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No. 432, Juirr 3, 1858.] THE LEADER. 641
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«->>•« . ILu^nitUrE* #
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V Critics are notthelegislatora, but the...
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The Magazines, mindful of the necessitie...
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.
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No. 432, Juirr 3, 1858.] The Leader. 641
No . 432 , Juirr 3 , 1858 . ] THE LEADER . 641
«-≫≫•« . Ilu^Niture* #
literature .
V Critics Are Notthelegislatora, But The...
V Critics are notthelegislatora , but the judges and police ofliterature . They do not makelaws—theyinterpretand try to enforcethem . —Edinburgh Revieiv .
The Magazines, Mindful Of The Necessitie...
The Magazines , mindful of the necessities of the season—something a little lively being necessary to keep up attention in the dog-days—aie better than usual this month , lilackwood is both instructive and entertaining , the opening articles of the number belonging to the former , and the closing ones to the latter head . Three articles arc devoted to the army , the first of which , entitled "The Soldier and the Surgeon , " is a sensible discussion of that most pressing and important question the sanitary condition of the army . It does seem strange—monstrous , indeed—that while the resources of sanitary science have been employed for years in rendering the condition of the criminals in oar gaols thoroughly healthy , the commonest precautions against disease should have been systematically neglected in our metropolitan barraclcs .
Important and expensive as our army is to the nation , the whole subject of the common soldier ' s health , the sanitary condition of men in barracks , has hitherto been , as one of the witnesses examined by the commission expressed it , " lost sight of . " The writer in Blackwood points out with great force the ruinous results of such a state of things , and urges many improvements that ought to be introduced to secure not only the health but the social comfort and general welfare of the men . The two other articles connected with the army refer to the doings of our soldiers in India—in the Punjab and before Luckno \ v . The account of the final capture of the latter city—written by one who was noi only an eye witness but a sharer in that perilous exploit—is written with vigour and spirit , and abounds with minute and graphic incidents of the siege .
The three last articles of the' number , respectively literary , political , and artistic , are verj r readable . "My First and Last Novel , " a charming little story , scarcely more than a domestic incident indeed , is full of nature and truth , and dramatically told . " The Great Imposture "—in oilier words , the promised . Whig Reform Bill- —is the bailesque political article , as the last , paper , "\ Mr . Dusky ' sOpinions on Art , " is the burlesque art-criticism of the number . This ' paper is a very -amusing and not very unfair satire- —in some cases , indeed , parody—of Mr . Ruskin's pamphlet on the Exhibitions of the present year . The following extract will give a taste of the critic ' s quality : — The first thing that strikes me , in the work of the present year , is , that though all other seasons and times of the day are reproduced in landscape ( except the pitch dark of a -winter ' s night , which it -would be difficult for any one , in the present stale of art , to place satisfactorily on canvas ) , yet that particular state of the atmosphere which
exists in the month of August from about five minutes before two to about twenty minutes after , when the sun ' s sultry and lavish splendour is tinged with some foreboding of his decline , and when Nature is , as it were , taking her siesta , is nowhere sought to be conveyed . 1 thought , on first looking at a small picture in the east room of the Academy , that this hiatus had been filled up ; but , on further study , I perceived that the picture in question had been painted rather earlier ( about iive-andtwentj' minutes before two is the time I should assign to it ) , and is therefore deficient in many of the chief characteristics of the remarkable period I allude to . How comes it , too , that , amid all the rendering of grass and flowers , there is not a single dandelion—a flower which has often given to me , no less than to Wordsworth , " thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears ; " nor a group of toadstools , which can give
interest to a foreground else bald and -barren ; nor , among the minute studies of insects , a daddy-long-legs , swaying delightedly across the path , and dar . cing to inaudible music , as the mid-day zephyr waves the slender fabric if his gossamer home . I am surprised , too , to find ( so far as my survey luis enabled me to note ) that there arc nowhere any frogs , though every artist who painted out of doors in the first warm days of spring must have heard their choral music from the neighbouring ditches The old heralds , speaking of the manner of the frog ' s holding his head , talk of the pride and dignity , or , as they phruse it , " the lording" of frogs , and gave them a place in heraldry ; and their ideas are generally vahuiule to artists , and worth studying , both for their literal exactness and their allegorical significance . Let us have some frogs next year .
