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Jan. 18, 1851.] ®ft* l, * *tttr« 6S
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SCHLOSSER S HISTORV OP THE EIGHTEENTH CE...
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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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"""'- 7 "— "¦* ¦ " ¦" Time, The Avenger....
Providence ; no , not even when he escaped from a shipwrec : — " He had passed through the perils of a tremendous shipwreck , and he had been saved . Yet there even ,
« "When the ship hung faT aloft , High on the broken wave , ' even in that tremendous moment he had not been so strongly moved as he was now . His heart had not been invincibly turned towards that Being Who was not slow to hear , Nor impotent to save . ' " No , and when he found himself safe and sound , alive and upon dry land , not even then , had his own
great deliverance , where nearly twice five hundred men went down , awakened in him any new sense , or turned his thoug hts in gratitude to that Power , that Providence which had saved him . " But , hardened as he is , he becomes softened by this ramble in Kensington-gardens , and his " chaos of confused and tempestuous thought and feeling " shapes itself into a paradise of moral beauty : he becomes—and at once—as generous , submissive , forgiving , and Christian as he had before been the reverse of all this !
Now , for a work having lofty pretensions like the present , you will own that such a basis is somewhat fantastic ; yet we venture to predict that it will be eulogized for its philosophic purpose and religious tone . The truth is , it is full of trash as nauseous as that which brought the Minerva Press into discredit , and perhaps the more hurtful , because it has cant to mask it . If it is weak and silly as a philosophical view of
life , it is no less silly as a tale—nay , it is worse than silly , it is immensely wearisome . Not even the generous use of " skipping " can alleviate the tedium . Incoherent , fragmentary , untrue , and uninteresting , we were only led on through the volumes by the amusement occasionally offered in its aphorisms . The authoress is given to reflectiongenerally this tendency wanders into sermonizingbut occasionally it takes the form of detached epigram : as
thus" Ah ! why are we so blinded to our faults till the irrevocable hour is past !" That luminous remark stands by itself as a paragraph , and invites meditation . There is a sigh in it , befitting the grave and saddened thinker . In the following severe truth we read a sterner mood : — " Through , our faults we are vulnerable . The strongest characters are assailable there . " What we are now about to quote puzzles us : — " Most Englishmen have something of the Hypolite in them . "
To clear it up , we must first suggest that Ilypolite is meant for Hippolyte in Racine ' s tragedy of Phedre . Now , Hippolyte is a chaste and bashful young gentleman who will not respond to the unequivocal advances of Madame Phedre . We were not before aware that this coyness was characteristic of our young countrymen . Sad Josephs some of them ! In another place , after the novel remark that in every brother , be he never so big a sinner , there is some latent goodness , she is tempted to qualify it by saying almost , every brother , when she thinks of
" Robespierre , and Thomas Paine , and the slave captains . " That Robespierre had some human qualities only the strange ignorance of this writer could ignore ; and why Thomas Paine should be selected as a type of incarnate vice we are at a loss to comprehend , unless the writing of the Age of Reason is to be his diploma . But , dear Madam , where is your Christianity that can so judge Thomas Paine ' s sincere act ? Jle was mistaken , if you will , in his
opinions ; but ho wrote that hook while momently expecting to mount the scaffold , and it was at least sincere . And does it not occur to you that , even after writing the Age of Reason , if he had been shaken to his being ' s centre by some such calamity as that which hefel your hero , he also might have had every foregone system of thought submerged as hy a mighty wave , ike , and been awakened to the beauty of the moon and to a recognition of Providence ? So that some good may have been latent even in the author of the Age . of Reason .
We close Time , the Avenger , with a very strong disapproval of its story , its philosophy , and its style ; but we cannot ho dismiss the authoress without once more recording our sincere admiration of the Two Old Men ' s 7 ' ales—notably , that of The Admiral ' s Daughter . Had Time , the Avenger , but been written in that style , with that knowledge <> l the working of pusMon and that free sketch of eharaeter , we would have filled our columns with praise as hearty as our condemnation is now unqualified .
Jan. 18, 1851.] ®Ft* L, * *Tttr« 6s
Jan . 18 , 1851 . ] ® ft * l , * * tttr « 6 S
Schlosser S Historv Op The Eighteenth Ce...
