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THE
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Vol. X. December 1, 1862. No. 58.
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XL.-EEMAEKS ON VICTOB HUGO'S « LES MISEH...
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¦ « BY FRANCES POWER COBBE. It is either...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The
THE
ENGLISH WOMAN'S JOURNAL .
PUBLISHED MONTHLY .
Vol. X. December 1, 1862. No. 58.
Vol . X . December 1 , 1862 . No . 58 .
Xl.-Eemaeks On Victob Hugo's « Les Miseh...
XL _.-EEMAEKS ON VICTOB HUGO'S « LES MISEHABLES . "
¦ « By Frances Power Cobbe. It Is Either...
¦ _« BY FRANCES POWER COBBE . It is either a very good or a very bad sign of the timeswhen
, a convict is made the hero of a great work of fiction , and thatwork is received with enthusiasm throughout Europe . When the _?
instinctive feeling of vengeance against crime , common to halfcivilized nations , has given way to more complicated sentiments _,
men fall into one or other of two very opposite modes of regarding the assassin and the robber . There is first the maudlin pity of the =
moral latitudinarian , who thinks virtue and vice after all very little * different from each other , and who contrives to attach
morecompassionate sympathy to the ruffian enduring the penalty of his : crimes , than to the innocent victim whom he has destroyed . "We
have all heard enough of this misplaced pity , against which Carlyle has thundered even somewhat too roughly . And blended with
this pseudo-compassion , comes the admiration of the vulgarminded for any species of notoriety , and of the cowardly for any
kind of courage . Here we have the secret of the odious interest of men ( and women tooalas !) in bloody sacksand beautiful hands of
murderers ; and the , disgusting honours , paid to offenders like Madeline Smith and her congeners . , The literature which belongs
to this phase of sentiment is , beyond doubt , baneful in the extreme , whether it descend to biographies of Jack Sheppard and Dick
Turpin , or mount to tragedies like Schiller ' s " Robbers , " which is said to have demoralized hundreds of the young men of Germany .
The old Greek plays with their avenging furies , the Shakespearian dramas , in which crime wears all its proper blacknesstheseand
indeed the whole literature of early times , are sound at the , core , , and must ever have been the ally of public virtue . But for a century
past this crude and simple idea of crime and its punishment has been gradually making way for a more complicated analysis of
human motives and responsibilities , and for that wider conception of Providence , which permits us to recognise without despair , that
our ideal of " poetic justice" is rather a prophecy of what may be , human in the life history to come . Henceforth , than an , induction our fictions from of the the hi actual gher clas course s can of
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Dec. 1, 1862, page unpag, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01121862/page/1/
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