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Leader (1850-1860), 13th September 1856, Edition 2 of 2, Page 15, September 13,1856.:] THE LEADEB. 879

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      bar of persons there are , in tins country , at once happy and rich . Statistics do not represent them . Nothing represents them better than a " glance at London . A prodigious city , lost amid its suburbs , with nearly every house inhabited and furnished , and a large majority of the houses inhabited by quiet and comfortable people . Beyond the subur b s , in every direction , are double lines of luxurious villas j and still farther , grouped near the different railways , little towns , supported almost solely by pleasure-seekers—all

      indicative of prosperity , and , to some extent , of happiness . If you say that rich people leave town because to leave town is fashionable , that weary girls seek restoration in the country from the dissipations of the long London carnival , that the gaiety of the sea-side is a social mockery , —tliat may suit the tone of an opening chapter ; but go to a watering-place , dull as a watering-place in England is , and Contradiction meets you on the parade . There are a thousand heauti . es there , with a flush , not hectic , on the cheeks ; there are crowds of individuals too well conditioned i

      n mind , body , and estate , to be miserable ; you may take it for granted life is not a burden to t 7 ie ? n—t \\ e stout gentlemen and the superb Coeitelia-S ; the conscious , confident faces are those of merry young people , who enjoy their rides , drives , and walks , and never think of cankers in roses , or hollow hearts that wear a mask , or anything else disagreeable . They come down "by first-class , express , and they come down by the excursion train ; they may- be seen at every pretty place on the coasi , and when they are unable to strike from tlie metropolis as far as the sea , they haunt the pretty places on the river , or rejoice on the little hills that seem made for holiday-seekexs round London .

      If we did not think of these things from time to time , a false melancholy would come over us . AH . the divorce eases are xecorded and repeated in the journals ; but with happy marriages reporters bave nothing to do . " We hear of houses burnt , tut if we go outside the door , "we shall see London more immense than ever . So , in every direction . The scum rises to the top , and we have dismal hints of the dregs that lie at the bottom , but there is a healthy , well-compounded body between , doing its daily work , suffering only a light average of human sorrow .

      If the vice , or the misery , that is obtruded upon our attention in particular exemplifications , were r « ally working through the whole mass of humanity , if men were not in general honest , marriages in general happy , individuals in general only so far dissatisfied as to be stimulated in their careers , society could not hold together . Ajid if it could hold together it would not be worth improving , and reformers and moralists would be the worst of the whole illusion .

      September 13,1856.:] The Leadeb. 879

      September 13 , 1856 .: ] THE LEADEB . 879

      A Poet And A Tatiuot. —Mr. J. Bronterro ...

      A Poet and a Tatiuot . —Mr . J . Bronterro O'Brien has published an ' Elegy on the Death of Robespierre , with a modest preface confessing that a few lines arc copied literally from the ' Lycidas' of Milton , with " or two exquisite passages , applicable to the ' situation . ' " The first four lines are appropriated , and spoiled ; then follows a parody down to " Tho meed of somo melodious tear . " Two or three stanzas are interposed , and wo then resume " Begin , yo sisters of tho sacred well . "

      From " Yo valleys low" fifteon lines are copied , and so forth , no marks being used to indicate which is which , whether it is Milton or O'Briem that sings . This exposure may show to tho reliqua * y band that still clings to tlio old class of Chartist orators , what are tho capaoitios and what the scruples , of tho individuals who pretend to load them . Not a lino in the Elegy , or in tho two Odes tUat accompany it , is readable , except Milton ' s . A Stud Farm . —A joint-stook company of a novel character is in courso of formation at Newmarket a company for the breed of horses . It includes some high and ariatocratical names among ita committee .

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      [ IN OSnS DEPARTMENT , AS Ail . OMjTIOJfS , nO'WTEVEB EXTREME . ABE AT . XOWED AIT EXPKESSIOM , THE EDITOR NEC-ESSAIUI . Y IIOXD 3 HIHSKAF KBSrOJN'SIBLE SOB XONE . 1

      There Is No Learned Man. But -Will Confe...

      There is no learned man . but -will confess h . e hath much profited by reading controversies , his senses awakened , and Ins judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him . to lead , why should it not , at least . be tolerable for his adver sary to write ? —Milton .

