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Leader (1850-1860), 8th December 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 18, M&2 TIE LEA1JE It. [No. 298, Saturday,

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      Macaulay's First And Second Volumes. 31a...

      The Dissenters coalesced with the members of the Established Church , as they had before done in the time of Elizabeth . Even many Roman Catholics , and the Supreme Pontrff himself , disapproved of James's measures . But he was bent on his own ruin , and remonstrance or advice only rendered him the more determined . For a long time the nation submitted with comparative patience , because at James ' s death the crown would revert to a sincerely Protestant ruler . But when a direct male heir to the throne was born , and it seemed probable that Papacy would be confirmed in the land , the most staunch Tories perceived that their duty to their Prince contravened their duty to their God . They

      were at no loss to choose to which allegiance to adhere . There might be a natural and very sore struggle between interest and duty , but the latter prevailed . The husband of the Princess Mary , William , Prince of Orange , was invited over from Holland to secure the Protestant succession . The cold intellect , unimpassioned sagacity , and unalterable resolution of that prince saved the country from spiritual bondage , and , almost without bloodshed , placed the constitutional liberties of England beyond all serious danger . In the last hour , deserted by those in whom he most confided and by bis ovrn daughter , James also was untrue to himself , and after much deceit and vacillation , fled the country .

      Thus far has Mr . Macaulay told with impartial truth and glowing elo-8 uenee the story of the illustrious achievements , the crimes , the follies , and le disasters of our ancestors . The world awaits with impatience the completion of his great national monument .

      M&2 Tie Lea1je It. [No. 298, Saturday,

      M & 2 TIE LEA 1 JE It . [ No . 298 , Saturday ,

      Characters In Little Dorrit. Little Dorr...

      CHARACTERS IN LITTLE DORRIT . Little Dorrit . By Charles Dickens . No . I . Bradbury and Evans . Among the varied circle of Elia ' s friends one is amazed to find a murderer —not a man who murders in a fit of passion—not a man who , stung by some injury which the law is powerless to avenge , takes vengeance into his own hands ; but a cool , calculating , cruel villain , who murders for money , and does it for a certain gaietd de cceur . That the " gentle Elia " should have admired such a man , and called him friend , sounds like a paradox . It is perfectly true , however , as mav be read in Talfourd ' s " Final IVIemorials of Charles Lamb ; " and in an article published by the British Quarterly Review . No . XVI ., where more particulars of this man may be read—particulars which belong to romance , so unlike the ordinary experiences of life are they . " Wainwright ( the murderer ) was sentenced to transportation for fraud ; a friend visited him in Newgate , and the Reviewer thus records part of the

      conversation . , " I do not / said our friend , ' intend to preach to you—that would be idle ; but I ask you , Mr . Mainwright , as a man of sense , whether you do not think your courses have been , to say the least , very absurd ? ' ' No , ' replied the exquisite . ' No . I played for a fortune , and 1 lost . They pay me great respect here , I assure you . They think I am in for ^ 10 . 000 , and that always creates respect . ' ' Well but , ' said the other , ' if you look hack upon your life and see to what it has brought you , does it not demonstrate the folly of your proceedings ? ' 'Not a bit , ' replied he . ¦ I have always been a gentleman —always lived like a gentleman—and I am a gentleman still . Yes , sir , even here in Newgate , I am a gentleman ! The prison regulations are , that we should each in turn sweep the yard . There are a baker and a sweep here besides myself . They sweep the yard ; but , sir , they have never offered me the broom / ' "

      There is a character for a novelist ! Dickens has long known all particulars of this " rlandy murderer , " and at last has resolved on portraying him in a fiction . The Rigaud of " Little Dorrit , " although he leaves us to be tried for the murder of his wife , will escape , and figure through many of the twenty numbers—at least , we hope so . Another character , full of promise for the future , is Mrs . Clennam , the clear , hard , rigorous Calvinist , stern of face and unrelenting of heart , making her religion a weapon of offence , a pretext for the indulgence of tyranny . Dickens always takes up some great abuse as the target for his satire . He has never , we believe , taken up one more urgently needing reform than that of the " bitter observance of the Sabbath , " as we understand it , in England and Scotland . The following is in his best manner : —

