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Leader (1850-1860), 3rd February 1855, Edition 1 of 2, Page 113

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      Untitled Article

      Critics are not the legislators , bat the judges-and police of literature . They do ot make lawa—they interpret aai try tp eaforce them . —Edinburgh Review .

      Untitled Article

      Fichte says , in' his Cliam ' cteristics of the Present Age— It is to be mentioned as an advantage arising from the creation of the critic species , that he who has no great pleasure in reading , or has not much time to devote to that purpose , no longer requires to read books;—but by mere reference to the Learned Journals finds the whole Literature of the Age brought within his grasp ;—and in this way , indeed , it may be said that books are only printed that they may be reviewed ; and there would no longer be any need for books , if reviews could be fabricated without them . " This was said fifty years a ^ o ;—this , and a great deal more about the use and abuse of reviewmiht

      ing in Germany . The noble-minded , democratic Transcendentalist g have said it all last week , in an English lecture-room . The " ever-whirling wheel of change" has produced no alteration in the Reviewer ' s business , " the leading maxims" of which Fichte states to be the following : — " That the Reviewer shall always find something to censure ; and that he knows everything better than the original author . " It was doubtless ordained so from the beginning . When the Book of Job first came out , and when the first Arrow-headed author wrote on Nineveh marbles , the Chaldaean and Arrow-headed reviewers brought out articles " after their kind , " and talked over the poor authors' heads , accusing

      the grand old patriarch of too much invective and digression , and JNimrod's lithographer of too great solidity and stiffness of style . Accepting , then , the ' great fact that Reviewers ought to know more than other authors , we break into a pile of new Magazines with becoming reverence , and throw our minds into a posture of supreme dignity—since it is our business to review the reviewers—to take stock of their infinite store of knowledge . The North British Review contains several excellent articles . " The Cont inent in 1854 " is , if we mistake not , the work of a man whose opinion is highly valued in political and literary circles , both here and abroad . The " MS . Notes of an Englishman , made in Paris in 1854 , " which stands as a

      2 « emVpublishedbook to be reviewed at the head of his article , is , we believe , his owmvork . Tire extracts here given lead us to regret his determination not to publish the whole . This article is the best collection of thoughts about the War , its proximate and . remote causes , its-prime movers and its nearest results to Europe , that we have yet seen . The reports of his conversations with Signor Manin , the ex-dictator of Venice , whom he pronounces to be " one of the wisest and honestest , and therefore one of the most moderate of- the Italian patriots , " and with the Polish General Chrzanowski , who " has passed thirty years fighting against or for the Russians , " are especially worthy of attention . The English military system is denounced more completely in this article than it was in Mr . B . Osbokne ' s speech the other night . How long will it be before an English General of division can do with his Colonels as a French general does ? " He sends back without ceremony , without excuse , all whom he finds too old , or too negligent , or too ignorant , or too dull , for real fighting . "

      Canrobert has the samefreedom of ' actibHaafiw master . He ^ ttot ~ expected" to distribute his doses of praise among his officers according to th rank . He can mention in his despatches , without apology , captains and subalterns , and even privates . There is something grand , something magnanimous , in the unnoticed , unrewarded herpism of the English soldier ; but France does not think it wise or magnanimous to let the heroism of her humbler sons remain unnoticed and unrewarded . " Nothing but the unusual worth of this article on all points which it touches could have induced us to say a word in this page about the * - war ;

      and although there are papers of historical and speculative merit on the subject in ° all the Magazines before us ( particularly in Fraser ) , we merely mention the fact—reserving our brief comments for matters not quite so grave . The writer on " The Contiuent in 1854 * ' is master of a clear , hard , compact stylo—manly , gentlemanly , in spite of a loud dictatorial tone and a little too much dogmatism here and there—in short , it is thoroughly Engr lish in feeling and in manner . It supports what we were saying last week concerning Magazine and Review writers in France and England . Supposing this article could have been written in the Revue des Deux Mondes , it . would

      have contained less matter and more art . Its author , by the way , has ably expressed an opinion of the intellectual status of modern French cultivated society , so unlike that generally entertained hero , and implied rather than expressed in our last week ' s Summary , that we fool tempted to set it before our reader—just reminding him , however , of Sir Roger » b Co verity ' s immortal aphorism , " Much may bo said on both sides . " There existed in the highest Parisian society towards the close of that century a comprehensiveness of curiosity and inquiry , a freedom of opinion , an independence and soundness of judgment never scon there before or since . Its pursuits , its

      ploa-Buros , its admirations , its vanities , wore all intellectual . Let us recollect the success of Hume : his manners were awkward , ho was a heavy , though an instructive , conversor , ho spoke bad French ; ho would pasa in Paris now for a most intelligent bore ; but such . was the worship then pnid to talents and knowledge , especially to knowledge and talents employed in the destruction of received opinions , that Hume was for years the lion of all the , salons- of Paris . The fashionable beauties quarrelled for the fat philosopher . Nor was their admiration or affection put on , or oven transitory ; he retained some of them as intimate friends for life . "Wo may infer , indeed , from the autobiographies of that time—from those of Marmontel , for instance , dud

      Kousseau— -that even the inferior bourgeoisie were then educated . Every country town had its literary circles ; many of them had Academies in which the great writers of France and Italy were studied . The French ' were not so engrossed by the serious cares of life as to disregard its ornaments . iVow , the time that is not devoted to the struggle for wealth or power , to place-hunting or to money-making , is spent at . the cafe' or the spectacle . Few read anything but the newspapers , or of them , anything but the feuilleton . If the brilliant talkers and writers of that time were , to return to life , we do not believe that gasr , or steam , or chloroform , or the electric telegraph :, would so much astonish them as the comparative dulness of'the''greater part of modern French society , and the comparative mediocrity of the greater part of modern French books . > > -..- - .:.

