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general character of the House of Commons , is an inference scarcely avoidable from the facts we have exhibited . There are a few exceptions , but generally it cannot fail to be observed , that the intelligent ¦ hard-working members of the House sit for the largest and purest constituencies . The sprigs and offshoots of nobility , the hack partizans and dependants , the professional men looking out for professional advancement , the mere golden calves ; in short , the classes who most thoroughly impair the ^ representative character of the House , usually have made their way there e ither through the small boroughs , or by wholesale corruption . It used to be urged on behalf of nomination , that it sent able men
into the House , whose poverty » nd habits unfitted them for the expense of contested elections in large towns , and for the degrading drudgery of the canvass . But it is notorious now that the cheapest elections , sometimes perfectly costless , are those of large popular constituencies ; and having to address a few public meetings must be a most desirable exchange to all who are qualified for Parliament , for the degradation of personal solicitations . And what if here and there a political demagogue be borne in upon a local tide of popular favour ; so far as he is dangerous at all to the public peace , he is evidently less dangerous in the House of Commons than anywhere else in the country .
" With nothing short of a closer approximation towards the representative principle can we hope to allay the discontent of the masses . Whatever measure- be objected to- ; whatever pressure may be felt upon their circumstances ; whatever practical oppression is abroad ; on this allegation they always fall back , * Ay , it would not be so if we were fairly represented . ' The broad shoulders of that giant grievance bear the butden of every other . Unequal taxation , failing trade , expensive warfare , Government jobs , court extravagance , all are placed to the account of imperfect representation ; and all are , for that reason , investigated in a more captious and angry spirit than they otherwise would be . "
The next article , On Shell , fish : their-Ways and Works , is the most satisfactory of all , and we beg no reader of ours to pass it over . In our Notes and Extracts we shaltdraw largely upon its entertaining _ store . Employers and Employed is a striking paper , both- in matter and style , on a very apropos question , viewed from the old point of the Politicical Economists , and endeavouring to define what precisely are the duties of Employers . We must take an occasion of returning to the arguments set forth in this paper ; meanwhile we extract this noble passage : —
THE THltEE BATTLES OF OUR RACE . " Of the three great battles appointed to humanity , we , in this land at least , have fought and gained two . We have wrestled with Wild Nature , and have subdued her to our service and tamed her to our will . Over the powers and obstacles of the material world we have achieved victory after victory—each more wonderful than the preceding one ; we have pushed our pioneers and founded our cities in the remotest recesses of primeval forests ; we have planted our footsteps and fixed our flag in the barrenest as in the richest regions ; the sea has become to us a bridge , and not a gulf—a highway , not a barrier ; climate has scarcely been an obstacle ; even the burning deserts of Africa and the wastes of Arctic and
Antarctic snows have scarce repelled us ; the most stupendous engineering difficulties suggest no question as to * whether they can be overcome , * but only 4 at what cost can they be overcome "; rapidity of communication and facility of intercourse have reached a point which it is not easy even for imagination to surpass ; even pain has found a conqueror in science j and , on the whole , if physical life were all we had to look to , and physical enemies the only ones \\ re had to strive with , it would be difficult to believe that the goal of human progress , and the boundary line of human capability , was not close at hand . The first great battle of civilization has been fought and won in a manner and with an issue which history may well record with pride .
" But there was another and a sterner struggle tobe gone through—another and a nobler victory to be won . Man hud to bo emancipated from a dwarfing and paralysing thraldom , and given back into his own possession . His limbs had to bo unfettered , and his energies to bo electrified by the healthy and bracing atmosphere of freedom . , Liberty of action had to be won from the . tyrant , and liberty of thought from the priest . To the conflict of man with Nature , succeeded the harder and far sadder conflict of man with man .
