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* £ „ « f * he Nizam ' s territories preferred to that of Mairwara ? la the Worth Western sj'stem so hateful as that of Oude under its native princes ? Mr Iiudlow ' s own statement , in his thirteenth lecture , is an admirable commentary on the random rhetoric of the ninth . Of the public works executed under British superintendence he gives , upon the whole , a tolerably fair account , drawing a useful contrast between the improved and the neglected nrovincfis . His tendency , however , is to impeach the Company ' s government at all hazards , so that it is literally painful to read his version of the Satfcara jsupercession . Of Lord Dalhousie . he writes ungenerously , un--eaadidly , and in a spirit of defiant dogmatism , which , we hope , did not mislead his hearers at the Working Men ' s College . They must seek elsewhere has been
for an authentic view of JLord Dalhousie's Indian policy , which made the subject of so much cruel misrepresentation . The future will show whether he deserved ill or well of the Government he served with so much ¦ devotion and vigour . But a single illustration should teach those who read as students the danger of trusting too implicitly in the counsels of a fluent and forcible lecturer . What would Mr . John Malcolm Ludlow do ? He would restore the dethroned dynasty of Oude and the boy-JRajah of Sattara , jqnA <* rant increase of territory to Putteala and Jheend , to Gwalior , Indore , and Jodhpore . That is to say , the rebels of Oude should be rewarded for * heir rebellion , and India should be taught that conquered territories may be regained by their deposed dynasties , on condition of a massacre and a military rising- We find few traces of sound critical acumen or practical political sagacity in Mr . Ludlow ' s book , which is rather a popular compendium , upon which the reader may rely for vivid and accurate impressions of ancient and general Indian history . It is , in all its parts , exceedingly well written .
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THE ALCHEMISTS . Jtemarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists , indicating a Method of Discovei-ing the True Nature of Hermetic Philosophy . Boston : Crosby , Nichols , and Co . The author professes to have discovered the key of the hermetic science-Alchemy , he contends , was not a search for an agent by which the baser metals might be converted into gold , but a philosophical method of operating 4 ipon the heart of man , the writings of the adepts being treatises on religious education , hidden in symbolical language . The words gold , silver , lead , salt , sulphur , mercury , orpiment , sol , luna , wine , acid , and alkali formed a veil , rpenetrable only by the initiated , behind which lurked the opinions of reformers who dared not avow their doctrines . The elixir of life , the universal medicine , and the philosopher's stone , were moral mysteries ; and they have ridiculed the Cabala who- never understood the secret . _ Those old alchemists were not mechanical Argonauts , ransacking nature in search of
4 he power to transmute lead into gold ; they were missionaries ana martyrs . So runs this erudite and ingenious argument , which is certainly ably sustained , although it is not difficult to detect the writer ' s alchemical faculty of reducing all doubts to dross , and turning into golden philosophy every eleanent in the Hosicrucian crucible . He builds up a system of divinity from £ he hermetic treatises , and translates their ambiguities as parables ; but the profane * interpreting their works literally , plunged into the monomania which lias overwhelmed alchemy with the reproaches of the modern world . We think the author ' s theory is one that deserves further examination . It is original and bold , but his citations , if by no means conclusive , are not to be disposed of by a sneer . It must be admitted , however , that if the hermetic writers of the highest class were simply philosophers , employing symbols for 4 h * mutual communication of their ideas , they might as well—so far as
posterity was concerned—have written in arrowheads and the characters of the StnaMio or Egyptian hieroglyphy . Sometimes man was designated as The Stone , antimony , lead , zinc , or arsenic ; but they poiut to the means of his perfection as animated mercury , the serpent , the green lion , shark water , or virgins' milk . Figuier , speaking of this element , says that none of the -aAchesuats have ever discovered it . However , according to the new Amexican system of deciphering , it means a pure conscience—rather an obvious , but not a very satisfactory solution . The author may have caught a glimpse ofaome concealed philosophy , but be asks too much when he desires us to Arust his dictionary of alchemic simples and compounds , translated from the original metaphors . The spirit of fire , transmuting all things , the salt of
