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    736 THE LEADER. [Saturday,

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    Mb. Alwxaudbh J. Ejxjs , woll-known for ...

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    De Qtjuncey, In His Preface To The Repub...

    ally becoming more moral and upright , and our parliamentary oratory more mild , and gentlemanlike . Some curious illustrations and anecdotes are introduced , from which it does appear that the political corruption of last century was colossal compared with anything we now see , and that we have lost the art of parliamentary Billingsgate . The writer , however , makes an onslaught on Lord Derby ' s Administration as retrogressive in both these particulars ; as having- " derogated from the amended political morality characteristic of our times , " and as having , in the person of , at least , one of its chiefs , " re-introduced into party warfare an unscrupulous malignity which its higher class of combatants had long discarded . " Of course , it is Mr . Disbaeij that is meant . The reviewer hardly verifies his own remark when he thus speaks of this much-abused Shemite , sketched , we must say , in this passage , from a point of view which many must think totally wrong : —

    " Mr . Disraeli aspires to be the Junms of St . Stephens , to speak as that great assassin spoke . There is the same indiscriminate and comprehensive hostility , —the same readiness to mak « or to suggest the most outrageous accusations—the same sinister care in polishing and sharpening his envenomed darts—the same necessity for a victim to mangle—the same deliberate and cruel vigilance to discover what point -will be tenderest , and what weapon will be sharpest . There is also the same absence of any strong convictions or fixed opinions ; the same merging of principles in personalities ; the same reduction of the great game of politics to a mere fencing match , where the object is not to pass a law , but to wound an adversary . Mr . Disraeli is not a statesman ; he is not even a po litician ; he is simply a gladiator . No invective is too savage for his cold and artificial indignation ; no sarcasm too bitter for his petty spite ; no allusions too indecorous for his taste ; no character pure enough to be sacred from iiis charges and insinuations . From the day wlieri he endeavoured to obtain access to the same Parliament , first as « KadicaL and then as a Tory

    from the day when , under the signature of " Bunnymede , " he addressed a series of letters to the public men of England , of Yrhlcl , it i $ difficult to say whether the adulatioa or the abuse is the most repellent ; from the day when he repaid the scurrility of O'Connell with Billingsgate like his own , as vulgar , but far less effective ; from the day when he fastened upon / Peel , as the glutton fastens on the noble stag , and baited aiid worried him with the gusto of the torturers of old—to the day when he received the rewardof his achievements in the leadership of his party , and a residence in Downing-street , and indulged first in the insolence of the triumphant official , and then in the impotent fury of the defeated and discarded minister , — Mr . Disraeli has been consistent and un ' qne ; he has never once deviated into right ; ; le has never once , so far as we remember , been surprised , into an unseemly fit of generosity or candbnr ; he has never for a monffent sacrificed personal gratification or a party triumph to a political obiecfc or a moral principle ; during a public

    life of nearly twenty years , he has never belied his antecedents , or stained his reputation by one noble sentiment , or one disinterested deed . That such a man should have oeen the chosen chief of a great , and once a not ignoble party ) that he should have been-not only tolerated but cheered on in his gladiatorial displays , by so large a section of the gentry and nobility of England ; that he should have been able to make himself Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons , over the heads of all his rivals , by the simple influence of a bitterer temper and a sharper tongue—these things constitute , we were about to say , the most disgraceful fact in the modern history of our country ; but unhappily we can reinember one in some respects analogous , but still more discreditable : — the generation which witnessed the vrorship paid to Mr . Hudson need scarcely blush at the elevation decreed to Mr . Disraeli . The statue designed , for the one is a fit pendant to the pedestal erected for the other ;"

    The Prospective Review ( by-the-by , is there not a little bit of a bull in the name ?) has this fine motto from St . Bernard on its cover : " Respice , Aspice , Pbospice , " the relative importance of the three imperatives being marked by the circumstance that " Respice" is printed in small italics , " Aspice 1 ' in ordinary Roman letters , and " Prospice" Roman capitals . In this number , at least , the Review is hardly true to its motto . Of six articles , three—one on Mclman ' s History of Latin Christianity , one qu the poets Ghat and Mason , and one on Lessing ' s Theology and Times—may be taken as representing the " Respice f * the other three—a nptice of an American

    book on Regeneration , a paper on K . uskin' ' s Lectures on Architecture and Painting , and a batch of Notices of Recent Publications , do justice to the " Aspice ; " but the " Prosmoe" remains unpresented . Perhaps it is meant that the Prospective tendency shall be represented by the spirit breathed into all the articles . And certainly the opinions pervading the articles are in advance of those to be found in most theological organs . The writing is also careful , thoughtful , scholar-like , and even sometimes beautiful ; the chief want ( a considerable want in an organ with such aims ) being emphasis , or what is irreverently termed " go . '

