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titose who are aequninted with Spmtoza a « d the Literature o # tbe subject ^ jjj- appreciate the full extent of such praise . Speaking of tie Nature of ^ gU , the writer says : — If Calvinism be pressed to its logical cousequaveees it either becomes an intolerable falsehood-, or it resolve * itself into the philosophy of Spinoza . It i » monstrous to call evil a positrve thing , and to assert that God has predetermined it , —to tell us that he has ordained what he hates , and hates what he has ordained . It is incredible that we should be without power to obey him except through his free grace , and yet be held responsible ifor our failures when that grace ha » been withheld . And it ia idle to call a p hilosopher sacrilegious who has but sy sttmatised the faith which , so many believe , and cleared it of its most hideous features .
The essayist himself eludes the difficulty , by declaring that Logic has no business- with such questions ; which is true in the sense of Logic having no sphere so extensive as to include the real data . He says that the answer to such questions lies in the conscience , and not in the intellect—that it is practical merely , and not speculative . But one may then ask : whose conscience ? Is my conscience to be arbiter , or yours ? or both ? We agree with him that " Life is too serious to be wasted with impunity over speculations in which certainty is impossible ; " and this cuts the metaphysical tree at its roots . Yet if the intellect has no answer for surfi insoluble questions as the origin and nature of Evil , we must be content to leave them unanswered , the answer of Conscience will not help us far .
** International Immorality" is a serious political essay , excellent in temper and in thought . " Self-Education" is a feeble essay , full of current commonplaces and judicious remarks , the publication of which was quite unnecessary and quite unprovoked . In . " The'rhysiological Errors of Teetotalism " writer undertakes to prove that alcohol is food , and not poison , as the teetotallers maintain ; and that taken in moderation its effects are beneficial , although taken in excess its effects are iatal . " The Decline of Party Government" is a luminous comment on this theme : — England has learned some rude lessons in the last twelvemonth . They are lessons she can afford to learn , for it is in her power to repair her errors , and to profit by her experience . Nothing like vital disease has been revealed ; all is sound within , but
the circulation is faint at the extremities . The wish to apply the necessary remedies is deep and general ; unfortunately , the malady is of a nature to make it very puzzling where and how to begin . The Military system , we axe told , is in fault , and the Civil system is at fault . Our systems , generally , are at fault . But we cannot cut out a bad system all at once . For these systems are part of the whole framework of society ; they are the growth of centuries : the men that work them are the most respectable people we know , and aie the near relations of thousands of other people equally respectable . Directly we set ourselves to inquire whom and what we are to blame , we find each head of our inquiry linked with some other head , and we lose ourselves in the vast range of thought which begins with a pilfering purveyor and ends with the British Constitution .
The writer surveys the history of the rise and decline of Party from Charles il . to our own day , when a crisis and a transition have produced the confusion every one deplores . " The Earth and Man" is an agreeable article of popular science , which opens with a sentence meant to startle , but startling only in its inaccuracy : " Nothing in the material world that comes under the cognisance of our senses is ever at rest . " He means , "is ever permanently at rest ; " for if there were no rest there could be no motion . The next article is on the important and now much agitated topic , " The Foreign Policy of the United States . " It is succeeded by the seven articles on " Contemporary Literature , " which preserve the old literary element , while admitting elsewhere the essay element , which of late years has , with questionable result , so completely engrossed the pages of all our Reviews . Altogether this is a solid and attractive number of the Westminster , although entertainment has been less studied than we think politic .
The British Quarterly , the Lomion Quarterly , the J ou rnal of Psycoloyical Medicine , and the new claimant on public attention , the National Review , must be left till next week : we have already outrun our limits .
