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manners and rites among the people—a circumstance -which , has also been particularly noticed in France . Concerning both islands * Mr . Forester intervreaves his narrative , although sparingly and judiciously , with fragments of iistory which have nowhere the character of digressions .. He has related , too , a few local stories , -which cast much light on the social life of the Corsicans especially . We will make two ot three extracts from this very fascinating book : —
A COKSICAN KVKNlNG . A . pleasant thing is the evening stroll on the outskirts of town or village , where life offers so much novelty . How graceful the forms of those girls at the fountain , dipping their pitchers of antique form and a glossy green ! Poising them on their heads with one arm raised , how lightly they trip back to the town , laughing and talking in the sweetest of tongues—sweet in their mouths even in its insular dialect A lazy Corsican is leading a goat , scarcely more bearded and shaggy than its owner . Others , still lazier , and wrapped in the roughjpdone hanging from their shoulders like an Irishman ' s frieze coat , bestride diminutive mules , while their wives trudge by the side , carrying burdens of firewood or vegetables on their leads and shoulders . Waggon 3 drawn by oxen and loaded with wine-casks , slowly creek along the road .
It is dusk as we lounge up the suburb , and the rude houses piled up round the base of the citadel look gloomier than ever . Light from a blazing pine-torch flashes from the door of a cave ; it is a wine vault . The owner welcomed us to its dark recesses . Smeared witli the juice of the ruddy grape , be is a very priest of Bacchus ; but the processes carried on ia his cave are only initiatory to ' tlie orgies . Here are vats filled with the new-pressed juice ; there , vats in the various stages of fermentation . Jolly , as "becomes his profession , he gives us to taste the sweet must and drink the purer extract . He explains the process and tells us that the vintage is a fair average , though the vine disease , theoidion , has penetrated even into these mountains . EvoeBqcckeJ The fumes of the reeking cave mount to our heads , the floor is slippeTy with the lees and trodden vine-leaves . We reel to the door , glad to breathe a fresher atmosphere . . ¦ ¦; : ¦ ¦ " ' ; . ¦ ; ' . . . ¦ - . . . . ' , ; ¦ ¦' . ' . ' ' . ' " . . '¦¦ ' . ; . ' . ¦ " .. . ' ,
Mr . Forester observes , that the French Government , having lately shot some hundreds of the brigands , has at length delivered Corsica from their terrorism . But he lias , nevertheless , many anecdotes to relate of recent outrages . " . . ¦ ' ¦ . ,.- ¦ . ¦ . ' . ; ¦ . ¦ . ¦; ¦ ¦ " ¦ ¦ " ¦ ¦ - ¦ . •¦ ,- ¦ . ¦¦ . ' . . ; ¦ •'¦ -.. ¦ ' In connexion with the brigandage of Sardinia , he states : — Even now , numbers of the fuoitcsciti find shelter in the fastnesses of the Gallura ; the remnant of bands once so formidable that tiey spread terror through the wliole province , bidding defiance alike to the law and the sword . Only within the present century the government has succeeded in quelling their ferocity , but not without desperate resistance to the troops employed , eighty of whom were destroyed by a party of the bandits in a single attack . v Still , though a better spirit begins to . prevail , and outrages have become less common and flagrant , we found , in travelling through the island , a " prevailing sense of insecurity quite incompatible with our ideas of the supremacy Of law under a wellordered government . Some of the mountainous districts were in so disturbed a state that we were cautioned not to approach them ; and every one -we met throughout our journey was armed to the teeth .