4 artar , the spirit of wine , driven to the centre by cold , ami the essentuil ¦ salt of vipers , remain mysterious , in spite of his efforts to pierce the obscuaities of the hermetic dialects . The writers say that great virtues appertain 4 » the salt of vipers ; they speak often of furnaces , retorts , cucurbits , aud . alembics ; and all this may be intended in a moral instead of a , physical . aenae ^ but the version here presented is , to say the least , arbitrary . Axtophius wrote on antimony : antimony ia here said to mean man ; but Axtephius , whatever his intention , was illegibly obscure , and spoke of the sedX , of the tun and moon , to be made homogenewith other imperfect bodies , of argentvive , the water of life , azoth , latten , and the true tincture ; Bnsilius Valentine adds the unicorn ' s horn . ' the aguish magnelified needle , ' and
. something feminine that ' in a mysterious penetration of homogoneal forms meats her beatitude . ' Conning over these books , as the author says , ' a JUasty reader might be mystified a little . ' If Bishop Berkeley knew what jUcakat meant , and if Kunkel was wrong ia his application of a physical law to demonstrate its impossibility , it may safely be affirmed that no one has ever reduced to clear common sense the works of Geber the Arabian . Of course , the language of the adepts was not designed for ordinary readers , Jwui ^ je ^ Efta sly ^^^ the language of angels ; thin , however , does not prove it to have contained any pliilbsopKy ~ more practical than that which occupied itself in studying the secret of transmutation . What was of a mixed nature between fixed and not fixed , and partook
sapphire , ' sun g gns . ' may , or mysticism or nonsense , but it is of a different texture from that hermetic pattern worked into the Romance of the Rose . Pure gold , violet , citrine , virgins milk , purple , and transcendant redness prove that * as Eyrenseus says , 'this art is very cabalistical . ' And cabalisticai , we think , it will remain . The American author has suggested a clue to the secret of that strange philosophy , and has been too diligent a student to deserve ridicule ; but it must be confessed that the subject remains where it was before Kopp or Fi guier published their disquisitions .
« f a sulphur aaurine ? What was n raw , cooling , feminine fire P Or the Austral water that cleansed the earth ? We somewhat suspect the facility of . the American interpretation . Three ( lowers are to be sought by Abe alchexawt , say the masters of the science—the daiwtujk-oaloured violet , the milkwhite July , and the amaranth . Gathering the fresh violets on the bank of t&a ^ oAAen river , when they have put on the most delicate colour of the dark
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THE SPORTS OF MERRY ENGLAND . Aferrie England , its Sports and Pastimes . By Lord William Lennox , Author of 1 Compton Audley , ' ' Percy Hamilton , ' ' Philip Courtney , ' ' Wellington in Private Life , ' &c . &c Newby . The season has arrived when ' Old Christmas brings his sports again , ' and the appearance of a book specially full of anecdote and information on matters connected with the favourite recreations of the English people is most opportune . This circumstance , combined with the author ' s previous reputation , will ensure for the volume an extensive popularity . "No cavalry officers like my brave fox-hunters , " said Wellington at Salamanca . And certainly the man who sits his horse like a centaur ; who by a judicious bridle hand , can , as it were , lift the noble beast over every spot of difficult ground ; whose judgment of distance is
perfect , from following the chase through a wild and difficult country—must be allowed to have passed no unworthy novitiate , ere entering upon that nobler hunting where the game is man . Skill and daring are almost intuitive in the English sportsman . He canters his horse over the green sward , and ' crams ' him at a six-foot stone fence , or charges a twenty-foot winter torrent with equal indifference . Impelled by this bold chivalrous spirit , the author of the book before us , being a sojourner at Brussels when the Duke marched into it , followed him to Waterloo en amateur , and as we believe , in plain clothes , charged with the cavalry throughout the whole of that bloody fray , and left it only when carried wounded to his tent .
