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Febrtjaby 14, 1357.] T HE LEADER. 163
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HENRY THE FOURTH AND THE LEAGUERS. La Xi...
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and goods . Locomotives came mto use in 1804 , though the machinery vras still very imperfect , and the ideas of engineers , very exude . They -were much improved in the course of the next twenty years , and a speed of from four to seven milea per hour was attained , with a prospect of greater . Higb > pressure engines required to be used , and there is something in . the very name that has always frightened the ignorant ; the boilers had been formed of cast iron in some cases at first , and the results , as might have been expected , were unsatisfactory and alarming . The difficulty of arranging the parts of a high-pressure engine on a moveable carriage , and the apparent impossibility of furnishing enough of steam to make the wheels turn at the rate of twenty or even ten
miles an hour , retarded the progress of the locomotive . If a ' wheel , four feet in diameter , turn 110 times in a minute , or travel at the rate of fifteen miles an hour , each cylinder will take from the boiler 220 fills of steam , per minute ; and it is not surprising , therefore , that many thoughtful people , whose opinions , were entitled to respect , regarded a speed of fifteen or even ten miles an hour as unattainable . Where learning failed , however , natural genius triumphed , George Stephenson , once a locomotive stoker in the north of England , and afterwards one of the most disti g guished engineers of modern times , invented the tubular boiler , and raised the speed of the engine from seven , to thirty miles an hour . An . d , he subsequently adds ;—
Ahnost every year since 1830 has witnessed an increase in . their number and power . Stephenson ' s prize locomotive , the Rocket , -weighed four tons and a quarter , and ran on rails of thirty-five lbs . to the yard ; engines are constructed now weighing more than thirty tons , and running along rails of eighty lbs . to the yard . To us the most interesting papers in the volume are Alexander Smith ' s essay on . " Scottish Ballads , " and Dr . George YTilson ' s on "Chemical final causes . " The former is every way a remarkable production , the prose of a poet , who can write prose , and think prose , with a felicity of expression , and steadiness of conception , which mere versifiers would find hopelessly impossible . We detect the poet iuhis love of concrete images , and in the cadences of rhythm , but even when the style is rmost elevated it is always prose , as in the following , which might have been signed by
Rusiin;—None of these ballads eaa be looked upon as the work of a single author . Their present form is the work of generations . For centuries the floating legendary material ¦ was reshaped , added to and altered , by the changing spirit and emotion of man . Hade and formless , they are touching and venerable as some ruin on the waste , the names of whose builders are unknown ; whose towers and walls , although not erected in accordance -with the lights of modern architecture , affect the spirit , and fire the imagination far more than nobler and more recent piles ; for its chambers , now roofless to the day , were ages ago tenanted by life and death , joy and sorrow , for its walls have " fceen worn and rounded by time , its stones channelled and fretted by the fierce tears of winter rains ; o-n broken arch and battlement every April for centuries has kindled a light of desert flowers , and it stands muffled in ivy , bearded with moss , and stained with lichens , crimson , golden , and green , by -the suns of forgotten summers . We . are told to imitate this , but who can recal the strong arms and rude hearts that piled huge stone on stone ? Who can simulate the hallowing of time ? Who can create us a ruin to-day with the weather-wear and licliens of five centuries upon it ? Here is a fine bit of direct vivid writing : —¦
The first thing which , strikes the reader of the Ballads is their direct and impulsive life . There ia nothing cloaked ox concealed . You look through , the iron corslet of the marauder , and see the fierce heart heave beneath . None of the heroes ever seem to feel that hesitancy and palsy of action -which arises from the clash of complex and opposing motives . At once the mailed hand executes the impulse of the hot heart . There seem to have been no dissimulators 3 n those days . If a man ia a scoundrel , he speaks and acts as if he were perfectly aware of the fact , and aware , too , that the whole , world knew it as well as himself . If a man Ls wronged by another , he runs him through the body -with his s-word , or cleaves him to the chin with his pole-axe , and then flees , pursued day and night , awake and asleep , in to-wn and wilderness , by
a bloody ghost . If two lovers meet in the greenwood , they forget church and holy priest , and in course of time the heron is startled from his solitary haunt , and shame and despair are at rest beneath the long weeds of the pool , and a ghost with dripping hair glides into the chamber , and with hand of ice awakes the horrified betrayer from his first sleep on his bridal night . And these men had their rude reverences and devotions , terrors of the solitary mountain-top and the moonless waste , wandering fires of the morass , spirits of the swollen stream : Edom o' Gordon , who burned a mother and lier children in their own tower with laughter and mockery as if agony were a jest , would ere night mutter an Ave to Mary Mother , and cross himself as devoutly as ever a saint in the calendar ; and the moss-trooper who could impale an infant 011 his spear point , would shiver at an omen -which , a Bcboolboy laughs at .
