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David . This is frivolity , but what is it to say that Milton " resembled Mamisin the sanguinary proscriptions of the Repuhlic ? " Were it not that we respect M . de Lamartine as a writer whose works have done as much honour to Prance as to himself , we should imagine that he seeks to impose on . the credulity of his French * readers . But he is above the imputation . He has merely criticised Milton without studying the history of the period in which Milton lived . Prom this injudicious appeal to obsolete ideas , we are glad to " fly to the desert" with M . de Lamartine , to discourse with him on those that dwell in tents , on the balm and beauty of Arabia . He tells the tale of Antar , sung long ago by Asmai , and known in England through Hamilton ' s translation . ToM . de Lamartine , of course , the events are historical . He realises them
in the prelude , and relates , in "the decorative" style , how Themadour , daughter of Amrou > had hair black as the night , eyes lustrous as heaven , a face like a rose , a form like a palm . And all the adventures of Antar are described , his feats , his marriage , his minstrelsy , his slaying of the lion , his heroic death—and these episodes rise into life under M . de Lamartine ' s hand . It would be well if he , or other writers , could naturalise in the West the glowing legends of the East , some of those wonderful stories which , in mere translations , are unreadable . Who reads the history of Hatim Tai ? Who has selected thefromantic fragments that are to be found amid the unchaste exuberance of " The Garden of Knowledge ? " Excepting the " Arabian Naght ' s Entertainments / ' scarcely any Oriental fictions are popular in Europe . Mir . G . P . R . James attempted to imitate them ; but his Gulnare was a
Columbine , and his . palace of the Jinn a mere jeweller's shop . Your true Orientalist does not load his branches with as many-bulbuls as figs , or his gardens with as many roses as atoms of light . The East is not all purple and gold , any more than the Red Indian is all paint and feathers . a ... : In ; , his ; ' tr ^ a % men ' t ; of'BQs&uet , as we have indicated , M . de Lamartine soars into analogies , uaattempted yet in prose or rhyme . His Bossuet is the successor , by ; the'title of genius , to Moses . But , with all this redundance , te writes many trtie and impressive things concerning the great Catholic orator , a Bellarmine in ' the pulpit . Among ingenuities of suggestion , we may instance his theory , which he promptly elaborates , that territories and cities influence men , as men influence cities and territories . Thus , Bossuet ,
born m a patrician province , abounded in pride , and wanted feeling , Dijon , an intellectual ¦ . 'but not an enthusiastic capital , produced St . Bernard , Bossuet , and Buffon , " men of broaze and mar ble , rather than of flesh . The first had Abelard for his victim , the second Penelon , and the third dissected all nature vvithout finding a tearj a single hymn of praise , or a deity . " That M , de £ amartiiie is not always equally elegant when equally bold 3 maybe inferred when we say that lie likens the two curls on Bossuet's forehead to the horns of a ( prophetic ) ram . , __ We have now indicated the kind of interest possessed by M . de Lamartlne ' s third volume of Memoirs . The biographies abound with graces of style and fancy , and though in great part apoeiyphal , have none of the dulness which often accompanies didactic accuracy .
