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Leader (1850-1860), 24th October 1857, Edition 1 of 2, Page 1024, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      The Edinburgh Revietc opens with , an article on ' Spedding ' s Complete Edition of the Works of Bacon / which is in every respect a striking contrast to the last paper that appeared in its pages on the same subject . ' . It-is ' almost as dull and wearisome as Macatjlay ' s essay was brilliant and attractive , and , though only half the length of the latter , will be read through only by those who are really interested in the subject . In the first place , the paper wants connexion and arrangement , tie little plan there is being worked out in a dull

      wandering , fragmentary manner . While a good deal of detail is introduced , this is too loose and unconnected to produce any broad general effect . The writing wants throughout the illumination of large views , aiid is deficient in anything like sustained grasp , vigour , and insight . Tlic writer undertakes , for instance , to show how Bacon ' s great work arose and shaped itself in his own mind , but lie does this in the merest external and superficially historic way , as that he wrote a first sketch at such a date , and another a few years afterwards , -without attempting in the least to trace liow his mental gaze gradually expanded over the field of knowledge as he rose to new heights of thought , until at length the vast panorama of possible science , the new and illimitable fields of undiscovered knowledge , hurst upon his view , the

      majestic prospect kindling that cool and massive intellect into poetic fervour , ay , even into prophetic inspiration . The article is deficient , too , in the ordinary graces of good composition , the style being at once heavy and careless , abounding with such sentences as the following : — " Moreover , in order to estimate Bacon ' s merit as regards this philosophy , we must not regard as most important and essential on his method that which he so regarded . " The best part of the paper is the latter , in which the writer attempts to trace the influence of Bacon ' s method on the history of science since his day . While the sketch is imperfect , and the illustrations by no means so numerous or apt as they might have been , Bacon ' s sagacity in detecting the true method of science in all its breadth and fulness , as well as his prescience in foreseeing some of its results , are well brought out . Take the following for example : —

      But science necessarily involves ideas as well as facts : the framework of all sound theory must rest on a basis of facts , and , as Bacon says , the ideas are the very nails by which this framework is held together . Without these the facts have no coherence . Has Bacon seen this condition of the existence of science ? Has he given any directions for the use of ideas as well as for the use of facts ? Here also his sagacity did not fail him . He enjoins upon his disciples that if the ideas which they employ—notiones is his word—are confused and rashly abstracted from thing-s , there is no hope of real knowledge . He says that even the most limited notions , as man or dog ; the most immediate impressions of the senses , hot and cold , white and black have some taint of confusion , and that all the more large and general notions are utterly fantastical and ill defined : as matter and form , attraction and ¦ repulsion ,

      generation and conception , dense and rare , heavy and light . Any one who has traced -with any attention the history of science will recollect what an important share in that history has been held by discussions concerning the necessary meaning and definition of words of this class : for example , force , gravity , momentum , inertia , element , matter , polarity , organization , life . And he will be aware of the truth of Bacon ' s assertion , that so long as these notions , the essential parts of the respective sciences to which they belong , are thus loose and -wavering , the superstructure which is erected by means of them can have no strength or stability . Nor do we know of any other teacher of the philosophy of science who has added his exhortations respecting the elucidation and definition of notions to those other more common exhortations concerning the necessity of beginning from facts . . . . .

      In speaking : of the points in -which Bacon showed his sagacity by foreseeing the course -which in succeeding times scientific research would have to make , we ought not to forget several of the experiments which he recommends for the purpose of settling questions then undecided ; for instance , his proposal that in order to determine whether the gravity of the earth arises from the gravity of its parts , a clock pendulum should be swung in a mine , aa lias recently been done at Harton Colliery by the Astronomer Royal ; and his suggestion that men should examine whether the protuberance of the ocean which causes the tides and high water extend across the Atlantic , so as to make high water on the opposite sides of the ocean at the same time . These and several others of the experiments suggested among the Jnstantice of the Novum Organon' show , that whatever might be the defects of Bacon's own method of constructing science , his comprehensive and diligent exploration of the limits of the known and the unknown did not fail to lead him to the gates of new provinces of knowledge .

      The article on 'The Atlantic Ocean , ' hi a late number of the lloview , is followed in . the present by one on The Mediterranean Sea , ' equally interesting from the fulness of its knowledge , and the amount of graphic detail the writer introduces . 'The Mediterranean Sea' is followed by a paper on 'Henri Martin ' s History of Prance / which gives a good sketch of IVcnch historians , and the progress of history as a science in France . Amongst the hest and most readable articles of the present number , however , is one entitled 'The Highlands : Men , Sheep , and Deer , ' which effectually replies to the romantic outory raised on the alleged depopulation of the Highlands . ' The writer proves , by the most ample evidence , in the first place , that the Highlands arc not depopulated ; and , in the second , that , if they were , it would ha an immense advantage to tho country and to the Highlanders themselves . The following extract will illustrate the way in which the subject is treated : —