No . 18 . —" A Man Washing his Hands" ( J . Prig ) . A stop in the right direction . The painting of the nail-brush , showing where friction has worn away and channelled the bristles in the middle , is especially good . But how cornea it that , the nail-brush having been evidently made use of , the water in the basin is still pellucid , with no soap apparent , either superficially or in solution V This oversight I should not have expected in so clever an artist , liven granting clearness to the water , the pattern of the bottom of the basin visible through it is of a different character from the exterior of the vessel , which is not the case in any specimen of that particular dclf which Juts come under my notice . No . 24 . —This is directly imitative both of Titian nnd George Critikshank , with Smith ' s handling , and a good deal of Hrowu's manner .
No . 29 . —As I told this artist lust year , he is dvlicicnt in fulness of form and looseness of texture . He should , therefore , for some years , paint nothing but mops of various colours ( without the handles ) , which would give him ¦ woolliness nnd rotundity . On the other hund , the painter of No . 82 bus too much of thuso qualities , with too little firmness in his dnrks ; and I should recommend him , as u counteracting influence , to study only blocks of coul—not the cummm coul ( which U too dull ) , but the kennel or cundle coul—u perseverance in which practice he will find attended by the happiest results . " The . Nativity . "—This ia nearly perfect . The infant , which at lirnt appears to be wearing a broad-brimmed straw-hat , is distinguished by a peculiar h « lo , in which there is no trace of acrvile imitation of those iibsurd pretenders known i \ b the old masters . Thoughtless and superficial observers lmv « objected to the angel holding the luntern , as an office inconsistent with the dignity of the angelic nuture ; saying , too , that the act bus some ofliciousness , bincc tl » e lantern might have been placed on the ground or hung oi » a nail . For my own part , I consider the idea eminently happy , und it one of the other angels hod been represented as snulliug the candlo with her lingers , my admiration would have been complete . Eraser commences two new stories this month ; the first , "lhuiworUi , " a regular magazine tale , apparently by nn old hand ; the second . " Caluriua in
Venice : a Study of the Lagoon , " a short sketch , to be completed in three parts , as evidently by a new writer , of peculiar powers , and considerable promise . The opening chapters of the sketch show a rare union of descriptive and analytic power . With the fullest enjoyment of nature , and life on the surface of the story , there is a poetic insight in its side glances and casual allusions that invests with an indescribable charm the description of wellknown places and persons . We are alL tolerably familiar with Venice—in description at least . Yet the following passage brings it vividly before us in new beauty and power : — - The inevitable railway has crossed the Lagoon since then , rather , as I think , marring the impression of the approach . But on the 1 st of June , thirty years ago , we quitted the mainland at Fusina , and turned the boat ' s prow right out to sea . The night breeze , blackening the waves , blew in sharply and shrilly from the Adriatic .
The Italian shore from which we had started quickly became distant and indistinct , until it disappeared in the growing darkness—all but one snowy peak of the Kuganeans , on which the sunset lingered . Then the night came down upon us in grim earnest , and found us still labouring in the sea-trough . For a moment it seemed a wild and extravagant whim—the mad freak of an Englishman—at such an hour , in pur crazy craft , and as the wind drove the foam into our faces , to tempt the caprice of the sea . But the boatmen held on their way collected and undisturbed , and hummed at times to their oars short snatclies of monotonous song . For why should they fear ? This silent and desolate water was one of the beaten highways of the nations . For centuries it had formed the main road between the monarchies of Europe and its most polished and warlike republic . Andnorf , as we turned our faces to the East , and looked through the drifting foam , the red moon rose from the Adriatic , dispersed the clouds , and discovered along the horizon , amid a charmed pause in the waves , the white domes and cupolas of Venice .
