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    3i v tltvi* 4 tt*iv JLuvriuUrF*

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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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    3i V Tltvi* 4 Tt*Iv Jluvriuurf*

    ICitaittre ,

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    deuce ; when the stagnation of Parliament is troubled by a crisis of parties , literature is lost in . the mist of addresses to electors . Yet in the old time ike most passionate tumult of public life stimulated and sustained tlie highest manifestations of intellectual activity . They managed these things better at Athens , in the old time . Is it that this advanced and progressive England , so vain of its clear-sighted eye for f business / of its tolerance without love , of its irony without hate , of its most unenthusiastic common sense , —is it , we say , tliat this England is in truth struck with a sterility of heart and brain which , like a creeping lassitude , is but the announcement of decay ? " Nonsense ! " cries the practical man , with , his crushing commonplaces about the steam-engine and the telegraph . But what if the steamengine precipitate and the telegraph centralize decrepitude ? Easy gradients and shilUng novels for the journey ; and , vogue la galere !

    The Blight of the * Penal Dissolution seems to have fallen upon the Magazines this month . "We turn over the pages of Blackwood and Fraser with the best disposition in the world to be amused and instructed , and with a confident expectation of agreeable and easy reading , but we turn and turn , dissatisfied and disappointed . That this dissatisfaction arises 3 in some degree at least , from » our otto , share in the- prevailing malady , we are not prepared to deny ; tlie ear of the time is ill-attuned to delicate thought , and the echoes of the hoar are not the echoes of eternal voices . Certain it is that our April visitors liaye a wandering and distracted air , as if they presumed indifference and foreknew forgetfuhiess . It is strange that , habituated as we are in England to the health y shocks and agitations of public freedom , we cannot permit politics and literature to flourish side by side . When we lave a war on our hands , literature subsides into Crimean

    correspon-All this , however , is a most unaccountable and improper digression froia a very simple text . We were merely saying that Blackwood and Fraser are not so interesting as usual this month , and that the electoral distraction , may probably be tlie cause of the deficiency . In Fraser , however , we may recommend a learned , chatty paper on our venerable friend " The Raven , " by a familiar hand , and " Some Talk about Food /' good subject curiously and carefully treated . The second article on " Literary Style" discusses Cabxtle , Emekson , Djb Quincey , and Huskin , in a by no means novel style , but the writer ' s

    animadversions upon the Jocular School have our hearty and entire concurrence . " Six Months at Kertch" is a lively reminiscence of the late war by an Officer in , the Turkish Contingent . A kindly notice / of " Deutsche Liebe ., " a little German story lately published in England , makes us anxious to be better acquainted with one who can feel and write like this exiled sufferer . He seems to know England as intimately as the author of Doctor Antonio , ami he reminds us more than once in these extracts of his great countryman , Jean pATJIi UlCIITER .

    Blackwood intimidates and repels us at the very outset by a most deliberate and fatiguing electoral squib in the shape of a " Political Pantomime , " in which tlie dramatis $ ersonee are Lord pAiiMERSTON and his colleagues , very thinly and clumsily disguised . So laborious a failure as this Pantomime could only have come to us from the north of the Tweed , where Tory history and Tory satire obtain a sort of national acceptance Doubtless it is our misfortune and not our fault tliat we find this ponderous lampooning absolutely unreadable . We rush eagerly to " Mr . GilfiTs Love Story . " The present chapters arc not quite equal to the preceding , but the hand is the hand of an artist . A friendly welcome to M . Edmond About ' s brilliant and "witty sketch of modern Greek political and social civilization , Le Roi des Montat / ncs ,

    introduced to the English public m a notice tliat will send allwlio read it to tlie original volume . Our readers arc not unacquainted with the name of M . Edmond About , and they know him as a young writer rich in promise ; xndoed , we may add , already rich in reputation . We believe we may say without exaggeration , that no French writer of our day proves more distinctly his descent from that noble line of intellectual ancestry whose foremost names arc Uabklajs , Montaigne , Molieiie , and Voltaire , than Edmond About . There is in . his style something of the flavour and freshness and exuberance of Rabelais and Montaigne , something of the force and breadth and vigour of Moliere , and something of the

    brilliant incisive clearness and vivacity of Voltaire . When we say this , we mean that M . Ahout lias quaffed at those perennial fountains ; but we may add that his style is all his own , and bears no trace of imitation . Add to these rare gifts a faculty of close and penetrating observation , an easy and abundant humour , an unfailing elegance and dexterity of composition , and you liavc nearly nil the elements of more than an ephemeral reputation . It rest a with M . Edmond About to do himself justice ; he has no ' more formidable rivals to fear than his own genius and liis own success . Lot him only refuse to let such promise run to waste , let him only contain , himself , and we predict for him an enduring name in the literature of lYnnec and of Europe .

