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,-- An THE LEADER. [No. 307, Saturday,
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HISTORY OF GERMAN PROTESTANTISM. Interna...
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« THE HOLLY TREE INN" AT THE ADELPHI. A ...
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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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¦ Lamabtine's " Celebrated Chaeacters." ...
¦ ^^ . 1 ' . ^ ^ ^^ M ^ M ^ M ^ I JKMi This is Myolity , but what is it . ^^^ P ' wL ' it no ^ hai WMMmmm -which Milton lived . , „ fl t th gmmmim
SrSS tt 3 ^^ % is »« S that are to be found amid the unchaste eSheSe of " The Garden of Knowledge ? " Excepting the " Arabian SSKXtartainnwiit * " scarcely . any Oriental fictions are popular inEnxope . K P . R . James attempted to imitate them ; but his Gulnare was a Snmbiae , and his palace o ? the Jinn a mere jeweller s shop . Jour true Orientalist does not load his branches with as many- bulbuls as fags , or his Sdenfmth as many roses attorns of lig h * The East ; »> not all purple andt sold , any moie than the Red Indian is all paint and feathers . L hvSment of Bossuet , as we have indicated , M . de Lamartme soars into analogies , uaattempted yet in prose or rhyme a ^ ls th ? ° ^ aJ aiJc 1 e SUCCe > y .. _ S > ¦ . 4 . "u : _ jie > nn-nnor-n \ mcr + h (* . orp . at OathollC im & aivc mtugs " —& —D
h _ e writes many •»*« » uu . urc Vu »»~~~ .. - . orator , a Bellarmine in" the pulpit . Among ingenuities of suggestion , we may instance his theory , which he promptly elaborates , that territories and cities hmuenee men , as men influence cities and territories . Thus , Bossuet , bom in a . patrician province , abounded in pride , and wantedfeelmg , . Uijon an intellectual but not an enthusiastic capital , produced St . Bernard , Bossuet , and Buffon , " men of bronze and marble , rather than of flesh . 1 he first had Abelardfor his victim , the second T ? enelon , and the third dissected alV nature ] without finding a tear ; a single hymn of praise , or-a deity . ThatM . de tamartine is not always equally elegant when equally bold , may be inferred ¦ When we say that he likens the two curls on Bossuet ' s forehead to the horns of a ( prophetic ) ram . . . _ _ , , We have now indicated the kind of interest possessed by M . de Lamar-Vine ' s third volume of Memoirs . The biographies abound with graces of style and fancy , and though in great part apoexyphal , have none ot ttie duhiess which often accompanies didactic accuracy-
,-- An The Leader. [No. 307, Saturday,
,-- An THE LEADER . [ No . 307 , Saturday ,
History Of German Protestantism. Interna...
HISTORY OF GERMAN PROTESTANTISM . Internal History of German Protestantism since Uie Middle of the Last Century . By Dr . * Kahnis . Treated from the German by the Rev . T ^ dor ^ eye . ^ ^ ^ As-naturalists tell us that the animals of the Old World are represented by analogous , but not by identical species in the New , so the various forms of religious opinion amongst us are represented by corresponding but not precisely similar forms in Germany . The Anglican Churchman is tpso verbo a purely English product ; but his species has its German analogue in the extreme Lutheran party , which has been urged into a rigid and vehement assertion of its peculiar tenets by the unsuccessful attempt of the late and actual Kings of Prussia to effect a union between the two great branches of German iormeu ju f
- - —^—ta ^ HW Kahnis' little book is written , we may recommend it to him , in the absence of better and equally accessible books on the same subject as a useful and compendious survey . The information that can be given , on so great a subject in about three hundred duodecimo pages is necessarily scanty , but it is rendered » n .-necessarily so » y an unwise expenditure of space on gossiping biographical details , which ought to have no place in a rapid historical sketch . Dr Kahnis seems , especially , tempted to give such details when they are disadvantageous to those whom he regards as heterodox . An example of his very bad taste in this way is his gratuitous mention of a private , and , as he thinks , reprehensible relation of Sehleiermacher ' s in early life . The other defects which might be pointed out in the book are chiefly theoretic , and will not be recognised as defects by those who share the author's theological position . 1 We wish our criticism could stop here , but the injury that is constantly being I done to the reading public by the issue of defective translations , renders it a duty for reviewers to allow no case of the kind to pass unnoticed . The Rev . I Theodore Meyer , as we gather from his preface to his translation , is a I German ; it is not surprising , therefore , that his English should be thickly inlaid with German idioms , but it is surprising that publishers who risk large 1 ¦ 1 Tl . ' _ _/* f * " . _„! _ _ _ T » j » --1 Ji H a . ^ 1-kS * vn * ± ** n rtoi'flTn 1 in duction oi uui muiiumuj iu