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HISTORY OF GERMAN PROTESTANTISM . Internal History of German Protestantism since Uie Middle of the Last Century . By Dr . Kahnis . Translated from the German by the Rev . Theodore Meyer . Edinburgh : T . and T . Clark . As naturalists tell us that the animals of the Old World are represented by analogous , but not by identical species in the New , so the various forms of religious opinion amongst us are represented by corresponding but not precisely similar forms in Germany . The Anglican Churchman is ipso verbo a purely English product ; but his species has its German analogue in the extreme Lutheran party , which has been urged into a rigid and vehement
assertion of its peculiar tenets by the unsuccessful attempt of the late and actual Kings of Prussia to effect a union between the two great branches of German Protestantism known as the Lutheran and Reformed Churches . The opinions of the "High " Lutherans concerning the authority of the Church and the efficacy of the Sacraments , resemble , with a difference not , let us hope , absolutely fatal , those of bur more geographically favoured Anglicans , and among the other indications of kinship , a certain arrogance of tone is not wanting . To this extreme Lutheran party belongs Dr . Kahnis , the author of the compact History of German Protestantism of which we have the translation before us . His . opinion as to the " rule of faith" may . be ' gathered from the following observations : — °
Kahnis Little book is written , we may recommend it to him , in the absen ce of better and equally accessible books on the same subject as a useful and com pendious survey . The information that can be given on so great a subjects about three hundred duodecimo pages is necessarily scanty , but it is render ^ ^ -necessarily so by an unwise expenditure of space on gossiping biographical details , which ought to have noplace in a rapid historical sketch Dr Kahnis seems , especially , tempted to give such details when they are disad vantageous to those whom he regards as heterodox . An example of his verv bad taste in this way is his gratuitous mention of a private , and , as he thinks reprehensible relation of Sehleiermacher ' s in early life . The other clefeS which might be pointed out in the book are chiefly theoretic , and will not bp recognised as defects by those who share the author ' s theological position wish criticism could here
We our stop , but the injury that is constantly beinodone to the reading public by the issue of defective translations , renders it a duty for reviewers to allow no case of the kind to pass unnoticed . The Rev Theodore Meyer , as we gather from his preface to his translation , is a Ixerman ; it is not surprising , therefore , that his English should be thickly inlaid with German idioms , but it is surprising that publishers who risk large sums on the reproduction of foreign works should not be more careful to secure a respectable quality of translation . Throughout this volume we are constantly meeting with such sentences as these : " For I know as little as nothing when I am told that some one has , however openly declared , twenty-two years ago , for something by which I believe , even to-dav no one knows to thznk of anything definite and distincty as little as twenty-two years ago . . . . "I don ' t observe almost anything at all . " . . ¦ Spmozas substance had no personal life , without the things , no personahty , " &c . &c . l
Translators , as a class , seem to want impressing with the wholesome truth that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well . They are " brokers in the great intellectual traffic of the world "—a function not so high as that of the producers , but one which it is of manifest importance to have carefully and honestly fulfilled . J
To go thus immediately back to Scripture , appeals , at first eight , as the truly free proceeding , and yet , at the same time ., truly bound ; in one word , as the : truly Protestant proceeding . But if every Protestant divine were to expound v Scripture in his own way , were himself to form the doctrines , and to snaps their building according to his own method , —what would be the result ? A chaos of stand-points atomiptically crossing one another , with which no Church , no sound science would he possible . Behind this apparent objectivity , an unbounded 3 ubjectmty is concealed . Men so rich in . intellect and spirit as JBecJc , must not influence the opinion oa to what the stand-point is in itself . If the Protestant CnuroU calls the Scriptures the rule of the doctrines of faith , it does not thereby Say that Scripture is the source of them . Even before the booka of the New Testament wore mitten and collected , there existed in the congregations a consciousness of faith . It was founded upon the oral word of the Apostles , and very early , according to the Confession at Baptism , assumed , the form of rules of
