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376 THE LEADER. [No. 317, Saturday,
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TYPICAL FORMS. Typical Forms and Special...
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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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Who Wrote The Waverley Novels ? Wlw Xoro...
bia hand at a novel and send it him to dress up . & . That certain scenes ^ characters in the novels are known to have been familiar to Elizabeth Scott from her childhood , 6 . That Walter ' s denial of the authorship in the iirst instance nullifies his ultimate assertion of it . A skilful advocate might create an effect with such a brief as this . But " W . J . F . so manages his arguments that they either prove too much , or else contradict each other . At one moment he tells us that Walter Scott could not possibly have had time to write the novels ; at another , that it is not surprising if the manuscript of most of them is extant in Walter Scott ' s handwriting , since he thought nothing of the trouble of copying , —at another , that " an adaptation must take a longer period to accomplish than a story written currente calamo . " Again , he brings forward Sophia Scott ' s declaration , that though the whole family had access to her father's papers , they had never
seen a scrap of the manuscript of any of the novels , forgetting that , if , as he says on another page , Walter Scott acted the part of " a skilful editor who fluently fills up and judiciously strikes out , " the difficulty of his daughter's statement is rather increased than lessened . His family would be much more likely to notice a strange manuscript on his desk , than to notice his own . But we do not Undertake to dissect W . J . F . ' s arguments , still less to disprove them . Our readers , we fancy , will thank us more for giving them a few specimens , which , to speak in the style of able editors , ' * need no comment , " Searching for cumulative evidence , W . J . F . procured an old Army List , in which lie read the names , first , of the officers in the 70 th regiment , of which Thomas Scott was Paymaster , and , subsequently , of the officers in other regiments , engaged in Canada , with which the / Oth was brought into frequent intercourse . Hereupon , he tells us , he was struck with " some
remarkable coincidences ; " probably the reader will be equally " struck " when he learns -what some of these coincidences were . The list of officers in the 70 th , he discovers , has a Captain O'Neil—ami in " Mannering " there is a Lieutenant O'Kean ; it has a Mac Laurin—and in the Fair Maid of Perth there is a MacLouis ; in t \\ Q Legend of Montrose a Maclean ; it has a Gaston—^ and one of the novels is called Anne of Gierstein I You see at once that these names are as like " as my fingers is to my fingers ? " But these astonishing coincidences ave nothing to what is coming . There was actually in the 70 th a Lieutenant John Graham—and in Old Mortality there is a Colonel John Graham of Claverhouse ( of eourse , an altogether unhistorical personage ) ; there was also a Lieutenant Smith , whose name clearly suggested that of Harry Smith , the valiant armourer in the Fair Maid of Perth . After this one does not wonder to find W . J . F .
saying-- " -Some mysterious impulse led me to try whether if ( sic ) - in the Army List of that day any George Heriot would be found ( for-who ever heard of a < 3 eorge Heriot except in the Fortunes of Nigel ) . " Startling result I a Colonel F . George IJeriot commanded the Canadian Voltiaeurs . The only real " coincidences" between the list of the 70 th and the Waverley novels are the names of Dalgetty aaid Sampson . Apropos of the former , W . J . F . quotes Dalgetty ' s reference to '• ' the learning whilk I had acquired at the Marescknl College of Aberdeen , " in order to point out the curious coincidence that " MaveschaV is the name given to one of the characters in the Black Dwarf . Apropos of the latter , he quotes a statement made by an old messmate of Thomas Scott ' s , that Adjutant Sampson , who was a queer , but honest fellow , had the niek-name of *? Dominie / ' omitting to ascertain whether the nickname was given before or after the publication of Guy Mannering . But the most
__ astonishing revelations are yet to come . In other regiments W . J . F . detects an Ensign Jones—and there is a Mrs . Jones in St . Ronan ' s Well—a Lieutenant Fennell—and you remember Fenetta ; a Quartermaster Gow—who clearly accounts for Neil Gow , the nam e of the tiddler in St Kpnon ' s Well , since no one ever heard before of Neil Gow , a fiddler- a Lieutenant TJuke—and there is " Duke Hildebrod " in Nigel J Last , and most amazing of all , in the 16 th there is an officer named Dalzell , and ' does not remember General Dateell in Old . Mortality f—in the 97 th there is a Captain Monk , and in Woodstoeh , too , there is—a General Monk ! We see what an amount of historical knowledge goes to the attainment of a ' * respectable literary status . " One more taste of W . J , F . ' s quality , and we have done . In the 103 rd there was a Captain Guy Carleton Colclcugh , and he sees a casual connexion between this between thi
fact and the name Gun Mann /> rin . tt . « T ?™ »> „„„ , „ w t t ? s tact and the name Guy Manner ing . "For , " says W . J . F " Scott , in his introduction to Guy Mannering , says that he 'looked about for a name and a subject / and from this observation we infer that such was his invariable habit when commencing a fictitious narrative ; The practice is , J believe , usual among author * . "
376 The Leader. [No. 317, Saturday,
376 THE LEADER . [ No . 317 , Saturday ,
Typical Forms. Typical Forms And Special...
