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    « [ in which the characters Q56 m^t &***...

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    SYDNEY YENDYS' ROMAN." The Roman. A Dram...

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    Newman's phases of faith. Phases of Fait...

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    Knight Hunt's Fourth Estate. The Fourth ...

    in this respect . The very earliest newspapers only communicated intelligence without civing comment ; subsequently we find papers giving political dl 8 CUS * l on ; 5 "" Jj

    organs " The year that produced the first daily newspaper m England gave birth also to the first of a group of publications , which had many of the characteristic features of journals , and were at the time regarded as such , though they cannot now be called newspapers . They appeared at stated intervals , occasionally gave intelligence of passing events and comments on passing events , contained advertisements , and , when the stamp was imposed on newspapers , suffered the infliction of that impost equally with their more political rivals .

    They were—the Tatler , started in 1709 ; the Spectator , in 1711 ; the Guardian , and the Englishman , in 1713 ; and the Free / wider , in 1715 . These , though now seen in compact volumes , were originally issued in separate sheets , as their numbering indicates ; and they concontained , in addition to the elegantly-written papers nuw preserved , various items of news and advertisements , as the originals in the British Museum library bear witness . A l » 8 t of nobl *> names is suggested by the mention of these works . Addison and Steele , Swift and Bi'lingbroke . come at once into the arena , as mental of the

    combatants in the written political strife period . Swift , when he took side with the Tories , used his power of language and ready pen in the paper fct-irted by that party under the title of the Examiner ; Bolingbroke wrote in the same journal ; whilst the more elegant and familiar Addison , and the ready and versa He Steele , devoted ttuir efforts to the service of the Tatler , the Spectator , and the Guardian . The Freeholder , which had an almost exclusively political object , was the sole production of Addison , who sought by its influence to aid the Government , and to neutralize some of the injury inflicted on his party by the Examiner of his political

    antagonists . The following notice of the origin of the Leading Journal of Europe will be read with interest : — " The first number of the Times is dated January , 1788 ; the heading being , « The Times , or Daily Universal Register , printed logographically . ' Its price is marked threepence , and its imprint runs , « Piinted ior J . Walter at the Logographic Press , Printing Housesquare , near Apothecaries' Hall , lilackfriars , where Advertisements , Essays , Letters , and Articles of Intelligence will be taken in . Also at Mr . Metteneus ' s , confectioner , Chaiing-cross ; Mr . Whiteeavese ' s , watchmaker , No . 30 , opposite St . Dunstan ' s Church , Fleet-Cornhillat

    BUeet ; Mr . Axtell ' s , No . 1 , Finch lane , ; Mr . Bushby ' s , No . 1 , Catherine-street , Strand ; Mr . Hose's , silk dyer , Spring-gardens ; and Mr . Grives ' s , stationer , No . 103 , corner of Fountain-court , Strand . ' In appearance , size , and contents , the first number of the Times shows the great advance which a cpntury had enabled the newspapers to make . Compared with the first number of the Intelligencer of 1 G 88 , the number «» ne of the new journal , the Times of 1788 is a giant . It contains certainly ten times as much matter ; it has Jour pages , each of four columns somewhat smaller than the Globe or Standard now present ; it has sixty-three advertisements , amongst which are announcements of a play , with Kemble and Mrs . Siddons , at Drury Lane ; of a concert , bv his Majesty ' s command , * at the

    concert-room in Tottenham-court-road ; ' and of lottery tickets to be had at offices open for the sale of those then attractive documents . Mr . VValter also had many nival and other Government advertisements . In the columns of this infant number of a journal now so famous in the world , there is foreign as well as home intelligence ; poetry ; shipping news ; and paragraphs of gossip , some of them rather doubtful in character . In the prospectus or address to the readers of the candidate for public support , is explained that the Times was a title assumed as better adapted to the paper than the heading by whicn it had previously been known : for the Times was a continuation of the London Daily Universal Register , started on the Itfth of January , 1785 , of which more will be lound in the chanter on the London Daily Papers . "

