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    882 T HE LEAD EB, [No. 838, Satttbday,

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    THE SKETCHER. The Sketcher.By the Rev- J...

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    THE RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE. Gfwerresde...

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    Emerson On Englastd. English Traits. % R...

    in iie presence of God , that when they are called upon to accept a living , perhaps , of 40602 . a year at that very instant they are moved by the Holy Ghost to accept the office and administration thereof , and fox no other reason whatever ? " The modes of initiation are more damaging than custom-house oaths . The bishop is elected by the dean and prebends ot the cathedral . The Queen sends these gentlemen a congf d ' e ~ U re , ¦ or leave to elect ; bat also sends them the name of the person whom they are to elect . They go into the cathedral , chant and pray , and beseech the Holy Ghost to assist ihem in their choice ; and , after these iirvocations , invariably find that the dictates of ihe Holy Ghost agree with the recommendations of the Queen . The following is worthy of Sydney Smith : — The Church at this moment is much to be pitied . She has nothing left but possession . If a bishop meets an . intelligent gentleman , and reads fatal interrogations in his eyes , he has no resource hut to . take wine with Mm . False position introduces cant , perjury , simony , and ever a lower class of mind and character into the cleigy : and , when the hierarchy is afraid of science and education , afraid of piety , afraid of tradition , and afraid of theology , there is nothing left but to quit a Church , which is no longer one .

    882 T He Lead Eb, [No. 838, Satttbday,

    882 T HE LEAD EB , [ No . 838 , Satttbday ,

    The Sketcher. The Sketcher.By The Rev- J...

    THE SKETCHER . The Sketcher . By the Rev- John Eagles . Blackwool and Sons . Axthotjgh the Sketcher appeared as a series of papers in Blackwood s Magajsine , and may therefore be presumed to have some element of popularity in it , we suspect that only a peculiar public will appreciate it : a public interested in landscape and . elegant literature , which is a inucb smaller jmblic than it pretends to be . Mr . Eagles was a man of elegant culture , an . artist , and something of a poet ; but he was a mild writer , correct rather than fascinating , judicious rather than impressive . We found his book one which -could be laid down without any regret , and left unread without much impatience ; yet while reading it we felt as if a mild and pleasant gentleman were discoursing to us on subjects agreeable and suggestive , to which we listened with admiration , but from which our attention was easily withdrawn . ¦ The part of the book which pleased us most is that wliich he has devoted to Poussin , probably because we share to a great extent his admiration of that painter :-

    —Who ever better understood the placid stream , the deep tarn , or mountain river , in its life and motion , from the first gushing , through all its course and rests ? So his ^ figures are all disengaged and free—are beings of leisure . They are of robest growth , natural vigour of limb and understanding , of a race sprung from the very woods and jocks , untamed and untamable to slave toil ; no artificial elegance—the very reverse ¦ of the smirking , piping , cocked hat , and flowered shepherds of French crockery ( how the artist must have detested , them !) but all of the simple elegance of pastoral freedom and leisure , a part -with , and influenced by the whole scenery—not as if they commanded it , or could command it , or / would twist aside the streams , or cut a twig in ^ 11 tleir land . Even the peculiarity of undress is entirely appropriate . It makes them of the pastoral age , and such as never can belong to any other . Like their fraternal trees , they are mot ashamed to show their rind . They live in no dressed . paradise ; all that is of the formal cast , as belonging to another beauty , that poetical painter rejects . All his pictures are , th « refore , ' ajust whole . Though he saw the beauty ,

    -as one who could be insensible *• it , of the solemn cypress and pine , he would not -overawe the simple youth and freedom of his foliage by their forbidding dictatorial -cast . And it is remarkable that all his trees are in , or rather under than past , their vigorous growth . They are of youth and freshness , like the fabled indwelling wood-Uymph and Faun that never grow old . Scarce any have attained the girt of timber 4 » invite the axe , that the most avaricious eye shall never calculate their top and lop . They have the life of pastoral poetry in themselves , and are therefore eternal in un-• dying . youth arid vigour . And to make this his natural ideal perfect , nothing is introduced to disturb this serene life , unless , indeed , he paints & storm , and then , who « ver toased his foliage about like him , as if he were familiar with the winds , and knew -all their ways , and played with and limited their power ?—for you still see that there is but an occasional irruption of violence that will pass , to uproot and tear away perhaps some discordant objects , and that gentle Peace had but retired to the shelter of the shepherds' homes , and would again soon walk forth in uninjured beauty . But in the whole landscape , no too rugged form , and no awful sublimity , is introduced , to mar , aa it may be termed , the natural ideal . Accessibility is a striking character in