Ae the aim was nobler , ao the struggle was longer , the progress Blower , and the martyrs more numerous by fur . Age after ago the tide of war swayed to and fro , with varying fortunes and in chunged localities , but with no cessation ; a « combatant after combatant fell , another stepped into the vacant rank ; aa one weapon was blunted or broken , another and another was discovered of bettor temper and of keener odgo ; unexpected aid -camo often from around , sometimes from above ; as defeat and despair darkened the horizon in one quarter , hope dawned upon it from
another ; till , thanks to our forefathers , who were made of sterner stuff , cast in a more stalwart mould , and gifted with a singler eye , than we who had our birth amid milder antecedents—thanks to the goodly fellowship of our reformers and the noble army of our martyrs—we have now no impediments to our future progress save" such as our own imperfections may " create for us—such as" may be heaped upon our path by indistinctness of vision , infirmity of purpose , or a halting and enfeebled will . *• But we have now to trim our lamp and gird on o ' ur armour for a final work , ¦ which cannot be put by , and which must not be neg l igently done . The last battle of civilization is the severest—the last problem , the knottiest to solve . Out of all the multitudinous
ingredients and influences of the past ; out of the conquest of nature and the victory of freedom . ; out of the blending and intermixture of all previous forms of polity and modifications of humanity ;—has arisen a complex order of society , of which the disorders and anomalies are as complex as its own structure . We are now summoned to the combat , not with material difficulties , nor yet with oppressors nor with priests , but with an imperfect and diseased condition of that social world of which we form a part—with pains and evils appalling in their magnitude , baffling in
their subtlety , perplexing in their complications , and demanding far more clear insight and unerring judgment than even purity of purpose or commanding energy of will . This conflict may be said to date from the first French Revolution ; and it has been increasing in intensity ever since , till it has now reached to a vividness and solemnity of interest which surpasses and overshadows the attractions of all other topics . Socialism , Communism , St . Simonism , Fourierism , Chartism , are among the indications of its progress . Gradually it has drawn all classes and orders of men into its ranks . The student in his
library , the statesman in his cabinet , the merchant at his desk , the artizan at his loom , the peasant at his plough , are all , in their several departments , working at the same problem , intent upon the same thought . It has enlisted and [ consecrated science ; it ha 3 merged or superseded ordinary politics , or has . given them a holier purpose and a deeper meaning ; it pierces through every organ of the periodic press ; it colours all the lighter literature of the day , provides fiction with its richest characters and its most dramatic scenes , and breathes into poetry an earnestness and a dignity to which the last age was a stranger . "
A thoughtful and graphic paper on Mary Stuart follows , taking pretty much the same view of her character as we took in our notice of Mignet ; and setting forth a defence of Elizabeth which will set many heads thinking . The paper on Direct Legislation ably refutes Rittinghausen and Considerant ' s theories , but strangely enough omits all mention of Louis Blanc and Proudhon , who have both severely animadverted on those escapades of democratic philosophy . A paper on Julia von Krudener is followed by one of unusual beauty on the Ethics of Christendom , wherein what is essential is separated from what ia accidental in Christianity : —
" In Christendom all the great and good things that are done at all will , of course , be done by Christians , and will contain such share of the religious element as may belong to the character of the actor or the age ; but before you can avail yourself of them in Christian Apologetics , it must be shown that , under any other faith , no social causes would have remained adequate either to produce them or to provide any worthy equivalent . BecauEe Charlemagne , after baptizing the Saxons in their own blood , displayed a better zeal by establishing cathedral
and conventual schools , therefore to put the hornbook of the liberal arts into the hand of his religion , while leaving the wet sword to stain his own ; because chivalry blended in its vow ' fear of God' with 4 love of the ladies , ' therefore to trace all loyalty and courtesy to the doctrine of the Church ; because the medieval schoolmen imported into every science the canons of Divinity , and decided between Realism and Nominalism on eucharistio principles , therefore to give the priesthood all the honours of modern philosophy and intellectual liberty—r is , to eay the least , very vulnerable logic and very superficial history . " The central and germinal idea of Christianity is thus indicated : — * ' We believe that the fundamental idea of Christendom may be described to bo the ascent through conscience into" communion with God . Other religions have lent their Bancdons to morality , and announced the Diyino commands to the human will ; but only as the laws of an outward monarch within whose sovereignty we lie , and who , ruling in virtue of his almightmoBS , has a right to obedience , ordain as he will . Other religions , again , have aimed at a union with God . But the conditions of this union , dictated by misleading conceptions of the Divine nature , have miaaed on every Bide the true level of human dignity and peace . Manichceism , defying the antithesis of matterj takes the path of ascetic suppression of the body , Tho Indian Pantheist , imagining the Divine Abyss as tho realm of night and