We fear that " Z" of the Athaueum -will find many words , and even phrases , in this essay , which other writers have used before ; and to all ' Z ' s one may fancy a covert sarcasm conveyed in the following : — The literary merit of many of these Ballads is great ; in the majority , the singer is in utter abeyance , and the subject is all in all . There is no straining and effort , no artifices are employed to fillip the dulled spirit of the reader ; no impertinent ornaments distract the attention from the agony or the woe . Tlieir authors were not literary men , and there was no existing literature by which their efforts were measured . Originality wis not expected of them , and they were consequently never teni 2 > ted to call grass pwpk , to avoid the imputation of plagiarism , some former writer ha
ving called it green . There were no critics to show up their failings and shortcomings , or to parado their good things—perhaps a lino and a half " in'length—in italics , as the manner of some ia . It may fairly bo doubted whether the present time is favourable to the production of poetry of a high class ; not , as is commonly supposed , that there ia anything necessarily unpoctieal in the artificial state of society , in the eternnl struggle and roar of labour , in the shifting of the points of interest from green fields and meadows , and tho sweet goings on of pastoral life , to the joys , crimes , and tTagedies of men congregated in thousands beneath the smoke of mighty towns , but mainly from the greatness of existing literature , the prevalence of criticism , and its immediate application to literary productions . We can only afford to quote one more passage , and it shall be this : —
It U this seeking a " new outlet for one ' s self , " which is the cause of nearly all the vices of contemporary literature—of poetry especially . On it may be charged the strain and glitter , the forced and perverse originality , and the extraordinary innovations in rhythm and measure of which so much is heard , both in the way of appluusc and condemnation . Tho primal emotions of humanity hum been ho fully . sung in England ( luring tho last two hundred years , that a jioot of the present period , unlcas ho is swept away by tlio torrent of feeling , or ia bold enough—which lie ia porfoctly justified in b «; ing—to look upon every ( situation of life , whether expressed buforc or not , oa merely poetical material , and to use it for hia own purposes , colour it by his ownrmind , Hhapo it by hia own emotion , —is tempted , when lie remoiuboru'in a former vrritor some consummate expression of 1111 idun , indiapcnsublo to tho sequence and stream of emotion , to diverge from the direct path , and to attest Ilia originality
by becoming unintelligible or unnatural . It is required of every builder that he should erect a house new and well-proportioned ; it is not required that he should , with , hia own hands , have baked every brick employed iu tlie edifice . The existing system of criticism , and the greatness and fulness of literature , are in many respects injurious to poetical writers . An author ' s first book is generally written con amore and for himself ; critic and reader are forgotten in the heat and delight of the task but after he has run the gauntlet of ¦ dailies , weeklies , . monthlies , and quarterlies , he ' becomes more conscious and less single-hearted . He writes with one eye to his subject and the other to what the reviewers will say of him . lie is more careful of the expression than of the thought . lie desires to dazzle and astonish . Of Dr . George Wilson ' s paper we have left ourselves no space to speak > and must take an opportunity of recurring to it . Mr . Eaynes ' s paper on " Sit William Hamilton" will also be read with interest b y the admirers of that prodigy of learning and acuteness . Altogether , this volume of Edinburgh Essays may be pronounced a brilliant coimiiencement .
Febrtjaby 14, 1357.] T He Leader. 163
Febrtjaby 14 , 1357 . ] T HE LEADER . 163
Henry The Fourth And The Leaguers. La Xi...