      It was a Sunday evening in London , gloomy , oloso , and stale . Maddening church bella of all degrees of dissonance , sharp and flat , cracked and clear , fast andslow , made tho bi-ick and inortar echoes hideous . Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot , steeped th" souls of tho people who were condemned to look at thorn out of windows in diro despondency . In every thoroughfare , up almost every alley , and down almost every turning , some doleful boll was throbbing , jerking , tolling , as if tho Plaguo were in the city and the dead-carts were going round . Everything was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish relief to an overworked people . No pictures , no unfamiliar animals , no rare plants or flowers , no natural or artificial wonders of the ancient world— -all taboo with that enlightened strictness , that tho ugly South sea gotU in tbe British Museum migut have supposed themselves at home again . Nothing to nee but streets , streets , Htreots . Nothing to breathe but streets , stroet , streets . Nothing to change tho brooding naind , or raise it up . Nothing for tho spent toiler to do , Jjut to compare the monotony of his seventh clay with the monotony of his six j—»* wuuiy ioa make ttio Dost ol itthe worst

      ~ - ~ , ..... <«• , « xuq ue , ana — , neoorcling to the probabilities . iwr A * Vi ° 5 L * lW timo » B 0 propitious to the interests of religion and morality , Mr . Arthur Clontmm , newly avrivod from Marseilles by way of Dover , and by Dovor coach the Blue eyecf Maid , sat in the window of a coffee house on Ludgate JHliU . Ion thousand responsible housea smvoundod him , frowning as heavily on tbe streets they oomposeel , as if they woro overy ono inhabited by the ten young men of tho Calender ' s story , who blackened their faces and bemoaned their nuBevioB overy night . Fifty thousand Inira nnrrounded him whero people lived ho nuvwliolosomely , that fan * water put into their orowded rooms on Saturday niiriit , ¦ would be corrupt on Sunday morning ; albeit my lord , their country member was amazed that they failed to sloop in company with , their butohor ' a meat Miles of olosowolls and pilis of Iiouhoh , whovo tho inhabitants gasped for air awetohed far away towards every point of tho compass . Through tho heart of tnet

      own a doadly sewer obbod and flowed , in the placo of a fino fresh rivor . What ¦ 6 < " * J want oould tho million or so of human boiiigs whoso daily labour , nix days *? * ® week , lay among thoeo Arcadian objects , from tho sweet sameness of which *»« y hod no escape between tho oradlo and tho grave—what secular wtint oould thy possibly hnvo upon their sovonth elny ? Clearly they could want nothing but a , ntnagent policeman .

      Mr , Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee house on Ludgate Hill counting one of the neighbouring bells , making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself , and wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the course of the year . As the hour approached , its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating . . At a quarter , it went off into a condition of deadly lively importunity , urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church , Come to church , Come to church . ! At the ten minutes it became aware that the congregation would be scanty , and slowly hammered , oufe in low spirits , They won't come , they won ' t come , they won't come ! At the five minutes , it abandoned hope , and shook every house in the neighbourhood for three hundred seconds , with one dismal swing per second , as a groan of despair . " Thank Heaven ! " said Clennam , wben the hour struck , and the bell stopped . But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays , and the procession would not stop with the bell , but continued to march , on . " Heaven forgive me , " said he , " and those who trained me . How I have hated this day !"

