On this page

• Departments (1)
  • 
• Text (5)

  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.

  • 

    IPlfpTfltltrtf %j liilUiUi w

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• 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.

    Iplfptfltltrtf %J Liiluiui W

    ICiteratet

    Untitled Article

    If the French have been since ' 89 somewhat revolutionary and impatient in the sphere of politics , they have in all periods been remarkably patient and slavish in their endurance of Literary authority . The dread they have in Literature for anything like innovation is singularly illustrated in the case of Robespierre , who , while devoting himself to the overthrow of the monarchy , remained a rigorous adherent to all the classic rules . It is this slavish acceptance of authority which gives their critical writings so uniform and fatiguing a character . We are not disputing their admirable qualities , when we point to a fact which must have certainly struck the reader , namely that Bossuet , Fenelon , Racine , Boileau , Mouere , Pascal—all the great names , in short—are always spoken of in stereotyped phrases . Even in the vehement quarrel of the Classic and Romantic schools , when a broad schism , was proclaimed , the same monotonous uniformity was preserved : instead of one

    and baffled all physiologists from Hippocrates downwards , but they also profoundly modify certain principles of chemistry and physiology -which have been considered as established . This importance it is which has made- us bring the question before our readers ,, at each new turn taken by the discussion , and which makes usrefer those who have notfollowed the discussion to M . Remusat ' s article , where the story is ably narrated ( with two or three unimportant inaccuracies ) from first to last . JLiebig And his followers consider it an established principle that the animal organism can form no organic substances , it can only transform the materials furnished by the vegetable world . But M . Bernard ' s discovery proves that the animal can form sugar , not furnished by the vegetable . Here then the Liebig generalisation is shown to be incomplete- If one organic substance is producible without the intervention of vegetables , others may he .

    M . Esquiros continues his interesting articles on Life in Holland ; and the Revue closes with a simple and touching story of Russian life ., translated from the Russian of M . Tourgenef , which makes us very curious to seeche other works of this writer . Altogether the Revue this time is remarkable for the variety and excellence of its articles , and is well worth our readers looking after it .

    opinion uttered in stereotyped phrases , there were two opinions ; that was all the change . For a Frenchman to think independently , and express himself as he thinks , about le grand Bossuet , would be the height of audacious paradox .. To play with ideas is permissible ; the natural vivacity of the Frenchman must break out ; but it is awed by names ; it holds a reputation more sacred than a system ; and no levity , no liberty seems permissible when les grands ictivains are in question . Unanimity is uninterrupted by independence . Opinions are as much a matter of course as " yours truly . " In England , with all our respect for names and ideas , there are only two names which receive this stereotyped applause . Shakspeare , whom it is heresy to mention without hyperbole , and the "judicious Hookek , " whom it is erudition to have read . With regard to all other writers , every thinking man has his own view ; there is a general estimate , but each critic adopts it with some modification , and expresses himself as he feels .

    There is a general estimate of Bacon , for example , which is assuredly high ; but scarcely two writers quite agree about his merits , and the degree of bis influence . Some are only fascinated by the style , some by the weighty pregnant thoughts , and some by the far-reaching Method . If we pass from English writers on Bacon , to French writers on Des Cartes , the contrast becomes striking . There are men who disagree with Des Cartes , who disbelieve in the possibility of metaphysical systems reaching the truth , or in Des Cartes having reached it ; but to find one man expressing even , an individual modification of the general estimate , using any but the stereotyped expressions , is as rare as to find a white crow- .

    We will not push the parallel further . It has brought us into the presence of two great names , the two Fathers of Modern Philosophy , whom we find contrasted in La Revue des Deux Monies ( March 1 ) , by M . Saisset in an essay on " Philosophy since Rainus" agreeably written , as his essays usually are , though thin in substance . In these days of entente cordiale , M . Saisset thinks it right the rivalry between the admirers of the two great men should give place to an impartial estimate of both . It is easy , he thinks , to disengage the question froin all national prejudice , and reduce it to its veritable terms : Bacon , assuredly a " grand esprit , " merits the magnificent eulogy of Walpoxe of having been the prophet of those truths which Newton taught . But celebrate this powerful imitator as pompously as you will , he will always

    want something which could entitle him to rank beside Des Cartes : " il lui a manque * Vesprit d'invention , le don supe ' rieur des grandes d&ouvertes , en un mot le genie crfateur . " * Of what use is his magnificent Method which he describes with precision , which he celebrates with enthusiasm ? He does not employ it ; nor has it had much influence even in his own country . But Des Cartes , on the contrary , has had an incomparable influence because his genius was essentially creative . Not only do his discoveries of the law of refraction and explanation of the rainbow place him beside Gal . il . bo (!) ; not only does he share with Pascal the honour of having made experiments on the weight of the atmosphere , but he baa done that which neither Pascal

    nor Gal . il . eo could have done—he has created sciences . The application of algebra to geometry , physical mathematics , and rational mechanics did not exist before Dbs Cartes , who created them at one stroke . Finally he created a system of Philosophy which is one of the glories of the human race . " We cannot in our limits discuss the legitimacy of the assertions M . Saisset makea , but leave to the meditation of the reader , to separate what is specious from what is true in them . The nonsense ( we can use no milder terra ) M . Sahsskt speaks in this article about Leibnitz and Spinoza , is of the stereotyped order . Let us pass from it to the interesting paper on