      The Order In American Disorder. (To Ike ...

      THE ORDER IN AMERICAN DISORDER . ( To ike Editor of ' the Leader . ) We Americans are doubtless very grateful for every attempt at a fair appreciation of our institutions made by Europeans , tut it is not to be denied that our critics generally exhibit a profound lack of sympathy with what constitutes tlie distinctively American mind and tendency . Our present America may be called a purgatorial world . That as to say , it Dears very much the same relation to Europe tliat the purgatorial world of the Papists bears to nature . For America is really the connecting link or transition point between two very distinct stages of human culture , and unless it be viewed in this light , it is

      impossible , in nay opinion , to formulate any reasonable or commanding doctrine on the subject . America connects the great past evolution of mankind , which Las been ecclesiastical and political , with a much grander future evolution , which shall be pre-eminently social . And inasmuch as this past evolution of the human mind has proceeded in a strictly literal manner , being based upon the reverence due to certain institutions , 6 o , consequently , tlie new evolution , which is a spiritual one , being based exclusively upon the reverence which is due to man as map , can hardly fail to bring the most sacred institutions into desuetude , or , what is the same thing , vacate our existing morality .

      What Europe has . done for man has been to lift him put of barbarism and give aim citizenship , or turn him , from a mere puppet and plaything of the gods , into the member of a peaceful and . orderly earthly community called the State . The barbaric conception of life , out of which our existing civilization has been gradually -wrung , involves a doctrine of God and man , suggestive only of despair for the latter . Man is regarded only as the spoit of the gods , while they themselves , instead of being wise and good beings , are , to the last degree , childish and capricious , taking delight in whatever flatters their power , and intolerant of everything like constancy and dignity in human affairs . But even these gods themselves obey a deadlier despotism , for over all the

      early imagination of the race presides a diabolic doctrine of Fiite , a fate which domineers gods and men alike , which laughs at the holiest affections , and lif ts one to exalted heights only tliat it may precipitate him to an utter downfal . Before the coming of Christ the State had no power to emerge from the womb of this gaunt and stifling superstition , because the Church , which alone fathers the State , had thitherto had only a formal or symbolic development , the Jew being as hopelessly superstitious as any of tlie Gentile nations . The superior historic interest of Greece and Home , to our imagination , will be found ) on analysis , to refer itself to the fact that their growth exhibits a striking decline in the empire of

      superstition and fanaticism , or argues an . approximation towards the scientific conception of the State . Good and wise men in those communities aspired to give stability to human affairs , but their aspirations were fruitless , because , having merely the personal conception of God , or being destitute of the human conception which was revealed only in the Christ , they did not know how to shape tlie popular thought into harmony ¦ with the rational fact . Indeed , the best minds of that day were bound to run into infidelity , and mere infidelity , as all thoughtful men recognize , furnishes a very treacherous bottom for any permanent engineering . What was wanted was the complete discrimination of religion from superstition , and this took place only in Christianity . ,

      Superstition has been often defined , but ita etymology tells tlio whole story . It is the doctrine of a superfluous or unemployed divine force in the world , of a force which is not entirely worked into the ordinary woof of life , and which is liable therefore to an occasional mischievous determination ; for nothing is more essentially mischievous than idle or unemployed force . To the uninstructed mind God superstat—stands above the world , stands spatially aloof from his creation and sees it spin , giving it now a cuff and now a caress , as it suits his irresponsible pleasure . It is the doctrine of an essential disproportion between the creator and tlio oreature , of such a disproportion aa makes it incumbent on the creature to do something more than reflect or image his creator , namely , to flatter him and give him a certain portion of his time and substnnce . In short , superstition gives us a haunted world , a world haunted by the power which made it , and which , instead of engaging in new cntcrnrizea of similar

      pith , ever comes back with senile pertinacity , to mend or mar that which has long since passed from under its fingers . Religion , and by religion I mean Christianity alone , tells a wholly different tale . It is the doctrine of a complete proportion or harmony l > etween God and man , between creator and creature It denies that there is any superfluous Divine energy in the world , any energy which is not fully engrossed in the work of creation . It denies the temporal and spatial conception of the relation between God and the son ? ,

      and affirms that this relation is exclusively spiritual , standing in tlie intensely human perfection of God on the one side , and the unselfish dispositions which that perfection is sure to generate in the creature , on the other side . In this -way Christianity prepared to sop up the Pagan or superstitious conception of God , as an idle an ! possibly mischievous power , by showing Him intent on developing his creature out of ' all merely personal or natural ties , up to the highest capacities of _ the human , form , that is , into the love and fellowship of universal man .

