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Leader (1850-1860), 5th November 1853, Edition Country of 2, Page 16, All those who suffer the chronic malady ...

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      1072 The Leader. [Saturday,

      1072 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

      Ictoratnrt

      ICtoratnrt

      Critics Are Not The Legislators, "But Th...

      Critics are not the legislators , "but the judges and police of literature . Tkey do not make laws—they interpret and . try to enforce them— Mdmbwrgh , Mevieto .

      All Those Who Suffer The Chronic Malady ...

      All those who suffer the chronic malady of " neglected genius , " and who believe that in this age poetry is a " drug , " because their own drugpoetry does not sell , will attribute the extraordinary success of Alexander Smith ' s poems to luck , accident , or the " puffery of critics . " We ourselves have been accused of having puffed this bubble . We do not think , however , that our efforts would succeed so well with another kind of bubble , and suspect that if we were to become dithyrambic on Jones , it would not prevent Jones from being considered a drug . Be it luck , or be it genius—or even perhaps a combination of both—Alexander Smith's success is a fact . He has had all the honours .

      He has been lauded ,, he has been abused , he has been learned by heart , and his autographs eagerly sought for . And now finally comes the avatar of fashion : he is to be " taken up" by " the great . At present ¦ we hear that he is staying on a visit with the Duke and Duchess of Aegtle . This fact will probably excite general misgivings as to his future , " lest his head should be turned , " and " society , " the syren , should ruin him . We do not share those misgivings ; we believe that it is only a weak head that can be so turned ; and weak heads would be turned as easily by the flattery of the bourgeoisie as by that of high society . Now , unless we have made a fundamental mistake with regard to Alexander

      Smith , he is remarkably endowed with sagacity and direct good sense . Success and flattery may fluster him for a little , and make him feel like a man who has suddenly fallen into the water , rising to the surface with a confused ringing in his ears , and rather a random sense of helplessness , until he gets his head fairly above water , when he strikes calmly out , and swims with such strength as God has given to him .

      The Magazines This Month Contain Much Th...

      The Magazines this month contain much that is interesting . Fraser concludes its very remarkable contribution to history , in the shape of an enquiry into the Morals of Queen Elizabeth , a masterly vindication of Elizabeth ' s character , and a searching analysis of the evidence or want of evidence , upon which the charges against her have been founded . Anatomy in Long Clothes is the quaint title of a biographical article on Vesalius , the father of modern anatomy . It bears the trace of that able hand which in the same magazine recently described the career of Conrad G-esner , and however removed from the sympathies of the general reader the life of an anatomist might appear , the writer of the present article has contrived to tell the story in a way which will be interesting to all readers . The

      difficulties with which Vesalius had to contend , fighting as he did against ignorance and prejudice , which made it seem impious to lay the scalpel on the " human form divine , " furnish the biographer with good material . We will give a specimen of the sublime " bodysnatching" to which this great man of science was doomed , in an age when only dogs and monkeys were allowed to furnish evidence of our wonderful mechanism . While Vesalitjs was at Louvain , he rambled outside the gates with his friond , and came to the Tyburn of Louvain . " Now there had been executed on that spot a noted robber , who , since lie deserved more than ordinary hanging , had been chained to the top of a high stake

      and roasted alive . Ho had been roasted by a slow fire made of straw , that was kept burning at Rome distance below his feet . In that way there had been a dish cooked for the fowls of heaven , which had been regarded by them as a special dainty . The sweet flesh of the delicately roasted thief they had preferred to every other ; his bones , therefore , had been elaborately picked , and there was left suspended on the stake a skeleton dissected out and cleaned by many beaks with rare precision . The dazzling skeleton , complete and clean , was lifted up on high before the eyes of the anatomist , who bad been striving hitherto to piece t > gether such a thing out of the bones of many people , gathered as occasion offered . ' That was a flower to be plucked from its tall stem .