SCHLOSSER S HISTORV OP THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . d Hittory of the Eighteenth Century and the Nineteenth , till the Overthrow cf the French Empire , with particular reference to Mental Cultivation and Progress . By F . C . Schlosser . Translated , with a Preface and Notes . By D . Davison . M . A . Vols . 1—7 . Chapman and Hall . ( Second Notice . )
At the close of . the former article we said that the theory of Progress and the theory of Equality might be taken as the texts for the whole philosophy of that epoch known as the eighteenth century . A glance at them is all we can give here . We will take two celebrated works as the exponents of these ideas , for it is grievously to misapprehend the character of literature not to detect in celebrated works the expression of the age in which they appeared . This misapprehension , Thomas Babington Macaulay is chargeable with , in respect of the first work we select—Perrault ' s Parallele
des Anciens et des Modernes . In his brilliant paper on Sir W . Temple he says : — " A most idle and contemptible controversy had arisen in France touching the comparative merit of the ancient and modern writers . " Now as far as the literary criticism of this controversy is concerned we perfectly agree with Macaulay : but there was a deeper meaning underneath the squabble , a philosophical conception , of which this dispute was the literary application , and that conception was : the progressive improvement of the human race .
People generally are but little aware how very modern this conception of Progress is , even although the conception itself be still rejected by hundreds . Auguste Comte has shown how impossible the conception was to the ancients , with their limited experience , and how naturally it arose from the manifest progress of positive science , about which there could be no dispute , and was first distinctly promulgated by the great mathematician—Pascal . The extension made by Perrault to literature was only the expression of a
notion dimly pervading society , that in moral and intellectual stature the moderns were decidedly in advance of their ancestors ; and that indeed it was a law of nature that it should be so . Beginning with a modest statement , such as Bacon threw into an apt formula , " Antiquity is the youth of the world , " this notion has gradually become so familiarized with our thoughts that we can with difficulty imagine men discrediting it . As a principle it is most destructive , for it throws to the winds as " childish" and "immature" those notions which to our forefathers were the highest
wisdom . Quite as destructive , but by no means quite as true , was that metaphysical figment about Equality . We do not , of course , mean the equality which man shares with man—equality in the eyes of Law and of Conscience ; but that intellectual equality which universal experience contradicts , but which French metaphysics evolved from its false principles . This equality finds its most absolute expression in Helvetius . It is the want of a sound philosophy of history which makes people regard this sophism , viz ., of all men ' s intellects being naturally equal , and the diversity visible in them arising solely from education—as the product of an eccentric paradoxical thinker . It was not Helvetius wrote that work Be VEsprit—it was the
eighteenth century . The theory grew out of the tendencies of the reigning philosophy which , starting from Locke , and his too exclusive a consideration of the sensuous origin of all knowledge , had come to regard external influences as omnipotent , without making due allowance for the organizm upon which those influences were to act . Throughout ^ this period we note the same radical mistake . To it must be attributed those deplorable and universal errors respecting the power of education and of government to modify arbitrarily the condition of humanity—placing in mere changes of form a power which could only result from vital changes
—so that in the great outbreak of the Trench Revolution , it was believed that by decreeing fraternity and adopting a Republican form of Government all the evils under which society then laboured would vanish . A terrible reaction was the retribution of this error . But the error is popular still . Men look to forms of government as the great objects to bo preserved or to be destroyed ; forgetting that society is organic .
