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£ * £ THE LEAD EE . [ Satto ^ aTj
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Natural history owes so much to clergymen , that only a momentary surprise will be raised by Charles Kixgsle y ' s appearance in the field . Among his many accomplishments he counts the graceful pursuit of Natural History ; and having last year written an article on the wonders of the shore , in the North British Review , he reprints and enlarges it this spring in a pretty little volume , just published by Macmillan , Glaucus ; or , the Wonders of the Shore . It is not a work to criticise ; indeed it is not , properly speak ino-, a work at all , but an article , and although pleasant to meet with in the pages of a Review or Magazine , has a -want of the novelty and definite purpose which would fit it for a substantive work . be he
Eingslet is always and above all a clergyman , so you may sure does not lead you on to the seabeach without " improving the occasion , " and- making it a constant text . For ourselves we prefer the " sermons in stones" to ° he sermons on stones ; we enjoy Nature more as sermon than as text ; we are more subdued by her eloquence , than by the eloquence of any man getting up in her pulpit . Others are not of that way of thinking ; and for them Kingsley ' s sermons may be the most attractive part of his volume . There are truly wonders enough on the seashore to occupy a Methusaijem . No one need complain of the vacuity and listlessness of solitude by the seaside , if he will confront the foolish prejudice against " smatterers , " and answer the old
platitude—A little knowledge is a dangerous thingfry a bold assertion that no knowledge is more dangerous still . He has only to get up a smattering of natural history , and he will not find time hang heavy on his hands . Something of what can be done on the seashore he will learn from Glaucus . But he need not go so far as the shore . The first anti-hill he stumbles on will occupy him for a week . Did the reader ever stretch himself on the grass , "lying against the sun upon a day , " Chaucer says , and watch the tribe of ants issuing from their little city ? There are three sexes , three castes in the tribe : first the Neuters , or those who work , for the commonwealth ( the People with a big P ) who do all the
labour , all the fighting , and all the [ police ; secondly , the females held in great honour , as mothers should be ; thirdly , the males , who are winged like the females , but who are kept prisoners by the careful workers , until the time when they are thought fit to be married . Let us suppose the Hymeneal day arrived . A crowd of ants issue , escorting the males and females to the altar . It is usually on the stems of the plants that the marriage takes place ; but this is only the first act of the drama ; or the first volume of the novel . At the close of this volume the husband dies . Marriage is death to him : the blaze of felicity lights his funeral pyre . The
second volume opens with a series of widows descending the stems of the plants ; but gay and sprightly as widows who loved not their lords . No e . o . oner are they once more on terra firma than the escorts of workers pounce upon them , and carry them off to the ant-hill , there to watch them with Oriental jealou&y . Nay , these guardians , of public safety seem to consider the best security for the chastity of the widows is to tear off their vwLagB ! This done , they watch them tenderly , caressing , feeding , and transporting them when necessary to other spots , until the moment of accouchement arrives . Interesting moment ! But where is the midwife ? She too
is present . She has probably studied the obstetric art under a learned professor , for we see her clinging to the abdomen of the suffering mother , and seizing the eggs as they make their appearance ; she places them with great care in a heap together , and then possibly announces to the tribe that her lady is doing as well as can be expected . There is a romance of reality ! But the Loves of the Spiders would perhaps furnish a delicate pen with scenes even more thrilling . Did the reader ever watch the terrible coquetry of the female spider ? We say terrible , for it is a perilous game to the young gentleman ; if he misinterpret her looks and actions , if his vanity , or the thoughtlessness of youth , induce him to imagine he has
inspired a passion deeper than coquetry , she does not , as our coquettes do , draw up her head and coldly declare " there must bo some mistake , " she pounces on the unlucky coxcomb , and slays him on the spot ! PrcHcicnt of such a possibility , it is wonderful to see how stealthily and humbly the gqjiant gay Lothario pays his court . Si'inoka was wont to relax his mind by . watching spiders fight ; but fighting is brutal work compared with ¦ courting : it is a mei'o display of strength and ferocity . Courting , when the maiden has the courage of Clorinda and the ferocity as well as strength of BauNiun ) , is , as every reader of Taaso and the Nkbelungen Lied will tell you , an- exploit of far other reach and compass . Apropos of Bttusmu ) , and her ferocious virtue , the moralist will remark how much more humane even she is than fierce Miss Abachne ; for although Bbvnuiu * is amgry with her husband , she contents herself with hanging him up by her girdle on an iron hook , keeping him ignominiously suspended ,
but sparing his life ; whereas little Abachne thirsts for the blood of her suitor . To be sure Abachne was ever an excitable creature : did not her ancestress hang herself in despair because Minerva , with feminine spite tore in pieces the cloth which the cunning hand of Akachne had woven ; and was she not thereby changed into a spider , as Grecian poets are ready to testify ? , * . But . we shall never cease wandering in this discursive style , unless we alight upon some piece of news which may recal us to our proper office . For you may have observed , lector benevole , that whenever our budget of news is scant , we fall into a strain of wandering talk , just as those who have no ideas have usually most words to clothe them with . That reads like a bull , bttt it is a small witticism ; for a " bull" is unconscious , its essence lies therein , and a bull made with malice prepense is a more or less hilarious je . u de 7 nols .