The introduction to Me-rrie England , enumerates the ' points' which guided our forefathers in their selection of a good horse . He should , said they , have fifteen good ' propyrtees and condicions , ' to wit—three of a man , three of a woman , three of a fox , three of a hare , three of an ass . Of a man , bold , ' proud , and hardy ; of a woman , fair breasts , fair hair , and easy to move ; of a fox , fair tail , short ears , with a good trot ; of a hare , a great eye , a dry heel , and well running ; of an ass , a big chin , a flat leg , and a good hoof . The following accurate and graphic picture of an onslaught of poachers upon a game preserve about Christmas time may perhaps help to banish from many of our readers' minds their sympathy tor that worthless and desperate caste of sylvan marauders : —
Ou a dark and cloudy night in November , I observed five men stealthily crawling throug h , the thickly covered underwood of my retreat . " Here's a likely place , " whispered one , as he drew from his pocket a wiry noose , and placed it across a cutting in the plantation . " Here Jim , " cried another , " drop the beans between the hedgo and that stack of buckwheat . " " Look out on the right branch of that lurch ; a poj > from your walking-stick will settle him , " cried a third . In a second , the whizzing noise of an air-gun was heard , and a splendid cock pheasant fell from his roost , at the feet of the poacher . " All right ! " exclaimed two others who were patrolling outside the plantation . During this awful moment I was crouched up under a hedgerow , within a very few yards of the principal speaker , but happily escaped observation . Day now began to break , and showed numbers of my furry brethren , noosed and struggling iu the agonies of death , while many a gorgeous pheasant cock fell stricken with almost instantaneous death . Footsteps were now heard among the crashiug underwood , and a party of keepers approached . " I thought how it was , " exclaimed their leader , as with his knife he cut open the glossy green , blue , and purple neck of one of the victims , and brought out a / torse bean pierced with strong brist / cs . " All these birds have been choked by the rascally gang-. " i
' Ascot Heath on the Cup day , ' is a lively , life-like sketch , and the royn procession up the course , headed by the Master of the BuckhoumLs , ia his uniform of Lincoln green and gold , with the golden dog-couples ilangling from his baldric , is a very pleasant sylvan spectacle . Not so the red- » .: olliirc < l , red-cuffed , blue livery Windsor uniform , worn by the ' ustutest of diplomatists '—Punch ' s protege and by his ministerial confreres . Their appearance in the rear of all , so suggestive of a body of district letter-curriers in a post-oilice vim , is regularly hailed by shouts of laughter from the populace . Passing over the chapter entitled 'Chanting for the Million , ' which has some excellent admonitory suggestions to ' young gentlomou in search of a horse , we come to the author ' s enthusiastic description of his first mount with the Goodwood hounds , whilst passing tl ^ j Cbritsmns holiday at his Gmcoof Richmond ' s . The hounds met at Valdoe Wood . " ' Gone uway ! ' " shouts old Tom Grunt , the huntsman . ' Hold hard , gentlemen , ' cried that ( irat-i'ftte sportswoman , Mrs . Dorrieu , us she was herself preparing for ai start .
' Give ' em time / said old Tom , approaching me , who , rather cowed " upon this , my first appearance , had shrunk back behind the redcoats , whom 1 t » e » regarded as wonders of the world . ' Couio along , youngster , I'll show you the way ; there , down that rido , turn short to the right ; the fox ia sure to sink the wind ; as you arc well mounted , set your pony's head strai g ht , ami you'll get the brush , ' We approached Halneker ; purt of the palings hml been broken down ; I spied the gup , and went at it , as the huntsman uftovwards said , 'like a Briton . ' The fact is , that even with the- top broken down , the fence was a stiff one . The huntsman followed mo . ' Bntvo , young 7 u 7 >; ' ^ lJoTrtWT 5 l ? rTdTnr 7 ^ field . ' 'Sot the field 1 ' thought I . Wellington after Waterloo was not prouder than I was at this , my first victory . Tho fox wont straig ht down wind ten miles , over a , beautiful flat country , and tho hound . * ran into him upon Houghton . bridge us lie was crossing the Arundul river . No ouo p " cept tho huntsman , tho Urst whipper-in , und myself , wore up , \ h \ i field htivi'itf been thrown out at Haluukor -Park . The brush was presented to n »« wlt' { great congratulations , and to this day I retain it as n proud and well-t ""' ° trophy . "
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the will ive thee si This be fancy THE -LEADER . [ No ., 407 , Januar y 9 , 1858 . 4 i 2 _ ' __
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 9, 1858, page 42, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2225/page/18/
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