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    been an incomplete book without a lion story , so we have more than one to choose from . Here is a tale of " a sociable lion : " — Two French soldiers set off one day to proceed to 1 U Aroucb , a settlement on the road between Philippeville a : id Constantino , to which there is a direct rpute from Jeuiappes , by a path through the bush . They did not start together , and the one who commenced the journey first was much intoxicated . After proceeding some distance , in the course of doing which he lost his sword , he felt himself overcome with fatigue , and stretching

    himself on the grass , fell into a sound sleep . His companion who was perfectly sober , following after him a time , picked up bis sabre , and at last found the slumberer on the grass . He gave him a kick , and called to him to get up , when , to Iris horror , there rose up— -not the man , but a huge lion , that lay couched by his side , which he had taken for part of the trunk of a tree covered with grass . The sober soldier instantly ran off , under the impression that his comrade had been destroyed by the in unsuccessful combat

    animal , after losing his sword , an with it ; but the lion , instead of pursuing him , resumed his place by the side of the still sleeping man . After a time , the latter awoke too , and got upon his legs , much astonished at discovering the company he had been keeping . The lion also again rose , but without any sign of ferocity : and when the soldier set off on his route , accompanied him , walking close by his side for several miles , as far as the immediate neighbourhood of El Aroucb , where , probably because the forest there

    ceases , he turned about , and sought his old haunt 3 again . In the pasticcio of hunting adventures called those of the Lieutenant Jules Gerard , we remember to have read of self-denying lions , but this last story has certainly been , of late years , unapproached . We had marked for extract a ' sketch outside _ the gate of Constantino peopled with Bedouins in white , tirailleurs indighies in blue , and blind beggars chanting verses from the Koran . Our readers would have been charmed , too , with the landscape

    in the gorge of the Oued Hummel , a stream on which Constantine sits astride . " We might have raised a smile by extracting " the perfectly happy man , " the mayor of the infant community of Fonduck , or the lively sketch of the extraordinary jugglers of Algiers , but that we are forbid by want of space . We must , however , squeeze in a photogram of a French colonist : — In the course of my ramble on the flanks of the Atlas I came upon a cantonnier , whose case will serve as a very fair specimen of the small African landholders . He had served in the army , and on quitting it , received an assignment of about ten acres of land ,

    together with a building which had been used as a blockhouse . The Jand he made over to a Spaniard for three years as the price of clearing it ; u for you conceive , monsieur , " said he , " that I am so occupied here , that I have no time to do that sort of thing myself . " I had found him smoking his pipe on the ground about a mile up the hills on the Aumale road . Two enormous ruts a foot deep gaped hard by , and the tool which he had brought ostensibly for the performance of his duties was the common mattock , which is used for getting up the stumps of the brushwood . This was stuck by his side since hia

    ist the grass , and no doubt had been bo ever arrival on the scene of his labours . On my return by the same spot an hour later I found everything in stntu gup , except that my friend was not smoking , but lying asleep on his batik . Mv . Blakesley seems of opinion that his cantonnier was a type of a class . It may be , and very pro'bably is so ; but doubt may arise whether the learned and accurate writer did not pass the scene of tlio poor man ' s operations at the beginning and end of hia lawful dinner hour . The evidence is insufficient for a general conviction ; therefore , cautonniers and colonists must for the present have tho benefit of tho doubt .

    "We have not half done with the author , nor have we the slightest hope that , were tho space at our disposal doubled , we could do justice to his interesting performance ; but we must hero part from him with , a hearty recommendation to our readers .

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    us . No object can be gained by such a publication * or rather re-publication , except' to create a hothouse kind ot ambition in the minds of ordinary schoolboys . The title sometimes means nothing at all , and at other times means too much . What is a " " self-made man ? " Certainly , not Burns , Andersen , 3 > ickcns , or any other great creative genius , who does his work without labour , effort , or preparation . No father of such sons has the power , if he has the capital and the will , of saying as he draws a cheque for a certain sum , " Go , my child , to the best university in the land , and write the world a poem or a novel that shall live . " Beady

    money can do a great deal , but it cannot accomplish this . To give such men the credit of making themselves , is Tike telling thein they have had au influence in forming the shape of their noses or the colour of their eyes . If men of great industry and perseverance , like William Gifford , are to he erected as models of " self-made men , " why not an army of scholars who have studied to good purpose in the very heat of college life ? If the cobbler who rose to be editor of ' the Quarterlu JRecieio had started with

    rich friends , and an overflowing purse , it is possible he might have been swamped by the many temptations that beset a youth . with large means at the universities . It may be that youiig gentlemen of fortune , who resist the many pleasures within their reach , and store their minds with piles of sterling knowledge , are more entitled to praise as " selfmade men , " than shoemakers and blacksmiths , whose books have been their only attainable amusements . The last have been strong , because never tempted ; but the former have been stronger , because often tempted .