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THE BIOGRAPHY OF A MUSEUM . The Louvre ; or , Riography of a Museum . By IJayle St . John . Chapman and Hall . Vbby often the difficult task of a biographer is to make a great deal out of what Mr . Morgan . —faithful attendant of Major Pendennis—culled " a little infumation . " The author of the book before us is entitled to general praise for the manner in which he has grappled with the less frequent historio-{ graphical difficulty , an cmbarras de richesses . The " . Biography "—as opposed to a merely critical account of the Louvre , inits character of Museum—was a good thought ; especially considering that Mr . St . John professes " a great objection to the vnguo generalities under shroud and and
which more classical writers conceal and persons things — tinder which , if he will pardon the remark , it is his own weakness to shroud not a little of his meaning , whenever ho docs not happen to have a fact ftJly and steadily in view . u Words , " he assures us , i like the atmosphere , flometimes adoru while they dim ; but light shininjr through a mist seems to < Hwn . Q from all sides , and not . from a particular source" — an effect of luminosity Which has never happened to strike us , in the thickest of metaphysical Or atmospheric fogs . On the contrary , we have always fancied it far less difficult to perceive the source of u ray poiu-trating a murky region than to distinguish the actual emanation of a prrvailing brightness . 'i'lie glimmer Of sense in the following passage , for instance , appears to us perfectly ttjatinct and uniniatakablu , in retuioet at least , to its origin : —
JV Other regimes ( than the Republican ) have tlu-ir advantages : ono ( rives glory , fOOtlier security , another subsistence , l- ' reedom is always perilous . A traveller runs i \ fUMtor ' chance of Htuinbling than a bedridden old lady . Hut tl »»« >» certain : that for iftananifcatntionH of human gcniiiH and energy we must look—not , it in true , to more fWfbitlQnt timcfl , for Asiatic and Negro umpires uro convulsed daily without producing $ ttewpoom or a nov-ahnned fetiah , —but to times when our race , weary ol routine
oppiesaaoa , weary ofr stereotyped feith ? weary of fettered industry suddenly « igbts an idea of high perfection , andsetar . the prow of its-vessel towards it . Art and Literature flourished amidst , the furious- struggles of the Italian repwMics ^ aw * perished when those struggles ended in slavery : Art and Literaturesflonrisfced imFi ? aHeey-Btt « HgUind , in Germany , im Flander&j wlulst . the fight for civil o » religions liberty wa » easried on . It is customary to talk of vaarious-eras , named from particular monarchs , which are supposed to owe their intellectual glory to the * said nronarchsi . But ' the truth is , that all those periods were contemporary with : or immediately succeeded the most terrible civil commotions , and owe their splendour entirely to the sfeock of ideas that necessarily accompanies ihe shock of arms — -where the prize i ^ not a bauble , bat the dearest interests of the' human race .
It is remarkable that Mr . St . John * who addresses his countrynaenin this superior style of language , and who tells them , moreover , that the object of Art should only be confined by the exhaustion of its means , incidentally furnishes an estimate of popular taste , about as favourable as . that given . by Mi . Albert Smith , when he observed that the majority of people who go to the British Museum would like Menuson much better if he rolled his eyes , and gave forth music from an organ concealed in . his body . In the real work of this volume Mr . St . John , we have already said , has acquitted himself with undeniable success . He has had the advantage of a sympathetic intimacy with M . Jeanron , an artist whose powerful views and decisive energy of action are best known- in connexion with the vast subject of the Louvre . It was to this gentleman that the Provisional Government applied , on the 24 th of February , 1848 , for a service which p robably no otber man alive was so well qualified to perform . The . Louvre was occupied by the Republican victors of the Tuileries ; and the grim garrison classwho
had been reinforced by numerous members of a , se patriotism , on such occasions , being of late growth , labours under the conscious disadvantage of suspicion , and is violently demonstrative on that account . But for the presence of such a man as M . Jeanron , invested with full authority , and able of his own superior nature to enforce it , the art-treasures of the Long Gallery ( which had been made a sort of barrack ) could not have escaped irreparable damage . " I regret , " says Mr . St . John , " not to remember the names of a "ood number of the young artists who courageously supported M . Jeanron ^ m this occasion . Two only come to my mindthose of Celestin Nanteuil , so well known by his romantic phantasies and the brilliant lithographs which have made him illustrious in the young school ; and of the regretted Papety , on whom the fatigues of those rough days probably acted sufficiently to contribute to his premature death , which deprived France of a man created for very high production . " The story of M . Jeanron ' s altercations with the bonnets-roiiges makes the chapter in which this passage occurs one of the most interesting in the book .