      That Christianity has so imperfectly manifested her mission as yet has been owing to the fact that she has been obliged to operate by Buch poor instrumentalities as bishops and priests . These persons have had so powerful a vested interest in maintaining the comparatively worthless letter of her authority , that her divine and '[ universal spirit has been completely stifled in their bosoms . Still the practical influence of Christianity in . Europe lias ever been to secularize the Church , or rather to consecrate the State . Its constant operation has been to take the relation of the soul to God out of the

      custody of the priest , and make it the exclusive concern of the private conscience . The immense corruption it encountered in the Romish Church seems to have had no other effect than to inflame this tendency or bring it into clearer day . Nothing , accordingly , is more obvious in Protestantism than the ceaseless effort which the State , or secular element , makes to precipitate the Church , or vacate it as a present power over the life and liberty of the citizen . All its energy goes to dignify the citizen , or to ensure him an irreproachable character and an unchecked career , without the l « ast reference to his ecclesiastical status . No one acquainted with Europe can help seeing that its ecclesiastical life is at its last gasp , and that the living tide of -the divine influence tends ever more and more away from it , to the

      evolving of an earthly state of man which shall be commensurate with his heavenly one , and therefore ifistinct with an order of its own . The popular conscience feels the Church to be wholly dissociated with the religious life of the race . It is admitted to have been an admirable witness of the truth , when the truth itself was rationally latent , but science is now furnishing an embodiment to that truth so infinitely superior as to make the Church look comparatively imbecile and delirious . We treat it in Miort as we treat the aged and infirm : we leave it to repose undisturbed in the chimney corner , and go about our business from Monday morning -to Saturday night , without once remembering its maxims or heeding its complaints . Yours , & c , H . J . Paris , August 30 th , 1856 .

      Thk Church Difficulties At Cuerkeitwell....

      Thk Church Difficulties at Cuerkeitwell .. — Fresh difficulties have arisen in the parish of St . James ' s , Clcrkemveli , in reference to the election of a minister for that district . Acting upon the opinion of Sir Fitzroy Kelly , that the right of the parishioners to elect has passed from them to the new vestry , the vestry have claimed the right of nomination , and have announced that they -will receive applications from clergymen wishing to become candidates , until Monday next , the 15 th inst . The new difficulties which liavo arisen are in connexion with the appointment to another church in the same district , and which the Bishop of London has formally sequestrated . During the incumbency of the Rev . W . E . L . Faulkner , tho late minister , St . Jamos ' s Chapol , Pontonville , was converted into a perpetual curacy , aa ecclesiastical district iras assigned to it , and . the Rev . Dr . Anthony Lefroy Courtonay , chaplain to the Earl of

      Hardwicke , was appointed to tho incumbency . Dr . Courtonay repudiates the sequestration . Sir Fitzroy Kelly having been applied to foi an opinion , writos : — " It is clear that tho chapel , which seems to bo of considerable pecuniary value , has been dealt witli in an unauthorized manner , and that tho trustees wlio hold the property in it for the benefit of tho parishioners of Clerkenwcli , ought to have intorjposed long ago to check the proceeding said to havo been adopted by Dr . Cour ^ . tonay , ami that they ought now to recover that property for tho benefit of tho body of parishioners whom they represent . " Dr . Couitenny intends to resist any interference with his rights , while it is understood that the pnrishionorfl generally will apply to tho Queen ' s Bencli to restrain tho vcatry from appointing an incumbent to tho parish , inasmuch ^ they contend that the election , ought to be iu the hands of tlio ratepayers .

      Mademoiselle Jouanna Wagner . —Tho Presse , oE Brussels , atatea that Mademoiselle Johanna Wagnor ,. tho celebrated singer , was married , on Satmday last , to M . Joclnnann , tho son of a millionnairo of Tilsit .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1856, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13091856/page/15/