For ourselves , we felt no apprehensions , and took no precautions . In the first place , we were not to be easily frightened by possible dangers ; and , in the second , we knew that a peaceable guise , in the character of foreign travellers , was our best protection . The violences of the fuorusciti are , it is well understood , mingled and tempered with a strong sense of honour . I imagine , indeed , that they originate for the most part in that principle , developed in vendetta , though degenerating into rapine and rcbtcry . Outlaws must find means of subsistence as well as honest men , and are not likely to be very scrupulous as to the mode of obtaining them . Among such characters there will be miscreants capable of any crime , and therefore there is always danger . But , still , the virtue of hospitality to strangers , so- inherent amongst the Sardes , as in most semi-barbarous races , is not extinguished in hearts which are hardened against every other feeling of humanity . As the stranger is secure when he has " eaten salt" in the tent of the Bedouin , the Caffre ' a kTaal , or the wigwam of the Red Indian , so there are numerous instances of the Sarde outlaws having afforded shelter and assistance to strangers throwing themselves on their honour and hosptfality . He remarks a novelty in feminine manners among the Sardes : —
The Tempiese women have the singular habit of raising the hinder part of the upper jjetticoat , tlie suncurinu , -when they go abroad , and bringing it over the head and shoulders , so as to form a sort of hood . So far from this fashion giving them , as might be supposed , a dowdy appearance , it is not inelegant when the garment is gracefully arranged . It has generally broad stripes , and is often of silk or a fine material . The under-petticoat , of cloth , is either of a bright colour , or dark with a bright-coloured border . Both of them are worn very full . The jacket is of scarlet , blue , or green ¦ ve lvet , fitting very tightly to the figure , the edges having-a border of a different colour , and sometimes brocaded . The simple head-dress consists of a gaily-coloured kerchief wound round the head , and tied in knots before and behind . There is an interesting chapter on the Nuraghe , concerning which Mr . Forester insists upon no special hypothesis . He says , however : —
The Sardinian Nuraghe are probably among the oldest structures in the world , and may therefore be reasonably considered the works of an aboriginal race ; but their origin , aud that of the founders , are equally involved in impenetrable mystery . Their rude , but massive and shapely , cones have survived the ruin of the sumptuous edifices of Babylon and Nineveh , of Ecbatana and Susa , of Tyre and the Egyptian Thebes . A volume of travel so original and varied as Mr . Forester ' s , is a rarity in our days .
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THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM . The Passionate Pilgrim ; or , Eros and Anteros . By Henry J . Thurstan . . Chapman and Hull . It is raire now-a-days to meet with such a literary curiosity as the 1 assionate Ptlyrim . The volume of some 240 pages is the outpouring or confession of one who hopes to lind pity , if not pardon , from all who know love by trial . It 13 a book that will be both admired and scotted at ; but we doubt whether any one should open it who does not give love the first place in the things of this life , and he may be disappointed . The wliole work is one long shudder of passion , one continued paroxysm of hope alternating with the black fever of despair . It is not a history of the events that compose a lifetime , but a manual of sensations and spiritual cxpe-SS ' ? " rj lcn a child > tlie Klgrim falls in lovo with another child named U « Ssiree . Ihe moment he sees her , his fate is sealed . » Paradise , by the simple opening of a door , has let itself in upon him . " He has touched the
deepest depths of grace , and nothing can ever turn his thoughts from . tbi 3 " miracle sent to earth from heaven . " " De ' siree was all womanhood to me . When with others , I laughed to myself in triumph to think by what immeasurable space any and every other was distanced from her . I might have met the ladies of Arthur ' s Court , Helen and Beatrice , Perdita and Una , and the interest to me would have been only their privilege of sharing her sex , and reflecting so much of her excellences as allowed me to recognize how far she exceeded them . " The mode of telling- the story is as peculiar as the subject . Mr . Thurstan has a capacity for emotion , and a capacity for expressing emotion ; but , strange to say ,-he does not tell the tale of his love in language that proceeds straight from his own overcharged heart . He either mistrusts himself , or he is making a literary experiment . His mind is " wrenched with a
woeful agony " which forces him to tell his tale ; but instead of following the natural impulse which makes all sorrow eloquent , he has gathered together the finest passages that have been written by the greatest of the great , and crammed the in into the narrow compass of his own experience . It is the Ancient Mariner speaking all in quotations . He skims the pages of Dante , Petrarch , Shakspeare , Tennyson , Wordsworth , and Keats * and any noble thought that applies to his own case he weaves into the history of his love . In a single page the reader will recognize the blended workings of many master minds ; but this appropriation is carried to excess , and throughout this anthem , of endless dolour there is a want of sequence and reality . The Pilgrim goes on . worshipping his lady at a distance . At last he approaches her on the " faint heart never won " principle ; but even tliea his heart fails him , and he defers his trial : — -
And to this pleasure was here added the exquisite sense that not only was I lying within shelter of the same house , but that , by the fact of her parents' absence , that house might be considered hers : there was holiness in tlie walls , and peace in the timbers : —the v « ry furniture , I extravagantly thought , had something sacred in ita certain sweet personality . Now , however , came the hfeart-quickening conviction , shouted by many voices at once—by that day ' s delight in her undivided companionship , by growing sensations of life , by approaching entrance on what I might not unjustly call life itself , and loudest and purest , by the voice of love ; that though there could be but two answers , and one—I could not think of that—yet it might be
timely time to speak ; that the hour had struck ; that , for fear of risking all , I must risk something . Silent I had hitherto been , in part from the mere fact of youth , in part from a familiarity dating almost before youth itself . There seemed no room to say one morning , . Love me more than yesterday . D ^ sii ee was in truth so identified with every thought—so incorporated , I might say , in the actual texture of my heart —so much myself—that I hardly had words to address her . Thus circumstanced , even could I have doubted her love , had I not this day proof the strongest and the most exquisitely winning of her frank and confiding affection , of interest which entrustedme with every incident of her life , and asked my story in return , her soul open to mine , and no veil interposed ; how should I ask more , or how ask at all ?
