On this page
-
Text (3)
-
^Q2 THE LEADEI. [tfo. 334, Batobdast,
-
HOLIDAY TIME. 3JONDOF being out of town ...
-
HIS HIGHNESS MEER ALI MOBAD. When the Br...
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
La Traviata In The Pulpit. " Save Me Fro...
with , . moralit y as it is usually understood , and are positively repelled from vice . If the vice is of a kind which is less sublime , terrible ; or epic than that presented in other works of art , it is because the state of society to which the story refers is trivial and mean . If virtue is presented amid the temptations which surround Violetta , it is because those temptations are the demons which beset the soul in the present day . If the attention of the audience is called to the
Lorettes and the roues of a great European capita ] , it is because roues and Xiorettes cannot be shut out of the sight . If there is anything detestable , we repeat , it is in the State of society ; if there is anything more detestable , it is that cant which attempts to prevent a remedial process , by saying that we must not turn our fastidious eyes on the disease .
^Q2 The Leadei. [Tfo. 334, Batobdast,
^ Q 2 THE LEADEI . [ tfo . 334 , Batobdast ,
Holiday Time. 3jondof Being Out Of Town ...
HOLIDAY TIME . 3 JONDOF being out of town at present , driven abroad by the dullness of our wateringplaces and only a residue left , even at the sea-side , not much is thought or said of a political or literary nature . It is impossible to be busy or serious all the year round—to legislate , or write , or practise at the bar , to
condense despatches , or keep accounts—to < io anything , -high or low , incessantly . Citizens muBt go into the country , and country people must take holidays in town , for leisure is essential , and pleasure is essential , and humanity withers without them . If I have been eleven months in a dusty office , beating my brains by application to business , can I be another eleven months in the office
without an interval of pastoral indolence , or sea or mountain breezes ? If I have sat nightly during , the session , dreamily on the benches of the House of Commons , or in the library , or in the coffee-room , or have been fetched from the Opera to vote , and have suffered from the dissipations of the town for more than half a year , is it tolerable that I should not Bhoot , ride , and sail during the holiday time , to relieve myself from nervousness ,
biliousness , and feeble irritability ! Would the liberty of life in chambers be endurable without a seasonable digression among fields , and parks , and the waves of the Channel ? Certainly there may be insensible beings who work perpetually without perceiving that they : are wearing out ; but he best knew human nature who said , " The spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in this body without some recreating intermission of labour and serious . things . "
Well , on Sunday morning , a month ago , forty sermons were preached in I / ondon against over-work , and in favour of seasonable leisure . It was proved from Zechariah that boys And girls play . even in the streets of the Divine City , and we really detect no unwillingness on the part of respectable people to provide themselves with , an autumnal holiday . It is one x > f / the pleasant duties they owe to Providence . But there are other people not quite so xceepectable , who nmy have been working longer and harder than we ; and it may
seem . curious to the few uncomfortable persons , who allow gentle reflections to trespass upon light-hearted leisure , that these poodle never have healthy holidays . They ¦ " ^©^ ewaymeiit , but not recreation . They JhaRe ** ieir . hot room at the Swan ; they have . their fpagra ^ t concert halle ; their " free ffVu * ^ " ^ "wh iten atill more the cheeks that have been whitening twelve hours in the itactorv . And ^ tnong tiE © innovations of our ago j -they have , i n * & w , placeB , their gardens , jmrkfl , and hbrarie * , tbenv spacious music-TCOQmB , their cheap exoureione—^ il but the tune to enjoy them . Even this i 8 promised ; the jOulanthjcopicgeneration is saying , ' . « Give
us your Sunday , and you shall have half your Saturday to yourself . " But here certain discreet economists have interposed to warn the people—which must be bewildered amid its multitude of counsellors—not to be led away by early closing and half-holiday ideas . " Five hours a week is eight per cent , off
your labour , eight per cent , off your wages , eight per cent , off your employers' profits , eight per cent , off the . average power of industrial production throughout the country . " And then these placid calculators , perhaps writing within sight of summer waves , " confess " proudly that they " may be coldblooded . " The man who confesses himself coldblooded always thinks himself a Malthus , at least . Your " sentiment" is put down at once . Possibly , however , to be coldblooded is not necessarily to be logical . For example , a great manufacturing company in this metropolis , warmed by the sun of our last splendid July , has made certain
calculations which , if they are not coldblooded , strike us as not less rational than the doctrines of the most relentless economy . First , the partners admit , " We ourselves get holidays when we can . " Then , reckoning the daily labour of each workman as amounting , under the high-pressure system , to three thousand one hundred and ten hours in the
year , they show that their concession of time involves only a loss of one hundred and four hours upon each man ' s work in the year . They propose , then , to pay the same wages for the smaller as they have hitherto paid for the larger number , and their economical justification is this : — " Oat of these three thousand and six hours' work , done in the spirit in which it will he done > we shall get more value than out of three thousand one hundred
and ten hours in the ordinary spirit ; and they go on to show that they shall gain " some hundreds of pounds" by the innovation . So that it is not always false sentimentality to suppose that a workman is not only a machine , but has a spirit which will influence his exertions . By the same rule , it is not always wise , though it may be
coldblooded , to say , as the manufacturer said to Mr . Cavait , " There are plenty more men to be : got . " That "plenty more men" are needed to supply the waste of overwork is shown by Dr . ^ Lancaster ' s proofs that a thousand persons in London die annually from exhaustion , and that at least « ight thousand lose their health .
