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he runs rapidly through Greek literature to substantiate what has been so energetically put by Mr . Ruskin respecting the indifference of the Greeks to picturesqueness ; an opinion previously insisted on by Humboldt , and before Humboldt by Schiller , whose essay Mr . Cope seems to have overlooked . Mr . Cope has no scorn in his mind in thus bringing together the evidence : — We in these latter days hare learned to look upon the-wilder sort of scenes as those in which Natureputs forth her highest powers of attraction ; we have learned to prefer the ruin to the complete building , the mountain to the . fertile plain , the foaming rapid to the smooth stream , the rough , bare precipice to the level down , and to regard as the neplus ultra of the sublime and beautiful , the waste of desert glacier , ¦ walled in by its ramparts of towering rocks and peaks crowned with eternal snow , standing out in dazzling whiteness against the brilliant background of the Alpine sky . Far indeed am I from asserting that such objects are not deserving of all the admiration and regard that we can bestow upon them , or that they are incapable of exciting a genuine enthusiasm and love . I have not the smallest desire to Tun down
the mountains in any but the most literal sense of the words 5 only if every Englishman would bear in mind how completely , in such matters , be is the creature of education and association— -would consider what his feelings with regard to Nature would have been if Wordsworth , Scott , Shelley , Keats , Tennyson , had not written—if Turner and Stanfield had not painted , or Forbes , Agassiz , Sedgwick , and a host of naturalists carried their study of nature into the heart of her mountains—how easy it would have been for him , had he been born in the last century , to have pronounced Lincoln or Salisbury Cathedral barbarous , or to have trnproi ;^ either of the m by substituting a flat ceilingfor its groined roof—or , if he lived in 3 a belle France , to regard the long , sweeping , monotonous undulations , and featureless but fruitful plains of its northern and central districts , as the onl y true beauty in landscape—we shall , perhaps , learn to look with less scorn upon a people who , for all that appears to the contrary , regarded a chain of mountains in no other light than as a convenient natural boundary , or a highly inconvenient obstacle to locomotion , according as their domestic or migratory propensities happened for the moment to be uppermost ; and the sea less as a source of sublime and pleasurable emotions than as providing the readiest means for the importation of corn and colonial produce from . Egypt or the Euxine .
It is , indeed , seldom borne in mind how very much we are influenced by the poets , how much our emotions depend on these subtle influences of verse and imagery , so that we cannot look upon mountains , streams , sunsets , uplands , or avenues of stately trees , without feeling something which the poets have formerly made us feel . Mr . Cope is disposed to attribute the absence ¦ of picturesijueness in the Greeks to some social and ethnical conditions , ' * ' the interest of the enlightened and cultivated Greeks—poets , artists , and people—^ centred in man , his nature and actions , and the love of the picturesque was not . " But Englishmen in the age of Pope wwe equally deficient in this sense of the picturesque ; and all Frenchmen , until the time of Kousseau , were dead to the influence of such poetry as external Nature inspires in Rousseau ' s descendants . A Cowper , a Rousseau , or a Wordsworth , poets with deep sensibilities , and having those sensibilities affected by scenery , are enough to change the whole current of a nation ' s thought ; they make all hearers share their peculiar rapture ; they teach others to see ¦ with their eyes . Had & poet of the requisite sensibility led a lonely life among the hub of Greece , he would have taught the Greeks to love those lonely hills .
"We have not read Mr . Ellicott ' a essay on the " Apocryphal Gospels , " Mr . "Waddington ' s on the " Protestant Church and lleligious Liberty in France ; " but we can cordially commend Dr . Badham ' s very ingenious essay on the " Text of Shakspeare , " and Mr . Francis ' s pleasant paper on " Flyfishing . " The subject of " Coleridge , " treated by Mr . Hort , is too great to be opened in this rapid notice , and we content ourselves with referring the reader to the essay , on which he will form his own conclusions .
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CHRISTMAS READING FOR OLD AND YOUNG . We group together under this seasonable title a number of books , some of which are ostensibly published for festive , fireside reading , while others we choose arbitrarily to regard in that light , on account of their seeming to us peculiarly adapted to the time of year . First on the list we place a new story by the Author " The Falcon Family , " " The Bachelor of the Albany , " &c . entitled Clover Cottage ; or , I Can't Get In : a Novellette ( Chapman and Hall ) . This is a little foolscap octavo volume , - with illustrations by M'Connell , setting forth a narrative of an elderly bachelor ( Mr . Windfall ) and a charming young widow ( Mrs . Wily ) , who are at odds about the possession of Clover Cottage , a transporting little paradise in Hampshire , owned by the gentleman but occupied by
the lady . Mr . Windfall has invited a party of sporting friends to go down with him in September to the disputed Eden , and have a few days' shooting ; but June has arrived , and the widow shows no sign of leaving , and Mr . Windfall is unmercifully joked by his friends , who begin to suspect that the cottage and grounds exist simply in his own imagination , How he appeals to lawyers in vain ; how at length he goes down in the autumn to the spot itself , in company with his sporting friends ; how they invade the widow ' s house just at the dinner hour , and are right cordially received ; and how , finally , Mr . Windfall obtains possession , not only of the cottage , but of the fascinating widow also , the reader must find out for himself . The talc is pleasantly and amusingly told , though the dialogue is a little too much like that which we find in farces , and the characterization is somewhat conventional . The stage effect seems , indeed , to have been designed by the