It is long before he thinks it necessary to renew his application in explicit terms ; and then he discovers that the lady loves him " like a sister . " She marries somebody else , and he compares her to Dante ' s Beatrice and Petrarch ' s Laura . The world immediately becomes a wilderness , and with the profoundest renunciation of hope , " the rejected loves his mistress more He delights to dwell upon that " sorrow ' s crown of sorrow , the remembering happier moments in the midst of wretchedness , " and he turns even the love that has loved and lost into a " pure organic pl « asure . " Alas that millions of prayers and no prayers should lead to the same result . Although we have no doubt he has some basis at least of intellectual truth for-a foundation , Mr . Thurstan cannot have gone through all the emotions he has put upon paper . It is strange , in the midst of passionate ravings on unrequited love , to alight upon deliberate criticisms and reflections about poets , university life , travels and travellers , all graceful , often
well said , but bringing together the remote ideas of Dante and Murray ' s Handbooks in a strange way . He quotes with great ability and taste , and he is extensively read in poetical literature , so that not all the inaptness can quite spoil the book , which seems sincere though artificial . Carlyle would , perhaps , call him a poet , for he says all may claim that title who read a poem well . Women will feel flattered by our author ' s extravagant idolatry of Desiree , since all compliments paid to one woman are a sort of tribute to the sex . And women will , perhaps , have patience to follow him through the long analysis of the sensations he experienced ; but it certainly requires a very sensili vc mind to sympathize with the " Passionate Pilgrim /* for his style is heavy-laden , and clogs tlie palate like " honey , loathsome in
its own dehciousness . " He says that , "to die unsatisfied , is the worst bitterness of death ; " but the truth is , that while seeking for the ideal , the real slipped from his grasp . Looking incessantly for a vision among the stars , he has missed tlie real life around him on earth . He has made a not uncommon mistake—that of supposing that the " ideal" being created by his own closet fancy can be more beautiful , wise , and perfect than its prototype from God ' s own hand . Dante overwrought one idea , but with how many other ideas did he surround it ! Petrarch played more exclusively on a monochord—but then he sang in numbers . And if llaslitt made a mistake in giving us a prose Liber Amoris to tell us that the young lady of his lodgings was not Beatrice , he was at least brief .
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A MATTER OF FACT ROMANCE . Seiy-JIel j ) by the People : Histovy of Co-ojieration in ltochdnk . By George Jacob Holyoak-c . Holyoake and Co . Mk . Hoj-yoake has given the charm of a romance to a veritable narrative , illustrating a great problem of social and political science , and no one can read his cheap and brief history of the " Rochdale Equitable Pioneers , " without growing hopeful of the future , mid seeing something more than u glimpse of a sound way out of the harsh warfare of competitive struggles , to a higher form of industrial co-operative life . Tho story of the Koehdale Pioneers is a noble one , and we have it before us in all its reality of hardship , devotion , endurance , perseverance , triumpli , facts , ligures , and even the greatest facts of all sketched with a bold , free band , the whole enlivened by warm-hearted sympathy and touches of sly , quaint humour , worthy of Defoe . The ltochdalo Pioneers , although by no means tho earliest of their
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JSTo . 429 , Jtoe . 12 , 1858 . ] 1 ___ TEE _ LEABER , 569
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Leader (1850-1860), June 12, 1858, page 569, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2246/page/17/
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