    Fraser , as usual , is groat in the military department , and in that of Natural History . The opening article is an elaborate one on The Russian Army , the object of the writer being to disabuse the public mind of the exaggerated ideas entertained of the military resources of the Czar . He snyg : — " When twenty or thirty battalions of Prince Goitachakoff ' s forces crossed tlio Danub ° into the Drobrutclia , the publio believed that Bulgaria was in danger , that Varna would bo besieged , and Shumla . turned . When Princp PnsWovitch ant down before Silistria witli 50 , 000 men , it was confidentiall y asserted , in ' well-informed quarters , ' that tUo Balkans would bo shortly forced , Constantinople taken , tho Bosphorua nnd Dardanelles ocoupied by Cossacks ( to tho great inconvenience of the allied fleets ) , nnd that a variety of other calamities would fall upon Turkey , Great Britain , and Franco , nmongst which wan specially noticed tho extinction of tho contingent under St . Arjiaud nnd Raglan . Those who indulged in such anticipations now learn that this formidable nfmy Iiun Icon baffled in the attempt to tnlco possession of ft fortress of tlio third class , although all tho attacks wore conducted on tlie ndest scale

    gra possible , ana with a total disregard ot tho micniico of hutnun life which might ; bo thereby ontailod . And it is now beginning to bo understood that thU dreaded military phantom is inferior to hisndvcrmirios , not only in eflkioncy but in numbers—Unit tho commanders of tho aliioil army will be able to tako the field with overpowering forces , and that if wo do notaichiove tho grandest results , it will bo tho crime of our rulers , and not tho misfortune of our generals nnd admirals . " The exaggerated ideas entertained of tho military forces of the Cznr , tho writer traces to tho wretchedly imperfect accounts given in journals and periodicals . In order to do away false impressions in the most satisfactory manner , he publishes a detailed analysis of the Russian army , compiled from authentic sources , giving tho numos of the regiments , thoir numbers , the names of their officers , & c . Tho analysis occupies about twenty pages and ia not finished . It is dry to look at , but is evidently important . After all , however , wo fire not quite sure that oven the writer ' s statistics , however accurate , justify hia contemptuous way of disposing of the llussophobin .

    He says , " Phrenzied fanatics may still hail their dupe ( £ . c . Nicholas ) as the Slavonian Messiah , but history will gibbet this most sanctimonious Vandal . " The probability is that the Czar represents , and is strong by reason of , more things than his armies—i . e ., Russian fanaticism , Slavonian political speculation , the acutest diplomacy in the world , and—what is as important as anything—the want of aim and forethought among his opponents . Napoleon could calculate the power of armies , and knew the statistics of the Russian army as well as any man ; and yet he believed in the possibility of a Cossack empire in Europe . The article on the Aquarium , or tank for Water-animals , is one of those pleasant and instructive papers of Naturalists ' gossip for which Fraser is famous . There are a variety of articles besides —literary and other—of which the concluding one , on the Politics and Pronunaiamentos of Spain , will , perhaps , be most read . It is an interesting and well-compiled account of Spanish politics , explanatory of the recent revolution .

    Blackivood has an article on The Insurrection vi ¦ Spain which is , in some respects , more interesting than the corresponding article in Fraserbeing the contribution of a writer resident in Madrid , and narrating from personal knowledge and observation . The article was written while the insurrection was still going on , and before its issue could be exactly known ; but it fully explains the causes of that event , and gives-a very vivid idea of the state of feeling in Madrid before and during the rising . By far the best sketch we have seen of the misdemeanours of the Sartorhjs or St . LtJis administration—the administration whose conduct provoked the rising , and winch has been swept away by it—is contained in this article . Another article in the number , containing valuable information and suggestive speculation on pending questions of foreign polities , is that entitled , Tricoupi and Alison on tlie Greek Revolution . The writer discusses five points in succession—the character , conduct , and position of Russia at the < outbreak of the war of Greek independence ; the conduct of the Turkish government

