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Xnnatnvt.
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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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Xnnatnvt.
Xnnatnvt .
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Among the new works in preparation there is one which , to our minds ,, stands eminent in interest , because , if adequately executed , its influence will be very great and-very wholesome ; we allude to the Illustrated Edition of the Vestiges . Popular as that work has been and is , exquisitely combining real philosophic sentiment with a mode of exposition that gains for its leading ideas an admission into all minds ; nevertheless , the very unfamiliarity of the public with the details upon which its generalizations are founded renders illustrations peculiarly desirable . We hope they will be diagrams rather than pictures . shallow
It is not uncommon to hear the Vestiges spoken of by very people as a very shallow work . Because it is popular in style it is regarded with a certain eye of patronage by many of those who could not even read it had the style been technical . Because it was inaccurate in some of its details , and heretical in many of its opinions , the hod-men of Science , who never in their lives rose to the height of a generalization , unless lifted there by others , sneered at it ; those sneers have been anxiously noted by the metaphysicians and theologians alarmed by its heresies ; and thus it has come to pass that a work distinguished for its generalizing , organizing power , its noble religious sentiment , and beautiful style , has been " answered" ( such answers !) very often , and very rarely estimated by writers , ft has worked its way , however , by sheer power , and has had immense influence on the thinking of this country .
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The North British Beview , just issued , is not so attractive a number as usual—at least to the general public ; but no one should fail to read its opening article , on the . influence of the Scottish mind upon English Literature , apropos to the Life of Jeffrey . It is by a hand we easily recognise , and friendship shall not absurdly restrain the expression of our admiration . The article is full of thought , both novel and suggestive , and contains the most masterly analysis of the Scotch character we ever read . From it we borrow one passage : — " For our part , we should say that the special habit or peculiarity which distinguishes the intellectual manifestations of Scotchmen—that , in short , in which the Scotticism of Scotchmen most intimately consists , —is the habit of emphasis . All Scotchmen are emphatic . If a Scotchman is a fool , he gives such emphasis to the nonsense he utters as to be infinitely more insufferable than a fool of any other country ; if a Scotchman is a man of genius , he gives such emphasis to the good things he has to communicate , that they have a supremely good chance of being at
once or very soon attended to . This habit of emp hasis , we believe , is exactly that perfervidutn ingenium Scotorum which used to be remarked some centuries ago , wherever Scotchmen were known . But emphasises perhaps a better word than fervour . Many Scotchmen are fervid , too , but not all ; but all , absolutely all , are emphatic . No one will call Joseph Hume a fervid man , but he is certainly emphatic . And so with David Hume , or Reid , or Adam Smith , or any of those colder-natured Scotchmen of whom we have spoken ; fervour cannot be predicated of them , but they had plenty of emphasis : In men like Burns , or Chalmers , or Irving , on the other hand , there was both emphasis and fervour ; so also with Carlyle ; and so , under a still more curious combination , with Sir William Hamilton . And as we distinguish emphasis from fervour , so would we distinguish it from perseverance . Scotchmen arc said to he persevering , but the saying is not universally true ; Scotchmen are or are not morally persevering , hut all Scotchmen are intellectually emphatic . Emphasis , we repeat , intellectual emphasis—the habit of laying stress on certain things rather than co-ordinating all—in this consists what is essential in the Scotticism of Scotchmen . And , ns this observation is
empirically verified by the very manner in which Scotchmen enunciate their words in ordinary talk , so it might be deduced scientifically from what we have already said regarding the nature and effects of the feeling of nationality . The habit of thinking emphatically is a necessary result of thinking much in the presence of , and in reHiHtnnvo to , n negative ; it is the habit of a people that has been accustomed to act on the defensive , rather than of a people peacefully self-evolved and accustomed to act positively ; it is the habit of Protestantism rather than of Catholicism , of IVesbyterianism rather than of Episcopacy , of Dissent rather than of Conformity . " The article on American Poetry begins with a sentence which betrays a youthful writer , deploring the unhappy error of nearly all recent criticism on art—viz ., that its judgments have been formed without reference to any high or very distinct standard of what it is right and desirable that poetry should be . The reader is attentive , hopes for some revelation on that
extremely delicate and ill-understood subject , and is considerably " put out" on arriving at such a goal as this , whither true criticism conducts him , in respect of Goktiik : — " In criticising Mr . Longfellow , we have a part to play that requires soino boldiu'hh , —we must speak ill of his model , Goethe , who , by a most strange injustice , bus of lute been permitted to usurp a throne in the seventh heaven of fame , with Nlmltspeare , Dante , and Homer . " ( Soothe was perhaps the greatest critic , that ever lived ; but we are convinced
that the next generation will bo astonished ut the admiration with which hitf poetry has come to be regarded by us . In our opinion , Goethe ' s poetry is always more or lens heartless . IIin minor poems are full of warm fancy , exquisitely expressed ; but there is more heart in half a dozen of Hums' songs than in all Goethe ' s minor poems put together . Faust , we venture to think , is immensely over-rated , liverybody praises it , and eullH it profound , because there in much of it , that nobody understands , or was intended to understand . It abounds with deep lines and pic-• uromjue passages , but it , 1 ms no claim to be regarded as the great symbolical poom which it pretends to bo . " A very juvenile passage indeed ! " In the twilight , " Kays Goethe , " the
Natural history seems in favour this month . The North British has its paper on Ornithology , and Blaekwood its paper on the sports with rod and gun , and Bentley ' s Miscellany its amusing inquiry into the habits and habitats of Rats . The writer—evidently the author of the Zoological Anecdoteshas the fitting love of rats ; he eyes them as a zoologist , not as a householder ; he writes with one on his table licking its paws , contemplative of cheese and careless of cats , and cannot be unjust to the race . Nay , hear how he defends them : — " The rat is one of the most despised and tormented of created animals ; he has many enemies and very few friends ; wherever he appears his life is in danger from mendogscatsowls&c , who will have no mercy on him . These perpetual
perplainest handwriting is illegible . " This writer will live to blot out all such passages as the one we have quoted ; the article itself gives unmistakeable evidence of fine critical appreciation and independent thinking . Blaekwood is varied and entertaining this month . Christopher North is once more " under canvass , " to the delight of his friends , discoursing in the old familiar tones of Milton—et qnibusdam aliis ; Dr . Wagner ' s travels furnish an agreeable paper from Stamboul to Tabriz ; Bulwer continues his novel ; Politics , of the dreary kind , have their verbose expression and tabular rhetoric ; the Moor and the Loch carries us away from the crowds and turmoils of cities into the free air most pleasantly .
