On this page

• Text (2)

  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.

  • 

    February 2, 1856.1 THE LEAPT3R. ^13_

  • 

    DE LA RIVE ON ELECTRICITY. 4. Treatise o...

• 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.

    The Lady In Waitihg In "The States." Let...

    will read the other nineteen in a score of different works , they would be a d : nTS " work is " well written , " although tic writers a clever woman ; nor that it is entirely unalloyed by a certain set mannerism , which certainly does not belong to woman ' s writing in general . Miss Mian-ay is too onseoL that she writes " as it were , " in company , '' -the company consistins of the "hospitable Republic on the one hand , and of the critical republ c of fatten in England . She is anxious to be thought well of-an excellent quality in woman , hiitanejthatdoes _ not take the best means of success when womanhood endeavours to eke out its attractions and adorn its costume with flowers from the teehnicology of botany instead of the flowers of the field or of the milliner ; with glances of geology n so deep as Lyell , and dashes at astronomy which is not peculiar to America , for they have not a different moon in the Union , nor does the diversity of institutions exercise a perceptable influence on Charles ' s wain . If lively Miss Murray were really to sit down and write us accounts of the scenery which she praises , and which is tantalisingly glanced at in her rapid pages , she might perhaps paint us very pretty aqSatint sketches . But the names of trees are not trees , and tlie facts which she records in natural history are not brought out with sufficient distinctness , nor always marked by discrimination . When we are told that she sees " a capsicum as small as a pea , " or a privet "like a Chinese privet ; that the dwarf black jack is abundant , or phlox Drummondi thick in certain sandy prairies of Texas , we have scanty materials either for the artist or the botanist . The two «« Horned Frogs" which she caught and petted , and which she calls " crustaceous , " and therefore , not disgusting , are neither new to natural history , nor are we much enlightened by such descriptions ; and we demur to accepting the driest statements from a writer who believes i ; hat certain snakes milk cows . But this is the consequence of turning out a diary anrevised and unpruned , with , perhaps , an overwhelming sense that anything which was said was worth preserving . Unprofessional writers often make the mistake of supposing that because they have a vivxd idea of the things seen when they read the words in their own manuscript , those words must convev the same vivid idea to their readers . ...

    3 ^ BBHmHB ^^^>* - ^ HW ^^^^^^~ — . these slaveholders ; whereas , I fear there is a greater amount of irreligion and vice in one town of ours , or of the Northern States here , than in all the Southern States put together . When I watch the kindness , the patience , the consideration shown by white gentlemen and gentlewomen towards these " darkies , " I coxdd say to some anti-slavery people I have known , " Go thou , and do likewise . " They are better off than the working classes in this country . A . slave girl was astonished when Miss Murray to ld her that the English working people could seldom get meat at all , still less three times a-day . The negro will remonstrate when it is proposed to free him : — Mrs . Stowe gives great credit to a young lady who , becoming the h . eires 3 of a few slaves , gave them all their freedom . I have heard of a young lady who succeeded to the possession of negroes , and nothing else ; by emancipating them she might have gained a fine character from the Abolitionists , and have cast oft not only a responsibility , but a heavy expense ; instead of which she sought occupation for herself , laboured hard , and earned the means of existence for her poor black dependents , as well a 3 her own living . Which of these two ladies acted the more Christian part ? They despise the free negro : — One woman was offered her freedom in my hearing : she took the offer as an insult and said , "I know what the free niggers are , missus : they are the meanest niggers as ever was ; I hopes never to be a free nigger , missus . " A slave quarreling with another black , after calling him names , at last sums up as the acme ot contempt , " You be a d d nigger without a master ! " This is the consequence of the fact , that free negroes being idle and profligate are generally poor and miserable . A common reproach among , them is to say , " You be es as bad as a Ire © nigger . " Miss Murray goes to Cuba , but does not equal Mr . Hurlbut in the vigour or distinctness of her painting , whether of scenery or society . Slavery she opines cannot be studied in Cuha , the question being complicated with social backwardness and indifferent government . And the daughter of St . James s is strong in the conviction that a better course than the blockading squadron would be to encourage peaceful commerce with the African -coasts ; " commercial remedies being the only certain legitimate slavery preventives . These conclusions have led to an accident in the life of the authoress ; and 3 pusinuu #