| . * sums on tne repro ioreign wous-s suumu , uc c . « secure a respectable quality of translation . Throughout this volume we are constantly meeting with such sentences as these : " For I know as little as nothing , when 1 am told that some one has , however openly , declared , twenty-two years ago , for something by which I believe , even to-day no one knows to think ' of anything definite and distinct , as little as twenty-tm years ago" . . . "I don ' t observe almost anything at all . " "Spinoza ' s substance had no personal life , without the things , no personality , " & C . & C . . -- . , ! Translators , as a class , seem to want impressing with the wholesome truth that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well . They are "brokers in the great intellectual traffic of the world "—a function not so high as that of the producers , but one which it is of manifest importance to have carefully and honestly fulfilled .
ALBERT SMITH ON ENGLISH HOTELS . The English Hotel Nuisance . By Albert Smith . David Bryce . Mr . Albert Smith is determined to lay the public under obligations to him . Not content with going up and down Mont Blanc with them more than twelve hundred , times , he now comes forward gallantly to fight the i battle of his home-travelling countrymen against their own Innkeepers . In a gay little pamphlet , boldly called " The English Hotel Nuisance , and modestly sold for no more than sixpence , he exposes all the most striking delects of the comfortless and expensive Hotel system of this country , and briefly and sensibly suggests the best means of reforming it . The pamphlet is written With delightful gaiety and good humour , with extraordinary acuten ess ot observation , and with an honest , downright contempt for all clap-traps and conventionalities which it is truly refreshing to meet with now-a-days . No matter how venerable by long custom hotel nuisances may be , tUe unerring " bull ' s-eye " of Mr . Albert Smith flashes detectively uponjthem 1 ^ O ¦ .,,. ¦• i . l _ J . T ^ £ P ~~ .. »»« - * % "Vfa lino n niocnrvp f * ttC % lit . SnftTl 10 iuuui uv ^« oo -.- , _
| from tne bed-cnamoer me cuucc- . , « ao « .. &~ - , -r at Inns which will awaken a chorus of sympathetic groans from travelling readers all over the country . He gives a ground-plan of a large Four-poster I in a small bed-room , wliich is one of the most awfully truthful and suggestive works of practical Art that we have looked On for years past—and he winds up with a perfectly bewildering model of what a wine-list ought to be , copied verbatim from the famous carte of « The Three Moors " at Augsburg and giving the drinker a choice out of something like two hundred varieties ol wine !! We refrain from making extracts from a pamphlet which ought tobe , and will be , in everybody ' s hands . It is enough if we announce its publication , and thaak Mr . Albert Smith for a small work winch docs great credit to his good sense , humour , and anxiety to help the effecting of a most important social reform . —— ——— =====
Protestantism known as the JLutheran ana He ^ nurcnes . «« ' «^ of the "High" Lutherans concerning the authority of the Church and the efficacy of the Sacraments , resemble , with a difference not , let us hope , absolutely fatal , those of bur more geographically favoured Anglicans , and among the other indications of kinship , a certain arrogance of tone is not wanting . To this extreme Lutheran party belongs Dr . Kahnis ,. the author of the compact History of German Protestantism of which we have the translation before us . His . opinion as to the ' rule of faith" may be ; gathered from the following observations : — To go thus immediately back to Scripture , appears , at first eight , as the truly free proceeding , and yet , ut the same time , truly bound ; in one word , as the ¦ truly Protestanfc proceeding . Bat if every Protestant divine were to expound \ Scripture in his own way , were himself to form the doctrines , and to ahaps thenbuilding according to his own method , —what would be the result ? A chaos of stand-points atomipticaUy crossing one another , with which no Church , no sound , science , would he possible . Behind this apparent objectivity , an unbounded pubjectivity is concealed . Men eo rich in . intellect and spirit as JfccJymust not influence the opinion aa to what the standpoint is in itself . If the Protestant Chwot calls the Scriptures the rule of the doctrines of faith , it doe « not thereby gay that Scripture is the eourqe of them . Even before the books of the New Testament were written and collected , there existed in the congregations a consciousness of faith . It was founded upon the oral word of the Apostlee , and very early , according to the Confossion at Baptism , assumed the form of rules ot faith , which wore regarded aa the sum and substance of both the oral and wrvtten - word . The first Dogmatik ( Qrigen on the Fundamental Doctrines ) procoeda from xuiwu * £ **¦» * ™
• > tne rule ot taetaitn . jliub ruie oi »» , av > * ™ o «»« . »««» .- « v »«~ . ™ , hep confession , of which she is convinced that it is at one with the oontaunon ot ' the Catholic Cliuroh , as is deolared in the Augsburg confession , at the close , and iatKa ^ orwulaconcordiae , at the commencement . Every dogmattk has anew to compare the doctrine of the confessions with the rule and measure of Scripture ; ft ! Wmerely , in a scientific manner , to evolve the confession , but not to produce it'tfrdttf Scripture jtBelf . -It may be that the argumentation from Scripture comes ' iniia' ^ ontrM ^ tibn" wjfth the confession of the Ohuroh , iiuvsnuioh aa it is , after all , of ^ uMtooifigiiS , ^ But , without prejudice to tho righta of Protestantism and science , wo may well demand from our divines , that they shall not consider their own opinion to fc >; infaUible , while they asuert the fallibility of tlw Church . Having tlvua forewarned the reader of the point of view from which Dr
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« The Holly Tree Inn" At The Adelphi. A ...
« THE HOLLY TREE INN" AT THE ADELPHI . A one act sketch , founded on the exquisite child romance with wluch Mr . Dickens has illuminated the Christmas Number of " Household Words , was produced on Monday evening at the Abelphi . The limes has expressed its astonishment that a piece 30 excellently acted , so well put on the stage , and so original in its character , should have met with so com a reception as that which the audience awarded on Monday night , and on successive evenings as well . We take the explanation to be that , tnougii Adelphi audiences are not generally very delicate or subtle m then- critical perceptions , they have , on this occasion , instinctively felt that tit beautiful creation of Mr . Dickens ' b genius belongs entirely to tnt domain of fairyland—to the very outskirts of humanity , fantastically and delicately tinted by a sort of Auror * of subtlest poetry anu feeling . The spectators therefore resented , or but frigidly Jccc *™ 1 ' the attempt to render tangible what ought to be kept sacredly within the limits of fancy . < We have already had occasion to remark , « J connexion with another version of this remarkable tale , that the clomem , of which stage children arc most devoid ia childhood ; ftn <» > wmiv . acknowledging real cleverness on the part of Miss Oaddock an « Miss Manning who played the infantine lovers , we must Wv l " ; uj
same observation to them . It is always painiui to us *^ »• - who ought 1 o be still in possession of their childish freshness and innoccnw . i exhibiting nil the slangy knowingnesa and jaded training of the stage « < wish , moreover , that the instructors who have had fchcj training 01 u «< - Adblphi « l » ildren had paid a little more attention to their aspirations , ana spared us the annoyance of so frequently hearing reference to ' < Vr » y . Mr . Wbdbtbb ' b Boots we may speak in high praise . The acting wns natural , subdued , humorous , touching , and steeped in emotion . Th . ° l i f the waa well manufactured , with a skilful introduction of a good d « iu 01 i descriptive writing of the Christmas Number ; and tlio scenery was v \ t painted an «) effective ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 9, 1856, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09021856/page/20/
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