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    Sept. 20, 1851.] ¦«** • *««* *** 897

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    tiUxntnxt.

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    Critics are not the legislators , but th...

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    Somb months ago we announced that Carlyl...

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    French Literature is beginning to show s...

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    THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. The Creed of C...

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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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    Sept. 20, 1851.] ¦«** • *««* *** 897

    Sept . 20 , 1851 . ] ¦«** *««* *** 897

    Tiuxntnxt.

    tiUxntnxt .

    Critics Are Not The Legislators , But Th...

    Critics are not the legislators , but the-judges and police of literate . They do not mate laws-they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .

    Somb Months Ago We Announced That Carlyl...

    Somb months ago we announced that Carlyle had written a Life of John Sterling , which would , for the first time , give an honest statement of the belief that struggling thinker finally arrived at . ' Doubts were thrown upon the authenticity of our assertion , which , however , will be cleared up next month by the publication of the work-Meanwhile , let us be distinctly understood as guaranteeing the truth of all the literary gossip we chronicle here , unless when we give it as a . rumour . That precaution taken , we may now announce the

    certainty of an abridged translation of Augustk Comtb ' s six volumes of Positive Philosophy appearing as soon as is compatible with the exigencies of so important an undertaking . A very competent mind has long been engaged upon the task ; and the growing desire in the public to hear more about this Bacon of the nineteenth century , renders such a publication necessary . Nor have we forgotten our promise of devoting to the Positive Philosophy a series of articles , which will appear on the completion of arrangements for their uninterrupted publication .

    A series of papers on Socialism is now in course of publication in the Economist , to which we direct all who desire to hear the adverse side of the question forcibly stated . When the series i 3 complete we may answer its arguments at length . They admit of easy answer ; as the writer may imagine when we tell him that we accept most of his positions , for in truth they do not touch Socialism , they pass beside it . He commits the almost universal mistake

    of adducing purely economic arguments against a moral doctrine . By studiously omitting the moral consideration he leaves Socialism just where it stood ; Socialists having perpetually declared the radical vice of the Economists to be this limitation of social questions to those of mere profit and loss ! The writer of whom we now speak labours to show that Cooperative Stores and Working-Men ' s Associations , however they may prosper , can only surpass an ordinary tradesman in the small margin

    of profit which accrues from the difterence between the wages of the foreman and gains of the master after deducting the interest of capital . Granted . What then ? The Profit is not greatly increased , hut is the condition of the Producers not greatly ameliorated ? Is it nothing to the workmen themselves that they khall be raised from the condition of hired servant into that of free man , working

    with their equals in a spirit of hearty goodwill , conscious that they are increasing the social tendency , conscious that their little experiment may be the forerunner of a change which will make all men r joperate upon principles of Justice , instead of struggling to exploiter each other upon principles of Selfishness ? Is this nothing ? Is a question of Profit to swamp such considerations ?

    We merely touch , in passing , the weak point of the Economist ; for a more ample refutation we must wait till the series is completed . Perhaps the writer will reconsider his position , and meet Socialism as a Social doctrine , which includes Political Economy , but includes a great deal more than that . In this week ' s number of Household Words there in an amusing and suggestive paper on Nursery Rhymes , wherein the ferocious morals embalmed

    in jog-trot verse arc indicated , for the reflective consideration of all parents . A terrihlo case is made out against these lisping moralists : slaughter , cruelty , bigotry , injustice , wanton delight in terrible accidents and awful punishmentH for trivial offences , ferocity of every kind—such a mass of " shocking notions" as would people our nurseries with demons , were it not for the happy indifference of children to anything but the rhyme , rhythm , and the quaint image . The philosophy of this subject is

    not touched upon . It would make a separate paper of great interest . The imperfect adaptation of man to the Social state , which our admirable friend Hbrbbrt Spencer shows to be the source of all Social discord ances , is here exemplified in the love of children for stories which appeal to their destructive propensities . The " manly sports , " which grow into h eroisms in the eloquent pages of sporting writers—the cock fights , bull fights , boxing matches , game battues , and military glories , are all activities of those propensities which make the truculent incidents of Nursery Rhymes so acceptable to the child .

    French Literature Is Beginning To Show S...

    French Literature is beginning to show some activity . Thiers issues the eleventh volume of his History of the Consulate and Empire ; instead of the ten volumes originally proposed , the work is to extend to fourteen—an extension for which few will be grateful ! We stumbled the other day upon a passage in Pliny , the Elder , wherein he notes the fact , that paper ( or the ancient substitute therefor , viz ., Papyrus ) is an article not absolutely to be counted on . " There was a dearth of paper , " he says , "in the reign of Tiberius , and it became so alarming that

    senators were appointed to look after its distribution , otherwise the greatest inconveniences would have occurred . " In certain sarcastic moments who has not wished for such a dearth—for anything , in short , that would limit the voluminousness of modern authors ? Uecrivaillerie , says old Montaigne , est le symptdme d un siecle deborde ; but sarcasms against the " itch of writing , * ' caco ' e ' thes scribendi , are almost as ancient as authorship itself , so we will allow Thiers and his fourteen volumes to pass by , envying the man who has leisure to read them—a leisure we should diligently employ in not reading them .

    Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac , the lively , impertinent , paradoxical journalist , is writing a Histoire du Directoire in his own paper ( as we announced months past ) , and the Brussels edition of volume one now lies on our table . It is full of sarcasms and declamations against the Republican party and their great Leaders ; but it is sprightly , amusing , and has something of novelty in its tone : after so much wearisome laudation of everybody in the Revolution , a spirited , reckless , and dashing onslaught makes the old subject piquant .

    Eugene Sue oilers us a new novel , UAvarice , the last of his series on the seven cardinal sins . It is in one volume ; and its presence reminds us that we have not yet spoken of Miss Mary , which is still a novelty . In Miss Mary we have Eugene Sue , not precisely upon English ground , but with one foot here—just enough to exhibit to his countrymen his perfect familiarity with the " insolent Islanders . " Miss Mary is the daughter of Sir Jjawson Esquire , one of the richest gentlemen cultivateurs of his country—possessing eight magnificent horses of true Irish breed , and a kennel of five

    and twenty fox hounds , not to speak of the manorial estate , JL » wson- cottage . Miss Mary , however , is forced to quit Ireland , forced to give up her horses Turner and Smogler , which the little Johny rode en postilion—and is now wending her way to France , where she is to be a governess , Sir Lawson having met with misfortunes which have reduced him to poverty . Of course the gentleman in whose family she is governess falls in love with her ; but what the upshot is we cannot say , for at this point the reading faculty fairly gave way .

    Turning from Eugknk Sue to the Count Johki'U i > K Maihtkk—from the popular romancist to the most illustrious defender of the Catholic Church , is something like taking a literary Russian hath . We found it agreeable . The two volumes of I ) k Maihtrk ' h letters and ineditcd trifles , Lettres et Opuscules inedits , with a biographical notice written by his son , will be very acceptable , not only to Catholics , but to all who can rise above differences of creed , and recognize the amazing power of thin great writer . These volumes present him , en dishabille , and he is worthy knowing- ao .

    Oxford has lost an ornament in losing Dr . Kidd , the Regius Professor of Medicine in the University , whose death we see recorded in the papers ; and the public will remember him as the author of one of the most popular Bridgewater Treatises , a series of works intended to give orthodoxy the support of science , and which , by the very juxtaposition of religion and science , have greatly helped to br ing their discordances into relief . Dr . Kidd was not a writer of such attainments in philosophy

    as to give any weight to his views ; but his knowledge of facts was extensive , and his exposition popular in style . It may be worth remarking that the title of his book , On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man , is radically opposed to the most advanced views of physiology , and ( unless Morphology ia to be tossed contemptuously aside as " materialistic " ) the title should be reversed into the Adaptation of the Physical Condition of Man to the External

    Universe . This title , indeed , would not suit the ortho * dox view which assumes that Nature is made for Man — adapted to him , instead of Man being adapted to the conditions of Nature ; a view which might have been accepted at a time when the stars were supposed to be nothing more than lamps for the night , the whole universe being centred in our planet—a view which modern science unequivocally opposes . " What ' s in a name ? " asks some hasty reader . Everything , when that name implies a theory , and that theory a false one !

    The Creed Of Christendom. The Creed Of C...

    THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM . The Creed of Christendom : its Foundation ! and Superstructure . By WilJiam Bathbone Greg . John Chapman . English Protestantism , effete as it seems in its ecclesiastical and sectarian forms , is manifesting the vitality of its roots in the vigorous and rapid growth of free religious inquiry among earnest men . The writers who are heading the present movement against dogmatic theology , are not mere speculators enamoured of theory , and careless of its practical results . Still less are they antireligious zealots , who identify all faith with superstition . They are men at once devout and practical , who have been driven into antagonism with the dominant belief by the force of their moral , no less

    than of their intellectual nature , and who have been led to the avowal of that antagonism , not simply by the impulse of candour , but by an interest in the spiritual well-being of society . They know that to call dogmatic Christianity the popular creed is a misnomer ; that the doctrines taught in our pulpits neither have , nor can have , any hold on the masses ; and that if our population is to be Christianized , religious teaching must be conducted in a new spirit and on new principles . They protest against the current faith , because they would substitute for it one purer and more influential ; they lay the axe to the old , only that there may be freer play for the energies which are ever tending to the development of the new and more perfect .

    Among these pioneers of the New Reformation , Mr . Greg is likely to be one of the most effective . Without any pretension to striking originality or extensive learning , his work perhaps all the more exhibits that sound , practical judgment which discerns at once the hinge of a question , and it bears throughout the impress of an honesty , geniality , and refinement which imply a moral nature of a very high order . The absence of any very profound critical erudition , far from disqualifying Mr . ( ireg for the task he has undertaken , is essential to the aim of his book—namely , to show at what conclusions concerning the Bible and Christianity a sensible , educated layman is likely to arrive , with such an amount of critical attainment as

    is compatible with the work that lies before him in daily life . If such conclusions must necessarily be unsound because they are formed in i gnorance of the last new edition of every Biblical critic , orthodox or heterodox , the right of private judgment is a nullity , and the unclericul mind must either dismiss the subject altogether , or surrender itself to a more consistent spiritual despotism than that of Protestant divines . The Creed of Christendom claims the attention of Iho theologian , not that it may teach him Biblical criticism , but that it may render him more familiar with the impression made by the vexed questions of hiw science on an earnest , cultivated mind , cut off by no barrier of caste or prejudice from full sympathy and acquaintance

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 20, 1851, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_20091851/page/13/