    The thing we look to , however , is not information about anything wnatever , but the special view through the special lens . We know all about hotel life in America ; but what will a Court lady think upon itl—tliat is the question . And when the Lady in waiting is applied to this use , the response which she makes to us is not quite what we should expect . She does not like hotel life in the Union , and that does not surprise us ; but what are the objections suggested by a St . James ' s exper ience of life ? They are mainly that the hotel customs are " ruinous to the manners and domestic character of the young women , " and also ruinous to the purses of travellers . Miss Murray paid on an average .= £ 10 a-week for self and maid , although they dined at , tlie public table ; and the woman of fashion from the golden circle of English society discovers that the canny and keen Robert Chambers is quite mistaken when he says that there is no imposition in American inns . Now , if we had sought for a keen eye to business and an appreciation of cash outgoings ; , we should have supposed either of the Messrs . Chambers fairly to but exact ciassyet uuugiuciui

    the story has been partly told in the papers . * .- we are nou m . •* correct the narrative . According to the tale , Miss Murray asked permission to dedicate her book to the Queen ; but on finding the discussion of slavery in it , her Majesty not only declined , but felt it necessary to dismiss from the service of the Court a person who had publicly discussed " a question which threatened to rend the Union . " There may be sound policy and good international law in that rigid enforcement of neutrality ; but it strikes us that the " question wKich threatens to rend the Union" has before been discussed--that a certain Mrs . Beecher Stowe was over in this country , and that a _ special reception was prepared fur her ' by no less a personage than the Duchess of Sutherland , Mistress of the Robes . This was " discussing , " with a vengeance , a question that threatened to rend the Union ; but was any manifestation ot Court displeasure made at that Court demonstration in favour of the Abolitionist party ? According to the story the neutrality of the Court is all on one side . ___

    represent , not a " near , " certainly an ; me - ou . James ' s hath a shrewder eye than the Edinburgh tradesman . So inherent is the housewife in the sex ; so completely does the domestic Englishwoman over-ride the lady of fashion ! She finds an excuse for the hotel life in the difficulty of keeping servants . Its modus operandi destroys the character of young women , " in the frivolity and indulgence " which it encourages , " by superseding domestic occupations . " The daughter of St . James ' s opines that women should "be the " educated companions , not the rivals , of men "— " the heart consolers , the binders up of broken spirits , the ' sisters of the sisterless , ' the presiding genius of the social circle . Is not this work enough for them to do ? " Therefore she objects to the woman ' s rights agitation ; oVjects equally to women being " all queens" or " playthiugs —dolls . " The daughter of St James ' s detects the extravagance and artificiality of the American toilet . " I see here false brows , false bloom , false hair , false everything—not always , but too frequently ; " Belgrayia blushes for the sex ! Still , there is something pleasant " in the hotel life . It is , at all events , convenient for travellers : society is completely brought forth , and presented far \ nancnt \ nn . TnlcR an instance from a . Washington inn : —