" Tom Hood , " for thus he signs himself in his dedication , though-we \\ aZ it would liave been as well not- -, to ., adopt that distinctive cognomen eW cially as he does not give any intimation of his being the sojiT and no ; 8 , 1 father— -a mistake which the reader , might at first-sight-make , there hrin such things as posthumous works . Mr . Hood appears to have a fertile n but we should judge that he is still very young—at least , we hope so fovhl has much to learn . He gives one the impression of a gentleman fresh S college , mistaking his own new perceptions and experiences for things whiSi are new to others , and rather proud of his Latin and of his ability to nnS from Horace in Horace's native tongue . We are inclined , also , to object f his sentimentalisms ; but , when lie . writes in a more genial and natural stra we see some sparkles of the father ' s wit . More especially have we ' eriiovprt the essay called " A Wreath of Smoke-. a Rhapsodical Reverie over S Nightly Pipe , * Ex Fumo dare Lucem' "—in which the luxuriant dreamv fancies of the smoker float airily before our eyes , with all the volatile ( Trace and shifting outlines of the fumes that curl upwards from-the hookah Verv admirable , too , is the subjoined little poem , which is full of sly , y ' ' iovial humour , of easy , impulsive verse and unwonted rhymes :- ^ '
THE FOUR SEASONS-- —A MADBIGAL . " Ring a ding a ding ! In the early Spring " Wooed I the old woman , Wooed and wed her too , man ! - She was rich and old , And , if truth be told , I did wed her gold ! Veil—and would not you , man ? Ring a ding a ding How * the bells did ring When I wed in Spring ! In the summer days , "With the sun a-l ) lazo—Sickened the old woman ; As old women do , man ! Spite of draught and pill Grew she very HI . : Sick and " sicker" still AJ 1 the time she grew , man ! In the summer days , " With the sky a-blaze , : She got-worse always ! ¦ ping a dong a dong ! Autumn came eTe long ! Died the poor old woman ! Well— -what could I do , man ? Why , I put on black , And , as tears did lack , ' ; ' . - ¦¦¦ ¦ ¦¦ In a cup of sack Wetted mine eyes two , man ! Ding a dong a dong , With a funeral song Autumn came erelong ! Hing a ding a ding ! Xet us quaff and sing ! So died the old woman ! And for me and you , man , Left her wealth untold ; And this vintage old Of her guineas gold Cost me not a few , man ! Well , sue died in time ! . For by Christmas chime , Ring a ding a ding , We can drink and sing—We good fellows two , man ! King a ding a ding , Xet the joy-bells ring !
An idle hour may be pleasantly whiled away by several of Mr . Hood ' s sketches , which , we should add , are here and there illustrated by grotesque woodcuts , some of them marvellously like the father ' s pictorial drolleries , though for the most part they exhibit more executive mastery . Here is a shilling volume which , though it be . merely a parody , exhibits real genius and original power . The Song of Drop d Wathcr , a Lo ? ir / o /> Legend , by Harry Wandsworth Shortfellow ( iloutledge ) , i-s , as the render will sec by the title , a travestie of Longfellow ' s " Hiawatha , " wonderfully it mimicks the characteristics of that fine American poem . But this is not done irreverently ; for Mr . " Shortfellow " . expresses his real admiration for the Red Indian epic , and says he merely seeks to put forth a " sportive tritlc . " Drop o' Watheria a London thief , born in thekennels of St . Giles ' s of Irish parents , arid retaining something of their peculiar notions of the English language , birth h
while he is up' to all the ' dodges' and slang of the city of his . J-e knavish adventures of this worthy , from his childhood down to his scU-ilcweou reformation and departure for Australia , arc told in the singular verification of the original , and with an amount of humour , of rollicking furi , ancJ , oven of occasional tragic power and a sort of vagabond poetrv , imlicixtivc or no common hand . The knowledge of London life in its squalul and criminal aspects is remarkable . The dim alleys and thieves dens , the dirt iind shiue , the grotesque merriment and foul picturcsqueness , of Seven Dials rise before us in this London Legend . The author has the happy ivrt of touching P" - ^ without defiling himself . He is a master of slang , and uses it willi the most artistic effect ; but he docs not disgust the reader . He awakens oaf sympathies for a strango development of humanity lying all round us , yot cut off by a great gulf—not a morbid sympath y with crime , but a huiinii » 2 in / J regard for our outcast brethren . Here is his description of the birth 01 ws hero : — Downward through the darkening twilight , In the days long time ago , now , In the hist of drunken at ages ,
author ; for he prefixes a list of dramatis persona . Pen and Pencil Pictures , by Thomas Hood ( Hurst and Blackett ) , is a title which makes us fancy that we have floated back some twelve years or so , and . that yte have before us a new work by one of the brightest and most varioua-hued wits and poets whom the present century has produced—that we £ ? e a ^ ' ? to ° pon the jmges on some new " Haunted House" and " Bridge of Sighs , ' interspersed with the quaintest of conceits and the most preposterous of puns . Such , however , is not the case ; but the book , nevertheless , is worth looking into . When Thomas Hood died , he loft behind him a collection of works which will not die , and a son who bears his father ' s name , and exhibits something of his father ' s faculty . The volumo before ua u a collection of the literary productions , ia proso and verse , of the younger
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1218 T BE __ LJE A _ I > E B . [ No . 352 , Satoudat gaMM ^^ MB ^ MMMii ^ WMMBMMBMMaBB ^^ BWWM ^ MWWM 1 *** 11 * ' ********* ' ^^* 1 ^ ' *^ " ****** ' **^ ' ***** 1 " ** " * 1 ' ^*'"* 1 *^^ _ .. " **~~ - - '
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 20, 1856, page 1218, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2172/page/18/
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