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Criiics ara not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make lavro — they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .
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Man ' s incessant ambition is to be a Prometheus , and for the most part he succeeds only m being a Frankenstein ; to create seems a necessity of his nature , and having created some monster , he flies from it in terror . This creative activity Las peopled ( and desolated . ) the world with Gods and Devils , Kobbolds and Witches , Fairies and Imps ; but of them it is not our present cue to speak , we have minor offspring of the creative faculty to deal with in the shape of the Entities named Maladies . Who does not talk of the Gout flying to his stomach as if the Gout were a winged spirit , or of Fever attacking Jokes , as if Fever were as distinctively real a " party" as Jones himself : one who not only attacks , but must in turn " be attacked " by the skilful Medicus ? Jones then becomes the imaginary theatre of a terrific combat—Fever versus Medicus—with the prospect of a coffin , and the certainty of a long bill !
It will be said , perhaps , these are but figures of speech . But nothing is more dangerous in science thau a figure of speech , owing to the tendency of man to realise abstractions , and to believe in the reality of his own figments . Figures of speech are still to many , and were once to all , expressions which indicate profound belief in the entities named . The slow results of Science are gathered into the one simple formula that every organ has its function , and every disease is a disturbance of one or more functions ; but this formula would have been utterly incomprehensible in the early stages of our history , when every malady was regarded as the anger of a Deity—when the arrows of the plague came from the clanging bow of the offended Apollo—just as in our own nineteenth enlightened century the Magi of our
Church have ascribed the cholera to the anger of Heaven , and the potato blight to the Maynooth grant . Medicine , indeed , spoke from a tripod ; the first physicians were the priests , who acted as mediators between the offended gods and the stricken patients Ifous avons change tout cela . To priests we leave the cure of souls ; the cure of bodies is undertaken by Colleges of Physicians and patent-medicine manufacturers . Why ? Because the diin perception of some relation between organ and function early arrested attention , and no sooner was attention so arrested than the offended deity faded from the field of vision . One of the most interesting chapters in the history of Science is that which traces the gradual secularisation of the study of medicine ; and we close this somewhat
long preamble by directing tbe reader's attention to an admirable sketch of that history given in a recent number of the Revue ties Deux Mondes , in an article on the " Life and Writings of Hippocrates , " in which the writer , availing himself of the recent publications of Littre and Dakemberg , presents an amusing as well as a philosophic view of the state of medical knowledge in the days of Hippocrates . Curious it is from our modern standing-point to sec Hippocrates grieving that tl the ancients" had already exhausted all that was grand and beautiful in scientific discovery , leaving
nothing for him and his contemporaries but such small gleanings as the stubble of the times might afford ! The old story ! No age is ideal to itself . And yet there is this difference to be noted between the present and the past , namely , that wo of the present having such unmistakable evidence of Progress , arc prone to mingle with our retrospective admiration a prospective enthusiasm , which to the men of the past would have seemed unjustifiable . We are no more satisfied with To-day than Yesterday was satisfied with itself ; but we To-day , while looking back on the Yesterday , also look forward to the Morrow .
In this article , from which we keep wandering , there is , among other piquant matters , a passage on the Food of the Ancients , which we must borrow for the reader ' s amusement and astonishment . The common notion is that the nncients'were much simpler in their dishes than we are—perhaps so , at least in earlier days—but , as we learn here , their viands were more various ; for , besides the domestic animals and the game eaten by us , they ate many animals we never think of touching , except in the lost extremity . They did not disdain the hedgehog , the donkey , the cat , the dog , nor that horseflesh which , as our school-geography used to tell us , " is publicly sold in the markets of Norway , " and Avhich Isidoiie Gkoffuoy Saint-IIilajre
has recently declared to be eminently nutritious ; nay , what is more , they considered dogilesh to bo equal in nutritive value to chicken , and placed tho donkey on a par with tho ox . Pork they considered the most indigestible of all , and fit only for artisans and athletes . It would bo difficult to persuade John Bull to dine off" a sirloin of donkey , or to nsk the waiter to bring him " ribs of dog with fried toadstools , " so strong is prejudico : we eat oysters , and a few other molluscs , and shudder at the mention of snails . We eat mushrooms and truffles with gusto , and believe all other fungi to be poisonous . Nor can Famine itaclf displaces our fenrs . Had the Greeks better digestions , or were their dogs and donkeys more succulent than ours P
In tho same Jicvue there is an article on the English School of Art in the Grande J ? xpo . ritio ? i , written by Gustave Pjlancue , and containing n series of judgments on our painters which will interest English renders , even whore moat violently in contradiction with English opinions . Tho tone is magisterially arrogant , na usual with Gustavk Pjlanchij , but some of tho criticism
is clear-aighted enough . A review of Jean Rbtnaui >' s attempt to reconcile Philosophy and Religion ( in his recent work Terre et Cieiy will interest speculative readers , who may also be referred to the article on «* Ea Philosophic Spirjtualiste" in the Bevue Contemporame : not that we commend this latter article for its opinions , or for any substantive value it possessesj but it serves to show some of the currents of thought in France at this moment . While touching thus allusively on speculative philosophy , we may notice , for the benefit of certain readers , the appearance of Herbebt Spenceb ' s Principles of Psychologrj r which now lies on our table , and of which , in due course , we will speak more precisely ; but many will not need to await our notice , and for them it is enough to mention the publication .