TYPICAL FORMS . Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation . By tbo Rev . James M'Oosb , LL . D and George Dickie , M . D . Edinburgh : Constable and Co . ' [ Second Notice . ] Hating in the previous article protested against the argument from design , and against Natural Theology altogether , we will now attempt to convey some idea of the work before us , which is Paley applied to the science of the nineteenth century , taking in quite the latest views of transcendental anatomy . The authors set out with the statement that two great principles are discoverable running through the universe ; a principle of Order , or a general Plan ; or Type , to which every object is made to conform with more or less
precision ; and a principle of Adaptation by which each object while constructed after a general model , is at the same time accommodated to the aitua-Ivmwhich it has to occupy , and a purpose which it i » intended to serve . A'huB conceived , their work seems one of pure transcendental science ; and as such , it might have been of great value ; as it ia , the illustrations they have Drought together of this uniformity and adaptation give it the main interest . , **** Jney not mingled therewith a running thread of Natural Theology they TOight have . producqd a work ctf permanent value ; but their theoretical pre-SL patlojn hns d ^ naged their science . rit artH . ??' tS 8 i 8 ts ? £ / bookB - The first collects examploa of Order SoJC - ''^ r ^ ^ ' fiecorMl consiats of a co-ordinate pene * o * l < ujts glVH , g indication s of combined order and adaptation throughout
the various kingdoms of Nature—tracing the unity in the forms of plants and animals—in geological and astronomical phenomena ; the third book is devoted to the interpretation of the facts . Both Dr . M'Cosh and Dr . Dickie have direct scientific knowledge , yet of course , their book is mainly a compilation , and reads too much like * second-hand work . It shows considerable reading , although that reading is not always -well digested , nor always so accuratel y reported as mi ght be Thus , at page 17 , they say " tea is the typical number of the fingers and toes of mam , and , indeed , of the digits of all vertebrate animals . " They must
be perfectl y aware that the digits of many vertebrata are eight , six , and even four . Again , at page 23 , they say " Animals and vegetables , it is well known , are classified according to type ; and they can be so arranged , because types are really found in nature , and are not the mere creation human reason or fancy . " Will they be good enough to say tohere these types are found , except in the human reason ? Do they mean that the typical fish swims amid the myriads of fishes made after his pattern , the typical bivalve gapes amid his gaping satellites , the typical polyp stretches forth its tentacles amid the branches of seaweed ? At page 280 we read : —
The presence of a system of nei-ves is the most marked character whicli separates the animal from the vegetable kingdom . In some of the lower forms its existence has not been clearly demonstrated ; in many it is very rudimentary ! But as we rise higher in the scale we find an evident advance , commensurate with the endowments of the animal . The nervous system does not mark the distinction , simply because large classes of unquestionable animals have none . To say that the nervous system has not heen " clearly demonstrated , is inaccurate : its existence has nothing but gratuitous supposition by way of evidence in all infusoria , in all the mj'riad species of Hydrozoa and Anthozoa ; and it is now very doubtful whether even the Echinodermata have a nervous system , that whicli has long been taken for one being questionable . There are other examples which , on a careful revision , they will themselves alter . As a specimen of the elastic nature of their argument to meet any difficulty , take the following : —
When the action of the combination of powers necessary to the development of an organ is interfered with we have a Monster . In monstrosities the principle of order is not accommodated to the usual special end . They are always comparatively few in number—in short , the exception . But we are not to conclude that they are failures , or that they have ho end to serve . A world in which they were the rule would certainly be a failure ; but , as exceptions , they are aa instructive as the rule . They help man to discover the nature of those agencies which combine to- form typical organs , and they show how derangements which , when few , wcrk no evil , would have been fearful if they had been frequent .
