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w 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 Review .
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Again we hare to offer our respectful congratulations to the University of Oxford upon an appointment which deserves to be cited as a perfect example of ' the right man in the right place / For some time past the venerable Alma Mater Las confounded her adversaries and silenced her detractors by the admirable names she lias added to her Professoriate , and the enlightened course of self-reform upon , which she has spontaneously entered and has continued to advance with unhasting but unresting steps . Only the other day . we were rejoicing in the triumphant election of Matthew Arnold , the poet jind critic of antique serenity of thought and true philosophic culture , to the Chair of Poetry . Then came the concurrent nomination of Dr . Aci » A . Nr > , the . esteemed and enlightened representative of the natural sciences , to the Regius Professorship of Medicine , and his election to the Clinical Professorship ; and now we have to express our unfeigned satisfaction at the appointment of Mr . Goijmnsr Smith , Fellow of University College , to the Professorship of Modern History . We are assuredly expressing the opinion of all who have watched the career of the new Professor in his boyhood at Eton and his early manhood at Oxford , of all who have seen the ripe fulfilment of his early promise , whea we say that a more unexceptionable choice could not have teen made . At Eton , where he sat side by side with ' poor Henry Haixam :, Mr . Goujwiu Smith was distinguished among his schoolfellows by the earnest energy and masculine vigour of his intellect , and in his prose and verse compositions the nervous energy and the terse felicity of expression gained him an easy pre-eminence . Out of school , too , his cast of thought was more serious and severe than boyish , although not wanting in the elasticity and freedom of a boy ' s ( an Eton boy ' s ) disposition . But at Oxford , where he was marked for honours and distinctions ^ the fine tone of mind , the broad and liberal culture , the refined and somewhat austere manner , the elevation and . dignity of thought , the generous sympathy , and the uncompromising sincerity , amply fulfilled the promise of the boy . He was distinguished at once within the University and beyond its precincts , and no one was surprised to hear that he was Secretary to the University Reform Commission , and in that capacity destined to be the most active and laborious agent in the great work of reconstruction and renovation . The anonymous system , with its unquestioned advantages to the Press as an ' Estate , ' combines the obvious disadvantage of suppressing the light of individual reputations ; and it seems almost like disclosing a secret to mention that among the most stirring articles in the most conspicuous columns of the London press , not a few of late years have been due to the fine Roman hand of Mr . Golbwin Smith . Wherever public liberty and political justice were to be defended and upheld , wherever tyranny , and corruption , and servility were to be condemned and chastised , a finer and stronger hand could not be found to wield the language and the thought of Milton . Such an appointment , therefore , to the chair of Modem History is full of promise and significance , and it does infinite honour to Lord Derby , a * Tory' Minister and a ' Tory' Chancellor , to have ratiOed , by anticipation , the spontaneous and unanimous choice of the University . It is a hopeful augury to University Reformers ; it is a pledge of the decay and disappearance of bigotry and intolerance ; it is a guarantee that the young men who ( as the Master of Balliol used to say ) are " fitting themselves to take their seats in the Senate or the vestry , " shall be taught the principles and the doctrines of wholesome English freedom while their hearts are still uncontaminated and their brains unmuddled by contemporary politics . Verily Oxford is awakened : she is reconciled to the nineteenth century , and is once more resolved to teach the nation how to live . Msto perpetua !
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Both the subject and the speaker conspired to invest with special interest the lecture delivered by Mr . Buckle , at the Royal Institution a week ago , the subject being * The Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge , ' and the speaker a philosophic student of history . The ladies naturally crowded to hear their ' mission' expounded by one who had notoriously devoted himself to the History of Civilization , and gentlemen arc generally willing to listen to any theory of woman ' s position unfolded in the presence of the facts . As a muscular and intellectual feat Mr . Buckle ' s lecture was certainly a great success . He spoke for an liour and a half not only with vigour and animation , but with unfailing fluency and precision . As an exposition of the subject to bo discussed it was less successful . Indeed , Mr . Buckle scarcely touched the special point in view—the influence of women—till towards the olose of his discourse , his lecture being thus like his volume , rather an introduction to the subject _ thai ^» a _ disousaioA . of _ it Nor , when he , at length arrived at it , was the lee turer ' s view of the subject a happy one . Mr . Buckle maintains that women are deduotive rather than inductive , in other words , that hi the progress of knowledge women contribute the principles while men gather the facts ; and that the influence of women is thus of the highest value in chcckjng the muttor-of-fact tendency of mankind . If this moans simply that women are impulsive rather than reflective , that they jump at conclusions rather than arrive at thorn by auy process of reasoning , it may pass as a polite , if not philosophic , version of an old truism , But if the epithet ' deductive' means more than this , as it surely must do in the mouth of such a speaker , the doctrine is not only not
