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November 12, 1853] THE LEADER. 1095
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Critica axaiiot the leAisiators. but the...
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The. current number of the North British...
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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November 12, 1853] The Leader. 1095
November 12 , 1853 ] THE LEADER . 1095
Icttotmt.
ICttotmt .
Critica Axaiiot The Leaisiators. But The...
Critica axaiiot the leAisiators . but the judges and police , of literature . They do not raalce laws—they interpret and try- to enforce fhexa ' —JEdinbiiryh Review . "
The. Current Number Of The North British...
The . current number of the North British Review is scarcely so interesting as usual , but there is never a number without matter -worthy of attention . Protestantism in Italy will be read with eagerness by a large class . The paper on American Novels contains a passage we quote elsewhere , and applies a rather startling canon to fiction : starting from the fact that now-a-days the novelist and poet rival the preacher in influence , the corollary is that their responsibility is equal to that of the preacher , and therefore that their teaching must be as narrowly watched . " If a minister of the gospel deviates a hair ' s-breadth from the well-defined convictions of his congregation , his audience falls away , and he will never hear the last of it ; and , as for an error of practical morals , it would he regarded with such horror if it came from the pulpit , that the occurrence of such defalcations is absolutely unknown among us . But , as many of us keep our best suit of clothes doctrines
and conduct for the Sabbath , so we have our Sunday and week-day ; and to be orthodox one day is regarded as salt sufficient for the seven . In our Sunday sermon we demand a bright and spotless reflection of revelation , and on Monday we fall to recreating ourselves ( mark the etymology !) with some novel or poem , which , if we had character and courage to set its secret sins in the light of God ' s countenance , would horrify us with its profound infidelity and insane perversion of moral truth . " A startling canon this , yet who shall deny its rigorous justice ? For our parts we think that the discordance between clerical and lay teaching , points to the radical discordance between doctrine and belief . There was no such discordance in the ages of faith . An elaborate article follows on Dr . Vaughan ' s Wycliffe—a work we have not seen—but the article of the number we should select is the one on Domestic Service , a subject oi great importance treated in a thoroughly Christian spirit . How well the writer characterizes the bugbear of " familiarity " : —
" But we cannot expect class-prejudices , the growth of more than a century , to yield to the kindness of a day . The fact is , that it would be a much easier thing than it now is to do good , if the desire to do good were more common . We can hardly be surprised that the poor should look with some suspicion on the rich ,- — that they should be slow to believe in the g enuine kindness of the latter , when the rule is one of exclusiveness and indifference , and the exceptions are so vq ^ v rare . We are afraid it cannot truthfully be denied that if the general feeling of the lower orders is one of distrust , it is because their superiors have done little or nothing to gain their confidence and affection . The distrust is generally mutual . Even in grave didactic books , published by religious tract societies , young people are Avarned against being ' familiar' with their servants ; and the warning is generally fortified by some stories illustrative of the evil habits of domestics , —of their trickery , their duplicity , their dishonesty , their iise of bad language , & c . & c . Now , Avbat arc we to expect , if they who conceive it to be their mission to teach , thus wilfully and systematically endeavour to widen the breach between the
employers and the employed , —to make each regard the other with distrust , —to array them , indeed , one against the other , openly , undisguisedly , as enemies , instead of brin ging the master and the servant side by aide as friends ? Now , ' familiarity ' between the employer and the employed , rightly understood , so far from being a bad state of things , is that which , above all others , it is most desirable to bring about . Tf ' familiarity , ' in the writings of which we speak , means levity of conduct and looseness of speech , doubtless it is to be eschewed , whether it belong to the behaviour of a nursery-maid or a duchess . That is not a matter which we are now called upon to consider . If such writers , however , mean to instruct young gentlemen and ladies to keep themselves aloof as much as possible from domestic servants , because the daily life of such people ia ordinarily marked by levity of conduct and looseness of speech , all we can say is , that it had been better for them if they had never learnt to w « to . There is no surer mode of making our servants unworthy of our confidence and the companionship of our children , than by thus holding them up , even in our lesson-books , as reprobates and outcasts . "
