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5 j,g; THE LEADER. [Saturday ,
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ctr>*±. rt+Vv av 3bXUrwIUrw ^
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Critics are not the legislators, but the...
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Natural history owes so much to clergyme...
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.
5 J,G; The Leader. [Saturday ,
5 j , g ; THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
Ctr≫*±. Rt+Vv Av 3bxurwiurw ^
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Critics Are Not The Legislators, But The...
Critics are not the legislators , but the j utfges and police of literature . They do not rake lawns-they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edtnburgh Bavzew .
Natural History Owes So Much To Clergyme...
Natural history owes so much to clergymen , that only a momentary surprise will be raised by Charles Kingsley ' s appearance in the field . Among his many accomplishments he counts the graceful pursuit of Natural History ; and having last year written an article on the wonders of the shore , in the North British Review , he reprints and enlarges it this spring in a pretty little volume , just published by Macmiij ^ an , Glaucus ; or , ihe Wonders of the Shore . It is not a work to criticise ; indeed it is not , properly speak Ingy a work at all , but an article , and although pleasant to meet with in the pages of a Review or Magazine , has a want of the novelty and definite purpose which would fit it for a substantive work . be he
Kingscjsy is always and above all a clergyman , so you may sure does not lead you on to the seabeach without " improving the occasion , " and . making it a constant text . For ourselves we prefer the " sermons in stones" to the sermons on stones ; we enjoy Nature more as sermon than as text ; we are more subdued by her eloquence , than by the eloquence of any man getting up in her pulpit . Others are not . of that way of thinking ; and for them Kongsley's sermons may be the mos , t attractive part of his volume . There are truly wonders enough on the seashore to occupy a Methtjsausm . No one need complain of the vacuity and listlessness of solitude by the seaside , if he will confront the foolish prejudice against " smatterers , " and answer the old
platitude—A little knowledge is a dangerous thingby a bold assertion that no knowledge is more dangerous still . He has only to get up a smattering of natural history , and he will not find time hang heavy on his hands . Something of what can be done on the seashore he will learxifrom Glaucus . But he need not go so far as the shore . The first ant-hill he stumbles on will occupy him for a week . Did the reader ever stretch himself on the grass , "lying against the sun upon a day , " as Chaucer says , and watch the tribe of ants issuing from their little city ? There are three sexes , three castes in the tribe : first the Neuters , or those
who work for the commonwealth ( the People with a big P ) who do all the labour , all the fighting , and all the ^ police ; secondly , the females held in great honour , as mothers should be ; thirdly , the males , who are winged like the females , but who are kept prisoners by the careful workers , until the time when they are thought fit to be married . Let us suppose the Hymeneal day arrived . A crowd of ants issue , escorting the males and females , to the altar . It is usually on the stems of the plants that the marriage takes place ; but this is only the first act of the drama ; or the first volume of the novel . At the close of this volume the husband dies .
Marriage is death to him : the blaze of felicity lights his funeral pyre . The second volume opens with a series of widows descending the steins of the plants ; but gay and sprightly as widows who loved not their lords . No sooner are they once more on terra firma than the escorts of workers pouiiee upon them , and carry them off to the ant-hill , there to watch them \ rith . Oriental jealousy . Nay , these guardians of public safety seem to consider the best security for the chastity of the widows is to tear off their
wings 1 This done , they watoh them tenderly , caressing , feeding , and transporting-them , when necessary to other spots , until the moment of accouchement arrives . Interesting moment ! But where is the midwife ? She too is . present . She has probably studied the obstetric art under a learned professor , for we see her clinging , to the abdomen of the suffering mother , and seizingthe eggs as they make their appearance ; she places them with great care in a heap together , and then possibly announces to the tribe that her lady is doing aa well as can be expected . There is a romance of reality !