The loquacious persons just referred to as having no ideas have , of cours e , a few ; and so liave we some slight scraps of information . For example , we can inform you that the excellent and esteemed Jules Simon , the professor of moral p hilosophy , who refused to owe allegiance to the Empire , has started recently a Journal pour Tous , at one penny a number , containing new novels and stories , illustrated by some of the ablest pencils ; the type is small , so that each number contains as much as an ordinary volume of the Circulating Library standard . The sale has already reached 70 , 000 copies , although the work has only reached its ninth number . This proves that sound , cheap literature will succeed in France as elsewhere . The theatres have not been prosperous this year in Paris ; the gross receipts show a diminution of nearly three millions of francs on last year . But at the present moment every theatre is crammed with visitors to the Exhibition , who are content with the novelties of twenty years ago .
We recently commended a French novel to our readers , Tolla , by M . Edmond About , and among the motives of our praise was the delicate fidelity with which it depicted modern Italian life in an easy , unobtrusive style . From , a curious article in the last number of La Revue Cunlemporaine , we learn that Tolla is a real story , that the letters it contains are translations of the actual letters written by Vittoria Savorelli , and published in Rome , and that the invention of the author is confined to the manipulation of this story into a novel : thus he had to vary the monotony of the single situation which the story has , to surround the principal actors with minor actors , and to personify the public . The way in which he has done this shows that he possesses the true artistic capacity ; and we shall be surprised if in M . About France has not a new master in Fiction . Amusingly enough , on
the very day in which M . About published in the Revue Contemj- > uraine this circumstantial history of Tolla , a writer in the Revue de Paris published an article accusing him , as if of a crime , of this very use of a real story and real letters : the ignorant or malevolent critic ( perhaps he was both ) not perceiving that by thus tracing Tolla to its origin , he was at once bestowing the highest praise on the novel and on its author . More fortunate than most writers who have laboured for po sterity as well as for their own times , Mr . Hallam * has lived to seti his exhaustive work on the State of Europe during the Middle Ages pass through eleven editions in less than forty years . To criticise this classic of historical research would be an impertinence ; even to add one word to the universal verdict appears a superfluous pretension . But we grieve for the honour of English literature that Mr . IIali . am ' s sicrnal success should not have encouraged other
students to walk in his footsteps . How few English names can we find to compare with that phalanx of French and German authors who have studied history as a science , who have searched its vast storehouses for the lessons of experience , and who have taught mankind that there are other conquests and purer glories than those of war . As a philosophical historian Mr . Hallam still stands alone and unapproached by any of his own countrymen ; indeed by few even of the Continental writers , with the exception of Sismondi and CJuizot . Ho has not only told us what manner of subjects should form the " eternal lessons of history , " but has furnished ixn example to the students of future generations when our own noisy moment of tune shall huvo become in its turn an exercise of research . Wo therelore hau
with peculiar satisfaction Mr . Murray ' s new and improved edition of Mr . Hauam ' s View of the State of Europe during that period of modern civilisation which we are pleased to call the Middle Ages , as if we had already attained the mysterious goal towards which mankind have been tslowly advancing since the fall of the Roman Empire . The SupploiiH-utul Noto 3 that appeared , in 1848 , as a separate volume , are now incorporated with the original work , nnd materially add to its value without unnecessarily diverting the reader ' s attention from the text by troublesome and extraneous refer ences . The price of this edition makes it accessible to a very large and frugal class of readers , who cannot afford the luxury of large paper , wh »« the clear , broad type , and the general " getting up , " make it an o rnament to the shelves of a nvodeHt library . . .. We are dimply taking note of the late , s <; edition of a classic , but whi o our attention ia attracted to Mr . Uai . lam ' s great argument , we cannot roms ^ the opportunity of a digression to express our nurprino that no advent" ™"
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Critics are nob the legislators , bat the judges and , police of literature . They do not makelaws -they interpret and try to enforce ttiera . —Edinburg 7 i Bevieto .
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* View of tUu Stato of Europe during tho Middle Agoa . Vy Homy Jlullaiu , L . L . D ., &c . JilovoutU edition . Vol . I . Murray .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 9, 1855, page 546, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2094/page/18/
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