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    risible—a desire to " extract amusement out of trifles by tlie way they are jreated ; but on serious occasions he is seriously graphic . We must refer the curious reader to all the details here given of agriculture , and tiie-condition of the agricultural classes , as well as the description > f the ^ militaiy organisation of aU Russian affairs . A passage or two are all wq can * find room for .

    :. V m THE TRANSIT OF COIUT . , ' . ** 7 n order io judge at what cost the most important of thoso exports is tfeus brought , and norder to enable an inquirer to predict with any approach to certainty what could be done trader the pressure of the most extraordinary temptation from without , let na leave the sharp stones , deep mud , or clouds of dust of Odessa , and examine the tracts along which those long lines of bullock waggons come creaking from' more northerly directions . I have saad that a vast belt of Steppe girdles this coast . We are upon the Steppe . The prevailing colour , as far as the eye can . reach over the immense plain , is a scorched brown . Tne-intense heat and drought have reduced the Steppe to this condition , and far beyond the horizon line , and away , verst upon verst , is the same dreary-looking and apparently waste expanse . N " ot that it is all flat—hiljs , barren and rugged , diversify the line , and add to its difficulties in diy ^ vrcatiher considerably , in -wit incalculable . For look at the ground on -which you stand . You are on one of the roads , as they are termed . Elsewhere , a road , good or bad , means

    Something which has been made—a . line upon which has been gathered material for binding and claspingj , and below which there is some kind of draining ; bad or go » d , the road is , as compared , with the adjacent land , dry , compact , and elastic . Dismiss all such ideas from your mind , or rather drag your limbs for an hoar behind that corn waggon , and such ideas will disappear of themselves . " Dead and helpless seems that wobegonc track , creaking and orawHpg ^ ver which comes the bnUoek-waggon—all wood , and built pre « iselv-as waggons were iuilta . thousand years ago . The driver sits in front , occasionally lashing the grey bullocks more by way of form than with any idea of hastening them , and his massy heard hang ' s down over a species oiF censer , wKence arise fumes of an unsavoury kind . But it is not in luxury ^ or in imitation of his eastern neighbours , that the peasant keeps this odour-Dreat vessel tne cents abominable

    mng unuer ms nose— con are an mixture tor greasing the wheels of his waggon , and by which you may track it through many a yard or tainted air . Wb ^ f lie has- placed the reeMng vessel exactly between , his legs I know not , unless it be to rliiiind ' hinM ^ jm ore ^ forcibly-of the necessity of an operation , without tie incessant perfonnince of ! which his clumsily built cart would be on fire in four places at once . Contrast this wretched . ' machine with the well-contrived , iron-mounted cart of the German colonist , ^ few miles hence . But on . goes the waggoner , jolting and creaking along the unhelpful soil , aha siaging ; &ome of those old airs in which , rude as they are , there is a certain melody , or saving pray « rs to one or other of the multifarious national saints . On he goes , and so he and his predecessors have gone since corn -was grown in . Russia . Ricketty carts , knotted rope h .-urnessi ^ drowsy bulloctcs wretched road—so crawls the loaf towards the Englishman ' s table . " . .: . ' , ' " ¦ ¦ ' . . , ¦ - RAILROADS IN RUSSIA . " In all this MC « ster empire , while the rest of Europe has been spinning its myriads of iron cobwebs from wall to wall , and from tower to tower , one line has been laid down ( I do not speak of Poland ^ ,, and that one a line which was all but unnecessary , and which actually runs-alpng one of the few lines . of Bossian intercourse for which a capital road had already been ^ laid down , TJieuadertaking was either a job , or a mere effort of yanihr ; probably . both ., ^ r But Itwill not be imitated .. - _ Railroads are not encouraged in Russia ; they ore coasMere < i asCconnectied in some way with the revolutionary tendencies of the age , and are « ctwrfingly . disfavoured . , As regards the transit of soldiery—the only point , of course , upon which it is "worth ; the while of Russian authority to consider them—the matter bias iwen pondered , and thesElnperpr finds that he can move his armies ( their appurtenances tafcen into acconatyas adyaht « g « ousl y without rails as with them . As to private enterprise here ,

    that is entirely put of the question . Without pausing to ask whether you can expect railway progress in a country which leaves one of its most splendid and important ports unarained and unlighted , or where the nation ' s very almanac is left a laughing-stock to Europe , we shall- find that a more practical , if not a more real , obstacle opposes itself to the establishment of railways were they ever so much desired . There is no capital . The sinews of railway iwar are wanting ^ The money could not be found . In saying this ,., ! am simpl y recording the answer made bv tradesmen , by merchants , by proprietors , by natives , swell as foieignersyuid even ( in . wfiispers ) by daring officials , when questioned concerning th ^ stagnatbn of all national andviiopular enterprise— We have no money as a nation . I ¦ haje , jreceiwed this . answer a hundred times ., . Many Russians are rich , but Russia is poor . With this answer , of course , ceases my share in the question , ' as it appears to meet the inquiry which would occur to an Englishman on first considering the position of Odessa . "