Then again as to " followers " : — "If we admit , as every rational person mmt admit , that our domestic servants , like other people , must have friends and desiro to associate with them , is it not far bettor that it should bo an understood thing between the employer and the employed , that the latter should bo visited at seasonable hours , by respectable relatives and friends , and that even if there bo something moro than mere common acquaintance , it should not bo a thing denied ? Why is not Ruth , or Kato , or toumy to have her ' followers , ' as well as Miss Amelia Maria , after whom Captain Sabretasch is always dangling ; or Mrs . Plumb , tbo wealthy widow , who is per-Koveringly 'followed' by the Jtevorend Isaac Pew ? Amelia Maria expresses her horror of followers , oven to tho Captain himself ; and tbo widow lives in a state of excitement regarding thornwhich seems likely to shorten hor days . If one of
, their pretty serving girls has been seen shaking hor cherry-colon red ribands , at tho back g . 'ito , " as tbo carpenter ' s non goes by after his day's work , or has actually had tbo audacity to invite tho grocer's assistant to nit down and take a dish of tea in * bo kitchen , there is no end to their lamentations and rovilings . Tbo unfortunate girl in d < mouiu ! o < l in the harahdKt language ; sho is impertinent and immodest , bold «••»«! artful— -porhapH sho Iosoh her place . Mow much butter , under such circumfitancoH , would it bo for tho mistress of a household to endeavour to win tho confidoneo of hor domestics , and to bo tho depositary of thoir most chorisbed secrets ? Why a comoly parlour-maid , or housemaid , or ovon a buxom cook , should not rocoivo tho honest addroHHOH of a worthy young man , and , in duo course , hav « tho hamiH put up in tho parish church , wo cannot by any moans conjecture . They lo laceHut
< not vow thuuiHolvoM to porpotual celibacy when thoy advertise for a p . avo know very woll that the concealments forced upon thorn by the harsh , grudging npirit in which too ofton tbo gratification of thoir natural instincts is regarded , are laden with a world of evil , it is a melancholy fact , that a very large proportion of tho unhappy young wonmn who are-tried ovory year in our criminal courts , for 'he murdor of tlioir illegitimate children , are < loinoni , i < j servants . Thin is not to be . t , l , l , ril ) ute < l to tho peculiar depravity of tho claw , but t , Iu > peculiarly dinadvanta-Ki'ouH eharaotor of thoir social onvironmonts . How much of it conies out of those 1 'lireo well-known words , ' No followers allowed , ' it in difficult to way . If young womon are afraid of their admirers being seen within tho shadow of thoir own rigl » tful homes , they will meet them abroad , whom no restraints and impedimontu oxint , and tho tempter , Opportunity , in at thoir olbow . "
Our own experience is decidedly in favour of the utmost liberty to followers as a practical good , quite apart from its abstract justice . If your servants are respectable their followers will be so ; if they are not , you get rid of them . . , The British Quarterly is excellent . In spite of some queer philosophizing about man beginning in the highest state of civilization , and subsequently degenerating into barbarism ( all with a view of " reconciling " Scripture with history , ) the opening paper on China will be read with interest ; so also that on JJtidwig Tieck . In the paper on English Fens :
their origin and improvements , there is amassed much piquant detail ; in that on Jifaar ice ' s JZssays the reader will find a lucid analysis of a book now exciting ; so much attention from its furnishing the pretext for the professor ' s expulsion ; he will also find there some of those brave , wise words which Bobeet "Vattghan is strong enough and wise enough to utter in defence of true religion against religious cant . Speaking of the treatment Mjutbice has received at the hands of certain " religious newspapers , " such as our dearly-beloved Becord , Dr . Vaughan ( we assume the authorship ) says :
" When religious truth is not embraced to its proper end , it is not unnatural that the moral state in which it leaves men , should sometimes be a worse state than that in which it found them . Mr . Maurice may feel assured , that he has hardly a worse opinion than we have of in'eligious spirits often to be found in what is called the religious world . It is anything but agreeable to be obliged to observe the subtleties , the frauds , the slanders , the cruelties , to which such spir its will often commit themselves . They are good haters , —and the strength of thai feeling is too often , in their estimation , the best evidence of their spirituality and enlightenment . This hatred has reference to something accounted the contrary of religion , and it