But the Loves of the Spiders would perhapa furnish a delicate pen with scenes even more thrilling . Did the reader ever watch the terrible coquetry o f the f emale spider ? We say terrible , for it is a perilous game to the young gentleman . ; if he misinterpret her looks and actions , if his vanity , or the thoughtlessness of youth , induce him to imagine he has inspired a passion deeper than coquetry , she d 6 oa not , as our coquettes do , draw up her head and coldly declare " there must be some mistake , " she
pounces on the unlucky coxcomb , and slays him on the spot ! Prescient of such a possibility , it is wonderful to see how stealthily and humbly the gallant gay Lothario pays his . court . Siunoza was wont to relnx hie mind by watching spiders fight ; but fighting is brutal work compared with courting : it is a mere display of strength and ferocity . Courting , when the maiden has the courage of Clokinda and the ferocity ua well us strength of Bj & iijNJUiiiii ) , Js , oa every reader of Tanso and the Niebelungen Lied will tell you , an > exploit of far other reach and
compass-Apropos of Brunhild , and her ferocious virtue , the moralist will remark how . much more humane even she is than fierce Miss AnAoiiNE ; for although Bbuniui . d is angry < with . her hu & band , she contents herself with hanging him up by her girdle on an iron hook ; keeping him ignominiously suspended ,
but-sparing his life ; whereas little Aeachse thirsts for the blood of her suitor . To be sure Abachne was ever an excitable creature : did not her ancestress hang herself in despair because Minerva , with feminine spite tore in pieces the cloth which the cunning hand of Arachne had woven ; and was she not thereby changed into a spider , as Grecian poets are ready to testify ? But we shall never cease wandering in this discursive style , unless we alight upon some piece of news which may recal us to our proper office . For you may have observed , lector benevole , that whenever our' bud get of news is scant , we fall into a strain of wandering talk , just as those who have no . ideas have usually most words to clothe them with . That reads like a bull , but it is a small witticism ; for a " bull" is unconscious , its essence lies therein , and a bull made with malice prepense is a more or less hilarious jeu de mots . The loquacious persons just referred to as having no ideas have , of course , a
few ; and so have we some slig ht scraps of information . For example , we can inform you that the excellent and esteemed Jules Simon , the professor of moral philosophy , who refused to owe allegiance to the Empire , has started recently a Journal pour Tons , at one penny a number , containing new novels and stories , illustrated by some of the ablest pencils ; the type is small , so that each number contains as much as an ordinary volume of the Circulating Library standard . The sale has already reached 70 , 000 copies , although the work has only reached its ninth number . This proves that sound , cheap literature will succeed in France as elsewhere . The theatres have not been prosperous this year in Paris ; the gross receipts show a diminution of nearly three millions of francs on last year . But at the present moment every theatre is crammed with visitors to the Exhibition , " who are content with tlie novelties of twenty years ago .
We recently commended a French novel to our readers , Tullu , by 3 \ J . Edmond About , and among the motives of our praise was the delicate fidelity with which it depicted modern Italian life in an easy , unobtrusive style . From a curious article in the last number of La lievue Cuiitemporainc , we learn that Tolla is a real story , that the letters it contains are translations of the actual letters written by Vittoria Savorelli , and published in Rome , and that the invention of the author is confined to the manipulation of this story into a novel : thus he had to vary the monotony of the single situation which the story has , to surround the principal actors with minor actors , and to personify the public . The way in which he has done this shows that he possesses the true artistic capacity ; and we shall be surprised if in M . About France has not a new master in Fiction . Amusingly enough , on
the very day in which M . About published in the lievue Contemporaine this circumstantial history of Tolla , a writer in the lievue de Paris published an article accusing him , as if of a crime , of this very use of a real story and real letters : the ignorant or malevolent critic ( perhaps he was both ) not perceiving that by thus tracing Tolla to its origin , he was at once bestowing the highest praise on the novel and on its author . More fortunate than most writers who have laboured for posterity as well as for their own times , Mr . Hallam * has lived to see his exhaustive work on the Slate of Europe during the Middle Ayes pass through eleven editions in less than forty years . To criticise this classic of historical research would be an impertinence ; even to add one word to the universal verdict « nnP 9 r 9 ji « nnprflnoiw nrfit . p . nsion . But we rieve for the honour ot English a superfluous pretension . 13 ut we grieve tor the honour oi iMigusu
appears literature that Mr . Hali . am ' s signal success should not have encouraged other students to walk in his footsteps . How few English names can we find to compare with that phalanx of French and German authors who have studied history as a science , who have searched its vast storehouses for the lessons of experience , and who have taught mankind that there are other conquests and purer glories than those of war . As a philosophical historian Mr . Hajllam still stands alone and unapproached by any of hits own countrymen ; indeed by lew even of the Continental writers , with the exception of Sismondi and Guizot . He has not only told us what manner of subjects should form the " eternal lessons of history , "" but has furnished an examp le to the students of future generations when our own noisy moment oi tune ^ p ^^ ^ t— — — ^^ ¦ h ~ rr -r ~ m — r ^ ^ v — — ~— ~— —~ - — — -w - - _ - g ^ -w — ^ j _
shall have become in its turn an exercise of research . Wo therefore ua » with peculiar satisfaction Mr . Murray ' s new and improved edition of M * - Haijcam ' s View of the State of Europe during that period of modern civilisation which we arc pleased to call the Middle Ages , as if we had already attained the mysterious goal towards which mankind have been hlovty advancing since the fall of the Roman Empire . The Supp lemental iNotos that appeared , in 1848 , as a separate volume , are now incorporated with the original work , and materially add to its value without unnecessarily diverting tho reader ' s attention from the text by troublesome and extraneous rut ex enccs . Tho price of this edition makes it , accessible to a very large and frugal class of readers , who cannot afford the luxury of huge paper , wlnle the clear , broad type , and the general " getting up , " make- it an ornament to
the shelves of a modest library . .. We arc simply taking note of tho latest edition of a classic , but wl « w our atteation is attracted to Mr . IIai ^ am's groat argument , we cannot roais tho opportunity of a digression to express our surprise that no advontiu ou * Viow of tlio Sfcato of JSuropo during tho Middlo Atfoa . By Homy llullfl >»» L . L . D ., & c . KlovontU odition . Vol . I . Murray .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 9, 1855, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09061855/page/18/
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