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unintelligible . To the vulgar mind you -mi g ht as nfte 1 ofWvcss without motion , of heat without vSinth , as of amelioration without alteration . We accent the dictum in silence , and ponder over it \ everentially . Then- tbllowsthe mostmarveUons piece of logical induction which it ever entered £ to thebrahiofmanto conceive Mr . ¦ Ilope | 3 an equal foe to Auxericanising or GaUicismgour institutions . He cannot fell- to remark that t he Constitutions both of France and America are the
offspring of-the ballot and universal suffrage .. lie , uierefore , cannot consent to any measure Avhich snLths the way to the introduction ^ of these institutions , and thercftire voted consistently , a ^ ainst what ? Against Locke . King ' s bill ? No . Against Berkeley s Ballot motion ? Guess again—against the' removal-of the Government of India to the Crown . What the connexion between the India House arid the ballot , between Cannon-row and be ±
universal suffrage , was , or is , or ever can , YLr Hope alone can tell . 'The only vestige of an explanation is to be found in tlie following statement : that if you once establish the precedent , of interfering with corporations , no one can tell where you may stop . Horrible to relate , you may eventually come to tampering with the corporations of Oxford and Cambridge . Why ,, actually , in time , Cambridge may cease to return " a member ! Let us turn in dread from the . awful pi-ospeet . On continental politics the Hope oracle is equally mysterious , lie desires to maintain religiously the . faith of treaties . He objects to interference with the internal condition of other
countries ; but ( the language here becomes too beautiful to be abridged ) " wherever the greed of a great Power , or the acquisitiveness of a small oiie , seeks to cloak its own selfishness tinder any simulated or plausible zeal on behalf of suffering nationalities , "' . ., - . ' . ' ..- then his " earnest exertions will be . given to the maintenance of British influence by the _ majesty and . extent of JBritish resources . " We have only to call the attention of oiir readers to a smallmanifest misprint in this magnificent peroration , and the sentence becomes intelligible as well as eloquent . For the first word "British , " read " Austrian , " you have a key to the whole ; foreign policy of Mi * . Hope and the Saturday Review .
It is , however , on his view of religious questions that Mr . Hope rises to the seventh heaven of involved uiiintelligibility . After having studied his statement with deep consideration , and having carefully dissected every sentence , and Aveighed every word , we have only been able to arrive at the following positive results , viz ., that Mr .. Hope is a sincere but moderate member of the Church of England—equally opposed to extreme opinions on one side or the other—and that the system of the Established Church " literally but reasonably " ( whatever that nuiy mean ) interpreted is at _ once conformable , to tipostolic precedent , and suitable to the : wants of our restless and progressive age . There is one Htep from the sublime ^ to the ridiculous—and Ayhether this is all deep wisdom or sheer nonsense wo will not venture to decide . If ,
however , the tree is to be judged by the fruits , we incline to the hitter opinion \ for the only tangible result of these brilliant ideas or * Mr . Hope ' s part appears to lmyo consisted in a steadfast opposition to the bills for Ie » : ili . \< ing marriage with a deceased wife ' s sister and-for abolishing cliurchrratos . Mr . Hope'has been teller in five divisions on these sub jects ; and wo . are glad to learn lias been re-WU'ded for Ids service's on behalf of the Establishment by being entrusted with petitions from the chapters of Canterbury , Westminster , Ely , and Liehncld . Truly in this instance the hire lias been
worthy of the hiboiircr . Small a « this positive result may appear , it was a eomibrt to us to arrive nt any dciinite profession of faith ; but , aluu ! in the very next paragraph this small rotfti noplace of fact is cut away from us , and wo are left wallowing tuniin in tho quick * sands of uncertainty . Though Mr , Hope is a steadfast opponent of tho abolition of churchrates , yet ho is quite read y to exempt DiHsontovs from the necessity of paying thorn ; and though Mr . IIopo assures us that on tho topic of education jus convictions arc fixed , ho only volunteers tho information that ho proposes to foster the * exertions-of communities and individuals . Ho unfortunately forgot to mid from what funds , or in what proportions , or subject to what regulations , ho proposes to foster these educational movements , There is a vague allusion , however , shortly after ,
to the " auspices of' the . Established -Church , " which is somewhat suggestive . The address concludes by a process analogous to what Mr . Wigan , in the " First ^ i ght , " terms ^ tickling" his seven contributing constituents . No small amount of our national prosperity is attributed , under Providence , to the existence of our seminaries of sound learning and religious education . " Well , there is " nothing like