is therefore regarded as religious ; and the zeal allied with it has reference to something accounted religious , and therefore the feeling is regarded as religion . Notions , dogmas , commonly supply their watchwords to such people . Echo these , and your praise will be upon their tongues ; fail to pronounce their shibboleth , and you have to lay your account with all the possible forms of persecution . On these grounds , we look with a degree of sympathy on any man who diverges fron » the beaten path , however much we may think him mistaken . For We are obliged to remember , that in the case of not a few who pour their censures upon him , the great recommendation of orthodoxy , as of a thousand things beside , has been , that it does not expose a ' / nan to any sort of cost or inconvenience . "
We have said the same things , but not with the same authority . Prom us the accusation has been treated as if springing from doctrinal differences , whereas it sprang from moral differences . No one can deny that in this journal every religious conviction , from that of the Catholic to that of the missionary , has met with the respect due to sincerity ; but irreligion masking itself under religion we have exposed andever will expose . In the same Review there is a suggestive paper on Portrait Painting in History , in defence of the anecdotical and personally picturesque , which sin so gravely against the " dignity of history . " Incidentally touching on craniological indications , the writer says : ¦—
" If any part of a man ' s body is more emphatically symbolical of the whole man than another , it must bo the nervous mass of his brain ; and , while a man is alive , his brain can bo studied only from the outside . True , from the outside examination of , the skull all that we can know ( and this only approximately , for the skull may be thick or thin , and its surface not at all points equidistant from the surface of the brain ) is the absolute size of tho brain , and the relative dimensions of its parts . Ah this leaves out entirely the considerations oi' density , and of what may be called quality , regarding which craniologists vaguely try tt > be a little
more certain by calling in temperament to their aid , and as , moreover , there are two kinds of matter in all brains , a grey and a white , whose respective functions are not settled , and whose proportions cannot bo externally ascertained , the most eminent anatomists and physiologists of the present day , with all thoir respect for tho tentative generalizations of Gall , Broussais , and other « , are agreed that the claims of external craniology as a practical science of cerebral manifcBtation , want tho necessary basiH . More unanimous and moro vehement is the rejection which tho learned give to the actual science of the thirty-five ' bumps' into which craniology itself has degenerated in too hasty bands . "
To this we may add , that ovon could tho absolute size of the brain bo ascertained , tho test would bo fallacious , for size ( and the phrenologists recognise this , though not distinctly awaro of the reasons , ) is only an index , " other tilings being equal . " Temperaments—in tho vague use o £ that term—will not solve tho problem . Nervous tissue differs from nervous tissue in its chemical composition , ( an , indeed , all organic substances do , their composition being non-dejinite , thereby distinguished from the definitely composed inorganic substances , ) and although those variations may bo very slight , yot they baffle appreciation , and only leave tho simplo fact in our hands , that one man's nervous tissue is more active than another ' s . Further , it has . been ascertained by BAiLiiAitn-Kii to bo far from true , as commonly taught , that the intellect of animals bears any direct proportion to tho extent of cerebral surfaco ( tho grey mafctor of tho
brain . ) Ho dissected out all tho white substance , and unfolding tho convoluted grey matter , took casts of it ; on comparison , ho found that tho human brain has less superficial extent in proportion to its volume than that of many mammalia . Hence- thero is loaa difficulty in tho fact , which has puzzled many , of the grampus poHHeflwing a brain with deeper convolutions and moro extensive Hiirfaco than man , without , however , manifesting anv HignH of superior intellect ; . We should nujuiro to know firs ! ,, whether tho extent , of cerebral surface /' . s' tho index of intellectual power ; second , whether Mie nervous tissue of the givunpiiH is of precisely the Htimo stmetuml composition as that of man ; a trifle moro or losa flay of phoHphoruH will produce- indefinite variations . Having briefly indicated those physiological points , lot us return to our author , for a curious passage- on heads , largo and small : —•
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 12, 1853, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_12111853/page/15/
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