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878 ®!>e 3L$ai!et+ [Saturday,
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KiUxatntt
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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This is Magazine week, but nothing of mo...
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In France, the literary event of the wee...
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The Taschenbiicher, which formerly were ...
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THE LADDER OF GOLD. The Laihler of Gold....
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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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Social Reform. Epistol-Sl Obscuroeum Yir...
tion I would have them employed in whatever seemed most fitted to their previous habits ; that is , I would have the state take a farm in Dorsetshire , start a mill for weaving low goods at Bradford , and sink a coal-pit in Durham ; and then send its corn , and its stuff , and its coal into the market fearless of the result ; knowing that if the private capitalist was undersold it would be because the state made more profit ; that is , understood better the art of production , in which case the capitalist would , of course , have no reason to complain .
But , perhaps , it will be said , though the state produce cost more , it may be offered at a less price , because as it must be made , it must be sold % sale , not profit , being the object . My reply is , that the object will still be profit in this case as much in any other ; nay , more especially in this case , because the men will be sharers in the profit as well as the masters ; and that , moreover , as the state , if it undersells the capitalist without a profit , must underpay the labourer , because its sole pay will be his subsistence , it will not be able to tempt labourers away from the private employer , and so not be able , in any of the articles I limit it to , to employ producers enough to rule the market .
Thus , then , whatever happened , no one could complain . If the experiment succeeded , the ratepayer would get his rate back with the comfort of knowing that it had made his brother a free man , instead of keeping him a slave to idleness ; and if it failed the rate receiver would , it is true , get no more j but if he produced anything it would be so much towards his own keep , and , therefore , into the pocket of the ratepayer ; and if he produced nothing , that would be only what he does now .
So that at the worst there would be no harm done , but certainly this good , that those who have reason to complain now would have reason to complain no longer ; for to all who are unemployed we should give not only employment but guidance : we should not only find them work , and pay them trage for it , but we should also tell them how to earn it , and then , if their earnings be little , it will be because they are poor workmen , and that we cannot help . We should pull them out of the bog in which thev are sinking , and make room for
them on the path on which we ourselves stand ; and , telling them to join hands with us , point them to the hill up which we would climb , but , alas ! do not ; and more than this we cannot do . And do I think that , after all , they would fall or miss their way ? No . I have faith in the strength which God has given them , and in the light which oershines us all , and in our power to bear them up ; ay , and I have faith , too , in their power to bear us up , so that together we may stay our downward course , and climb the hill , however steep .
One word with our Socialist friends before I finish ; for they too will be objectors , I can well imagine . " Why waste your time in calling out for State efforts , " they may say : " Government can do nothing for you ; its machinery is worn out ; why mend the old rags ? Society is about to clothe herself anew in the garments of love and brotherhood , which our warm hearts and busy brains are weaving . " All honour to your warm hearts and busy brains , my good friends ; but it is only by mending the old rags , one old rag after another , that society will ever get clothed in its new garment ; for , if we strip her , she will die of
cold . Associations such as you are forming are good things , most useful , most benevolent aids—to the good , the skilful workman ; but what right have you to ask him to admit the poor , the unskilled workman into his partnership ? If he does so , he will quickly become bankrupt . It is the pauper , the surplus labourer , whom we want to help ; but his fellow-labourer is the last person who can help him , for it is all he can do to help himself . What right have we to shift our burden on to the shoulders winch are least able to bear it ? The only possible association for this surplus labourer is the association which nature has already formed—to which we all belong—is society itself .
Let us , then , remember that we are a . 11 associates , members of a community , with each of us our post assigned ; and , as we see and feel this truth , wo shall confess that the only possible way to arrive at what you call the principle of Communism , which hut seems to me the aim of every commonwealth , viz ., " concert in the division of employments , " is to admit the right of every one of our fellow-citizens to live by work , and to call upon our Government to enforce it . \ V . E . FORSTER .
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Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—they interpret and trj to enforce them—Edinburgh Review .
This Is Magazine Week, But Nothing Of Mo...
This is Magazine week , but nothing of more than ordinary excellence has caught our eye . Blackwood is not so strong as usual , though Bulweb continues his novel , and there is some hard hitting in the " Lecture on Journalism . " Fraser keeps up its varied and pleasant character , the Note Book of a Naturalist" continuing its delightful communications . The Rambler has , of course , an article on the " Hierarchy , " but brings forward nothing new ; the papers on " Religion and Modern Philosophy" are curious as exhibiting ingenuity in a hopeless attempt . When will men understand that all Truth is of God ? When will
they confess that the revelations of Science are in open contradiction with the revelations of the Bible ? When will they understand that the doctrines of Religion are only attempts to explain the phenomena of the universe and of man ' s relation to the Deity ? Whence it follows , that the early explanations are necessarily imperfect , and must give place to newer and truer explanations , so that while the Religious Sentiment in man remains constant through all the phases of human progress , Religious Doctrines necessarily vary with the varying explanations afforded by advancing knowledge .
Beside the old Magazines new journals are raising their titles . This week we have the first number of Leigh Hunt ' s Journal , which is destined to cultivate our love of the beautiful and progressive . Leigh Hunt , Thomas Carlylb , and Walter Savage Landor , are sounding lures to open with ; and , besides the attraction of good names , the new journal has the indispensable quality of filling a place hitherto unoccupied . The section devoted to " Talk of the Week , " will be an interesting one ; not less so that of " Books speaking for themselves . " By uniting the instructive with the aesthetic , this journal will secure a charmed and numerous public .
In France, The Literary Event Of The Wee...