But we rnuHt not write an esway in place of a review . Enough has been Haid to indicate the propriety with which Schlosser opens his history by an examination of Locke and his contemporaries . Locke , indeed , may be said to have inaugurated the
insurgent philosophy of the eighteenth century ; and his influence is well stated by Schlosser . Generally indeed , we may remark , that Schlosser ' s literarycriticism is almost worthless as regards belle g lettres ; but valuable as pointing to the position of literature in an historical sense . It is as an historian rather than as a critic he deals with it ; and the value of his observations is little deteriorated by the mediocrity of his talent . This remark applies peculiarly to the chapter on English and German Literature . In casting about for an extract , we are puzzled where to choose amidst so many passages ; but this perhaps will be the most acceptable , as few persons know much of
THE ILLUMINATI . " Weishaupt and the no inconsiderable number of persons in Bavaria who shared his principles and convictions were influenced by the example of their opponents themselves to institute another order with a constitution similar to theirs , with a view to counteract and defeat the secret machinations of the Jesuits . Weishaupt and his illurainati , as the pretended masters of the light , wished to avail themselves of the folly and absurdity of decorations , symbols , and initiation , in order to draw the people out of the power of the priests into that of their own . These masters of the light and their light itself were indeed of such a description that the people would have gained nothing by the change : but when or where
have the people , who are everywhere oppressed , gained anything by the change of their leaders and rulers ? That moreover an order , founded by an obscure professor of canon law in an obscure German university , and reduced to form by the cooperation of a student ( Von Zwackh ) , then only twenty years old , should have found adherents and partisans through the whole of Germany , in the Netherlands , in Denmark , in Sweden , and even in Spain , can only be comprehended and explained by a still fuller acquaintance with the connection of the enthusiasm , jugglery , and imposture of the secret orders of that time and their relation to freemasonry . "We have already referred to the origin of a belief in the power of and
superstitious prayers , incantations , secret arts , associations in general ; we must here go more , at length into the history of the freemasons . The most of the persons whom we shall have occasion to mention , were either , in the proper sense of the word , impostors , or insignificant , or , like Knigge , altogether contemptible , because their schemes were merely founded upon hopes of advantage or pleasure , and they were not only strangers to all high and noble human feelings , but despised aud abused them . So much for the leaders ; as to the associations themselves , we can neither say so much evil of the freemasons and the illuminati as Barruel and Germans of his stamp have said , nor bestow upon them such commendations as the enemies of the Jesuits and their doctrines are
accustomed to do . The men whom we are about to mention , their orders , and the longing after secret initiations and revelations , appear to us not to have been the causes but the effects of a new order of things which had been slowly developing its form , and consequently means and instruments of that eternal order and of that invisible overruling Providence , by whose power kingdoms and worlds come into existence and disappear , and which sometimes uses the external for the promotion of the internal , and sometimes the internal for that of the external Besides , almost all the dealers in secrets sought to avail themselves of symbols , hieroglyphs , and freemasons ' lodges for the promotion of their object * , and the innocent foolery of this secret society was much and variously
abused . Initiation , oaths , solemnities , subordination , and ranks allured them to orders ; symbols and hieroglyphs inspired simpletons and fools with the hope of learning important secrets for their money ; men of the world , lovers of pleasure and adventurers sought and found in these orders , protectors , acquaintances , recommendations , and social enjoyment , which was seasoned by its exclusive character . In these secret societies the doubter might more freely express his opinions than in the common intercourse of social life , where they were carefully and minutely watched by both the civil and the eccleaiatical police . Those who wished to avail
themselves of an order in these times for the promotion of their objects , allured their brethren , the freemasons and others , by the forms of strict or lax observance , of ' / An- ' nedorfiaiis , Rosicruciana , Martinists , and Templars . Princes , counts , barons , idlers , and men of wealth nought for the philosopher ' s » tone in these secret associations , for wisdom gained without exertion or toil , and therefore the privileges of knowledge for the privileged . People of rank were especially attracted , because they , as well as the higher classes in general , in their ignorance of the nature of human training , imagined there wax a lunrer road to true wisdom than the usual beaten and arduous
path . It has been so from the beginning of the world ; those who have found the way prescribed by Providence for the attainment of the objects of human eil ' orts to be tcdioiiH , who become weury of labour , unxut . y , and thought , have always placed their confidence upon miraculous revelations and boiiio midden disclosure of the secret of certain nigns and . symbols . " Frederick II . himself continued to belong to this rirdor till uftcr the Silcnian war ; he ceased to be a member shortly before the commencement of the Seven
years' war , at the very time when these orders began to be abused for every Hpecies of deception ; and he also commanded such of his ministera of state ns belonged to the order , to desist from visiting their lodges . The lodges and secrets of the frccmaNoiiH began to be ubiiHcd by impoHtors from the year 17 H 0 till 1770 , some of whom exercised such u considerable influence upon the order , which wiib then very widely extended The order of the illuminati , us originally founded in liavariu and for . Bavaria , wan altogether dissimilar to the
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 18, 1851, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18011851/page/15/
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