On this page
- Departments (1)
-
Text (6)
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
Untitled Article
-
1 titnahxxt
-
Untitled Article
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.
Untitled Article
^^ SMSSSJiJfiSSSS ^ ^ e ^^ Si ^ iLSaB ^^ SK ^ " *
Untitled Article
The Priesthood bf Letters / which is a conception daily growing more familiar to the European mind , could only have arisen bteside a priesthood incapable of fulfilling its whole function . * Literature , as an amusement , as a graceful employment of the feelings and the intellect , might fairly co-exist with a Church which gathered into its bosom all the earnest problems that could vex and occupy the human mind ; but Literature—in our modem and almost solemn conception of its function—became a rival to the Church the moment that it ceased to be a plaything . Beside the Cathedral rose the Laboratory ; the crosier and the surplice acknowledged rivals in the pen and the alembic . The Church immovable upon ancient dogmas , was the antagonist of Science moving in the march of new conquests ; the Church persisted in her old explanations , Science practically demonstrated their untruth . Not only so , but even Morals , and the science of Life , were wrested from the hands of a Priesthood which in all earnestness repeated the old
formulas , and were tacitly allowed to be treated otherwise by another Priesthood ; so that at last we have reached this stage . Beside the old Priesthood there is a Priesthood of Letters , whose doctrines are all either in contradiction to , or in extension of , the doctrines taught by its rival ! A strange , unhappy anomaly ! It is startlingly apparent in the questions now prominently before England respecting National Education . Our table is crowded with pamphlets and books on the subject . Mr . Zincke ' s School of the Future we reserve for review . Words by a Working Man , about Education , a pamphlet published by John W . Parker and Son , though clearly not by a Working Man , is worth attentive consideration , as briefly sketching what has been done , and what may be done , in this momentous matter . In his retrospect , the writer has this remark : —
" The evils threatened were public and social . Not so the remedies . Education in the popular inind was identified with Religion , and Religion was no longer the " binding , hut the dislocating force in citizenship . The Established Church , forgetful of the mission implied in her establishment , had not grown with the groioth of the people , and tvas no longer a home for the multiplied activities of their spiritual life . The religious organisations which had arisen beyond her borders existed for independent ends , and owned no relations to any English polity . " - Did we not say that everywhere in social life Religion , because it moves the heights and depths of man ' s nature , is either an animating impulse , or
a retarding obstacle ; and should we fulfil our function as Journalists , if we sat down in quietness , resolutely " ignoring" Religion , lest we should " offend" by plain speech ? Is there any man who denies the inadequacy of all attempts at giving the people education ? Is there any man unaware of the fact that the great and abiding obstacle to all reasonable solution of the difficulty , is Religion ? To place children at a school where the man who teaches d , o , g , dogj c , a , t , cat ; and Opens the mystery of the multiplication table , without at the same time thrusting upon the infant mind some sectarian conceptions of the Great Mystery—that is shriekingly declared to be " irreligious "—darkest ignorance is preferable !
It requires no peculiar sagacity to read in this , and in many other phenomena , the operation of those antagonistic forces which we have hinted at as necessitating a Priesthood of Letters . The Church is naturally jealous of its rival . Had it the power , it would suppress that rival , as we see in the traditional foolishness of the Index Expurgatorius . The Pope continues his prohibition of books even now , when his prohibition has lost the power of creating that interest which formerly hovered round forbidden books . In the last edict we observe the works of Eugene Sue , in whatever language published , opera omnia quocumque idiomate exarata ; the
same of Pboudhon and Gioberti ; nor can Tommasi s II Magnetismo Animate be permitted to ingenuous Catholics . Our Church is wiser . It enters the field of Literature . It patronizes and cultivates science . The attempts by which it aims at " reconciling" Science with Scripture may be forgiven : their helplessness should gain them toleration . Meanwhile , the very fact that the Priesthood tries to identify itself with the Priesthood of Letters , is immensely significant . Let us recommend the reader to consult on this subject Dr . Vaughan ' h article on the Priesthood of Letters , in his Essays , republvshed from the British Quarterly .
Untitled Article
All Paris is at this moment running after La Dame aux Camehas , a drame which Ai . exandke Dumas , the Younger , has arranged from his affecting novel of that name . It will surpr ise our public to hear that this furore of interest is created by the representation of a courtesan ' s life . But French literature , ever since Manon Lescaut , has been singularly addicted to that Subject over which our better taste has always thrown a veil . When every cottage has its tragedy , when every family has its mystery , when every roof shuts in more emotion 1 , more sacrifice , more crime , more folly , more love , and more prayers than anpwritcr can exhaust , why must he rush to that saddest of all subjects—saddest , because the most hopeless and most remote from the idealization of poetry and passion—and try to move our sympathies for that " immense-impiety , an unworthy life" ( to use Tasso ' s noble language ) :
" L'hnmonza unpiotit , la vitu imlogna . " How men , who , as poets and iiovolints , must be supposed , in a peculiar degree , to feel for women that tenderness and chivalrous respect which animate the finest natures , can consent to treat with levity or false sentiment ,
a subject so terrible , a subject that depoetizes the sex and soils the inw nation , —that , indeed , is a question moralists may ponder on . We can un derstand a stern picture presenting the tragedy of the subject ; boldly seizing it in its reality , and showing what a black gulf opens uilder it . \\ Tg can understand a picture like that of the old Greek poet , who , in an image painted the whole moral of the courtesan life , —they are like vultures , lie says , when their claws have the vigour of youth , they rise triumphantl y with their prey in the air , but when old age comes on them they die starved and lonely , on some remote ledge of rock . But we cannot understand taking up this subject as the French take it up . Alexandra Dumas , the Younger , has handled it with more delicacy and feeling than is usual ; but he , too , dwells complacently on the orgies , the extravagance the want of principle , and the mere sensual fever of that life , —Vimmenz ' a
impieta ! We have to announce the third and last volume of Eugene Sue's Fernand Duplessis , wherein the memoirs of a husband are recounted with a licence which only a French public could permit . Perhaps the worst thing in Sue is not his positive passion for what is criminal and odious , so much as the way in which he always contrives to render the good people odious . Much as we reprobate his pictures of vice , we think them less offensive than his pictures of virtue . How a man so essentially vulgar-minded could ever have attained the position he had once !