      " Mounting upon the shoulders of bin friond , and aided by him from below , young Andreas ascended the charred utako , and' tore away whatever bones he found accessible , breaking the ligaments which tied the logs and arms to tho main trunk . The trunk itself was bound by iron chains ho firmly to the stako that it was left there hanging . With stolen bones under their clothes , tho two young mon returned into Louvain . " But in tho evening Vosalius went out alone to take another walk , did not return in haste , and suffered the town gates to close against him . He had resolved to spend tho night a-field under the stars ; while honest mon wero sleeping in their beds be meant to share tho vigil of tho thieves , Thorn was fclio trunk of the okoloton yet to bo had . At midnight none would dare to bravo tho flpectaclo of fleshly horrors , to any nothing of such ghostly accidents as might befal them among corpses of tho wicked , under rain , moon , stars , or flitting jjjglut- clouds . Certain , therefore , that no man would come to witness Juh offence , X -- "T ^ Vefll ^ W akmulnight again climbed the tree to gather its remaining blossom . 1 W / '*•'¦; ' j £ a ! ri / QWWp deliberately wonted tho whole Hot of bon 0 H out or the grasp of tho •' ; jKreaJ ; Wit 'ftittorH , and then having removed his treasure to a secret . spot , ho , , buried i \ " In tho morning bo returned homo empty-handed . At leisure then , Z' ' « nd ahft ) f ) ri ) : ft ho smuggled through tho gates day after day bono after bono . Bui ' - "" •• whenilioflitaf oct Hkoloton was sot up in his own house , he did n (>< , Heruplo to display jt oppniy , »« d to demonstrate from it ,, giving out that it had boon brought ¦ .. ' ¦ 'by Jhim to j £ o ) iv » in from Paris . ''" - ¦ " .,. ' ' ) ^ Ah ' cfthiir : Vtiolo in thin number , which will not bo left unread , m - ^ ; . ThMtghte $ k Shelloy and Jit / ron , by a hand easily rocognmablo . It , may ' v ' 3 b | JP ejOuVidered as a continuation of tho paper last month in favour of Vovw , *»» d »» protest againfif ; tho pootjpol tendency of our age , It iB

      fierce , eloquent , abrupt , exaggerated , and startling , the tendency of it being to elevate Byron , because he recognised a Law which he was perpetually breaking , ( and in so far he must be dear to Orthodoxy , since his very fierceness of misanthropy was homage , as Orthodoxy interprets it , ) and to depreciate Shelley , because instead of saying , " There is a Law , and therefore I am miserable ; why cannot I keep the Law P Shelley says , There is a law , and therefore I am miserable ; why should not the law be abolished P" To any one who accepts this description of the two men , the article will be triumphant in its success . But we do not think those who know and love Shelley will fail to see through this sophisticate statement . Shelley , of course , like all men who think at all , recogn ise d that there was a Law of right and wrong , good and evil , truth and falsehood ; but in the place of that Law , obscuring it , misrepresenting it , pretending to be it , but being in fact a divergent distortion thereof , —was a Law made by man , and not by God ; and this was the Law Shelley said should be abolished .

      JBlachwood treats us to one of its admirable analyses of foreign works in the shape of an article on Dr . Tscnvni ' a JBrute Life in the Alpine Regions . Prom this article , which will specially interest the naturalists we select a passage abctat bats : — " They are the owls amongst mammalia ; like them they are dismal , nocturnal carniverous creatures , unamiable and shy . Our naturalists are probabl y still far from a thorough knowledge of them , their secret abodes and nocturnal habits rendering this very difficult to attain . And in this respect natuial history receives small aid from man , who loathes the bat , because he does not know that it ia his benefactor kills it when he can , and throws it away . Strange it ia that man has such a profound aversion and almost invincible horror for many animals which are positively useful and no way injurious ! He shuns and persecutes toads and lizards , which destroy so many locusts , worms , spiders , flies , and snails ; blind worms and snakes , which rid him of vermin and of mice ; moles , owls , and bats which are his true benefactors , and should be carefully protected . The last

      named are , like swallows , active . destroyers of insects , and devour millions of beetles , injurious water insects , free-caterpillars , cabbage-butterflies , night-moths and May-bugs , and crunch , with their numerous and extremely sharp-teeth , even the hard-winged dung-beetle . Certainly they have not the agreeable aspect or the amiable manners of canaries or goldfinches ; they are wild and fierce , and ready enough to open their wide red gullets against the head of man . They are hard to tame , and , when held captive , usually refuse all nourishment . Their musky smell , the thin oily skin of their wings , their tawny hair , their hissing and grumbling , their little tail and their claws , are not par ticularly attractive ; but one might forgive them all that , and leave them in peace , inasmuch as the y do great and good service . Popular superstition classes them as venomous , with toads , frogs , and snakes . They are just as little so as any of these , and have not the absurd passion attributed to them of flying into people ' s hair . Weasels and polecats , martens and dogs , and especially owls , their sworn foes , persecute them sufficiently , to prevent their numbers ever becoming troublesome to man , though he should leave them unmolested . "