leather , after all ; " and if college dons , and fellows , and tutors have , at times , an uncomfortable suspicion whether their lives and careers are strictly hi accordance * either with apostolic precedent or the spirit ' of the age , it must be a comfort to them to learn , on . the authority of the founder of the Church of England Missionary College , that in some mysterious way they are foundation stones of our national greatness . _ is the real
In plain English , we ask what meaning of this confession of faith ? The articles of the creed have a familiar jingle in our ears ; an unreasoning horror of democracy , an uniform resistance to all reform , a blind support of continental despotism , a bigoted adherence to nil vested abuses and ecclesiastical privileges , read , to us like a political . manifesto , not unknown before . The only novelty about the creed is a kind of dilletante pseudo-liberalism , and an arrogant assertion of exclusive wisdom , with which the old ¦ worn-out tenets of the Tory party ' are-bedecked and veiled . Of Mr . Hope , personally , Ave have little to say , said is
because there is little to be . He a veiy respectable man , and also a very wealthy one . lie gained two or three college prizes in his youth , surd in later life got hold of the Saturday Review He is . a shallow thinker , a poor speaker , and a poorer - writer . ' - The worst fate , indeed , we could wish the Saturday Review would be for Mr . Hope to take a fancy to write liis own ¦ articles .. Let Mr . Hope remain at Maidstone , or he may go farther and fare worse . Of late years ; , the members for the University of Cambridge have not been a distinguished body , but the standard has not yet been lowered to the intellectual calibre of Mr . Beresfbrd Hope . '
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STREET VIEW OF ITALY . —^ o . III . IEGHOBX PISA FLORENCE . AVi 3 suppose that in every civilised country the condition of its periodical press is , more or less , a fair test of its intellectual development . Judging by this standard , we should assign a low place indeed to the moral culture of Italy . In Sardinia the press , of late years , has grown into active existence , though , like all , the liberal institutions of that go-ahead country , it has somewhat of a lath and plaster ' character , and commands'but small influence . Throughout TuScany , the Papal States , and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies , the press can
hardly be * saiid to exist . " We have seen an old English country newspaper of some hundred and twenty years ago , in which , though published at the time of the rebellion of-forty-five ,, the only item of political news is comprised in the paragraph that at Genoa , a town in Italy , two deserters from the State forces had been captured and executed by military law . Such a piece of intelligence , bald as it is , would bo almost a startling novelty in a South Italian newspaper . In fact , these journals are little more than . State advertisement sheets , filled up with the most meagre scraps of intelligence , and in tr
every now and then a column of what , couny newspapers , are termed " Varieties . " Heaven help the unlucky editors , and tho still more unfortunate readers ! Throughout the south of Italy , in all places of public resort , in cafes and barbers' shops , und steam-boats and hotels , you never , by any chance , come across an Italian paper . The songs of Zion never sounded po sweetly as when sung in a Ptrango land , nnd you must have resided long in Italy to know the value of an English uowspapcr . Leghorn is tho Liverpool of Italy , and yet even there there o ' xitrtH no newspaper which can be termed political .
Indeed , us you enter Leghorn , coming from the Sardinian dominions , you become awaro nt once of a change of government . It would tuko tho nllpwnllowing faith of Mr . George Bowyor to believe that tho change is for tho bettor . On landing , ypu ore stopped , and all your luggage opened , to guard against the most distant possibility of your bringing in fire-arms with you , which , by Homo means or other , might find their way unauthorised into the hands of the loving subjects of this paternal
Government . To such an extent is the rule enforced , that we have heard of a midslupman ' s dirk being taken from lniii and locked up till his departure . Even bribery , which will do silmost everything in Italy , will not avail in this instance . On leaving the town , however—which is a free port—ryou arc . submitted to a second inspection , where you may bribe to your heart ' s content . Everybody wants' to be bribed ; Ule Govemijient officials avowedly live . by bribes ; it is the rule all over Italy .. AVe have" seen , ourselves , an Austrian commissioned officer , with the epaulettes . . 'upon hisshoulders , accept five shillings with the utmost complacency , as the reward for his acquiescence in our assertion that our luggage contained nothing contraband .