Teratology , which treats of natural naonstvositi . es , has now a place among acknowledged sciences . Single monsters are produced by arrest of development ; double by 4 he union of homologous parts , as of veins to veins , and arteries to arteries . The aberrations of monstrosity do not exceed certain limits . They have their distinctive characters , and long ago there were noticed five orders , twenty . three families and eighty-three genera . So far as these monstrosities do not produce pain , they are not evils any more than an irregularly-formed crystal is . So far as they are the means of entailing suffering and humiliation among mankind , they carry us into the profoundest of all mysterie 3 ( which we cannot here discuss )—the existence of evil .
Thus a monster turns out an example of " admirable contrivance ; " he is produced in order that man , by noting the exception , may understand what is the rule , and may also lea , m what a fearful world it would have been liad the exception been the rule ! The tone of their work is commendable . They have none of the acrimony which theologians are prone to substitute for reasoning ; and if they are somewhat contemptuous towards adversaries , that is a very general failing . They should not , however , say that the phrase , * ' conditions of existence , " is the " miserable subterfuge of French materialists . " They should not say so for two reasons : it was not a subterfuge , and it was not invented by the materialists . They ought to know that the phrase is Cuvier ' s , and that he was very proud of it . Again , why is Buffon ' s vanity made responsible in the following
example?—We ar « not surprised to find a man so proverbially vain as Buffon failing to discover marks of design in the hump of the camel , but it ia rather wonderful to find Cuvier , whose heart was so filled with admiration of the Divine wisdom , speaking- somewhat doubtfully of the sloth . Buffon ' s deliquency is here made moral , Cuvier ' s only intellectual : is it because these authors can quote Cuvier in favour of final causes , and cannot quote the vain Buffon ? But , as we said , the work contains much that is interesting . The reader will here find brought into brief compass those views of Owen on the vertebral theory , of Huxley on the molluscan archetype , and of Dr . Me Cosh on vegetable morphology , whicli Goethe long ago commenced . lie will find much with which he will disagree , not a little which will strike him as purely fanciful , but also not a little which will give fresh insight and interest into vegetable and animal forms . As a specimen , we will extract the following : —
It will nob be reckoned , by any scientific "botanist , in the present day , aa an excess of refinement to represent the developed organs of the plant as all formed after ono or other of tvVo different types or models , tho Stem and tho Loaf-First , The more Bolid parts of the plant axe composed of a number of atoms , proceeding tho ouo from the other in linear succession . Springing from tho embryo , or seed , there is the axis mounting upwards and becoming the aerial stem and , going downward and beooming the root . From tho former of these , , or tho ascending axis , there go off lateral stems , which wo may oall bran olios and fromj thoao other atoms , whiou wo may oall bra-uohlets . Thoro pror coed , in hko manner , from the descending axis , or top root , lateral bmnohoa
which also ramify through tho soil . There are important differences between tho aerial and tho subterranean atoms to fit thom for their different functions , lloota , for example , have no pith , no soaloB or leaves , and , ia ordinary oiroumstftneos , no leaf-buds like tho upward axis . Still the two are alilto in tho general character ; tho branched plant is found to havo a bmnohod root . The tendencies of the underground ranrinoation have not , bo far i \ a wo know , been carefully determined ; but , above ground , it ia vary evident that tho Btom . branch nnd brnnohlofc obey tho aamo laws . " If a thousand , branches from the sumo tree , " Bnya LUidlcy , " are oomparedl together , thoy will bo found to be formed upon tho aamo uniform plan , and to accord in every essential particular . Each , branch ia also , under faivour-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), April 19, 1856, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19041856/page/16/
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