    on that occasion ; the character of the Greeks themselves , as shown during their five years' struggle ; the conduct of Hussia towards the Greek people since ; and the conduct of the Greek people since the accession of Otho . The result is a moderate vindication of the Greeks , and a . temperate appeal in their behalf to Europe . In the beginning of the article we find a reasseveration of an important fact already brought before the public , with characteristic enthusisam , by Professor Blackie , of Edinburgh—to wit , that the modern Greek language is , to all intents and purposes , the same as the ancient Greek , so that the notion that Greek requires to be learnt as a dead language is to be regarded as a mere fallacy . pedants and pedagogues . Introduced into a political article , the following passage seems to hint that , were it for no other purpose than to have a . school to which our young men could go to learn Greek , we ought to do our best to keep up the nice little nationality of tlie iEgean , and to fence it in ( a little extended , perhaps ) both from Turks and Russians .

    " Now , with regard to this point , Mr . Tricoupi ' a book furnishes tho most decided and convincing evidence tbat the language of Aristotle and Plato yet survives in a state of tho most perfect purity , tho materials of which it is composed being genuine Greek , and the main difference between tho stylo of Tricoupi and t 1 u \ t of Xcnoprion consisting in the loss of a few superfluous verbal flexions , and tho adoption of one or two new syntactical forms to compensate for the Ions—the merest points ot grammar , indeed , which to a schoolmaster great in . Attic forms may apponr miglity , but to the general scholar , and tho practical linguist , are of no moment . A few such words of Turkish extraction , as gdfuov , amosque ; fapftciviov , a firman ; / 3 e £ t /»? r , a vizier ; yevlrcrapos , a janizary ; payidbrjs , arajah , so far from being any blof on the purity of Mr . Tricoupi ' s Greek , do in fact only jvove his good senso ; for even tho ancient Greeks , ultra-national as they tfero in all their liabits , novcr scrupled to adopt a foreign word—such as y « fa , TTapabeifros , iiyyapot when it camo in their way , juat as wo have ko 8 o « j / tj /? , ktjvctoso-ovdaptovand a few

    , , other Lahnisms in tho New Testament . Tho faot ia , that the modern Greeks are rather to be blamed for tlio affectation of extreme purity in their stylo , than for nny undue admixture of foreign words , such as wo find b y scores in every Gorman newspaper . But this is their affair . It is a vice that leans to virtue ' s side , and springs manifestly from that strong and obstinate vitality of race which has survived tho political revolutions of nearly two thousand jears ; and a vice , moreover , that may prove of tho utmost use to our young scholars , who may havo tho sense and tlio enterpriso to turn it to practical account . For , as tho puro Greek of Mr . Trieoupi ' s book is no private invention or his own , but tho very samo dialect which is at present used as an orgnn of intellectual utterance by a largo phalanx of talented yrofoaaors in tlio University of Athens , and is in fact tho language of pohto intercourse over tho whole of Greece , it follows that Greek , which is at present almost universally studied as a < ioad language , and that by a most laborious nnd tedious prooesu of grammatical indoctrination , may bo wore readily picked up , like Gorman or French , in tho courso of tlio living practice of a few months . "

    In domestic politics we have an article on u Comewatioe llcascend ( t > i <\>/ Considered , " in which tho Coalition Government is severely handled , nn < l the doctrine asserted that " only by tho reascendnncy of tho Conservative party can the blessings of , & c . & c . & c , be secured to tho country . " There ia also a learned article on the Ethnology of Europe . We must not omit to notice the Assurance Magazine and Journal , of the Institute of Actuaries . It is addressed , of course , chiefly to the business classes , )> ut in these days , when tho whole subject of assurance engrosses so large a share of public interest , an . assurance" ivmgnzino , iibly written and published under authority , can fairly claim something l > oyoml a class circuUition . The present number contains several articles of interest , and among others a paper lately road by Professor Da Mono . an , before the Institute ot Actuaries , on tlio " Demonstration of Formulio connected with Interest and Annuities . " Womust x-osorvo the venmining magazines and periodicals .

    736 The Leader. [Saturday,

    736 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

    Mb. Alwxaudbh J. Ejxjs , Woll-Known For ...

    Mb . Alwxaudbh J . Ejxjs , woll-known for hia labours nnd expenditure of

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 5, 1854, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05081854/page/16/