . Smith and Elder we owe the publication of the most original novel of our day ; they had the gift to know it when they saw it a 3 beyond all question the best novel by any Englishwoman since the days of Maria EDGEwoBTH ,-and in passion and _ poetry ( though not in characterpainting ) , far beyond Miss Ej > gewoktet , or indeed any other woman , save , perhaps , George Sand . Shirley , the second novel , would not have produced so vivid an impression as Jane Eyre , even if it had been as good , because it was the second . Villette , the last , in the opinion of many critics , horeand ^ there gave promise of something yet to come nearer to perfection inl ; his department of literature than we are accustomed to read .
The Empire was in a bad state when the Emperor sought the applause of a " Roman Holiday" by descending himself into the arena , as if he had been a professional Gladiator . It was a terrible blow to the divinity which doth hedge a king ; a blow more fatal than fifty regicides . On a lower scale , but in the same suicidal direction , is the attempt of our aristocracy to secure popular favour by descending from its " halls of dazzling light" into the lecture-room , competing with popular lecturers . What would the Barons of England , " who could not sign theirnames ^ - have said to an aristocracy which , not content with making an extremely poor figure in the world of Letters ,
has finally come to present a still worse appearance in Mechanics Institutions ? Our old nobility looks very well in its Halls , Parks , and quiet House of Lords . If not a very beneficial Institution ifc is at least venerable , historical . But if it aims higher—if it desires to be what it seems—an aristocracy , it must undergo a thorough change in its training . An historical name or broad acres will necessarily command respect . But a name will not reason , acres have no eloquence ; and Lord Carlisle or Sir Robert Pjeel , who would assuredly throw George Dawson in the background at a county ball or election meeting , would assuredly sink into insignificance beside him on the lecturer ' s platform .
Sir Robert Peel has undertaken to lecture at the Marylebone Institution . We are glad of it for the Institution 5 but if Sir Robert thinks he has a vocation , it would be desirable that he should take his stand on something more intrinsically solid than his social position . What his ideas are on the subject may bo gathered from this programme : — programme
AN EYENING WITH THE POETS , With recitals of beautiful and powerful passages . SHAKSPEARE . As You Like It . Hamlet . Othello . Henry IV . MILTON . Description of character . 1 phyden , aoLJJSMiTir , johnson , btbojt .
POPE . War . Russia . Poland . The Prisoner , The Soldier ' s Grave , Victory , Liberty Tho Sen , The Navy . SOUTIIEY , JBYRON . Tho Storm , Shipwreck . Description of personal adventure Description of Scenery , &c , &c . To commence at Half-past Eight o'clock .
Is not this attractive ? What a fine fib wing incoherence it has , and ho it suggests a Victoria playbill I The Lecture was of a character accordant with , the " bill . " A few ol remarks on the old poets , some stale quotations in a stagey manner , an then the " Honourable Bart . " proceeded to narrate—it occupied an hour c so—the story of his shipwreck in the Mediterranean 1 Well , we laugh a all this . But ' the lecture-room was crowded , and the " Honourable Bart . was " vehemently applauded ! " Alas , for possible British democracy , is i hot but too evident that our cry to sweep aristocracy from Downing-stree cannot be very consistent while we entreat Honourable Barts . to be our lee turers too , and , on the plea of " poetry / ' to talk about—their honourabli selves !
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A ^ n , 7 , 1855 . | THEXEAJ ER . 329
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When last week we congratulated Psychology and its students on tin increasing attention which is paid to Physiology as the only true basis or which the science can be raised , we ought to have warned the reader against the source of danger which lies in the very method of the Psychologiststhe danger , namely , of facile hypothesis . An article in Blackwood thu month , and a very interesting article too , makes us aware of the danger . It is professedly a review of Brodie ' s Psychological Inquiries , but is really an original essay , in which , by the aid of very hypothetical anatomy , and some bold disregard of fact , the writer undertakes to prove that the proper seat of sensation is not in the brain but in the nerve , and that the brain is simply the organ of Memory . All instincts , appetites , emotions , the writer distributes over the whole nervous system . All the higher intellectual processes not included under Memory are without any organ , are , indeed , not conceivable by the writer as possible to be represented by an organ . He strangely adds : — "We can understand the cerebrum being the organ of memory ; at least we can as easily comprehend this as that the eye should be the organ of vision , or nerves spread through the hand the organ of touch ; each fibre or each particle of neurine repeats its peculiar impression . But if there is anything higher than memory in the mind of man , if there is any power of reason classifying the contents of the memory according to its own laws , we find it utterly impossible to represent this as acting through fibres or particles of neurine . The following passage we leave to the judgment of the reader : — There are few , if any , whq would bestow upon the lower animals the same immaterial spirit which we believe to be immortal in ourselves . There is no one who would deny to them the faculty of sensations ; we see that jvery many of them combine , with the noble sense of vision , some measure of representative thought or memory . Were it not the wiser plan , then , to admit at once that the vital organism in them is , to this extent , sensitive or conscious , rather than insist on it that sensation itself must imply a dualism of mind and body ? Our solution would run thus : —An . immaterial spirit , a higher principle of consciousness , assumes or takes upon itself , in man , what in other animals is the sensitiveness of the vital organism ; it feels in the nerve , it sees in the eye , it remembers in the brain ; but the still loftier , and especially human attributes of mind , have no instrument or organ ; they can only be described as the energies of the soul itself , exercised on the materials or in the organs of sense , of vision , of memory . . In spite of this unpromising passage , there is much in the article deserving attention ; especially what is said about Instinct as the simple action of the organism . Charles Dickens is the subject of a long and elaborate criticism in the same Magazine , and although it is difficult to say anything novel on a topic "¦ w ' hi chTfbr' ^" liinaiiy ~ y ^ ars ~ lTsts ~ 'toeeTr"'iTicessa . iitly - cLiacussedy—tlie . article ^ . 'will- 'be read with interest . Some of its opinions will excite surprise ; none more so than the writer ' s avowal of inability to see the humour of Captain Cuttle ! Magazine poetry is seldom the poetry which " repays perusal . " Out of one ' s teens , one assiduously avoids it . But Fraser contrives to make brilliant exceptions . We read the poetry in Eraser , and were not space sc exigent we would often quote it . This month there are poems by Matthew Arnold and Frederick Tennyson , which we should like to give entire ; nay , the Iatter ' s poem is short enough to insist on a place being found : — wiNns op spring . If sudden Summer shone with all her light , Who could abide her coming ? and what eyes Awaking could affront the flaming skies Of morning , and not tremble at the sight ? Slowly She bends unto us from the height Of her enthronement , and unveils her crown With sovran sweetness as She steppeth down ; Love shades her triumphs , Mercy stays her might . If , like tho frosts of Winter , Woo and Pain , And sharp Misfortune , like the winds of Spring , Were not , some flowers , most sweet in blossoming , Would not be gather'd in tho world again . Hope would not , like tho early primrose , blow ; Nor Charity , liko tho violet on tho plain ; Nor Faith , like the bright crocus dash'd with rain ; Nor Pity , like tho palo bells in the enow . Men would bo Gods in their unchang ing bliss , If Joy ' B midsummer zenith could be etill Unshadow'd by a passing cloud of ill—And tho high worlds unseen for light of this . But , if the star of Gladness rose no more , Self-centred hearts would harden' into etono ; Life ' s sweetest lights from good and evil thrown Rise , like the rainbow , 'twixt tho sun and shower . Very curious and Apropos is tho paper on <« Military Hospitals a Centurj
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 7, 1855, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2085/page/17/
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