    There is one . very ludicrous and instructive illustration of -the passport system . Everybody m Russia must have his ticket of leave to live—his billet descjour . That necessity not only hangs over him in this world , but is supposed to hang over him in the next , e . g . : — " When The battle of life is fought , and its dead soldier brought into the house of God , that the last rites may b * performed over the body , watch the process . After certain ceremonies of ah imposing character , the priost approaches the cofhn , which is open , and strews incense upon the breast of the dead . He then reads a paper , unfastens the front of the dress of the corpse , and places ' the document in the bosom . The interment then proceeds . Thai document is a certificate and passport , without which ( duly vhd by the priest ) the officer in charge of the gate of heaven would refuse' entrance to the soul of the departed . Even St . Feter demands the sight of a soul ' s papers . What objection can a worshipper of St . Peter snake to such a system ? He must , on the contrary , rather regard the renewing of his billet de se ' jour as a species of religious ceremony , and look upon the police officials as resembling Ma own priests—a point in which he will not greatly slander either party , both being , very generally , remarkably venal , dissolute , and worthless . "

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    DE QUINCEY'S NEW VOLUME . Autobiographic Sketches , By Thomas d « Qnincey . Vol . II . Price 7 s . 6 d . Edinburgh , James Hogg . This second volume of De Quincey ' s writings , which we have impatiently awaited through many months of unaccountable and most impolitic delay , ( and which , by the . way , has only the obscure indication of two asterisks on the title-page to inform us that it is a second volume ) , does not present such material for criticism as the first . It has few of those wondrous bursts of elotji ^ ence which form the charm , of the first volume ; scarcely any- of those revelations of psychological iaterest . But it is as discursive , digressive , and as overloaded with insignificant details . It will , however , be fascinating to all interested-in the Lake Poets , devoted as it mainly is to the writer ' s recollections of G-rasmere , Coleridge , Wordsworth , and Southcy . We must be sparing in our extracts . Here is one on

    THE PLAaiA-BtSMS OF COLKB 1 DGB . " A rmoro singular case of Coleridgo ' d infirmity is this : —In a very noblo passage of ' Frunco / n tine expression or two \> ccur from ' Sampson Agonistes . ' Now , to take a phrase or an inspiriting lino from the great fathers of poetry , even though no marks of quotation should b « added , carries with it no charge of plagiarism . Milton is j ustly presumed to bo aa familiar to the catsignature to the eye ; and to Blcal from him ns inoposnible as to appropriate , o-r to sequester to a private us « , » omo ' bright purticulur star . ' And there is good reason for rejecting the typographical marks of quotation : they break the continuity oitho passion , by reminding the render of a printed book ; on which account Milton himself , ( to give an instance ) lm » net marked the aublirnc words , * tormented all the air , ' ns borrowed ; uor haa Wowlsworth , in applying to an unprincipled wjirmn of commanding beauty the

    memorable expression , ' a weed of glorious feature , ' thought it necessary to acknowled ge it as originally hanging to Spenser . Some dozens of similar cases might be adduced irom Miltou . But Coleridge , when saying of republican France—that , ' Inseupportably advancing . Her arm made mockery or the warrior's tramp , ' not satisfied with omitting the marks of acknowledgment , thought fit positively to deny that he was indebted to Milton . Y « t who could forget that semi-chorus in the ' Sampsdn , ' where the 'bold As&alonite' is described as having fled from his lion ramp ? ' Or who , that was not in this point liable to some hallucination of judgment , would have ventured on a public challenge ( for virtually it was 1 hat ) to prorlace from the ' Sampson / words so impossible to be overlooked , as those of insupportably advancing the foot ? The result was , that one of the critical journals placed ihe two passages in juxta-position , and left the reader to his

    own conclusions with regard to the poets veracity . Bat in this instance it was common sense rather than veracity which the facts impeach . " In the year 1810 , ^ I happened to be amusing myself , by reading , in their chronological order , the great classical circumnavigations of the earth ; and coming to Shelvocke , I met with a passage to this effect : —That Hatley , his second captain ( t e . lieutenant ) , being a melancholy man , was possessed by a fancy that some long season of foul weather , in Sie solitary sea which they were then traversing , was due to au albatross which had steadil y pursued the ship ; upon which he shot the bird , but without mending their condition . There at once I saw the gertn of the ' Anci « nt Mariner ; ' and I put a question to Coleiidge accordingly . Gould it have been imagined that he would see cause utterly to disown so sli g ht an obligation to Sh elvoeke ? Wordsworth , a man of stern veracity , on hearing of this , professed his inability to understand Coleridge ' s meaning ; the fact being notorious , aa he told me , that Coleridge had derived , from the very passsage I had cited , the original hint

    for the action of the poem ; tnough it is very possible , from something which Coleridge said on another occasion , that , before meeting a fable in which to embody his ideas , he had meditated a poem on delirium , confounding its own dream-scenery with external things , and connected wiih the imagery of high latitudes . - " All these cases amount to nothing at all , as cases of p lagiarism , and for this reason expose the more conspicuously that obliquity of feeling which could seek to decline the very slight acknowledgments required . But now I come to a case of real and palpable plagiarism ; yet that too of a nature to be quite unaccountable in a man of Coleridge ' s attainments . It Is not very likely that this particular case will soon be detected ; but others will . Tet who knows ? Eight hundred or a thousand years hence , some reviewer may arise , who , having read the ' Philosophical ' * of Schelling , the great Bavarian professor , a man in some respects worthy to be Coleridge ' s assessor ; and he will then make a singular . discovery . la the 'Biograpaia Literaria , ' occurs a dissertation upon the reciprocal relations