At present the irieste boat is to be preferred . Though by this route you do not obtain perhaps the same vivid impression of a city driven from the land and adrift among the breakers , j-et the labyrinth of narrow and squalid canal , through -which by the other you must pass ere you arrive at your hotel , is avoided . You are ushered at once into the presence of the Hepublic . All . noble edifices associated with its national and historical life are grouped together on thi 3 its furthest shore . No land is visible on the Piazza except the Lido . The winged lion , as he paws his lair , looks out upon the sea . The breeze that sweeps through the pillared screen of the ducal gallery comes salt from the Adriatic . 'TVas bravely done . She had been spurned from her native soil . She had been forced , like a sea-mew , to build her nest upon the surf , and to stay it among the reeds . And lo ! she accepts her doom ; and turning with beautiful scorn from the betrayer , casts her white arms , Queen-like , upon the wave 3 . „ ¦ ¦ . ' . . 'V [' : ' ¦ . ' ¦ . ' ' ¦ ¦¦ ' :.. " : . -. ¦ . . '¦ ; ¦ ¦ ' .... ' We have most of us travelled from Kensington to Hackney on the top of au omnibus . Here is the panorama of the journey in ¦ its picturesque -variety : ¦—•
Have you ever journeyed , dear reader , from Kensington to Hackney , and looked down on the City from the heights of an omnibus ? journeyed , not for the sake of moving , but of seeing ? I have the pleasure to know an eminent modern philosopher who mounts the box-seat once or twice every iveek , and who tells me that lie is indebted to the drive for any little insight he may have gained into the framework of the human understanding . And merely in an artistic point of view the experiment is worth making . The series of sparkling- kaleidoscopic effects which it offers could hardly be matched in Kubla Khan ' s metropolis . There are the parks , with their ancestral oaks , and elms , and ashes , and pellucid waters , where the identical ducks are still to be met with which the monarch of merry memory was- \ vont to feed ; and the still impenetrable mansions of Piccadilly , with their huge gates and green preserves , prison-like as the Sleeping Palace of our childhood ere the advent of the nimble-footed Prince ; and the great square of Trafalgar ,
with its pepper-boxes , and its statue of Nelson , and its funny little fountains , which blush in the sunshine , as if they were ashamed of themselves , and felt the absurdity of the situation painfully ; and its glimpse down Parliament-street to that tragic stage where Chatham died , and Burke flung his dagger at the House , and Sheridan wept or grinned as it was the tragic or the comic mask he wore , and Canning was basely stabbed , and Disraeli was jeered into greatness ; and the Strand , with its richly-decorated stream of various life , its shops , its temples , its theatres , its panoramic advertisements , its trenchant hansoms , its merchant-princes rolling westward from the City ; and the green oasis of the Temple , with its idle barristers and shabby suitors ; and St . Paul ' s crowded into a corner and afraid to move a muscle , though it ia stiff and rigid all over -with cramp ; and the Mansion-house , with its odour of aldermen and turtle , and Ministerial speeches ; nnd the Bank , gorged and surfeited > vith gold , and raising in the mind wild visions of burglary , and the Old Bailev , and
transportation beyond the high seas ; then beyond this brilliant turmoil quiet lanes and small disjointed squares , each -with its centre plot of greenery protected—God knows why —by prison-like iron rails , and its laburnum , which pines sadly in the smoky sunshine , and its rich crop of grass on the footpath , and its strange population , which never reads tins dnily papers , never seems rightly to awake ; butchers who stand placidly -with white unspotted aprons nt their doors , guiltless of the blood of woolly victims ; nursery-maids , who Iiave never been young , children who need never grow old ; a savage and incurious race , who stare blankly nt the omnibus as i * goes by , and know not thut a potent enchanter is passing them—a wizard , who " in forty miuuteV can transport them bodily from their primitive wilds into the wealthiest and most splendid civilization of the world ! And this brilliant panorama for a shilling a siugle shilling for leave to pass aloft through the golden turmoil ; to pass alol ' t , und look down through the white incense of Lutnkia , like Jove through the Olympian clouds , on the races of men who muko Iiauto to destruction .
And though we have seen Ladiy Macbeth a dozen times , the following account of " Calarina" in the part is so instinct with the deeper meaning oi that affecting vision , that we cannot but read it with interest : — Still Catarina was not a groat singer . There she was matched often— sometime ! probably excelled . Hut as un actress nho stood alone . In this second sceno slie had little to say—a few pussionate words ol' anger und entreaty , lint tlio vignette was perfect in its way ; an elaborate picture could not have been more curiously finished She , stood before thu house for one breathless moment , a white-mined fury . Verj beautiful , but fierce and unrelenting us the panther , as raising her white arm she points pitilessly to the chamber wherein lies the king . Such au arm f I have novel Keen its match . It spoke to the peoplo expressively , eloquently as her face . What often becomes an incunibrutiuo to an inferior artist , wtm with her tlio higJient upell ol her craft . In its Htraiued nntl agitated . iiiuscIcn you could road nngor , contempt , de > liunt'G , detestation j most womanly weakness , -when nt the und it dropped exhauster m > d helpless by hor side . Slio cast it up to heaven , and its grand vehement curv invoked the vindictive gods ; it clasped the neck of her Konwm lover with the puusior nnd tenderiicds of an ltuliun Aphrodite ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 3, 1858, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_03071858/page/17/
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