      There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood , when he sat with his hand * before him , scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with . tBe poor child by asking him in its title , why he was going to perdition ? a piece of curiosity that he really in a frock and drawers was not in a condition to satisfy—and which , for the further attraction of his infant mind , bad a parenthesis in every other line with , some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep . Thess . c . iii . v . 6 & 7 . There was the sleepy Sunday of bis boyhood , when , like a military desertei ' , he was marched to chapel by a picquet , of teachers three times a day , morally handcuffed to another boy ; and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of inferior mutton at bis scanty dinner in the flesh . There was the interminable Sunday of Lig

      nonage ; when his mother , stern of face and unrelenting of heart , would sit all day behind a Bible—bound like her own construction of it in the hardest , barest , and . straightest boards , with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain , and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves—as if it , of all books ! were a fortification against sweetness of temper , natural affection , and gentle intercourse . There was the i esentful Sunday of a little later , when he sat glowering and glooming through , the tardy length of the rlay , with a sullen sense of injury in his heart , and . no more real knowledge of the beneficeDt history of the New Testament , than if he had been bred among idolaters . There was a legion of Sundays , all days of unserviceable bitterness and mortification , slowly passing before him .

      This miserable child goes from home , rnd returns a man . The interview with his mother is told in very pregnant sentences : — Arthur followed him up the staircase , which was panelled off into spaces like so many mourning tablets , into a dim bedchamber , the floor of which had gradully so sxmk and settled , that the fireplace was in a dell . On a black bier-Like sofa in this hollow , propped up behind with one great angular black bolster , like the block at a state execution in the good old times , sat bis mother in a widow ' s dress . She and his father had been at variance from his earliest remembrance . To sit speechless himself in the midst of rigid silence , glancing in dread from the

      one adverted face to tbe otber , hadbeen the peacefulest occupation of his childhood . She gave him one glassy kiss , and fOur stiff fingers muffled in worsted . This embrace concluded , he sat down on t ^ e opposite side of her little table . There was a fire in the grate , as there had been night and day for fifteen years . There was a kettle on the hob , as there had been night and day for fifteen years . There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire , and another little mound swept together under the grate , as there had been night and day for ifteen years . There was a smell of black dye in the airless room , which the firo had been drawing out of the crape and sttiff of the widow ' s dress for fifteen months , and out of the bier-like sofa for fifteen years . " Mother , this is a change from your old active habits . "

      " The world has narrowed to these dimensions , Arthur , " she replied , glancing round the room . "It is well forme that I never set my heart upon its hollow vanities . " The old influence of her presence and her stem strong voice , so gathered about her son , that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood . We hope that this dreary , but truthful , picture of English life will form a prominent part in the new story . Of Little Dorrit herself we as yet only get the vaguest of glimpses . Affery and Flintwinch may turn out characters ; but at present we rather dread to think of what Miss Watle will become . It is , however , too early to form more than the vaguest guess as to either the conduct of the story or the nature of the actors ; and , in the case of a popularity so unparalleled as that of Dickens ' , criticism is taki n out of our hands by the public . Thirty-five thousand copies having been sold within the first week , how can we poor critics hope to be heard .

      Browninct's Men And Women. Men And Women...

      BROWNINCt'S MEN AND WOMEN . Men and Women . By Robert Browning . 2 vola . Chapman and Hall . ( SECOND NOTIOK . ) The render of these volumes will assuredly feel himself in the presence of a powerful and original mind , which is not what he oftens feels when turning over volumes of verse . But , although Drowning has thought much , he gives it forth at white heat , and fuses his thought into the mould of verso , he doe s not commit the great mistake of pouring it cold into the moulds-nor does he forget , to use his own language , that—Song ' s our art : "Whoi'oas you ploaso to sponk thono naked thoughts Instead of draping thorn in fdglitn and sounds . True thoughts , good thoughts , thoughts fit to troauuro up ! But why such long prolunion and display , Such , turning and adjustment of the harp , And taking it upon your breast at length , Only to speak dry words acrostt its stringH ? He can argue in verso , but even in argument he does not . forget that ho IS a poet . Sec , as an example , how admirably he argues njrninst the n ^ 'oticism of the Romantic School , in these words , spoken by tho painter monk , *' ra dippo dippi : — Fivflt , ovory Hort of monk , tho black and white , I drew them , fat and loan : then , l ' olkn at ohuroh , From good old gossips waiting to confess Their oribe of barrel-droppings , candle-ends , —

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 8, 1855, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08121855/page/18/