      The Romans in Scotland , and Athens in 1853 , are two articles which will be read with interest . But there is something more than interest in the concluding paper on The Narcotics we Indulge in . Opium , hemp , and coca are treated as hop and tobacco were before , with great knowledge , clearness of exposition , and admirable impartiality : — " It will strike the reader of the present article ; is somewhat remarkable , that modern , perhaps more impartial and truth-loving inquiry , should strip so many of these narcotic indulgences of the horrid and repulsive aspect they have alwaya hitherto worn . Wo find now that they havo all a fair side as well as a foul , and that it becomes a question for reasonable discussion whether an educated population , trained to the exercise of a reasonable self-control , might not be safely left to avail themselves of tho strangely fascinating enjoyments they are capable of affording , without much risk of their becoming the source of any greatly extended after-misery . But when , it may bo pertinently asked , can we hope to seo the mass of our population so trained to self-denial and self-restraint V

      In the Dublin University Magazine , pigs arc honoxired by a display of erudition and sympathy in their behalf which must extort approving grunts from the most indifferent of porkers . Tho articlo is entitled Pig Lore ; arid , as a slight taste of its quality , read this : — " It seems difficult to account for tho almost universal connexion of swine with religious ceremony . Tho ancient Romans sacrificed the sow to Bacchus and to Ceres ; while he amongst them who unconsciously desccratod tho public holiday , or ferue piMicw , might atone for the offonco by sacrificing a pig , though ho whose disobedience was intentional , was deemed to hiwve transgressed beyond reparation . Homor , amongst various epithets which ho bestows upon Artemis , speaks of her

      as one ' rejoicing in tho wild boar and sta # . ' Tho Argives offered the sow to Aphrodito , the Goddess of Love and Beauty ; while , in a very different * region of tho earth , tho natives of tho . Sandwich JsIoh still sacrifice tho pig to Pole , tho witch-goddess who personifies the crater of Koranea . Tho mythology of tho East represents that when tho earth wan hidden away by tho malico of the . f / iavt // inanyakshana , tho Cod Vinnu assumed tho forui ' of a mighty boar , with fiery tusks , and rooted it up from tho depths of PaUlas , roHtoring it to its proper place , and thus dignif y ing Uio pig , in the estimation of a lar ^ o portion of tho pooplo of Asia , by associating it with Iiih third , or Va / mra Avatar ; in commemoration of which bo is sometimes represented in Hindu tomplos with tho hoad of a pig . "

      The ( hliofjfnies of Jilr . asmits furnish another entertaining papor ; hnl readers will probabl y neglect , everything for 1 , 1 u > very humorous paper , by tho author of the " Uaclielor of the , Albany , " in which ho describes an . Excursion to the Limbos . We enn only fi'ml room for tin ' s vision of tho hotol-lcoeper ' H hell , jts fetched l > . y the demon himself : — " Thon ho gayo mo some details of this most appropriate punishment that ootild possibly b « inflicted on the Bonifaces ; how fchoy wore to bo arraigned and convicted at their own bars ; how thoy wore to bo scorched , in sec-ula HC . c . ulorum , by their own wax-candles ; how all fclio caravanserais in Turkey , and all fcho jniiH m Russia and Rpain woro to givo up their legions of floas to stock tho bedrooms with ; how thoy woro to bo inexorably doomed to drink their own wines pure ; how thoy wero to 1 ) 0 servod and waited on through oihMohm Jigcs by their own waifcorH ; how their own interminable billn wore to bo proHontod to thorn ovcry morning and ci

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 5, 1853, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_05111853/page/16/