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Leader (1850-1860), 15th November 1856, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1096, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      We have many examples of Italians writing English with remarkable purity and elegance—some of them , Ugo Foscolo and Rtjfinx for instance , writing like the most accomplished Englishmen . ^ How well Pahiszi , Pra-ndi , Gam ^ enga , Arbivabene have written , and how rare it is to find an Englishman who could compete -with them in Italian ! The rarity gives all the greater value to the success of the Countess Pepoxj—by birth an Englishwoman—who , as our Italian letters inform us , has just published at Florence a translation , of Mrs . Somerviij £ e ' s Physical Geography ., a task requiring not only great mastery over Italian , but also some scientific culture . "We have carefully read the countess ' s translation , " writes our correspondent , an Italian , " and feel the greatest admiration for the talent with which she has surmounted the difficulty of rendering into a foreign language the scientific terminology of the original . Her style as simple , clear , and faithful ; and while her version shows thorough mastery of the language , she has not imitated that pompous exaggeration of expression , and swelling pride of phrase , to which Italians themselves are too often ready to sacrifice the simplicity of their sweet tongue . "

      Untitled Article

      Few subjects would more amply reward the conscientious labour of a philosophic writer than a really true picture of the condition of the working classes in Europe . The treatise by M . Le Play , which the present French Government has taken under its protection , and by that very act stamped the work with an indelible mark of suspicion in all tout imperial minds , is ably analyzed and exposed in the North British Review to which we refer all our readers , not simply for the object of ascertainining M . Le Pxat ' s errors , but also to read there some curious facts . Here is a sample on the Russian artele :- — ' ¦'¦ ¦ ' . . '' . ' ¦' . ¦ ¦ ¦ . ¦ ' ¦ ¦ ¦¦ '¦ ' ¦ . . v . ' ¦ ¦ • • ' V ¦ '• • '¦ ¦ - ¦ - ¦ ...

      A number of men , chiefly from the ' valley of the Oka , emigrate yearly to St . Petersburg as boatmen , porters , wheelwrights , and handy day-labourers generally . The term of their emigration is from April to November . About sixty or seventy join together in this association ; they form the artele—placing themselves under the control of an artelchick , a cloutchnik , and two starchi . The artelchickis the business man of the troupe ; he finds the work , and regulates the price of payment , &c .: the cloutchnik is the treasurer ; he keeps the accounts and the cash , pays the bills , markets for the artele , and does all that the housekeeper would do in large families ; while the starchi , men of weight and experience , are the magistrates of the association , controlling the artelchick and the cloutchnik , settling disputes , calming passions , and doing the work of citizen priests . These emigrant workmen do all the rough handy jobs in St . Petersburg . They are the porters and ironworkers :

      It is the tone of his novel which has been most offensive . While doh 7 his utmost to make every form of religious opinion ridiculous except h ? own , and while endeavouring to pander to the Mtterness already existin against free thought , the effect he produces on religions minds is well ex pressed by the reviewer in the North British . — The infidels ia the book are , we think , not so bad as many of the profess **/ rehgious people . An infidel might have written a considerable part of the book 3 called it "Hypocrisy , or the causes and consequences of religious belief" \ Ye kn of no work , written by an enemy of Christianity , tkat presents us with such mT favourable pictures of religious preachers and teachers .

      they load and unload boats ,, saw and deliver firewood , shape and-drive in the stakes for the foundations of buildings , and rough-dig gardens in the city and the suburbs . But their favourite employment is iron work—this being the best paid . They take their food in brigades 6 f from thirty to thirty-five ; the expenses are paid out of the common fund , and generally cost about fourteen francs a month each . Sometimes a woman is hired by the artele to do the cooking ; sometimes , and most generally , a traiteur supplies them with certain meals at so much a head . Tea , brandy , clothes , and private luxuries are paid by each out of hia own private purse ; but not much is generally spent in that way ; all else is paid by the association . Sixteen days are given to each member during the campaign for extra work , to be paid by extra wages , and at the end all the money is divided . It generally comes to about one franc sixty centimes a day , or thirty-six francs eighty centimes a month . Fifteen

      generally start together from the same village , making their own commencement . They borrow , says M . Le Play , 240 francs from a peasant in good circumstances , for which they pay no interest . But the peasant indemnifies himself by selling them a horse , worth ninety francs , at the sum of 115 francs . Each takes with him a certain amount of coarse meal or bread , and they go from twenty-five to thirty miles a day . They keep the horse for a week at St . Petersburg , at the common expense , and then sell him for thirty-five francs . All this time the wife stays at home with the father , or the eldest brother , if the father be dead . When the husband goes home again , rich , for him , he burieB his money in the woods . Untold heaps of wealth lie at this moment buried , no man knows where , in the forests of the Oremburg Steppes ; for as each man must be secret as the grave , for fear of pilferers and robbers , it of ten happens that the grave closes over his secret , and that his hard-earned gold lies to this hour mouldering in the ground .

      The man best fitted for such a work as the one we have suggested is Bieiil , whose admirable monographs , Land und Lezite and Die Biirgcrliche Geselschqft , were recently noticed in the Westminster Review . He has the requisite breadth and acuteness , without the passion of system-making , which perverts his countrymen , and without the inaccuracy and love of paradox which destroy confidence in Trench writers . In the same number of the North British there is a heavy , but instructive article , on " The Sight and how to See , " from which we may borrow this fact to astound the reader , namely , that in the crystalline lens of the eye of a codfish ( which is composed of a series of fibrous layers , one over the other like the coats of an onion , each fibre having teeth like those of a saw , and these teeth dovetailing into each other ) there are estimated to be no less than five millions of fibres , and sixty-two thousand five hundred million of teeth 1 Did you ever ?