Ifc is quite unnecessary to write dismally on this subject . We all know what is the effect of over-work , of over-excitement , of too continuous application to one pursuit . We find that we lose nothing by a holiday , that we need not be less zealous , ambitious , or successful because we do not choose to exhau st mind and body by one unrelaxed effort carried on in an unwholesome . atmosphere for years . No one regrets the month he has spent in Switzerland , or in North Wales , or at Brighton . No one imagines that he would have been richer , stronger , happier , had he never ceased to " attend to his affaire" for
the sake of an annual holiday . But , with this universal assent to the law that exertion should bo relieved by leisure , it ought to bo remembered that millions of persona do not enjoy the pleasures " that win most upon the people "— -rambles and pastimes , pure air and change , release from labour , * and the indolence that brightens and re-empowers the tnind .
Thero is no danger that " society will become too philanthropic , though there is danger that ifc may become too paternal . Suppose , however , that wliilo we refresh oursolvtiH on Hoa and lund , wo tliiulc a little of tho vast stationary aimus . and rewolvo that il
we cannot ask " the people" down to dinner or offer them a bed , we will allow them to do as they will with their own time , their own means , and their own opportunities . A notion of this sort of tolerance , picked up at Hastings , would be as pretty as the pinkest of sea-shells , and worth more money .
His Highness Meer Ali Mobad. When The Br...
HIS HIGHNESS MEER ALI MOBAD . When the British forces first entered Scinde in 1838 , Meer Sohbajb was Rais , or chief , of the Talpoors of Khyrpoor . Feeling that his end was at hand , that prince divided his territories , which comprised the whole of Upper Scinde , into four parts . He had three sons , Meee Eoostum :, Meer Moobaeuck , and Meeb Ali Mobad , each of whom received one of these portions as his hereditary property . But the fourth was assigned to the
eldest born , in addition to his other patrimony , for the express purpose of maintaining the dignity of the Pugree , or Turban . The second son , however , died in 1839 , and thus , in accordance with the will of Meee Sohbab , A . LI Mokad became heir apparent to the throne . During his minority , Ali Mokad had been placed under the guardianship of Moobaeuck Khak , who had abused the trust reposed in him , and had unjustly deprived his ward and brother of a part of
his inheritance . Hence afterwards arose many disputes , in the course of which blood was frequently shed . In the words of Ali Mokad himself : " The matter was one between myself and the other Meers of Khyrpoor , as brothers , and they sometimes had been in the habit of taking my villages and sometimes I used to take theirs . " In these disgraceful contests Meeb . Boosxum Khan , the head of the family and nominal sovereign of Khyrpoor , took part with NrsaEER KJHAir—Moobaeuck ' s eldest son
—not altogether indeed on account of the justice of his claims , but rather because he had himself received an affront at the bands of Ajli Mouad . A treaty recently impoaed upou the Scindian chieftains by the British Government , prohibited an appeal to arms for the settlement of such disputes , and referred
their adjustment to the British political agent . Am Mobad , however , being " a man of unbounded ambition and great tact , and consistent and unswerving in his purpose of aggrandizement , " was not to be restrained by the mere letter of the law . Ho knew his own abilities , hia skill in intriguing , and his utter freedom from the impediments of conscientiousness . He therefore raised a
considerable force , and marched against hia nephew , while yet unprepared for the encounter—chiefly through his compliance with the counsels of Captain BbowjN " , the Governor-General ' s political agent . On tho 15 th of September , 184 , 2 , tho hostile bands confronted each other at Nownahar , near Khyrpoor , and an engagement ensued nltogether in favour of Ali Mobad . To prevont an entire overthrowand to check the
slaugh-, ter of hia friends , the venerable lla'is , Muit Roostum Khan , proceeded to his brother ' s camp and purchased peace by tho ceaaioii ot nine villages , seven of which belonged to himself . Tho compact was barely ai gucd when a mossonger arrived in hot haste lrom Captain Bjiown , forbidding tho fight , and requiring tho grounds of dispute to be laid before * himself . On Huh Ali Mouad wrote to
inform him that he had already granted poueo to bia relativea on thoir ceding to him nlliO villageH , while tho otliera acknowledged thaithey had been compelled to " autial ' y tho hungry follow for the moment with n mouthful , " at tho name time intimating iheir i ' ' tontion of maltiug good their x ) rewenL losses
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 16, 1856, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_16081856/page/14/
-