    In a subsequent chapter the history of the Times is pjivim at some detail : one anecdote we cannot resist quoting : — 14 1-o . d Brougham , who has figured in so many characters , liiut also me credit of an occasional leader . A newspaper tradition says that LJarnes went one day to Uiout > haui , then chancellor , « nd , waiting lor him in his private room at . the . court , took up the Morning Chro-¦ tti < : ln , in wliii-h there was that inoruinir a ( lenuneiution of ai > article Hi outturn had the day before written in the Times . H . irms suspected the nuthorship from the style , ami when the legal niuuitiuy left the judgment-seat to KjM-iik to the editor , the latter saluted tlio chancellor with * Well , this is almost loo hud to demolish yourself in this way ! ' lirou ^ hnin was tnkou ahack . Barnes saw at once , that ttie random ^ uess was a hit , pursued his advania ^ e , lolluwed up the attack , and Brougham admitted that he was thu wiiter of tho reply to his own onslaught . ' * Our limit * prevent further extracts , though the book is ernmmed with oxtraetablo matter . The pages doftcriiiin ^ the structural processes of u daily journal -will ho . r ii'l vnth tf' -en ' . interest ; invl throughout the : ttt < r . ti'' !! is r .- 'ver suflbred to ( li ' , r . It is not . a

    complete book ; it does not pretend to completeness ; otherwise we might have several objections to make ( such , for example , as the extremely scant notice of Defoe's " Review , " one of the most remarkable specimens of our free press ) ; but taken for what it professes to be , " Contributions towards a History of the Press , " we can commend it as a work both solid and agreeable .

    « [ In Which The Characters Q56 M^T &***...

    « [ in which the characters Q 56 m ^ t &****? Saturday , . — — ¦ ———»^ * - ¦ ' ~ ^^^^^™ & & ¦ > _ h m

    Sydney Yendys' Roman." The Roman. A Dram...

    SYDNEY YENDYS' ROMAN . " The Roman . A Dramatic Poem . By Sydney Yendys . Richard J 3 entley . The author of " The Roman " is careless of the unities , commonly so called , yet he has produced a poem whose great characteristic is unity . Some poets write , as the bird nutters at sunrise , to shake the dew of fancy from their wings : their poems are not a flight any-whither . We lose ourselves in their enchanted gardens , and wonder , at last as much as at first , why these aerial strains were sounded , and whither their avenues of greenery and fragrance , their ever-alternating glints of sunshine and spaces of arching shade , will finally lead .

    In the present work the poet does not hover in butterfly idlesse among poetical themes merely : he commences with a purpose of which he never loses sight . The unity observed is one of idea rather than of action . The scenes do not open one into another , contributing each increasingly to a denouement . They are but the signs throug h which the sun , Santo , the Monk—the Roman , the hero of the piece—moves gloriously . This personage is the vehicle of the poet ' s thought . That thought is Rome . The poem is the history of the rise , the growth , and the expression in action , of this master-idea in the mind of this Apostle of Liberty .

    The character of this Monk—the John the Baptist of a revolution which is to diffuse the glory of old Rome again throughout the Italian peninsula , is true to history . The elements which compose the conception have all before existed , and the artist has combined them in his hero . Arnold of Brescia—the emancipator of Rome in the twelfth century , the martyr before whose ashes Adrian and Barbarossa exchanged the kiss of a friendship which his death cemented—is a prototype for the Santo of Sydney Yendys .

    In Italy every effort for liberty has been produced by the influence of a single mind upon the masses . Rienzi and Savonarola could rouse the populace against oppression , at least for a season ; but the aristocracy of Italy have been almost invaiiably her betrayers . Santo exhorts the Italians to unite , and to strike , not for Genoa , Milan , or Placenza , but for Rome , Such a union the friends of Italian freedom

    have attempted or desired in vain for many centuries It was only for a few weeks that John of Vicenza could prolong the universal amnesty and peace which , on the banks of the Adige , were to have reconciled for ever the Guelph and the Ghibiline . From the days of Charles the Eighth of France and Ferdinand of Spain downwards , the tendency in the nations around Italy has been to consolidate , while the process in Italy itself was still one of disintegration . Even the Holy League against Charles the Fifth yielded speedily to the treachery of France , the pusillanimity of the Pope , and the downward destiny of a nation everywhere enfeebled and corrupt .