      There is also a good article , grave and not satirical , on " Religious JNovels , the ineptitude and unchristian tendency of which the writer properly rebukes . He also justly estimates the low worth—intellectual and moral--of Perversion . If the writer of Perversion , is capable of learning a lesson , he will have learned from tlie unanimity of the graver and more auth oritative cr . t . cs , that the better part of th e public regards with unfeigned dwgust his coarseness and dishonesty redeemed by no remarkable ability .

      Untitled Article

      The " Photographic Portraits of Living Celebrities" which Messrs . Madll' and Polybank . are issuing , give us this month the portrait of Samtjei , Wabren—one of the best photographs of the series . The author of Ten Thousand a Year is the son of the Rev . Dr . Wabren , Incumbent of All Souls , Manchester , and was born in Denbighshire , May 23 , 1807 . He was originally destined for the medical profession , but did not complete his studies . He learned enough of Medicine to write the Diary of a Late Physician , which was commenced in 1830 , when ho was only three-and-twenty . In 1839 , appeared Ten , Thousand a Year j in 1847 , Now and Then ; and in 1851 , The ' Lily and the Bee . .

      Untitled Article

      COLERIDGE ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON . Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton . By the late S . T . Coleridge . \ A List of all the MS . Emendations in Mr . Collier ' s Folio , 1632 ; and an Introductory Pref ace by J . Payne Collier , Esq . Chapman and Hall ! To a certain class of readers the announcement of seven new Lectures , or notes of Lectures , by Coleridge , on the topic on which he was strongest , namely , poetical criticism , will be full of expectant interest ; and we do not think that expectation will be disappointed by this publication . But the public at large has by this time pretty well mad * up its mind not to expect much from Coleridge , and certainly this volume will in nowise alter that disposition . It contains very little not previously published—often with

      scarcely verbal differences , as in the following example , which might easily be multiplied b y reference to the " Literary Remains . '" In the-JJiograyMa Literaria , Coleridge writes : — " In times of old , books were as religious oracles ; as literature , advanced , they next became venerable preceptors ; they then descended to the rank of instructive friends ; a . nd as their numbers increased , they sank still lower to that of entertaining companions ; arid at present they seem degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every self-elected yet not less peremptory judge , "vrho chooses to write from humour or interest , from enmity or arrogance , and to abide the decision of him that reads in malice or him that reads after dinner . " Thiswhich , by the way , is eminently untrue , as any calm consideration will detect—is thus repeated in the Lectures now published : —

      In older times writers were looked up to almost as intermediate beings , between angels and men ; afterwards they -were regarded as -venerable and , perhaps , inspired teachers ; subsequently they descended to the level of learned and instructive friends ; but in modern days they are deemed culprits more than benefactors : as culprits they are brought to the bar of self-erected and self-satissued tribunals . If a person be now seen reading a new book , the most usual question is— " What trash have you there ? " . These Lectures have the Coleridgean tone , half-querulous , half-apologetic , and the Coleridgean impossibility of restricting ; what is said to the matter in hand : it is a mass of digressions ^ on Shakspeare and Milton , sometimes good , often poor , always apologetic . Of the good let us borrow . Here , for example , is a passage vyell worth repeating from week to week in every critical journal : —

      As a third permanent cause of false criticism we may notice the vague use of terms . And here I may take the liberty of impressing upon , my hearers the fitness , if not the necessity , of employing the most appropriate "words and expressions , even in common conversation , and in the ordinary transactions of life . If you want a substantive do not take the first that comes into your head , but that which most distinctly and peculiarly conveys your meaning : if an adjective , remember the grammatical use of that part of speech , and be careful that it expresses some quality in the substantive that you wish to impress upon your licarer . lieflect for a moment on the vague and uncertain manner in which the word ' taste' has been often employed ; and how such epithets as ' sublime , ' ' majestic , ' grand , ' ' striking , ' ' picturesque , ' &c , have been misapplied , and how they have been , used on the most unworthy and inappropriate occasions . This again is noticeable : —

      A second permanent cause of false criticism is connected with the habit of not taking the trouble to think : it is tlie custom whicli some people have establishe of judging of books by books . —Hence to such the use and value of reviews . Why has nature given limbs , if they are not to be applied to motion and action ; why abilities , if they are to lie asleep , while wo avail ourselves of the eyes , ears , and understandings of others ? As men often employ servants , to spare them the nuisance of rising from their seats and . walking across a room , so men employ rovie \ vs in order to save them-• elves the trouble of exercising their own powers of judging : it is only mental slothfulness and sluggishness that induce so many to adopt , and take for granted the opinions of others . I may illustrate this moral imbecility by a case which came within my own knowledge . A friend of xnine had seen it stated somewhere , or had heard it said , that Shakespeare had not made Constance , in King John , speak the langungo of nature , when she exclaims on the loss of Arthur ,

      " Grief fills the room up of my absent child , Lies in his bed , walks up and down with mo ; Puts on his pretty lookg , repeats liis woTds , Remembers me of nil his gracious parts , Stuffs out hia vacant garments with his form : Then have I reason to bo fond of grief . " King John , Act III ., Scene 4 . Within three months after ho had repeated the opinion ( not thinking for him self ) , that these linos were out of naturo , my friend died . I called upon his mothor , « i > affoctionato , but ignorant woman , who had scarcely licard the name of Shakespea re , much loss road any of hia plays . Liko Philip , I endeavoured to console hor , nna

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      Untitled Article

      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 Reviewa ¦ '

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      1096 THE L ^ DEK __ ^ N ^ 3 ^; Satijkda ^

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 15, 1856, page 1096, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2167/page/16/