    • all his compositions . There is not a height or a depth unapproachable ; and this accessibility is marked throughout , or carefully indicated , by path , or road , or building , or figure . The whole terrene is fox the inhabitants , and the inhabitants for the terrene , and all are free " to wander where they -will . " The accesibility ie perfect , and it is of a home character , for all the lines tend into the scene , none out . The paths ¦ entice you -within , where you may eat of the lotus , and never dream of departure . Very ingenious also is his analysis of Poussin ' s method of composition . But the Sketcher by no means confines himself to pictures ; he breaks out occasionally into verse ^ which , to confess the truth , we skipped after the first specimen ) and varies his themes by criticisms of the poets . Altogether the Sketcher is a composite affair , better suited , to the pages of ft Magazine than to the demands made by a book . At page 70 , Mr . Eagles oppofes the now universally admitted opinion that 4 hc ancients cared little for landscape , and those who have read Mr . Ruskin ' s eloquent and convincing 1 pages on this subject will be curious perhaps to sec what can be said on the other side :

    It has been said that the ancients had no great notion or admiration of landscape ; —aa a painter ' s art , perhaps not ; hut Horace was not tli « only one who thought ¦ " flumina amera aylvasque inglorius . " It is true , they give you no very elaborate descriptions ; and I doubt whether any elaborated descriptions , not excepting our Mrs . Radcliffe'a ever give them quite successfull y . But they often paint in a word , and awaken to the eye more than meets the ear . There ia a vast range for the sketcher over Homer ' s ovpea aKtoevra— " the shadowing mountain , and resounding sen , " are a boundary within which are noble and exquisite pictures . The Odyasejj is delightful totao landscape painter . And who will be bold enough to try hia hand at the £ & r & ens of Alcinous ? Then , what ma # njficeut lion-hunts and marine pieces , with t » e steam-vessels that know all ports , and went self-directed , " covered with vapour ana aoua 1 ^ Ulysses throwing the magic safety-girdle behind him into the sea , and a thousand other admirable subjects . -nJ ^ v ! " * ' •* " $ ° tiM » g while pretending to settle the matter . It is not omy Decauae , the awaeate " givo you no very elaborate descriptions" but because . they eadubit * o feelTng for landscape , that critics jnauitain their ¦ nferwnfcy m this * oa |« ct . . && . they admired landscape as much as Mrs . ttadchffe , they would lum > described it as elaborately . As to their

    paintingin a word more than meets the ear , that entirely depends upon the eye which sees it . Mr . Eagles chooses Homer ' s ovpea cnciaevra as a specimen ; and says it offers " a vast range for the sketcher . " Truly , but the sketcher must bring his own landscape 1 If " shadowy mountains'" is suggestive to the sk « tcher , it can only be because his mind is already full of pictures Homer paints none . Let us consider for a moment the passage in which Homer employs the phrase , which because it happens to occur in a sounding line has become memorable ^ and to us moderns seems pictorial . Achilles is * com plaining of his treatment , regrets having left his own country to come and * fight against the Trojans , who never did him any larm , never drove his cattle off his meadows , for the excellent reason that ; the Trojans were separated from him by " shadowy mountains , and a roaring sea . " Achilles is not intending to be poetical ; he states a prosaic fact ; the more shadowy or wooded the mountains , the greater the obstacle they presented . If we in reading Homer , forget the obstacle , and think only of the picturesque mountains , we must nut credit Homer with our sensibilities , and suppose he meant what we interpret . While touching on Homer , we may quote what the Sketcher says about Cowper's translation of a passage : —

    Pictor . Hising smoke is always delightful—it is associated yith home ; and m would place a home wherever we see beauty . We say to ourselves— - " Here would I live ; " and in this place the proprietor and architect have but embodied the mind ' s sketch and desire . It i 3 the picture ever present to the mind ' s eye of Ulysses . "When heart-sick in despair of not seeing it , he would die . "Ulysses—happy , might he but behold The smoke ascending froin . his native land—Death covets . " . " - Sketcher . You quote from Cowper—he has lost the feeling and the picture of the passage . Homer does not say happy -would he be , as if it were the reflection of the author , but that Ulysses , ardently longing to see the smoke , & c , desires death . It is tlie feeling of Ulysses that Homer intended to show . Then the picture—" the smoke ascending , " is feeble in motion . In Homer the smoke itself would be seen to rise , and with a life and animation springs up , leaps vp from his native land —» ca ; n / oj / aarodpaoKovra . Ovid is as feeble ia his imitation—¦ ¦ " ¦ . ¦ ¦ ' . ;¦ . . ¦¦"¦• ' ¦' - ¦¦' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ .. . : . "¦¦ ¦' ¦ : . ¦ " Optat ¦ - ¦ ¦ ¦ . " ¦ ' ¦ ' . ¦ ' ; . ' .