In France , the literary event of the week is the republication by Guizot of his two thoughtful tractates on Monk and Washington , with appended documents . The Washington is tolerably well known here ; but the Monk , having only appeared in the Revue Fran $ aise ( except in the English translation ) , will , to most readers , be as a new work . The election of M . D . Nisard to a seat in the Academy excites idle sarcasms and reclamations from some of Alfred de Musset ' s admirers . Certainly , if merit were the passport to the Acaher clai
demy , De Musset would have a far hig m than Nisard ; but when was ever merit alone the passport to an Academy ? Paul Louis Courier , in his inimitable Letter on that subject , denies that even high birth is absolutely indispensable— " I'ignorance Men prouve * svffit : well-authenticated ignorance is enough" ! IiiNisard ' s case , however , the choice is perfectly justifiable : his merit is undeniable , and is precisely of the academic kind . As an acute critic , a sober thinker , a rigid defender oj classic purity and national taste , M . Nisard ' s claim to a fauteuil surpasses that of all his rivals .
In the Revue desDeux Mondes ( 15 th November ) there is an amusing paper by Henri Blaze , on Verona and Marshal Radetzky , where , among other matters , he touches upon Romeo and Juliet . The house where Juliet was born , lived , and loved , is now turned into a vast warehouse for merchandize by the pitiless prosaism of Time , which respects nothing ; and this recals us to the curious point thrown out for the commentators by M . Blaze , who was told by an Italian genealogist that the Capulets never belonged to the Veronese nobilitythey only were rich merchants , whereas the Mon-Siiaksimsarewho
tagues were of pure noblesse . , somehow always manages to be in the right , no matter what his ignorance of the subject , has hit the precise distinction , just as if he had been versed in the whole genealogy . Open the play : and M . Bi . aze assures you that , while great stress is laid on the nobility of the proud patrician Montagues , not a word indicates the claim of the Capulets to be more than rich . " He that can lay hold of her shall have the chinks , " says Juliet ' s Nurse ; and Capulet is always spoken of as the " rich Capulet . " It is a pity to spoil so pleasant a passage for the
commentators , who always will discover Shakspeare to be minutely right ; but a natural suspicion of all French judgments on these matters forced us to look at Romeo and Juliet , to see if what M . Blaze said was correct ; had it been so , there would have been no marvel in it , for Shakspeare must , in this matter , have taken his cue from the story , not from genealogists ; but , in point of fact , it is not true . The very Prologue thus rudely contradicts it : — " Two households , both alike in dignity . In fair Verona ";—and County Paris says to Capulet : — ' Of honourable reckoning are you both . " Nay , the very phrase chosen by M . Blaze , " rich Capulet , " is , in the original , a condemnation of his notion ;—it is " the great rich Capulet . " Moreover , had Shaksfbare meant to indicate the distinction , would he not have placed some sarcasms in the mouths of the Montagues ?
The Taschenbiicher, Which Formerly Were ...
The Taschenbiicher , which formerly were even more numerous in Germany than oar Annuals at the height of their success , have gradually dwindled down—as with us—to three or four . There is a fashion in books as in everything else ; and one may safely assert that the fashion has departed from Annuals . In Germany their place is filled by the pretty children ' s books , which are now swarming from the press . The best of them is Der Jugend Kalender , wherein the illustrations are really artistic . That for 1851 is quite a gem ; and , as German now rasps the throats of our very " Young England / ' this notice may not be unwelcome to parents and godpapas wishing to make
presents . The almanacks are sand-numerous . A passing word is all we can give to Weber ' s Illustrirter Kalender , with its rivals by Gubitz and Nicritz . The comic almanacks are by Brbnn g lass ( noticed last week ) and the famous Kladderadatsch . For new books we hare a novel by the active Theodor Mundt , Die Matadore—which we
shall not read—and two by his wife ( who writes under the pseudonym of L . Muhlbach ) , called Johann Gotzkousky ein Kaufmann aus Berlin and Der Zogling der Gesellschaft—both of which we shall most carefully avoid ; but , as you may like German novels , we generously give you the information , with the stoic benevolence of a physician who prescribes a dose that he would shudder at if offered to himself .
But here is something that we , and you , and all German readers will try to get hold of—a Christmas hook by Bekthold Auerbach , author of the Tales of the Black Forest "—it is not yet published , but its title is Deutsche Abende . Our graver philosophic friends may be told that Chalybaus , whose History of Modern Philosophical Systems is tolerably known here , has published a Speculative Ethilt , oder Philosophie der Familie , des Staates , und der relii / iosen Sittethe only work on philosophy that has been issued for a long while . Barricades have brushed away cobwebs .
Shelley used to tell a story of the Italian douaniers with infinite relish . He had two books in his trunk , an English Bible and a Latin Spinoza : the Bible was confiscated , the Spinoza was allowed to pass free ! This story is recalled to us by the Neapolitan journals , which announce that the Government has prohibited the sale of several very dangerous and anarchical works , among them Sophocles ! Shakspeare , Schiller , Moliere , Thiers , Sismondi , Lamartine , and Humboldt . Some of these we can understand as inspiring terror ; but why poor Sophocles is made a Red Republican we cannot divine .
We had something of importance to say upon the new press laws in Saxony , but must reserve it for next week .
The Ladder Of Gold. The Laihler Of Gold....
THE LADDER OF GOLD . The Laihler of Gold . An English Story . By Robert Bell . Tn tlirce volumes . lieiitley . Robert Bell is known to the world of letters for a variety of works signed by him , embracing a very wide range—as wide , indeed , as from a History of Russia to a five-act comedy ! He has now won laurels in another field , and has written his first novel . It will not be his last , if success may justify prediction . The Ladder of Gold is a book that once commenced must be read through , for it grasps the attention with a power as great as that of the Ancient Mariner s eye when it fixed the wedding guest . Although
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 7, 1850, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07121850/page/14/
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