    The cant about " self-made men" is popular and long-lived . The natural appetite for the wonderful creates a demand for miraculous histories , and the demand produces a supply . In proportion as a celebrated writer , thinker , or man of action has risen in after-life , so are his birth and parentage depressed . If he was born in a small house in the suburbs , it at once becomes a " low , mean hovel ;" if his parents were struggling respectably upon somewhat straitened means , ' they are represented as sunk in the most abject state of poverty ";" and if the young genius starts in life as a junior clerk to a warehouseman , it is most probable his

    early position will be described as " a common shopboy lo a shopkeeper . " At a time when the great traditions of history are crumbling , one by one , under an earnest and honest investigation , it is more than doubtful if the incidents of the most recent literary biography would stand unshakcu under the light of unromantic research . The book before us is not a very reliable guide , for while the date of the present year stands on the title-page , and in the space devoted to Mr . Charles Dickens , we are treated with a gossiping newspaper paragraph upon recent domestic events ; we are told that lie still lives in a house in

    Devonshireterrace wlijcli ho left nearly ten years ago . ¦ Most of the sketches are disfigured by criticisms and idle speculations , while the individuality of the subject-man is lost sight of , or is not stamped upon the page . Each biography is ornamented with a very rudely executed portrait ; Mr . Dickens being depicted , as he never was , at the age of seventeen ; and Amos Whittcmcrc , the American inventor ot the card machine ; being handed down to posterity as a bloated Jack Sheppard who has grown too large for his cell .

    SELF-MADU MEN . Self-Made Men . By C . 0 . B . Seymour . Now York : Harper Brothers . London : Sampson Low and Go . A book that is no book ; made with tho soissors , and not well made ; scraps of biography taken without sifting , from cyclopaedias , biographical dictionaries , newspapers , and tip " Mcrcluynt ' B Magazine : " England , Italy , Germany , Denmark , and Amenon , being tho only countries winch have teen honoured bv appearing through their representative celebrities ; and sixty-two small hvos being tho whole number considered worthy ot ranking under the general and false title of " self-made men "—suoU is tho substance of tho volume before

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    a stipulation that the two babes shall be brought , 7 together in TJiubul-square-a stipulation which Mr ? Holhs readily complies with , as the mother sS Birt , was once her favourite waiting-woman T distinguish the plebeian from the aristocra t a piece nf tape is tied ori the arm of the latter , and as I further distinguishing mark the pleb is born with o mole under his left foot . The infancy of the nai ' p passes without much to note , and nothing occur * until the period for going to school . Young Holli * first enters a proprietary school kept by Miss Pris cilia Campbell , where he profits so little that he U taken away and sent to the establishment of " Dionysius Dickson , A . C . P ., who received a limited number of the sons of noblemen and gentlemen onlv to prepare for public schools and universities . " Here

    we have several " interiors" from the pen of Master Hollis , who , if capable of writing such accounts at twelve years of age as are attributed to him in the noyel , certainly was a Crichton-like phenomenon of worldly precocity and satirical observation . These " interiors , " though sufficiently graphic , will hardly be considered sufficiently truthful to pass with the world as examples of what is to be found among boys in similar establishments . From this school young Hollis goes to " YVinton ( the author disguises under feigned name 3 public schools of well-known reputation ) , and here the boy of twelve writes home letters that would not disgrace a man of twenty-one , giving by no means flattering descriptions of the scholastic system to which lie is made amenable . Prom Winton lie removes to Dimbledou , in order to

    qualify for admission to Sandhurst . Here , after undergoing incredible brutalities on the bullying system , he is initiated into scenes and abominations which we trust are mainly imaginary . He nearly concludes his experiences of Dimbledon by manslaughter , for in a lit of exasperation , oil getting the head bully into a retired place , he , as he firmly believes , leaves him on the ground with 1 us brains dashed out . Fortunately the youth escapes this misadventure , but , after a short period , certain