infinite negation , strives to hold in the breath and sink into self-annulment . Plato , seeing in God the essence of thought , demands science and beauty not less than goodness , as the needful notes of harmony with Him , and appoints the approach to heaven by academic ways . The modern Quietists , worshipping a being too much the reflection of their , own tenderness , have lost , themselves in soft aflfeptions relaxing to the nerves of duty , and unseemly "in the face of eternal law . Christianity alone has neither crushed the soul by mere submission , like Mohammedanism ; nor melted it away in the tides of infinite being , like
Pantheistic faiths i but has saved the good of both , by establishing the union with God through a free act of the individual soul . Assigning to him a transcendent moral nature , sensitive to the same distinctions , conservative of the same solemnities , which awe and kindle usj it singles out the conscience aa the field where we are to meet him , where the bridge will be found of transit between the human and the divine . No fear or servility remains with an obedience consisting , not in mystic acts and artificial habits , but in the free play of natural goodness ; and
rendered , not in homage to a ' supreme autocrat , but in sympathy with a mind itself the infinite impersonation of all the sanctities . Nor are any dizzy and perilous flights incurred by a devotion which meets its great Inspirer in no foreign heaven , but in the higher walks of this home life , and misses him only in what is mean and low . The place assigned in Christianity to the moral sentiments and affections has no parallel in any other religion . The whole faith is as an unutterable sigh after an ideal perfection . Holiness eternal in heaven , incarnate on earth , and to be realized in men , — -this ia the circle of conceptions in which it moves . *'
There are many points in this article we should question—indeed , it is written by an orthodox thinker—but on the whole it is one we emphatically recommend . An " independent section" forms a new feature in the Review—in this section will be printed articles which express opinions differing from those maintained by the Review itself . The idea is excellent . We are sorry , however , to see its first application ; for the article on the Political Parties of France—very serviceable as an articleis not of that extreme kind to warrant isolation . Another new feature is " that of giving quarterlysurveys of Literature in Germany , France , America , and England ; this will undoubtedly prove one of the most attractive portions of the Review .
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WILKIE COLLINS S CHRISTMAS BOOK . Mr . fFray ' s Cash Box ; or , tlieMask and the Mystery . A Christmas Sketch . By W . WHkie Collins , Author of " Antonina , " &c . ¦ . Bentley . One of the prettiest and pleasantest stories we have read for a long time ; charmingly and enjoyingly written , with an unaffected heartiness pervading it , such as will win for it a place by numerous firesides . Saintine , in Picciola , - and Alexandra Dumas , in La Tulipe Noire , have successfully proved that it is not subject , so much as treatment which
makes the excellence of stories ; there is nothing trivial to far-reaching genius . Trivial' * it may be ; it may stand in the three ways , and be downtrodden by the busy feet that hurry past it ; lying there , " still as any stone , " it may call for no interest from the vulgar , it may suggest no thoughts to the meditative ; yet , let but the eye of genius fall upon it / there as it stands on the three ways , and
lo ! those three ways each lead into Infinity ! So when the romancist pleads that all the "' great subjects " have been " used up , " be sure that he wants the " vision and the faculty divine . '* Let him show what he can do with a poor subject , and we may estimate the richness of his mind . It is nothing , therefore , to say that the passion of Reuben Wray for his mask of Shakspeare is a slender thread wherewith to weave a fiction . What
is thread as it passes into the adroit hands of Wilkie Collins turns out strong cord , for he has bound it with the fibres of human passion . The inexhaustible well of sympathy lying in our nature may always be drawn from : show us human passion , and we are at onco interested in it , no matter what object inspires it . Remote , therefore , as Reuben ' s passion may . be , we all sympathize with it , because it is a passion . It is not necessary that we should be frantic about the inestimable treasure
of possessing a Shakspeare mask ; it is enough that we feel Reuben Wray is so . And Here lies the art of the storyteller . He has made the fantastic real ; he has brought the improbable into perfect familiarity , lie has so prepared the reader ' s mind by artful touches in Wray ' a previous history , that we all accept as a matter of course what looks unreal when stated point blank . Therefore we shall not , in dry analysis , state what the story is . Get hold of the book itself . Settle yourself quietly
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 10, 1852, page 38, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1917/page/14/
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