fcuth , Tviuoh wore regarded aa the sum and substance of both , the oral and written - wopd . The first JOogmatik ( Qrigen on the Fundamental Doofcrines ) proceeds from : $ to rule of the faith . Thie rule of faith is , for the Evangelical Lutheran Church , » «® r » Confession , cf which she is convinced that it is at one with tho confession of - ^ £ ^> * ^ CJl urob , M * deolared in the Augsburg confession , at tho close , and in the formula concordiae , at the commencement . Every dogmatik has anew to fo ^ pa ™ the doctrine of the confessions with tho rule and measure of Scripture ; r *?^ b * S ' * " ¦ a floi « atifio manner , to evolve the confession , but not to produce Mtffe ^* 5 ffl * * tBoW ' vaa > y tllftt tho argumentation fro m Scripture comes ! S ^ ffl ^^ * " WJ 1 * * confession of the Ohuvch , huiumuoh as it is , after all , 2 ? l ° ! Lf' -W » V without prejudice to tho rights of Protestantism and ^ f ^ LTtT ^ fi ^ ' from our divines , that they shall nob consider their own opinion to t ? O ; infomble , while they assert the fallibility of tlw Church . Having tlMw forewarned the wader of the point of view from which Dr
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ALBERT SMITH OX ENGLISH HOTELS . The English Hotel Nuisance . By Alttert Smith . David Bryce Mr . Albert Smith is determined to lay the public under obligations to him . Not content with going up and down Mont Blanc with them more than twelve hundred times , he now comes forward gallantly to fight the battle of his home-travelling countrymen against their own Innkeepers . In a gay little parnpblet , boldly called " The English Hotel Nuisance , " and modestly sold for no more than sixpence , he exposes all the most striking defects of the comfortless and expensive Hotel system of this country , and briefly and sensibly suggests the test means of reforming it . The pamphlet is written with delightful gaiety and good humour , with extraordinary acuten ess of observation , and with an honest , downright contempt for all clap-traps and conventionalities which it is truly refreshing to meet with now-a-days . No matter how venerable by long custom hotel nuisances may be , tie
unerring- " bull ' s-eye " of Mr . Albert Smith flashes detectively upoiijthem all , from the bed-chamber to the coffee-room . He has a passage about soap at Inns which will awaken a chorus of sympathetic groans from travelling readers all over the country . He gives a ground-plan of a large Four-poster in a small bed-room , wliich is one of the most awfully truthful and suggestive works of practical Art that we have looked On for years past—and he winds up with a perfectly bewildering model of what a wine-list ought to he , copied verbatim from the famous carte of " The Three Moors , " at Augsburg , and giving the drinker a choice out of something like two hundred varieties of wines . We refrain from making extracts from a pamphlet which ought to be , and will be , in everybody ' s hands . It is enough if we announce its publication , and thaak Mr . Albert Smith for a small work which docs great credit to his good sense , humour , and anxiety to help the effecting of a most important social reform . ' -
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« THE HOLLY TREE INN" AT THE ADELPHI . A one act sketch , founded on the exquisite child romance with which Mr Dickens has illuminated the Christmas Number of " Household Words , " was produced on Monday evening at the Aidelphi . The Times has expressed its astonishment that a piece so excellently acted , so well put on the stage , and so original in its character , should have met with so cold a reception as that which the audience awarded on Monday night , and on successive evenings as well . We take the explanation to be that , though Adelphi audiences arc not generally very delicate or subtle in their critical perceptions , they have , on this occasion , instinctively felt that the beautiful creation of Mr . Dickens's genius belongs entirely to the domain of fairyland—to the very outskirts of humanity , fantastically and ^ delicately tinted by a sort of Aurora of subtlest poetry and feeling . Tlie spectators therefore resented , or but frigidly received , the attempt to vender tangible what ought to be kept sacredly within the limits of
fancy . > We have already had occasion to remark , in connexion with another version of this remarkable tale , that the clement of which stage children are most devoid ia childhood : and , while acknowledging real cleverness on the part of Miss Cuahoock and Miss Manning who played tho infantine lovers , we must apply tlic same observation to them . It is always painful to us to ssco those who ought to be still in possession of their childish freshness nnd innocence , exhibiting all the alangy knowingnesa and jaded training of tho stage . We wisih , moreover , that the instructors who have had the training of tho Adklphi ohildren had paid a little more attention to their aspirations , and spared us the annoyance of so frequently hearing reference to \ Vrry . " Of Mr . WionsTBR ' s Boots we may speak in high praise . The acting wiis I'ftt 11 " ral , subdued , humorous , touching , and steeped in emotion . Tho piece , too , was well manufactured , with a skilful introduction of a good dcnl of' the descriptive writing of the Christmas Number ; and tho scenery wna welt painted and effective .
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HO THE LEADER . j ^ fo . 307 > Saturday
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 9, 1856, page 140, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2127/page/20/
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