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Some weeks * ago we alluded to an announcement of a Russian Reviewunder the auspices of the distinguished exile Aiexandbe Hjebzen . The first number will appear next week , and the spirit of the Review may be judged by the announcement of letters from Victoh Hugo , Mazzini , Michelet , and . Pkoudhon . M . Louis B . canc has , we hear , promised an article for the second number , and M . Hebzen has received from Russia a collection of unpublished poems of Pouchkinb and Lermontoit , which until now , thanks to the Russian censorship , have never seen the light of day . This Review will possess an interest of curiosity only for English readers , as it is printed in Russian exclusively : but the existence of such a propaganda marks out the latent perils ^ of Russian " stability . " What if Russia herself , and not France , should be the herald of the next revolution in Europe ?
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THE NOVELS OF M . HENDRIK CONSCIENCE . The Curse of the Village , and The Happiness being Rich . Two Tales . Lambert and Co Veva ; or , The War of the Peasants . Lambert and Co . The Lion , of Flanders ; or , The Battle of the Golden Spurs . An Historical Romance . Lambert and Co . From one of the prefatory puffs attached to these translations we gather two important facts . First , that the revival of Flemish literature took place in
the year 1830 ; and secondly , that M . Hendrik Conscience is the chief among the " writers by whom this amazingly recent revival has been brought about . These two facts explain the otherwise unaccountable notoriety , hi the way of foreign translations , which the books placed at the head of this notice have obtained . A national literature which is only a quarter of a century old is a curiosity in Europe , and the chief man connected with the literature is necessarily , in virtue of his position , a curiosity also . He is the Infant Phenomenon of the world of books , and he gets notice accordingly in
all sorts of right-seeing quarter ^ . Apart from the exceptional circumstances which surround him , M . Conscience cannot , as it appears to us , lay claim to any special attentions from the reading public . He has a new literary stage and new literary scenery at his disposal ; and if he could add to these new actors and actresses , dressed entirely in a costume of his own devising , and speaking sentiments of his own inventing , he might , as times go , really and truly start a new school . This , however , is exactly what he cannot do . He is not an original writer . Flemish names , customs , and costumes are plentiful enough in his novels ; but there is no such thing as an original character , or a new thought in any one of the three books which we have read for the purpose of writing this notice .
M . Conscience is most successful in his short stories . We have already , if our recollection serves us rightly , helped to draw attention to some of these as presented in a lately-published translation . They are prettily and simply written , and they afford the reader pleasant glimpses here and there at quaint local customs . They are happily too short to allow the author ' s want of executive dramatic power ( for he hits dramatic feeling ) in the development of story and characters , to be sensibly felt . Without any positive novelty of idea at the bottom of any one of them , they are still very agreeable reading—partly because they do not claim attention for too long a time , and partly because they do not require the writer to rise to heights which he is not strong enough to scale successfully . first list
Thus , the pleasantest of the books now before us is the on our ; for the stories , though tediously minute here and there , axe of the moderate length , to which , in our opinion , M . Conscience should always restrict himself ? The Curse of the Village is the grog-shop , and the story is written on the temperance side , with the usual temperance arguments . The second tale and the best , The Happiness of Being Rich , points quaintly and amusingly enough the old grovelling moral that people should be always content with such tbings as they have . With every disposition to see the best side of these stories , it is impossible not to be struck by the want of hfe-hke individuality which the characters in them exhibit . What Scott did with the poor people of Scotland—what Dickens does with the poor people of London —is what M . Conscience cannot do with the poor people of Flanders , lerhaps it is hard to try tho chief of the new Flemish school of novel writing bv the hiu-h standard of the chiefs of the old English school . Let us go a
little lower , nnd measure him by tho height of Miss kdgewort 1 or iymss Austen . Even then , comparing what he has brought out of the P °° P" * about him with what they brought out of the people about them , he ™™ before us sadly empty-handed . Testing him again by the * ™ n ^ J ^ dara * ho still loses . Balzac can see in one little provincial town of . ™ ffo m ?^ than M . Conscience can see , judging by what we have as yet rooa 01 writing ., in all Flanders . Is the tfonlwh popular char actor o 'tme or thwP fa ls there no genuine nationality in the . ?^« L mu S _ l ? xS classes it may be so ; but surely striking individualities mua h ssatf : S » , ^ = ? s ^ £ rH £ sk&z
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Auatrsr 18 , 1855 . J T g B __ A D E B ,. 795
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 18, 1855, page 795, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2102/page/15/
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