      Next in place in the North British , and equal in value , comes an article on a very-different subject—FinlAy ' s three works on the Byzantine Empire . The Reviewer evidently knows more of his subject than most people , and gives amusing instances of the i gnorance of cultivated and literary men on all points connected with the history of the middle ages in the east of Europe—where " the language of Thucydides and Aristotle and the political power of Augustus and Constantine" were preserved , " till the nations of the west were once more prepared to receive the gift and to despise the giver . " Like the rest of the world , we have lived by the little light which Gibbon was able to throw on that long and important period of the world ' s history ; but we will say this for ourselves , that unlike the rest of the world we have never been contented with our ignorance . It was an

      " aching void , " through which the grand names of Justinian , and B ash . Leo , and Belisarius sounded occasionally , but they called up no distinct ideas and historic fancies like the names of Charlemagne , St . Louis , and the Cn > . The writer of the articl e in the North * British gives Mr . Fibmay the honour which seems due to him—viz ., that of being the only great and sound authority on Byzantine history in this ; country—but he warns us that Finlay is as dry as he is erudite—that his history will never attain even the small popularity of Grotk ' s , and that he does not appeal to the sympathies of the many . Now , if any enterprising young scholar would set about popul arising FinjcAy , there were a young scholar to command the sympathies and the sterling coin of the many ! We beg to inform all those whom it may concern , on the authority of this Reviewer , that " the Lower Empire" is " a strange sobriquet , " the exact meaning of which nobody kuows . We are very glad to hear this , as we have always thought it sounded like an absurdity .

      There is a capital paper on the ^ Curiosities the Census , " written by one who fully understands the fictitious value of facts and figures as well as their real value . Those who are accustomed to look below the surface of our social system for the causes of its strange and sad phenomena , will find nothing absolutely new in this article . Of all the women between twenty and forty inEnglandybrty-o / i

      It became with the majority a matter of wisdom , and often of conscience , to forego or to postpone marriage till a provision for a family had been secured ; and when that period at length arrived , the habits and tastes of a solitary and unaccommodating life were irrevocably formed . Now , happily , a wiser eystem has given a wonderful elasticity to every branch of industry , while emigration has relieved our redundant numbers , the demand for labour has once more overtaken the supply ; and not only has ita remuneration consequently risen , but every man , not actually suffering under physical or moral inability , may feel secure that Jus . powers ,... honestly . and steadily exerted will suffice to maintain him . Few men now , we sincerely believe , weed to remain unmarried after the age of thirty . If they do SO , accidental incapacity apart , it must be a matter of preference or of indolence .

      Numbers , however , do and will remain unmarried , especially among our tipper classes from necessities artificially created or gratuitously supposed . Younger sons are constantly doomed to celibacy , not because a marrying income is unattainable by them but because prejudice , custom , pride , or laziness forbid them to toil for its attainment . By inheritance , or by public employment , they possess , perhaps , just sufficient to permit them to enjoy the pleasures and amenities of a London life ; miscellaneous society stands them instead of a domestic cirple , —the club supplies the place of a home , —vagrant and disreputable amours ( or amours that ought to be disreputable ) make them unambitious of and unfit for wives , and they prefer to rest satisfied with a pleasant , rather than labour for a happy and worthy existence . Others , again , possess an income amply sufficient for the support of a wife and family but will not believe it to be so . Their ideas of the style and comfort

      in which it is necessary to live , are formed orf a conventional and unreasonable standard . They will not condescend to the fancied indignities , or they cannot endure the trivial privations , of economy , —they will not ask the woman of their choice to share with them any home less luxurious than she has been accustomed to , and they condemn her to live without love rather then expose her to live without a carriage . God only knows how many noble creatures have their happiness sacrificed to this miserable blunder , —how many pine away existence in desolate and dreary singleness , amid luxuries on which they are not dependent and splendour which confers no joy , who would thankfully have dwelt in the humblest cottage , and been contented with the simplest dress , and have blest the one and emtheir hearts had

      bellished the other , if only the mon to whom they have given possessed less false pride and more true faith in woman's love and sense and capacity of self-abnegation . A higher and more just conception pf the materials wliic / i really make up the sum of human enjoyment , —a sounder estimate of the relative value ot earthly possessions , — a more frequent habit of diving down through tiro conventional to the real , and a knowledge of how much rofinoment , how much comfort , how mucn serene content are compatibln with the scantiest mouiw , whoro thero id sense and courage to face the fact and to control the fancy , -would m Ji « lf « generation roduoo the million and a quarter of ^ spinsters wo have spokon of to a . few hundred thousands , and raise into the condition of honoured happy wives the vast majority ^ of those ¦ « beautiful lay nun « " ( a « ' they have been callod ) , whoso sad , unnatural , objectless existence , whoso ' wasted powers of giving and receiving joy , it makes the heart bleed to witness . ¦ ' „' . ''' . This passage is as true in fact as it ia beautiful m feeling and . expression .

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      Untitled Article

      FebeuaryB , 1855 . ] _ THE DEADER ; 113 -

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 3, 1855, page 113, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2076/page/17/