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    The second number of Paved with Gold fulfils and improves upon the promise of the first . The authors have the peculiar advantage of an intimate and profound knowledge of their subject , and a thorough sympathy with the life they portray . The description , of St . Lazarus Industrial School in the present number- \ re had marked for extract , but our space forbids . There are many sincere lovers of their kind who have not the courage to wade through Blue-Bobks , but who in these pages will find daguerreotyped , as it were , the living beings of that half of the world wliich the other half ignores .

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    In England we have , what is unknown to our neighbours over the water , a sporting ; literary public - In France the " sportsmen" ( who invariably dress Mke ostlers ) ma , y be counted : many of them are arduous readers of Ruff ' s Ghiide and of Bell ' s Lips , and to be stable-minded is their highest ambition but there is . nopublic , properly so called , for whom sporting life possesses a natural and native interest . Such there is in England , and such may there long continue to be ; in sporting matters we are frankly and decidedly conservative . Ask Mamma belongs to this literature , pure and undenled , for home consumption ; and to many of us there is rare zest in the hearty animal spirits which distinguish it from , every other . The author of " Handley Cross" has won his spurs as a sporting serial novelist ; and he enjoys the inestimable distinction of being illustrated by Leech , who seems to have passed half his life in the saddle . Nothing truer or more enjoyable than his hunting scenes can be imagined ; if liis pencil were not that of a universal humorist , he would deserve to be called the artist of " the Brush . "

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    The spirited conductors of The Train announce a series of personal sketches of Men . of Marie , and they inaugurate the gallery very worthily with a portrait of " William Russell , " known to all the habitable globe as the " Correspondent of the Times . " A pleasanter name could not have been selected to begin with ; and as the writer of these sketches , Mr . Edmund Yates , knows Low to discourse with honest sympathy and hearty admiration ahout a man . whom all who know 3 iim love and honour , we trust he may be equally successful in sket « hcs demanding the exercise of a judicious criticism as well as the impulse of a strong regard .

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    BACON'S METHOD . The Works of Francis Bacon . Edited by James Spedding , Robert Leslie Ellis , and Douglas Dcnon Heath . Vola . I . and II . Longman and Co . ( Second Article . ) Mr . . Ellis , in his admirable General Preface to the Philosophical "Works , undertakes to settle one of the most diversely agitated questions in the history of Bacon ' s influence . As an exposition of Bacon ' s Method , and as a criticism on its essential defects , this is in our opinion tlie finest essay which lias yet appeared . Mr . Ellis remarks , as all historians have done , the confidence wieh which Bacon always speaks of hi 3 invention as one universally applicable and in all cases infallible . Its absolute certainty reduces alL minds to nearly the same level . lie compares it to a pair of compasses

    which enable all men to draw a perfect circle , whereas without the compasses no man can draw a perfect circle . Bacon , moreover , always considered knowledge as correlative with power , in idem coincident ; a glaring contrudiction , unless by knowledge something different bo intended from that which is ordinarily implied in the word ; and different it was , in Bncon ' s conception , since lie always assumed that tho knowledge of the cause will enable us to produce the effect . " Therefore the sure way , though most about , to make gold , is to know tho causes of the several nuturus before rehearsed , and the axioms concerning the sarno . For if n mun aan make a metal that hath all these properties , let men dispute whether it be gold or no . " Tho ' natures' referred to are what we cull abstract qualities , and what he calls " Forma ; " and they are held to bo vary f ' ow .

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    varied and attractive . It has become a fashion of late for oar Universities to put forth their own individual contributions to periodical literature . We "take up the London University Magazine with the interest we always feel in the happy audacities of youth . Of course there is an essay on " Alfred Tennyson , " and a critical one too ; but we are more struck by a paper on " Essays and Essayists , " indicative of much discursive and desultory reading in French , and English literature of the best periods , and of reading well sifted and turned to the best account . The article on " Sir Robert Peel" is singularly calm and mature in . manner , and very carefully written .

    Another serial well deserving a word or two of commendation is the Commercial Travellers' Magazine , designed to be the special organ of that most valuable and intelligent "body of men , who ' carry- with , their samples so much good sense and so much native humour and shrewd fun from one end of the kingdom to the other , and whose £ room' is redolent of good company . We are not surprised to find every page of their Magazine marked with some of the best characteristics of the order ; practical , business-like brevity , compact fulness , quick , smart , hard-hitting humour , and shrewd utility . Such papers as the " Chemistry of Beer , " the " Greeks in London , " "Silk , and its Substitutes , " are notable for their pithy substance ; but tlie lighter articles are also quite above par . " Spectacles" discourses ( in the first person ) on thetheattes with , the practised sagacity of a man who knows what he is talking about , and . talks well . We honestly and heartily commend this Magazine to our thirty thousand" friends in town and co \ intry .

    ^ The Dublin University Maguzine \\ v& manifested renewed strength and animation of late ; and the April number , although not remarkable , is sufficiently

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    Critics are not the legislators , "but tlie judges and police of literature . They do not make laws—theyintexpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Review .

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    Aprii * 4 , 1857 . j THE LEADER . 329

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), April 4, 1857, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2187/page/17/