      Professor Blackic , from Edinburgh , seeking pastime for his vacation , and work for Ills somewhat vagrant muse , marks on tho banks of Deo the bright turf and untepded tree which * show where a garden has been , ' and straightway his imagination bodies forth homesteads ' once bright with Highland cheer' and filled with an industrious and thriving population , all made to give place to an artificial desolation for the pleasure of some English Nimrod . But what if there never was any tiling there

      but wretchedness and rapine—if the solitude was made long hefore the English vaders sought it , and if ( keeping here to the particular case unluckily lighted unon f !" Professor Blackie in his poetical flight ) there happened never to have been in th t district either evictions or Highlanders ? The tourist , steaming through the ilebridp some summer day , when an emigrant ship is waiting at her station , sees boat-loads nf the departing people , with teav-soiled countenances and hanging heads , shooting ; nI from the dusky shores of Mull , or from beneath the riven peaks of Skye ; his ea assailed with wailings , as if hi reproacli to Heaven , sent up from women ' croucW ¦ wi th covered heads on the uttermost rocks ; and he is amazed , saddened , and indie nant . But what if he knew that these people are only doing now , with tears ad struggling-, what has been done willingly and long ago by the population of other and happier districts , and is being done at tins day in every other class and almost everv family of the British community ? What if he knew that they are leaving behind them chronic and hopeless misery—a misery that has lasted from time immemorial and threatened to last in all time to come ? What , in short , if it can be shown not by mere argument but from tlie teaching of all experience there and elsewhere ' that the ' depopulation of the Highlands , ' though in particular instances it may bave been accompanied with more or less haste and harshness , is , on the whole , and so far as it has yet gone , and much further than that , a work of necessity and mercy ?

      The sum of the popular belief or outcay regarding the Highlands seems to lie , —that those regions once contained a large population , happy in peace and serviceable in war ; that , without necessity and against true policy and profit , that happv population has been forcibly and unduly reduced ; and that this cruel process is at present undergoing aggravation in order to make artificial solitudes for the sport of strangers . The sum of what the facts , so far as we can find them , establish , is , that the population never was otherwise than socially -wretched ; that the removal of a portion of it by one means or another , was absolutely necessary ; that , after all , the population of the Highlands is at this moment greater than ever ; that it is in many places greater than it ought to be , or than population is in districts much better fitted for employing and sustaining human beings ; that the changes of position or employment undergone by portions of the population in some Highland counties are only similar in character and extent to what has taken place in non-Highland districts , not subjected to any compulsion ; that the so-called ' cleared' district were manifestly fitted by nature rather for sheep than for men ; and that the deer is no more of an intruder , and is less of a depopulates , than the sheep .

      The last number of the llecite de Paris contains a delightful extract from a new study of natural history by the celebrated historian M . Miciielet . M . Michelet has already proved by liis charming work L'Oiseau that lie is as capable of becoming the historian of nature as of man ; and the new volume entitled VJnsecte assures us that the picturesque and sensitive historian studies the humble ¦ commonwealth of ants and bees as carefully , and records their doings as graphically , as he has already done those of the larger empires with whose histoi-y his name is identified . By the way , we have heard it whispered that in these holiday studies a double sense , or rather a mingled influence , is perceptible—of the" naturalist and of the poet ; and that what the one has so . tenderly and delicately observed , the other has , with almost equal tenderness and delicacy , expressed . We cannot say whether , in this instance . Madame Michel > : t has been the naturalist , and her gifted husband the poet : no doubt a woman's hand may be imagined here and there in the pages ; but the truth is , that to genius something of womanly feeling and insight is never wanting .

      Untitled Article

      MEMOIR ON THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS I . The Accession of Nicholas T . Compiled , by Special Command of the Emperor Alexander II ., by Ilia Imperial Majesty ' s Secretary of State Baron M . Korff , and Translated from the Original Russian . Murray . In the vear 1848 , upon the suggestion of the Grand Duke Alexander , the Emperor Nicholas ordered one of liis ministers to draw up a Memoir of the events which preceded his accession to the throne of Alexander I . After repeatedly correcting the narrative with liis own pen lie refused to sanction its publication . It was printed , however , and twenty-five copies were distributed among the members of the imperial family and a few confidential friends . Fresh materials were afterwards collected , and twenty-five copie ? of the amended version were produced . But , upon the coronation of tn <) Cznr Alexander , he fancied it would be an act of policy to circulate through Europe an account of the first day of his father ' s reign and of the peculiar circumstances hearing upon it . Something like a mystery had hunjj over tho mtziei

      entire transaction . UBtrialofThad glossed it over in ten small pnges ; bon had only vaguely described it ; by the race of compilers it hud boon represented under one aspect or another , but always imperfectly . In the unpublished diaries of Captain Shoe , who drilled the Persian nriivy for the late Shah , and who was in Russia at the period of the death of Alexander I ., we find hints of tho suspicions that then floated through the empire , giving Pestel and his friends a stronger hold upon public opinion that they might otherwise have possessed . It was in the full knowledge that posterity would arraign him on this count that Nicholas acquiesced in t \ m idea o » becoming tho historian of at lenst that episode of his own career wmen seemed to implicate him in it clmrge of conspiracy against his . broth er , W » Oi it is asserted , was by him cajoled out of his birthright and inheritance . Hero then , decorated witii the crown and golden double-lie-aded eagle , is a book o

      Untitled Article

      ?— - Critics are not the legislators , bu . t the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Itevieta .

      ^Ii-A^Rt^-V^Tv 3lu?R(Luxlv+ •

      itttrnttitt .

      Untitled Article

      102 a T H E LEA DUE .. [ No . 396 , October 24 1851 ?

      Untitled Article

      Messrs . Gambaut and Co ., of Bcrncrs-strcct , have published , m lithography , from a family miniature , an admirable portrait of General Havelock . The head is noble , the face most characteristic—the- face of a bravo , kindly generous man—the face , indeed , of ' old Phloss' Havelock , Hero of Cawnporc . Britain's testimony to her gallant soldier ' s deeds would be the acceptation of this portrait as a household ornament , a ' likeness to he enthroned in a niche of gold . '

      Untitled Article

      The Russian Polar Star , edited by M . Alexaxdiib IIerzen , will shortly issue an elaborate criticism on the work of Baron Kohff . 3 ? or this work the public will look with extreme interest . It is sure to be an' original ( and faithful ) essay .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 24, 1857, page 1024, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2215/page/16/