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*»« Hoa are not thelesrislators . butthe judges and police of literature . They do not mlk ^ fa ^ a—they interpret and try to enforce them . — Edinburgh Hevteto .
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In Blackwood this month two old tales—' The Athelings' and 'Mr . Gilfil ' s Love Story '—are finished , and a new one , by Pisistbattts Caxton , begun . Of course we ought to welcome Bulwer Lytton ' s return to periodical literature , and if it may be accepted in confirmation of the current report that he has abandoned politics , we do so heartily ; but so far as the stories are concerned it is questionable whether the exchange will be much to our advantage . We shall mhss the quiet power , delicate insight , and subtle truthfulness which gave the ' Scenes of Clerical Life' so peculiar a charm ; and , judging from the first instalment , the loss will scarcely be supplied by the careless sketches and conventional sentiment of ' What will he do with it ?'—the title of the new story . The affectations and puerilities of the outset remind us more of Pelham Bulwer than of Pisistratus Caxton . Take the elaborate
headings of the chapters , done in the cumbrously jocular style of the Christmas pantomime bills—the two first for example : — In which the History opens with a description of the Social Manners , Habits , and Amusements of the English People , as exhibited in an immemorial National Festivity . Characters to be commemorated in the History , introduced and graphically portrayed , with a nasological illustration . —Original suggestions as to the idiosyncrasies engendered by trades and callings , with other matters worthy of note , conveyed in artless dialogue after the manner of Herodotus , Father of History ( Mother unknown ) . The Historian takes a view of the British Stage as represented by the Irregular Drama , the Regular having ( ere the date of the events to which this narrative is restricted ) disappeared from the Vestiges of Creation .
After such deadly lively flourishes at the beginning , it is reassuring to find 1 he story carried on in the most orthodox manner . It opens with the wellknown « Summer evening in one of the prettiest villages of Surrey , ' the usual ' sunset' is described , and the inevitable ' two strangers /—one of the enviable age ranging from five to seven-and-twenty , while Ids companion ' might be about seventeen , '—soon make their appearance . Their conversation shows the customary Bui / web mixture of cynicism and sentiment , so popular at the circulating libraries ; and everything at present seems to promise well for a good story of the early type . The best chapter of this part is the second , describing the representation at the travelling theatre of the grand melodrama , The Remorseless Baron and the Bandii ' s Child . The second article , ' New Sea-side Sketches . No . I ., ' is a sketch of the
scenery and marine zoology of the ' Scilly Isles , '—fresh and breezy in style as the winds and waves , to whose music it was evidently written . There is a vigorous enjoyment of the sea , a definitely saline flavour in the writing which refreshes you by sympathy as you read . The writer shows in his treatment of scientific questions that thoroughly out-of-door mind which the poets of the present day are said so much to want . As a specimen of the graphic vigour of the paper take the following extract : — As I said , the joyful tidings came at last . With alacrity I urged my staggering steps up the ladder , and emerged upon the deck , where the bright sunlight revealed a . scene , which of itself was repayment and full discharge for any arrears of misery . We were in St . Mary ' s Sound . The islands lay around us , ten times bigger than imagination had prefigured , and incomparably more beautiful . On their picturesque countenance and lazed but the heart within
varieties I might turn a green g eye , me bounded like a leopard on his prey . This was worth coming to ! Those poor devils who sit at home at ease , and supply their tanks from commercial sources , were now the objects of pitiless sarcasms for their want of enterprise . In such a mood 1 hastily secured comfortable lodgings , clean as a Dutchman's , at the Post-office ; swallowed some tea and toast , to appease the baser appetites , and hurried forth to satisfy the hunger of the soul , by a survey of the Bay , and its promises . The promontory on which stands Star Castle offered a fine breezy walk over downs resplendent with golden furze , and suffered the eye to take the widest sweep . How thoroughly I enjoyed that walk ! The downs were so brilliant that one could sympathize with the enthusiasm of Linnaeus on his arrival in England , and his iirst sight of furze , as he flung himself on his knees , and thanked God for having made unything so beautiful . The downs were all aflame with their golden light . Ever and anon a rabbit started across the path , or the timid deer were seen emerging from the clumps of golden bush . A glance at the many reefa and creeks along the wavy shores raised expectation tiptoeforcing hope into certainty of treasures abounding .