To begin at the beginning , however , Mr . St . John ' s epitome of remote facts and remoter fictions concerning the Louvre is an instance of that peculiar tact which we recognised at the outset of this notice : — Many buildings of far ancienter date still remain erect in various parts of the world , about the origin of which we have much more definite information than ajjout that of the Louvre . It stands there , in the centre of a capital which is rapidly assuming a more modern appearance even than St . Petersburg ; and yet no one knows precisely when it was first founded , and etymologists differ as to the real meaning of its name . At a remote period in the future , if the history of French dynasties be faitlifullv recorded , there is no doubt that Louvre will be taken to mean a Den of Wolves . " Tradition tells us , that in the time of the famous King Dagobert , who had such peculiar theories on the art of dress , there existed in the midst of the forest near the river , where now the palace stands , a little hunting-seat , from which his majesty used to cross over every evening in a ferry-boat to his residence in Paris j and it even ventures sometimes to go back a hundred years more , and assign the foundation of the Louvre to Childebert the First , in the beginning of the sixth
century . But , in truth , we know more about the early days of the Pyramids and the Parthenon than about the origin of an edifice which is not yet completed whilst I write , which every tourist has visited a hundred times , and along whose galleries the silken flounces of every Mrs . Till have rustled . It would be pleasant to feel sure that Charlemagne ' s educational movement began in the Louvre , and that Alcuin was lodged here , with many other learned men : —¦ What is known with certainty is , that the Louvre came by degrees to be the home of the monarchy in its feudal character—the head of all the fiefe , says Pasquier , that immediately depended upon the French crown . At a later period it used to be remarked that the King of France always had three residences in Paris .- the Palais , where he was indeed King ; the Louvre , where he was a Gentilhomme ; and the Tournelles , where he was a Bourgeois . architect and
The Essay of M . Vitet—who is dissatisfied with everything aa an satisfied with everything aa a courtier—neatly states some of the principal points of the architectural history of this palace ; but more complete details are found in the elaborate work of M . Clarao . By their aid we see the Louvre gradually expanding from a mere shed to a respectable house ; then starting up into the proportions of a feudal fortress ; gradually disappearing once more , but lending its deep foundations to support a more elegant edifice , which by degrees thrust out winga on every side ; and now , at length , occupies , in the centre of a vast metropolis , n space with wnicb of old many cities would liavo been content . I can only notice some of the incidents of t his wonderful growth , and shall not attempt to represent by words the various changes in the aspect of the palace or the general effect now produced . A great towor that long frowned threatening over Paris , and served for the purposes of grantl receptions and ceremonies , and was naturally accompanied by a dungeon , a treasury , and a « le * pot of archives , was built in 1204 by Philippe-Auguste ; and the Louvre , the remained almost exclusively
exactly « w it is described in the " Romance of Rose , " a feudal fortress for above three hundred years . Under Charles V . a few alterations were uiudo to lit it for a habitation . Ornaments were added ; gardens were mingicu with tho towers , walls , antl mouts ; and hero and there were scattered » ien ^ f *'""* aviaries . There was also a tower specially reserved for the king s library ; ttU « V ™* still remain n few manuscript volumes in the Rue do Richelieu , on which » ™ ^ ritwn theso words in letters of the fourteenth century :- "To bo placed on such «' £ ™ wards the river at the Louvre . " It appears certain that this library wnirewy opoiio . 1 to learned men-a tradition not . long preserved by the moiiarc-bj - All tReao additions , combined with the lu . *> conical roofs of the towers and tarr < ts covered with lead or with varnished tiles , and surmount ^ by «» " «»»« * X cVfortreT wentlivrooekH . gave a strange and almost fantastical « H | . eet ^ ^ ° q / qSwhie . i is well represented in an old V ^^ % ^ h" hT %£ t £ tJ 2 £ mail tlo . s I ' rtfs , and now preserved at bt . uenis . > " »> » ™«« , « ilt nt the tionaof the external aap . U of the Louvro from '" V ^ S ^ d ^^ roT orr inff to National Library the immense collection of plans , elevations , and views , referring to
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3 to ^ 7 , 1855 ff TTH £ g ! LEAl ^ EBi 851 ¦ ¦ . "¦ ¦ ' ¦ II III M ' ^^~|^ M »»|| I ^ I — ¦¦——^—^^—^—H . ^ I « II II 1 ¦ | . 1 ^ _ - II— .. nmm , , , . , ^^ ^^^ , _ III . Ml . ^ M ¦¦¦ MIMIM ^ ^ t ^ WW—i^—^——^— —
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Leader (1850-1860), July 7, 1855, page 651, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2098/page/15/
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