    delinquencies are found out , aiid lie is obliged to quit the " cramming" school at Dimbledon . The university is his next step , and young Hollis enters with all the advantages of high birth , libural allowance , and large expectations . In the mean time the education of the pleb Kobert Birt has been progressing , through a , presentation to a public school—Senbury School—where acertain number of boys receive board and education gratis . We will not describe the foul and repulsive doings within the walls of this splendid and abused charity . We fear the writer has viewed school-life with a jaundiced eye ; it must suffice to sav that after a few days of inhuman torture Birt ,

    on being sent at midnight by his tormentor to get a skull from a ' neighbouring churchyard , executes his task , but on his way back to his dormitory he passes the clothes room , he places the skull on a heap of clothes , he divests himself of the foundation uniform , resumes his own clothes , and makes Ins escape over the wall . The young tyrant , too impatient at the delay of Ms victim , creeps down to the clothes room , sees the skull in the dim rays of the moon , believes that Birt has hanged lunisef , falls into a fit from pure fright , and is found shortly afterwards with the skull in his hand , a driveling idiot for life . It will be scon that the »• " «*«*' not shrink at sacrificing probability for the sake of in the d

    « strong eflbcts . " Uirt makes his wny wor in rather a romantic manner , am at last finds himself , by the aid of kind nnd unknown friends , a college . Here he meets with hi * ^? " ^* f Hollis , but no companionship takes place ; Hit enact ing the role of a democrat and UoU . s the part 'j f ojo of the " upper ten thousand , " but still wellIdwpowJ towards his less fortunate fellow mortal . \ Y «>«»« many college scenes , and many phases ot college life , with much truth mixed up with n' «» * Jg 2 , tion . The two young men— youths no lonwr fij on in their respective ways ; Birt hiird- « tuilyJnff « na progressive , Hollia , more dashing > " J » ls """ J ™ ment and position , but still making >» 3 wft > ' B humanities . The examination day comes on , « » and Hollis are among tho candidate * lor high 1 lonour * Tho day before the examiners make fl * " *™ ^ « tnrtlim % secret is communicated to the youiigw ?* t

    THE FOSTER-BROTHERS . The FosCer ~ JBrothera ; or , a History of the School and College Life of Two Young Men-J J Hall , Virtue , and Co . Tins is another work ' on our educational systemsembracing private schools and colleges—thrown into the form of a novel . Two lads , one tho son of the high-born Adolphus Henry rinntngonot Brooks Hollia , of Bulbul-square , heir to a peerage , the other the son of coachman Birt , of JJulbul-mows , were born exactly at tho same time . Tho coachafter birth to tho

    man s wife , Sarah Birt , dies giving boy , nnd a kind soul , tho wifo of ft democratic tailor named Groves , who has just lost her own baby , takes charge of the little orphan . The high-born lady—who ia blessed or wither earned with ii contemptible tyrant of a huaband , depicted according to tho pattorn so much in favour with certain popular writers of the day , that is to say , with all tho insolence and solflshnoss of riches and high life—being somewhat delicate in health , ia induced by tho family doctor , Sir Toby Ruflflos , to have a wot nurse for her child . Mrs . Groves is engaged , but not until she has made

    Mrs . Groves , just before her death , to Us no' » J £ that she changed tho children ^" l ' ^ ? "' S js tiling said by the Hon . Adolplma llo lia-thn * JJJJ the aristocrat andlloUis tho plebeian , J " > , P . " » men receive tho announcement with J ^ ™ * JL iiurs-HolliB is ovorwhclmoil , Uirt cool as a oucw « her . When the examiners announce the i JJj Birt ia first , Hollis second . "'' V ' HB refuses to avail himself of the boon J » ° « oWa own comparative insignificant P <« ' r ' ' w bo 8 Cen Hollia to keep his elevated rank . . « J w j lont from this resumd that tho author is ion ot v » o contrast . He has a fair show of dosoriptivo poj ^ and can write with taste and fceU tf- J ;" , ionea 8 good qualities are somewhat nuirrod by ft pro to exaggeration . Tho del nontlons of whooi college life aro auffloient to bear us out in our cism .

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    13 S 0 THE ~ L E A DEB . [ No . 456 , December , 18 , 1858 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 18, 1858, page 1380, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2273/page/12/