, Whatever drawbacks Scilly might possibly have in store , this at least was indubitabe—the hunting would bo good . Not that any shadow of a drawback darkened the horizon : for what could the heart desire more ? Hero was ft little archipelago , such as Greek heroes might have lived in—bold , rugged , p icturesque—secure from nil the assaults of idle watering-place frequenters , —lovely to the eye , full of promise to the mind , and health in every breeze . Ithaca was visibly opposite . Wonier a cadences were sweetly audible Hero one might write epics finer than the Odyssey , had one but geniua packed up In one's carpet-bag ; and if the genius had been forgotten , left behind ( by some etrange oversight ) , at any rate there waa the microscopo and coulpel , with which one might follow in the tracks of the " stout Stagyrito , " whom the world ia now beginning to recognise among the greatest of its naturaliatB . Homer , or Ariatotlo ? The modest choice lay thoro ; and aa Montaigne says— " noua allona par Xh , questor une friando gloiro h . piper le aot mondc . " ( The sot monde being you , beloved reader . )
Wns not the more aspect of the aoa a banquet ? Xonophon tolls ua that when the Ton Thousand sow the sea again , they shouted . No wondor . After thoir woary eyos had wandered forlorn ovor weary paraaanga of flat earth , and Unit earth an enemy ' s , wistfully yearning for the gloama of the old familiar blue , they came upon it at last , nnd the heart-shaking sight waa saluted by a about atill more heart-shaking . At the first flush of H thuro must have been a general hush , a universal catching of tho breath , and tho next moment , like thundor leaping from hill to hill , tho loosuncd burst of gladness ran along tho ranks , reverberating from company to company , swelling into a mighty symphony of rejoicing . What a sight , and what a sound ! Thoro was more than safety in that blue expanse , thoro was more than loosened four in their joy at onco again seeing tho dear familiar fuee . Tho sea was a pasalon to tho Greeka ; thoy took naturally to tho water , liko duoks , or Englishmen , who arc , if we truly
consider it , fonder of water than the ducks . We are sea-dogs from our birth It 7 our race—bred in the blood . Even the most inland and bucolic youth takes ^ " * taneously to the water , as an element he is born to rule . The winds carry ocean ^ *" murs far into the inland valleys , and awaken the old pirate instincts of the Notse Boys hear them , and although they never saw a ship in their lives , these mum ' make their hearts unquiet ; and to run away from home , ' to go to sea ' is the " table result . Place a Londoner in a turnip field , and the chances are that he will ^ f know it from a field of mangold-wurzel . Place him , unfamiliar with pigskin o ' fresh' horse , and he will not make a majestic figure . But take this same youth and fling him into a boat , how readily he learns to feather an oar ! Nay , even who h is sea-sick—as unhappily even the Briton will sometimes be—he goes through it ' th a certain careless grace , a manly haughtiness , or at the lowest , a certain ' official r serve , ' not observable in the foreigner . What can be a more abject picture than " Frenchman suffering from sea-sickness—unless it be a German under the same hideous circumstances ? Before getting out of harbour he was radiant , arrogant self-centred ; only half an hour has passed , and he is green , cadaverous / dank pro ' strate , the manhood seemingly spunged out of him . N . B . —In this respect I am a Frenchman .
It ought to be stated that the present is the five-hundredth number of the Magazine , and that it appropriately closes with a hymn of triumph in celebration of a period so interesting in Maga ' s history . Fraser opens with a genial and discriminating criticism of Raskin ' s Modern Faititers , under the title of ' What are the Functions of the Artist ? ' The whole paper is very interesting , but instead of describing it we will give an extract , showing the thoughtful style in which the subject is discussed , that all who are interested in Art may be tempted to read it for themselves : — A great tragedy , a Bartholomew or Piedmont massacre , is being accomplished ; let the thunder-cloud cover the heaven , and cast a gloom , as of the sepulchre , upon the ' graye-paved star . ' The association is right and legitimate . It gives fitting
expression to the emotion which the situation naturally suggests . There is no exaggeration . But Mr . Ruskin requires us to accept much more than this simple and appropriate drapery . Let us examine a few of his illustrations . In the Building of Carthage the children are sailing their paper boats upon the sea which their children were to conquer with their commerce . Here there is not much that is wrong . The sentiment is a little forced and obtrusive , perhaps ,, but not offensively . In the foreground of Tintoret ' s Entombment of our Lord stands a ruined cattle-shed , recalling on the day of his burial the privation of his birth ; the clouds , in the same painter ' s Baptism of Christy are shaped like the head of a fish— " the well-known type , " says Mr . Ruskin , " of the baptismal sacrament of Christ ; " in the Crucifixion the ass is feeding on the remnants of the withered palm-leaves which the multitude had strewn before Him