    3 ? umum de patnis posse videre focis . To see the smoke is imperfect , the Greek alone is complete . "When Ulysses first discovers the abode of Circe , it is likewise by the smoke ; but Homer does not on that occasion use the same sentient -word , it was rising , and indeed gTacefully waring , aia-crovTa , hut not leaping up to be seen—there is not that life and desire in it tliat Homer engenders . He wished that the very smoke of laome should have a sentient life , and spring up to welcome the master of the hearth . And why may not this be Circe ' s habitation ? -the passage illustrates the position as well as the incident . Ulysses had ascended a rock , and hence saw tlie smoke arising . It is an abode fit for an enchantxess—beautiful , well built , and the scene appropriate to magic arts in the depths—a place deep in . among the-windings of such a valley as this—ev jS ^ o-OTjat , and in just such a clear spot , thus surrounded , as if words of magic power had bade the woods tecede , and make a place for the magician ' s dwelling , it is rrepio-Keirra ) evt

    ^< op < a " in a look-round place , "—recollect it is in the midst of the depths , so that if you had not that word nepio-iceiTTa , the position would Tie well marked ; yet in spite of this does Cowper , who , like other prospect lovers , thought perhaps there must be a distinct view , ventured to mistranslate the passage thus : — "We went Through yonder oaks ! embosom'd in a vale , But built conspicuous on a swelling knoll , With polish'd rock , we found a stately dome . " _ Not a word about a *' swelling knoll" in the original ; but Cowper thought there could not be any looking about or around without it , and gives that meaning to n-epia-KeTTTO ) . He adopts Clarke's translation , " Conspicuo in loco , " a " nd by way of adding something of Ms own to match it , hits upon the " swelling knoll . " It is too suburban .

    The Religious Wars Of France. Gfwerresde...

    THE RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE . Gfwerresde Religion , By J . Michelet . Paris : Ghanwot So many histories of St . Bartholomew lave been written that a new history has become essential . M . Michelet ' s , the newest , and one of the best , ought not to _ close the series . It is a richly-illustrated essay , a critical argument flashing with light and colour , rapid and searching , yet more suggestive than satisfactory . "When the historian ceases , when lie has presented , with capitular inscriptions , twenty-six tragic or romantic tableaux , crowded with sixteenth-century life , bold , and abundantly artistic , it is felt that the narrative is imperfect , episodical , abrupt . Some of the connecting links have been lost ; events and men Lave been too dramatically grouped to allow the entire imposing procession to move across the stage . But M , Michelet has broken up a mass of ecclesiastical chronicling that had long passed for history , in and out of France . In his volumes on the Renaissance , the Reformation , and tlie Religious Wars of the seventeenth century , there is a broad debatable ground , for . as a writer he ia too personal , too

    authoritative , too much addicted to surprise and paradox , not to draw on many an attack ; but this may be said , —that he obliterates a multitude of chimerical traditions that once held possession of the Church and the Academy- Were it not that civil history is so perversely separated from religious history , he might even dethrone some of the doctors of the critical Sorbonne j but it must be a keen knife , in a good light , which will pierce through that integument . However , M . Michelet writes for those who will read , and it ia possible that the students of De Capcfigue and I > e Falloux—now known to fame as the Pcre Loriquet of our generation—may receive a purer inspiration from writers who believe neither in the virtues of Catherine do Medicis , nor in the vices of De Coligny , in the terrors of the Reformation , nor in the beneficence of St . Bartholomew . In relation to those topics , a number of loose errors are afloat , such as thoso which M . Eugene Despoix has so effectively characterised . These not being tho days , he says , when Freret would bo committed to the Bastille for insinuating that the Franks were not descended from Francus , grandson of Hector , it is permissible to write historical truth . 3 t . Despoix . knows , of course , as well as wo , that historical

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1856, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_13091856/page/18/