Passing through the city of Pisa , and travelling through that wondrous burying-ground of the " Cainpo Santo , " where the sacred ' . soil of the Holy Land moulders away beneath the cypress branches , and the fresco-covered walls are studded with the tombs of Pisa ' s wortliies , we were struck most of all with two recent inscriptions . Since we last had . passed through those fretted cloisters there had been one slab raised , over which hung the chains of PisaV ancient'gateways . Centuries had passed away since the Florentines had carried them off in triumph from the Avails of ' ¦ the captured city , but in that short and sweet period of Italian national revolutions oi
independence , which succeeded the ' 48 , the fittest gift which Florence could find to make to Pisa , was the gift of her ancient chains ; yet it seemed to us that the very fact that such a gift should be welcome , ¦ showed how little the memory of old divisions had passed away ; how far the old states of Italy were yet distant from the time that they could be fused into one homogeneous country . Here too , we found another slab i also new to us , arid ' in' our eyes more hopeful of Jhe future . It was a monument erected soon after ! 48 , to the memory-of those who fell in . the great struggle between Austria and Italy . All honour be to those who , even if-mistaken , fought
and foil manfully for a noble cause . The whole railway between Leghorn and Florence is a dead flat , and lies in the wide Arno plain , celebrated for its system of agriculture and irrigation . You cannot " travel through it without being-struck by the richness of tho pasture land , and the extreme care with which every plot of ground is watered and tended . This very . fact recalls to us an observation , which , we believe , explains , in a great measure , the divided state of Italy , and which is generally overlooked by enthu-The Governmentsof
siastic : travellers . -Rome , and jS pIes , and Tuscany , are . all had Governments , according to our notions . They arc all despotic , all intolerant , and all oppressive ; yet there is all the difference in the world between them , as far as their subjects are concerned . The Government of Tuscany , however faulty , is still a Government . Life , and property , and enterprise , are efficiently protected under it . There is , therefore , a fair opening for material progress and development ; and , inconsequence , tho agricultural and uneducated classes in Tuscany are well
enoimh content . Now what all classes m Home and Naples require-, is not a good Government , in our setose of tho Worrt , but a Government at all . Tho old story about the two Hides of tho shield ' in c « pi ! t ? ially applicable to travellers 5 so much , in a traveller ' s impression , depends on the side from which he enters a place , or the aspect from which ho viows it . When we last entered Florence , we came from the dead stagnation and squalid torpor of tho Papal States . Ou the present occasion wo wore fresh from tho life and lnwtle of the Sardinian cities . Hut whatever may have been the ciiwe , it seemed , to us that Florence had fallen oil' in activity and energy ninec tho dim » of the brillianttho
revolution .. The shops lonkeil Iuhh , strootH Ioms crowded , the i > nlncun nwra < hngy tiian of old . At the time , too , that wo happened to bo there , tho capital wim in inounim tf /!>»¦ Ihcs dontn OJ the young Saxon Princiw , who had boon but lately married to tho Crown Prince of Tuscany . A fbw months before wo had boon at Dresden , whom the iiqwh came , that one of the royal Princesses , tho bride of the Archduke of Austria , had died suddenly—another woh now dead , and a third was dying when we left Italv . lno . uuoal family arc detontod at Florence-, which is of course the Ucrtd-quartors of tho Liberal party in Tuscany , and by a reversion of ftoluig , not unknown even in our own country , the poor Crown Princonri , whom
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n ^ a . ^ yi . ^ THE LEADEB . 403
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Leader (1850-1860), March 26, 1859, page 403, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2287/page/19/
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