when they cried llosanna in the highest ! Ihe trunks of the trees in Turner s Jason are all alive with dragons'heada ; the bough of the oak in the foreground of the Harold at Hastings takes the form of an arrow-head . Such specimens of intellectual association Mr . Ruskin finds only in the greatest painters , and are , he assures us , the highest triumphs of art . We cannot agree with him . They seem to us , on the contrary , to be the worst exaggerations of that ' poetic fallacy' which in the case of the poet he unsparingly condemns . In either case we endow inanimate nature with life ; and it does not matter whether that life is such as we would gift it with , or such as another man whom we create , and whose eyes for the time being we use , would gift it with An excessive self-consciousness is not more offensive to us than these elaborate
mystifications of the forms of natural life , this obtrusive assertion of the facts of history . In such recondite puerilities—puerilities which we hope , and in some sort believe , are more noticeable to the critic than they were to the painter—there is a smallness and pettiness of treatment we cannot admire , an absence of the courageous , candid , and healthy abandon of the great artist , who , like Shakspoare , looks nature and human nature broadly and frankly in the face . " The stars , " said a wise heathen , " do not grieve because men die ; " and trees unfortunately will not consent to twist their branches into demons' heads , nor clouds transform themselves into ftth , however desirable for artistic purposes it might be that they should do so . Lntil nature chooses to mend her ways , we will continue to hold that a tree should be painted as a
tree , and not as a fish or a dragon . Towards the close the critic notices the prc-ltn-plmelitcs , explains the principle on which they proceeded , and , in a measure , approves their practice : — The original maxim of the school was—literal accuracy . If God condescended to finish a leaf , they could not see any good ro . ason why they should not ; nay , '"^ « P " pearecl to them many sufficient practical reasons why they should . Iheir P redeaJ ; f had imitated nature from memory or from tradition . Every leaf was treated comentionally . When it was carried into tho open air there was not a single tree , tna w would fit . This lazy and effeminate practice had taken the genuineness out oevery thing . No faith could bo placed in any statement tho artist made ; and instooa . m making tho world better when ho thus took it into his own hands , "vory stLpu ceoded deprived it of beauty and attractiveness . It is indeed a most owenta , that a man must constantly return to nature to sweeten , refresh , and in \^ ° J self . Nothing ia more tamo and monotonous than bii »»!» fc " a l 0 n i . "' ' , / Intact aeir . iNouung la inuru i « ' » u »»« iU « hUiu ,. vU 1 . -.. «•• »¦ - -..- o- : . « uBiHit contact which ia maintained only by uicesuit conto ^
itself . It loses tho versatile manliness with tho actual . Hunt , Millais , and tho rest , did not inquire whether eylm < gination , but wont to work at once . If thoy had imagination , t wm . U In ° d °£ t ™ its way in its own good time ; in tho meanwhile , what they had to do , W * ° <> tho specific character of every object which it might bo needful lor hem to u o after . Thoy found that tho man who looked nearest got the boat not on of w a thing was and meant , and bo thoy sat down boaido it and 1 >»> ^ the ™ « m So of plants and animals , and so of man . It is tho intense »«'"« ' «> " apodal givoa tho charm to all their pictures of lifo . Other men painted faces i li « pasaiona fitted to thorn liko glaaa masks ; thcjmsv through the face . to to ao painted that . I recollect an early sketch by Mi lais , a girl « luce \ "f , ° , boon was about ns broad as tho palm of ono ' a hand , not larger ; oaol | « J ^ \ y th o dwelt on with visible elaborate palufolncss ; the eoloura wore In od a ^ J ,, / b prolonged manipulation ; but tho whole pathoa of tho woman a 1 il «« n o ou u h these with wonderful vividnoaa . Ono folt that tho painter had so n he sou ^
and atriv n ' day aftor day to got at It-not without ultimate . uoe-j . » . Kaplmolitu at least has loarnod tho honourabloi . oaa of hia vocation , lo Win tion between holy life and golden art' haa boon made manifest . ^ , In ' Tho Interpreter ; a Tale of the War , ' by the Author of » 1 ^ j ^ commenced in the present number , we inuy expect some vigorous from the lute scone-of war , if Iho pron . iso of ll . o «™ J j ™! , ^ thc Amongst tho remaining papers of tho number arc ono on 1 U 0 AJ \ f . A Public Service / in which tho declamatory rhetoric and tuba rea * onmg ol DkitinguiBhed Writer' arc justly exposed ; ono on Pou-ft moafft o siko o life aud writings , which does not in tho least help us lo ^' W ^ motor ? a learned and lively article on Door ; ' and one by Mi . 1 » ou » ,
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544 T H E Ii E A D E E ,. [ No . 376 , Saturday
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Leader (1850-1860), June 6, 1857, page 544, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2196/page/16/
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