Besides Fernand Duplessis , Mr . Jeffs places before us the two first volumes of the Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas . Curiously enough , the Brussels edition is , in this instance , the authentic work , published by Dumas himself , and containing the passages which a susceptible censorship struck out . The two volumes contain little more than memoirs of his father , and are unblushing specimens of book-making ; but they are agreeable reading , nevertheless , and we look forward to the continuation . When we look over the recent productions of French literature , we cannot help recalling , with a smile , Victor Hugo ' s magnificent and intensel y French declaration , not long ago : — "At the present hour , there is but one literature full of vigorous life—( vivante et allumee , )—and that is the literature of France !"
Untitled Article
DISRAELI'S BENTINCK . Lord George Benlinch : A Political Biography . By B . Disraeli , M . P . Oolburn & Co . An accident caused an . omission in our pages , when Mr . Disraeli ' s Political Biography was suffered to pass without notice , but we are not'about to revert to it for elaborate review . It is not a happy-specimen of Mr . Disraeli ' s writing ; the subject was not a happy one for his pen . He was indeed an active participator in the struggles of which Lord George Bentinck was the leader ; he took an intense interest both in the cause of Protection , and in the personal career of tlie leader . But " delicacy" has probably precluded him from that part of the subject which is the soul of biography—the personal life of the man ; and that which forms the staple of the thick book before us , a recapitulation of debates in the House of Commons at a time of no very strenuous action , is not a subject capable of being made other than dry . The extracts from correspondence , chiefly with Mr . Burn , editor of the Commercial Glance , in search of statistics , do not throw much variety into the action of the story ; and even the councils held from time to time with the residue of the Conservative party that adhered to Protection , do not suffice by way of incident . In one sense , Mr . Disraeli has endeavoured to make the most of his materials , by the dramatic tone in which he has translated Hansard ; but the drama of the manner only renders more conspicuous the essentially undramatic
character of the events . The author does more than try to " cut blocks with a razor ; " he endeavours to make those , blocks pass for dramatis persona in a melodrama , of which Peel is the villain , Lord John the " heavy father , " and Lord George the generous , all-saving hero ; but the lrotectionist blocks are not so tractable as the Marionettes . Most of us remember those dobates too well ; and its moral—that a policy which a nation has outgrown cannot be maintained by the most energetic orlorta of Conservative genius—does not need five or six hundred pages to dovolopeit . . . miht tho book with view to anal the character of its
We gsurvey a yse author ; but to discover his true gonius we must look into other volumes . Ho has kept himself in the background ; and it is only in the handling or his subjects that personal traits come out . Disraeli is a man of whom i were well if there wore more amongst our acting politicians . Ho 18 ono of tho fow who treat politics aa a science , their application as an art . That ho is really to bo counted among patriots wo believe ; J »» liability to the fovor-accosa of " honourable ambition" is obvious ; uu above all , lie is artist . Events are for him tho materials for arrftJ 1 # injy great state opic , and performing it before tho world for audionco . * 111
strange twists arc explained by that inextinguishable instinct , exaggoy- . though they have boon b y accidents . It was a grievous mistulco of i- not to attach tho ablo and artistic partisan to his ranks ; and wo can' 10 , help thinking that tho mistake contributed to the false estimate . wl" « Disraoli forms of Pool . ¦ b , y His judgment of that statesman has boon circulated through . l » world in tho columns of tho Times ; tho writer has evidently- ' Jabourt to bo just , handsome ; yet is tho rosult a prejudiced and partial vl £ j \; Pool is dismissed as "titogroatestMomborof Parliament that ever livetl ' i as if all his acts and famo wero limited to " tho Houso 1 " Pool o p 8 * tho policy of a country ; and thoro are abundant evidences that ho * OT 0 B ! i ovonts with a sagacity as far-siglitod as it was bold . Ho forosaw w v advent of tho working-classes into political action , as Plumcr Ward w - noHsos ; ho foresaw tho consummation of Freo Trade long boforo no kn that ho should effect it witli his own hand ; ho forosaw , and did not io ^ the coming on of tho Socialist discussion , on Which , Disraoli touches wi "
1 Titnahxxt
1 titnahxxt
Untitled Article
180 THE t E A PER . { feArfttftiuy ,
-
-
Citation
-
Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 21, 1852, page 180, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1923/page/16/
-