true , but exactly the reverse of the truth . Deductive reasoning , as Mr , Buckxe himself explained , is a reasoning from general ideas to facts , and the deductive mind is one in which the abstract rules the concrete , in which the idea colours and transforms the reality . The true deductive spirit to which principles are everything , facts comparatively nothing , naturally expresses itself in the philosopher ' s exclamation on being told that the facts contradicted his theory , "So much the worse for the facts . " According to Mr . Buckle ' s doctrine , therefore , women care more for principles than facts ; but so far is this from being the case , that women are rarely able even to recognize or understand a general idea apart from the particular instances that illustrate and vivify it ; Principles , as stated by them , are for the most part only facts disguised . Their phi . losophical reflections on human nature are generally iu the strictest sense reflexions—censures on particular persons and particular acts , with the names and dates suppressed . When Mrs . Jones , for instance , says with a resigned and reflective air that " Prosperity chills and hardens the heart , " she probably simply means that Mrs - Smith , whose husband is getting on in the world , did not iuvite herself and the dear girls to her last party . The influence of women on the progress of knowledge is great , greater and more important than any other , but not iu the direction Mr . Buckle suggests . The lecture is , however , we believe about to be published , and we therefore reserve further criticism till it appears iu a more permanent form . Turning from the philosopher to the humorist , from Mr . Buckle , whose notion of women seems to have been elaborated , like the German philosopher's idea of a camel , ' from the depths of his moral consciousness , ' to Mr . Thackeray , whose representations are ever direct from life and intensely real , take the following passage from the last number of the Virginians . It touches with a master ' s hand the influence of women , not on the progress of knowledge , but on the happiness of the race : — Two fish-pools irradiated by a pair of stars would not kindle to greater warmth than did those elderly orbs into which Harry poured his gaze . Nevertheless , he plunged into their blue depths , and fancied he saw Heaven in tbeir calm brightness . So that silly dog ( of whom . JSsop or the Spelling-book used to tell us in youth ) beheld a beef-bone in the pond , and snapped it , and lost the beef-bone he was carrying . 0 , absurd cur ! He saw the beef-bone in his own mouth reflected in the treacherous pool , which dimpled , I dare say , with ever so many smiles , coolly sucked up the meat , and returned to its usual placidity . Ah ! what a heap of wreck lie beneath some of those quiet surfaces ! What treasures we have dropped into them ! What chased golden dishes , what precious jewels of love , what bones after bones , and sweetest heart ' s flesh ! Do not some very faithful and unlucky dogs jump in bodily , when they are swallowed up heads and tails entirely ? When some women come to be dragged , it is a marvel what will be found in the depths of them . Cavete , canes ! Have a care how ye lap that water . What do they want with us , the mischievous syren sluts ? A green-eyed Naiad never rests until she has inveigled a fellow under the water ; she sings after him , she dances after him ; she winds round him , glittering tortuously ; she warbles and whispers dainty secrets at his cheek , she kisse 3 his feet , she leers at him from out of her rushes : all her beds sigh out , " Come , sweet youth ! Hither , hither , rosy Hylas ! " Pop goes Hylas . ( Surely the fable is renewed for ever and ever ?) Has his captivator any pleasure ? Doth she take any account of him ? No more than a fisherman landing at Brig hton does of one out of a hundred thousand herrings . . . . . The last time Ulysses rowed by the Syrens' Bank , he and his men did not care though a whole shoal of them were singing and combing their longest locks . Young Telemachus was for jumping overboard : but the tough old crew held the silly , bawling lad . They were deaf , and could not hear his bawling nor the sea-nymphs' singing . They were dim of sight , and did not see how lovely the witches were . The stale , old , leering witches ! Away with ye ! I dare say you have painted your checks by this time ; your wretched old songs are as out of fashion as Mozart , and it is all false hair you are combing !
In the last sentence you see Lector Benevolus and Scriptor Doctissimus figure as tough old Ulysses and his toggh old Boatswain , who do not care a quid of tobacco for any Syren at Syrens' Point ; but Hurry Warrington is green Telemachus , who , be sure , was very unlike the soft youth in the good Bishop of Cambray ' s twaddling story . He doea not see that the syren paints the lashes from under which she ogles him ; will put by into a box when she has done the ringlets into which alie would inveigle him ; and if she eats him , as she proposes to do , will crunch his bonea with a new set of grinders , just from the dentist's , and warranted for maatication . The song is not stale to Harry Warrington , nor the voice cracked or out of tune that aings » t . But—but—O , dear me , Brother Boatswain ! Don ' t you remember how ploasant the opera was when we first heard it ? Coai fan tutti was its name—Mozart ' s music . Now , I dare say , they have other words , and other music , and other singers ana fiddlers , and another great crowd in tho pit . Well , well , Cosi fan tutti is still upon the bills , aixd they are going on singing it over and over and over . This is a partial but profound glance at that darker side of female character which Thackeray is so fond of painting . It has all the writer ' s usual trutu and reality of representation— a terrible truth and reality . We quote it as au illustration of the meditative richness and calm p iercing intuition winch preeminently mark tho-now story . Many people object that there is httlo story in the Virginians , but those who make such a complaint aro n » capable 01 enjoying Thaokeuav ' s peculiar qualities . There arc two classes ol « ovol » Mthose who write stories full of incident and situations , ' to bo awaUowea down in gulps like draughts of strong alo ; and those who write clmptors urn of exquisite humour and dclioato insight , to be sipped like line wnio . } llx " r ehay Oolongs to tho kttcr , and his rare subtlety in oharnotcr-pamUng , J ™ inimitable euso and eloquence of his style , cannot he adequately upprocuiw " by ~ aie-oommon-iiovel-roudorv ^ To-ftlU Virginians will give a rich delight .
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FltOUJDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND . History qf England from tho Fail , of WoUoy to the Death < if Elizabeth ' » 7 L ' * riroudo , M . A .. Vol .. III . uncl tV . , J . W < rurkor and Boa-Withxn a few yours , every existing version of English history will P ™^"* have become obsolete . Excepting a few fragments , the whole liaa to no » written . Tho compilers Imvo so long exclusively possessed the now tnan-State archives , containing the most "valuable und almost tho only uutuou ^
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3 < M . $ H E LEADER , [ No . 418 , March 27 , 1858 .
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Leader (1850-1860), March 27, 1858, page 304, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2236/page/16/
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