HENRY THE FOURTH AND THE LEAGUERS . La Xigue et Henri IV . By J . Michelet :. Paris : Chameron . When a writer possesses a highly characteristic style , it would be strange if all his characteristics were merits . Merits they may be , indeed , in one sense , since they produce variety , and relieve us from literary lotus-eating ; but , in poinfc of art , of taste , of power , and beauty , a very peculiar book may always be expected to present some very peculiar contrasts . Of no Frenchman is this more true than of Michelet . He is often grand , pure , Iyiacal , but quite as often eccentric , wild , ungracefully familiar .. His historical account of the sixteenth century abounds , more , perhaps , than any of his other works , in diversities of substance , in inequalities of surface , in abrupt transitions of manner . As Enaile Montegufc says , Hear the sound of the epic trumpet sinking into the tiny pipings of a whistle . Far-sought analogies , dramatic figures of speech , vast transepts of digression ; break the continuity of the narration , while , at "times , the critic and chronicler seems to forget that he is preparing the inscription of a noble monument , and
expresses himself as though he were scratching doggrel on a gravestone . Thus , he describes Marie Stuart as "the common woman dragged by soldiers through the streets of Edinburgh , " he refers to Marguerite , wife of Henry IT ., as having " the provoking eyes of a wanton ; " he depicts the " hereditary muzzle" of the Medicis , and their countenances " very intelligent and bestial . " Still less scrupulously he alludes to the disgust conceived by Henry II . for his wife , by saying , " he abhorred her > as a woman that had been bred in an Italian sepulchre . " These are examples of a displeasing mannerism : which have not escaped Michelet ' s French critics . But it would be injustice to note them without admitting that they are exceptional , and that , though Michelet is frivolously addicted to epigrams , to flashes of rletoric , to surprising turns of language , and precipitous descents from epic to colloquy , he is a master of style , a penetrating thinker , inmost respects a man of whom this generation of Frenchmen may well be proud . A specimen of Michelet ' s extraordinary manner is to befoxmdat the end of the fourth volume of his work on " France in the Sixteenth Century . " "This , " he says , "is not an impartial history . " It Is " franklv and
vigorously partial —partial on the side where ri glit and truth appeared to him to prev-ail . It is advocacy and attack , charged with invective , redolent of eulogy , unmeasured and unsparing . In his dissection of personal character especially , lie treats the men and women of the past as though they had destroyed his _ happiness . He reviles Catherine de MLedicis as though she had poisoned his wife , Marie Stuart as though she had disgraced him . This element of his book , this persecution of historical names , may add to the warmth and richness of the composition , but it destroys "that beautiful serene" which should reflect the shapes and colours of history . The period of the League embraces the last quarter of the sixteenth century—from the massacre of St . Bartholomew to the peace of Vervius . M . Michelet disposes the events of this memorable epoch in large groups " connected by their proper relations , and surrounded with an artistic
arrangement of accessories . The Cardinal of Lorraine , after the murder of Coligny , had set up in Rome a golden tablet , inscribed with these words : "Religion had withered and languished ; but this day we have seen an augury that she will revive and bloom once more . " But Protestantism , adds M . Michelet , though abased in France , " survived and shall survive , invincible in Holland , victorious ia England , creative in America , " with another Protestantism in the rear—that of reason , science , and equity , " conquering the human mind through Rabelais , Shakspeare , Bacon , and Descartes ; conquering in the right of Europe through the peace of Westphalia ^ conquering even to the stars through Kepler and Galileo . " The Byzantine casuists are discarded ; Cujas replies to them in a sentence ; Palissy turns from sophistry to nature ; the epoch wore the mask of the League ; but France and JGiu'ope were progressing—the genius of the
Renaissance , the heroism , of the Reformation , "bore fruit in Europe , in the East , in the JNew World ; but , unhappily , in France , the peace of Vervins riveted the links of the old Catholicity , and a melancholy reaction opened the way to the Thirty Years' War . On the morrow of St . Bartholomew Charles tlio Ninth stood triumphant ; intoxicated , yet apprehensive . His successor , Henry the Third , under the overpowering influence of Catherine , commenced a premature conflict , which resulted in his humiliation , and then the League arose . The clergy said , on the 5 th of March , 1559 , u necessary , the king must be killed " . " "That , " says M . Michelot , " was the first utterance of the Leaguers . " Their constitution , original and unique , was that of a federal religious body , acting by violence , intimidation , treason , and cruelty , upon the throne , the church , the nobles , and all the representatives of authority . They were Catholics—the crusaders of Catholicism ; and among their neophyte champions the king was included
in 1576 . The series of broad episodes in this history is admirably ordered in M . Michelet ' s work . It includes : the famous Jesuit . campaign , the assassination of the Prince of Orange , the conspiracy of Kheims , the execution of Marie Stuart , tho compulsory self-sacrifice of Jlenry the Third , the battle of Coutrus , the Spanish insurrection in Paris , the fitting-out and ruin of the
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 14, 1857, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14021857/page/19/
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