, , , , secutions oblige him to he wary in his movements , and call for a large amount of cunning and sagacity on his part , which give his little sharp face" peculiarly knowing and wide-awake appearance , which the most superficial observer must have noticed . Though , poor creatiire , he is hated and killed by man , his sworn foe , yet he is to that same ungrateful race a most useful servant , in the humble capacity of scavenger ; for wherever man settles his habitation , even in the most remote parts of the earth , there , as if by magic , appear our friends the rats . He quietly takes possession of the out-houses , drains , &c ., and occupies himself by devouring the refuse and filth thrown away from the dwelling of his master ( unde v whose floor , as well as roof , he lives ); this refuse , if left to decay , would engendei
fever , malaria , and all kinds of horrors , to the destruction of the children of the family , were it not for the unremitting exertions of the rats to get rid of it , in a way no doubt agreeable to themselves , namely , by eating it . Let us take an example . The sewers neig hbouring a connected series of slaughter-houses , as ' Newgate Market , Whitechapel , Clare Market , &c ., are often nearly choked up with offal and the foul refuse of animal matter , swept into them by the careless butchers . It maybe imagined what fearful maladies would arise from this putrid mass if it were allowed to stay there neglected . How is this evil result prevented ? Why , by the poor , persecuted rats , who live there in swarms , and devour every morsel of concentrated cholera as it comes down to them , profiting thereby themselves and the inhabitants of the houses who reside above their haunts . "
We have on several occasions strongly expressed our dissent from the mechanical conception of the Universe , usually implied or advocated by theologians , and this month we see Kingsley , in the opening chapter of Hypatia , very eloquently expressing the same opinion . He speaks , it is true , through the mouth of his Hypatia , so that we are not to conclude the view to be his own ; but we shall be curious to see how be will answer it when he comes to the part of answering all her philosophy , and , meanwhile , we let our readers have the benefit of her eloquence : —¦ "' If the universe lives and moves , and ha 3 its being in him , must he not
necessarily pervade all things ? " ' Why ?—Forgive my dulness , and explain . ' " ' Because , if he did not pervade all things , those things which he did not pervade would be as it were interstices in his being , and in so far , without him ?' " ' True , but still they would bo within his circumference . ' "' Well argued . But yet they would not live in him , but in themselves . To live in him t hey must be pervaded b } ' his life . Do you think it possible—do you think it . even reverent , to affirm that there can be anything within the infinite glory of Deity which has the power of excluding from the space which it occupies
that very bein < r from which it draws its worth , and which must have originally pervaded that thing , in order to bestow on it its organization and ihs life ? JJoc . t he retire after creat . hu / , from the space tvhich he occupied during creation , reduced to the base necessity of making room for his own universe , and endure the suffering —for the analogy of all nature tells us that it is suffering—of a foreign body , like a thorn within the llesh , subsisting within his own substance ? Rather believe that his wisdom and splendour , like a subtle and piercing fire , insinuates itself externally with resistless force , through every organized atom , and that were it withdrawn but for an instant from the petal of the meanest flower , gross matter , and the dead chaos from which it was formed , would be all which would remain of its
loveliness " ' Yes '—she went on , after the method of her school , who preferred , like most decaying ones , orations to dialectic , and synthesis to induction ' Look at yon lotus flower , rising like Aphrodite from the wave in which it has slept throughout the night , and saluting , with bending swan-neck , that huh which ifc will follow lovingly around the sky . Is there no more there than brute-matter , pipes and fibres , colour and shape , and the meaningless life-in-death which men call vegetation P Those old Egyptian priests knew better , who could see in the number that the form of those ivory petals and golden stamina , in that mysterious daily birth out of the wave , in that nightly baptism , from which ifc rises each morning re-born to a new life , the signs of some divine idea .
Besides Hypatia , there arc other papers in this month ' s Frascr of excellent material . One on Hold and Immigration—perhaps the topic ol the day . ; one , a letter from the author of Friends in Council , on the : ideas suggested by that American novel Uncle Tom ' s Cabin ( which is the topic in America , the book selling , as we hear , something like a thousand copies n day ) , a letter bright with the humour and sagacity of its author ( extracts will be found elsewhere in our columns ); a review of the Austrian Poets , and a defence , somewhat unnecessary now , of the Pie-Raphuelites .
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o t -n « nre not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do not Critics < " | ke xaw 3—they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Beview .
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A uGUST 7 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . ™ 9
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Iu France there seems no activity . Victor lluuo , who luw just left
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 7, 1852, page 759, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1946/page/19/
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