    The mission of " The Roman" is to traverse Italy and revive the dead sense of nationality among all classes , to proclaim that Rome is at hand , and to leave the mighty thought of Rome to grow and work its several issues of resolve in the breasts of youth and maiden , artisan and merchant , singer , husbandman , and soldier . He seeks , in the adaptation of his teaching , to imitate Nature—the instructress who is heard addressing every man in the language of his condition , whose parables and oracular suggestions

    are all of private interpretation , " and whose mystic hints are to be applied and wrought out by each true obedient listener for himself . The poem is characterized in style principally by vehemence and strength . Scarcely ever does the author loiter with Nature for her own sake . His

    landscnr > es are only ti background for the human form . He succeeds best in the portraiture of thought and passion , and yet the excellencies of the poem are not properly dramatic . He possesses more vigour than beauty of description . His fancy is discursive , but only within well-assigned limits . His similes are generally line , but now and then carried out with a lengthy elaboration admissible only iu some mighty

    epic . The scenery move is of necessity in harmony with the spirit and action of the poem , —a coincidence of which the author has not been slow to avail himself . The grass-grown ruins of the Campagna and the Forum are referred to frequently , and the descriptions of Nature they occasion are nearer irrelevant ; on the contrary , the reader feels that those monuments are as truly personages as any in the piece , that they do mutely take part in the colloquy , and movelessly carry on the action . The lyrical beauty which distinguishes the similar appeals of Shelley in behalf of liberty is here wanting . At the close of the seventh scene the author has even marred the effect of the fiery oratory of the Monk by the ode with which he concludes . There is a tendency to the rhetorical which the author must severely curb ; he is too apt to think that imagery is poetry—to mistake focundia for eloquence . Indeed the fault of excess pervades the poem , and proves it to be the work of a young man . On the other hand , amidst this prodigality we espy real power . Single lines such as " Give eyes to this blind trouble in my soul , " and epithets of great felicity , as the " brawny words of manhood , " may be found in abundance ; but it is rare to find any passage of length not marred by some crudity , some false tone , or by redundancy of expression . We here select from among the marked passages in our copy , four which may convey a notion of the author at his best : — " For before every man , the world of beauty , Like a great artist , standeth day and night , With patient hand retouching in the heart God ' s defaced image . " This is in a very different strain : — " When the heart Adds a new planet to its heavtn , great portents Clash the celestial influence ; strange signs Of coming dread , mysterious agencies , And omens inconceivable convulse The expectant s > stem , while the stranger sails Still out of sight in space . Dim echoings Not of the truth , but witnessing the truth—Like the resounding thunder ot the rock Which the sea passe *—rushing thoughts like heralds , Voici-s which seem to clear the way lor greatness , Cry advent in the soul , like the far shoutings That say a monarch comes . These must go by . And then the man who can out-watch this vigil Sees the apocalypse . " Contrast the above with this : — " There was a lonely mother and one babe , — A moon with one small star in all her heaven—Too like the moon , the wan and weary moon , In pallor , beauty , all , alas ! but change . Through six long months of sighs that moon umvaning Had risen and set beside the little star . And now the little star , whom all the dews Of heaven refresh not . westers to its setting , Out of the moonlight to be dark for ever . OVr the hush'd holy land where tired men sleep . There went an incense through the night . It fell Upon the mother , and she slept—the babe , It smiled and dream'd of paradise . " Or with this , on Poetry : — " The good man hears The voice in which God speaks to men . The poet , In some wrapt moment of intense attendance , The skies being genial and the earthly air Piopitious , catches on the inward ear The awful and unutterable meanings Of a divine soliloquy . Soul-trembling With incommunicable things , he speaks At infinite distance . So a bahe in smiles Repeats the unknown and unknowable Joys of a smiling mother . " . ^

    Newman's Phases Of Faith. Phases Of Fait...

    Newman ' s phases of faith . Phases of Faith ; or , Passages from the History of my own Creed . By Francis William'Kuwtnau . John Chapman . ( Third Notice . } We have seen how this earnest inquirer was led on moral grounds to abandon Calvinism ; we have now to see upon what grounds he abandoned the Religion of the Letter . He had become aware that every thing

    in the Bible was not absolutely to be accepted as inspired by divine wisdom ; but those points in the Book of Genesis which gave most offence to his moral creed ho explained away by the doctrine of Progress . Me states , with his usual candour , how he habitually overruled the objections as they arose , and how , dreading to precipitate himself into " shocking unbelief if he followed out the thoughts " suggested to him , he continued to elude the questions which still

    pressed on him sternly demanding an answer . You have seen a child building its palace of cards , and having reared a goodly structure , suddenly bring the whole tumbling down by inadvertently touching one card . This is very much the case with the Religion of the Letter . Touch it and it is a ruin . An error apparently of the most trivial kind , viz ., the error in Matthew ' s genealogy of Christ , which g ives fourteen generations in lieu of eighteen , was sufficient to open Mr . Newman ' s eyes to the untenablcness of the Scriptures as inspired and infallible guides : —

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 8, 1850, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08061850/page/16/