    of the Essa ami the Cogitare , that is , of the objective aud the subjective : and an attempt is made , oy la verting the postulates from which the argument starts , to show how each ' might arise as a product , by an intelligible genesis , from the other . It is a subject which , since the time of Fichte , has much occupied the German metaphysicians ; and many thousands of . essays have been written on it , or indirectly so , of which many hundreds have been read by many tens of persons . Coleridge's essay , m particular , is prefaced by a few -words , in which , aware of his coincidence with Spelling , he declares his willingness to acknowledge himself indebted to so great a man ,, in any case where the truth would allow him to do so ; but in this particular case , insisting ; on the impossibility that he could have borrowed arguments which he had first seen some jears after he had thought out the whole hypothesis proprio marie . After'this , what was my astonishment , to find that the entire essay , from- the first word to the last , is a verbatim translation from Schelling , with no attempt in a single instance to appropriate the paper , by developing the arguments or by diversifying the illustrations I "

    These are but specimens , a larger surrey of Coleridge ' s plagiarisms , while it astounds by the revelation of their number , only serves to deepen the impression of his utter want of veracity , so that when he excused his indifference to his wife , on . such grounds as the following , we know how much credence to bestow : — "Coleridge , besides , assured , me that bis marriage was not his own deliberate act , but was in a manner forced upon his « ense of honour by the scrupulous Southey , who insisted that he had gone too far in his attentions "to Miss Flicker , for any honourable retreat . On the other hand , a neutral spectator of tho parties protested to me , that , if ever in his life he had seen a man under deep fascination , and what he would have called desperately in love , Coleridge , in relation to Miss F ., was that man . "

    A note or two upon , two notes of De Quincey ' s , and our present notice must close . His learning is remarkable both for its extent and accuracy ; and yet every now and then we see him puzzling over things not by any means recondite . E . g .: — " ' Veterinary : '—By the way ,, whence comes this odd-looking word ? The word vtterana I have met with in monkish writers , to express domesticated quadrupeds ; aud evidently from that word must have originated the word veterinary . But the question is still but one step removed : for how cam * vela-ana by that acceptation in rural economy ?" Whatever use monkish writers may have made of veterana , it is quite clear the word veterinary does not owe its parentage to them , but to the Latin word of the same signification , vetcrinarius , which comes from veterinus ( and if we arc not deceived by a treacherous memory , there is even the word veterina for beasts of burden ) .

    On the Pindaric passage Trop < f > vpeov < f > cos cpatros which Gray has ( falsel y , according to De Quineey ) translated " the purple light of love , " there is this note : — " Falsely , because iropcptipcos rarely , perhaps , means in the Greek use what wo mean properly by purple , and corned not mean it in the Pindaric passage ; much oftener it denotes some shndo of crimson , or else of punice-us , or blood-red . Gibbon was never more mistaken than when ho argued that Jill tho endless disputing about the purptireus of the ancients might have been evaded by attending to its Greek designation , viz ., porphyry-colonTcA : since , said he , porphyry , is always of Ijie same colour . Not at all . Porphyry , I have heard , runs through as large a gamut of hues as marble : but , if this should be an exaggeration , at all events porphyry is far from being bo monochromatic as Gibbon ' s argument would presume . Tho trutli is , colours were as loosely and latitudinarially distinguished by the Greeks and Romans ns degrees of affinity and consanguinity are everywhere . My sonin ~ law , sajs a woman , and sho means raw step-son . My cousin , she says , and she means nny mode of relationship in tho wide , w 3 ue world . Nos neveux , says a French writer , and means—not our nephews , iut our grandchildren , or more generally our descendants "

    On the meaning of this word rmpepvpeos—purpureus—purple every classical reader knows the disputes are interminable . Nothing is settled by saying that it is oftener used as blood red , especially when we remember that Anacroon speaks of the " purple tresses" { nop < pvpai ( ri x < uras ) of his mistress , and then he surely did not mean blood red ; he also speaks of " sec-purple carpets" ( aXt 7 rop 0 upocs ranrjo-L ) aiul sca-purplc cannot bo blood red . Pindar may have used the word metaphorically , as we know tho Romans dul to express lustro or magnificence . For example , is it not Horace who talks of the " purple swans' of Venus , purpureus olores—surely a more rare avis than the rarest of all , the Mack swan ! We must ce . ise this gossip , and we do so with the hope that the next volume of De Quincey ' s works will not be so long in making its apponranoe .

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    " f * q THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

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    * I forget tho exact tiLlo , not having soon tho book since 1 H 23 , and then only for ouo day ; but 1 bcliovo it was . 'iScholling ' s JCloluo l'hilosophlsoho Werko . "

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 11, 1854, page 140, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2025/page/20/