    David D'Angbus by Gustavh Pl . ancub , who is one of the few critics capable of expressing an independent ppiwion , although ho does it generally with an insolence of manner which reminds one of a pedagogue , ruler in hand , laying down the law to his uplooking pupils . Another , and a very interesting paper ia the same Revue , is that by M . Paul , de Remus at sketching the history of Claude Bbunaud ' s discovery of the function of the liver , and tlio disputes winch have latterly agitated the Academy , and occupied Frnuco respecting the truth of the discovery . " Wo have kept our readers informed of all the stages of this dispute , which is really of inanien . se importance ) , for M * Bjatt , NAJM >' s views , ifj ( tru « , not only solve A problem which has occupied

    Untitled Article

    THE ART OF THE ANCIENTS . Torso . Kunst , KunstJer und KutUioerke der Alten . { Torso . The AH , Artists , and Art-remains of the Ancients . ) By Adolf Stahr . In , Two Parts . Part Second . ¦ London : D . Nott . A year ago we directed oiir readers' attention to the first volume of Professor Stahr ' s Torso , as a delightful introduction to the study of Greek Art , The recent appearance of the second volume enables us to enforce our previous recommendation by the assurance that the author has worthily ended what was so well begun . novelbut

    We were going to say that Torso is as interesting as a , we remembered that this stock phrase of eulogistic reviewers has become nearly as vague as the celebrated comparison , " about as big as a potato % " the interest of novels varying as much as the size of that invaluable but too uncertain root , and indeed the majority of them being , next to volumes of " poems , " the hardest reading inexorable duty calls on us to perform . Let us be content to say , then , without any comparison , that Torso is a deeplyinteresting book , telling , often with warm eloquence , and always < with ^ ejase and grace , the wonderful history of Greek sculpture as it may he gathered and conjectured from the fragmentary remains and fragmentary records which have escaped the ravages of time and barbarism . A history of art necessarily includes a large amount of description and criticism ,, since to such

    a history , pictures , statues and buildings , bear the same relation _ h e actions of men bear to the history of nations ; description is there equivalent to narrative , and criticism to the analysis of character . And the discrepancies of the Whig and the Tory , the Protestant and the Catholic historian , are trivial compared with the discrepancies of art critics ; so that in such a work as Professor Stahr ' s there are sure to be plenty of questionable judgments , of which other writers on art will tell you that the contrary is " evident to the plainest understanding . " His mistakes are likely to be on the amiable Bide pf over-estimation ; but though enthusiastic , he is never cloudil y rhapsodical like some of his confraternity in Germany . He is as far as possible from that state of criticism which sees in a simple , playful subject like the ' * Boy with

    the Mask , " " the divinely-inspired longing after the highest summit of earthly existence in contrast with the nothingness and emptiness of all earthly joys . " He has too intense a feeling for art as art . t <» wash away its language of form in a flood of vague philosophising j he loves the outward fact too well to let it be screened from him by the Grand-idee , Nevertheless he is a philosophic critic in the best sense ; he judges of art in its relation to the other phases of human'development ; he traces it to its originating principles , and he notes the causes and the reactive influences of its development and decline . The reader will perhaps find him now and then a little too arrogant in his decisions , a little too vague and allusive in his statements ; but these faults are unfortunately much commoner than , the merits by which

    they are redeemed in the author of Torso . Almost all the greatest works of ancient art remaining to us ore described in the first volume , Professor Stahr having wisel y adopted the plan of arranging them according to the period of their origination as ideals by the greatest masters of Greece , and not according to the date at which the sculptures we actually possess are supposed to have "been executed . For , apart from the Parthenon sculptures , which enable us to know , not merely by faith , but by sight , that Phidias was the sublimest artist the world has produced , our acquaintance with Greek art in ita grandest periods is almost entirely due to copies executed by Greek artists Who wroug ht under Roman patronage in the days of the early Emperors . Thus the Jupiter Otwcoh only represents to us the Jupiter of Phidias ; in u the Juno Ludovisi we see only the ideal of Polykletos ; in the Discobolus only a marble copy of Myron ' s bronze original ; in the Venus de Medici the emulating skill of an , artist who , many generations after Praxiteles , sought to surpass , while barrowing , the ideal of the Yenus of Cnidos . Hence the second volume o *

    Torso has less description than the first , and more narrative ana disquisition - it is occupied less with the productions of art than with the conditions under which art was either further developed or simply continued to exist from the Macedonian period , when it ceased to be a vital function in a political and religious organium , and became an affinr of royal and aristocratic patronage , down to the time of Hadrian , when it sent forth a few gleams of originating power before its setting . Still there is enough of the description m . which Prof . Stahr excels to render the contents of this volume sufficiently various . There are the works which may with more or less probability bo attributed to Lysippus , the Phidias of portrait sculpture , whose geniua initiated that phase of development on which sculptural art entered in Jihe timo of AJexarider The portraits of Alexander wo possess , the Hercules Tames © , the JierculeBTorao of the Vaticaa , and the Horses of the Sim at Venice , we among the many works of which tUc originals are attributed to Lysippueu In the history

    Untitled Article

    Prices are not the Legislators , but tie judges and police of literature . They do not ^ make laws-they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Eetnew .

    Untitled Article

    March 22 , 185 < $ 3 g ' Sf g X % X &H'Ki ; gjg

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 22, 1856, page 279, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2133/page/15/