    I find acquaintances from Cuba , California , all tho Southern States ; from each of the Northern—even some from Canada ; naval meu , who have visited Japan ; politicians , judgoa , biahops , botanists , geologists , educationalists , philanthropists , abolitiouista , slave-holders , voyages of iliscovory meu , and meu who have beon some of all those things at various periods of their lives , with a large number of ladies , all willing to couvor . se , and vying in klnduess aud hospitality towards me , the only foreignor and stranger among them . It is something , also , to get the daughter of St . James ' s as a witness on the subject of slavery . Miss Murray is so impartial that she becomes a partisan . She has lived so completely under the influence of anti-slavery doctrinos in the liighest quarters at home , that , finding the slave-holders human beings , with hearts hi their bosoms , and not demons , there is a strong reaction . She disclaims indeed anything like an opinion , and doos not express one ; but her picture is an opinion . She contrasts the anxious faces , the general absence of content , the prevalence of insanity in the North , with the content in the South , the happy condition of the slaves , and the encouragement of religion amongst them . Slnvery she accepts as a preparatory state of existence—a sort of purgatory on earth , during which the abject races of Africa acquire a more rectangular facial outline , a thinner lip , knowledge of religion , and , by n compulsory apprenticeship , a certain power of self-government . In the South the race is happy , oven in its preparatory state of existence . There is mostly the pot an feu in the cottage , and often all the cliiekens and comfort of an English farm-house . In fact , it ia apparent that " slavery is , in moat cases , real freedom : " — Tho Creator of men formed them for labour under guulanoo , and there ia probably a providential intention of produoiug aorao good Christian niou and women out of it in timo . We have boon blindly endeavouring to oountomot Huh intention ; wo have thought ourctolvoa wiser than our forefathers iu all points , booiuiac wo havo ivdvauood beyond them iu others ; and it has boon tho luibit for us iu England to boliove oui'hgIvob more religious , aud virtuous , and bonsvolout than

    February 2, 1856.1 The Leapt3r. ^13_

    February 2 , 1856 . 1 THE LEAPT 3 R . ^ 13 _

    De La Rive On Electricity. 4. Treatise O...

    DE LA RIVE ON ELECTRICITY . 4 . Treatise on Eketridtu . By Augustus de la Rive . Translated by C . V . Walker . Vol . II . ¦ Longmans . The science of Electricity is little more than a century old . In 1750 the Leyden jar was indeed known , but the identity of electricity and lightning was still unsuspected . Little more was known than what the ancients knew respecting the properties possessed by certain bodies of exercising an attraction for others after being rubbed ; and this little consisted in the fact that some substances were conductors and others non-conductors ; that there were two electrical principles or " fluids" which attracted and repelled each other ; and that the union of the two opposing fluids produced a spark . In 1856 we look back upon this slender budget with some surprise , perhaps compassion , in thinking of the varied applications which our more extended knowledge has enabled us to make ot * an agant met with in every corner of the organic and inorganic world ; and we are only brought to a proper state of modesty by reflecting how small our actual knowledge is , compared with the manifold and . complex problems which solicit attention , and demand is aim liu & uiwu ^

    solution . We have not even settled what Electricity ; u .,, coupled with the marvellous agencies of which daily experience renders us cognisant , causes rash theorisers and facile philosophers to attribute everything they do not understand to the agency of Electricity . Are tables turned by means not obvious ? The explanation is Electricity . No one pausing to ask whether the known effects of Electricity are in the least analogous to tahle turning ; no one trying to turn a table by the application of a gigantic battery . Does an epidemic ravage countries ? It is owing to an electrical state of the atmosphere" Is a min found burned to death , no fire to burn him being discoverable ? It is Electricity which has decomposed the wotei of his body into oxygen and hydrogen , a condition brought about by excessive use of alcohol , ami " spontaneous com bustion" results . Are tlw wonder , of n rvous action contemplated ? tho brain is a galvanic battery ; tUoignt is Electricity . Look where we will we are sure to sec Electricity made the great 'Feiisft of ignorance-the Deity whoso presence is the cause ot air m o would imagine that an agent so constantly invoked would be ° « jgj [ Jy Stt ^ W ttttF ^ J ^ tt t & Jttzrsis ? ^ Wl ^ SiS probably be acknowledged to have como from the G 9 . " ™ * /?^ J ^^ bstte ^ usft ^ ' ^^ SSSS work oui-most 8 Orious recommendation we must at the same time indicate toToh . Zcteimm a Treatise : it is not a rapid summary of principles , but an S Z ex , £ » Won of principles , experiments , facts and theo « e .. « r . t on from the fulness of knowledge , ami with a desire of comploUjneau uhiel *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 2, 1856, page 17, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_02021856/page/17/