Current:

Leader (1850-1860), 14th April 1855, Edition 2 of 2, Page 20, 356 THE LEADEB. [Saturday ,

Page 20
Page 20
20 of 24

On this page

  • Text (3)
  • Transcript

    • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

      Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

      Handbook Of Painting. Handbook Of Painti...

      painting . The great characteristic of the revival of Art in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a return to the study of nature , which was pushed to a greater extent than it had ever been before , and sometimes led to an abuse which it has been agreed to . call-Naturalism . It was a reaction against this tendency in Art , commenced in modern times by the great Savoyard de Maistre , with purely ecclesiastical views that culminated at length in the work of M . Rio , of which we have spoken . The same ideas , somewhat modified , have recently been maintained in England ; but We shall not at present attempt to follow their eccentric development . The

      discussions which they naturally give rise to amongst young students are not without their utility . We strongly recommend , however , all those who engage in them to consult frequently Kugler ' s admirable Handbook , in which they will find the claims to attention of all the rival schools , from the mystical to the naturalistic , fairly dealt with in a manner which evinces a large and hearty appreciation of Art in general . We may add that the numerous woodcuts , by Mr . George Scharf , by which the work is illustrated , are elegantly executed , and not only assist the reader to understand the text , but are in themselves intrinsically interesting . We refer especially to the series of Raphael ' s Madonnas and Holy Families , which Sir Charles Eastlake , in his able preface , very justly selects for a special notice .

      356 The Leadeb. [Saturday ,

      356 THE LEADEB . [ Saturday ,

      North And South. North Arid South. By Th...

      NORTH AND SOUTH . North arid South . By the Author of " Mary Barton . " Chapman and Hall . North and South is an exceedingly good novel of life in the Midland Counties . By this paradox we mean to say that the book under notice is a good novel in all the generalities that make a novel good , wherever the scene may be laid ; but , as relates to anything special to either the North or the South , or to those two Districts in contrast , it is not so successful : is , not to mince matters , a failure . As this tale appeared originally in Household Words , of course the story and characters are too well known to need our doing anything here but the purely critical . Presuming so much ,

      therefore , we affirm that the Hales , father , mother , and daughter ; the Lennoxes , Mr . Bell , and all that here represent the South , represent simply the well-bred , unmercantile middle-classes of England , and not any class peculiar to any district , or county . While on the other hand the Thorntons , the Higginses and others , as well as the incidents laid in Milton , are no fair picture of the cotton realms of which Manchester is the metropolis . That such characters may exist there as exceptional varieties we cannot deny , of course , but they are not types , nor even generalities : and obviously enough , if you are to put exceptional Horth against uncharacteristic South , you might as well call a book " Christ and Vishnu , " and proceed to discuss

      the my thology of Central Africa- - _ _ _ - Lancashire and the Cotton Trade seems to be ~ Ehe pons asinorum of novelists—with this exception , that none get over it . Mrs . Trollope's Michael Armstrong vras a gross , dauby libel ; . Disraeli ' s Sybil was a sketch of the trade from a Caucasian point of view ; Miss Jewsbury , a Manchester lady , onl y saved Marian Withers from being a failure by ceasing to make it a Lancashire tale ; and here we have Mrs . Gaskell , if not a Manchester lady , a settler therein , failing distinctly , not in the tale , for North and South is a successful and a good novel , but in an attempt to dramatise spinning and weaving , and throw a light on the vexed questions of corn . and cotton , of masters and men . Such failures we hold to be inevitable . A novel must have the same essential dramatic

      characteristics , the same principles of incident , lay the scene where you will ; if you lay-the scene in Lancashire , and are trues toits men and present arrangements , you cannot have those essential requirements ; if you idealise your men and melo-dramatise your incidents , you are false to Lancashire , and might as well have laid the scene in Timbuctoo . A newdubbed hedge is not more level than is Lancashire cotton life . Your grand ideal manufacturer , with we know not how much sunk in business , who keeps an acute eye on all the markets of the world , ready to change his productions to meet any demand , and who makes some awful venture to a distant port , and waits returns with furrowing brow and grizzling hair , till , adverse winds keeping argosies out of port , half a day stands between him and ruin , when suddenly the gale shifts , and blows in a colossal fortune and

      general denouement of prosperity , is as utterly false as it would be to describe such a man selling yarn on the Manchester Exchange in doublet and trunkhose . The division of labour is too well understood in Lancashire . The merchant and the manufacturer are quite separate beings . Six months' study will teach you spinning , six days , manufacturing ; three pounds a week will buy a first-class manager for a spinning '' , and thirty shillings the same for a weaving , mill . Men who * can neither read nor write , ancj with capacities little removed above that of the swine , make fortunes in the trade : men with education and ideas are not more successful , rather less . For onerandtwenty years the history of the Cotton Trade has been ono of septennial crises . A demand arises , a crisis being past , and for three _ years or more , anybody who can manage to . spin or weave has only to spin or weave and sell the product at the market price , settled by competition to a fraction , to make money ; the demand slackens , and be he the wisest or the stupidest of men , his profits grow smaller , change into a loss , a fresh crisis reigns , until

      the corner is turned , and money-making recommences . On the other hand , the workpeople placidly spin and weave , placidly receive their wages , and very hnplacidly at wakes and fairs and dog-fights spend them , every now and then , and always at the wrong time , flying into open mutiny for more wages . While , as regards the question of masters and men and strikes , the masters , making of money being their highest ideal , always endeavour to make as much as they can by keeping the operative ' s wages as low as they can ; while the operative , spending ns ho gets ,- is always ready to use his real or fancied power to get more without any reference as to whether the Masters can afford more at the time in question . Now , as regards painting characters and subduing them into a dramatic story , the material is not here ; and as to" assisting to solve vexed questions of capital and labour by a fiction , why take two round-about volumes to say what we can say in thirty words V There can be no solution of this question till both master

      and man have learned that neither money , nor things purchasable by money , are the highest ends of man ' s being here . We therefore are of opinion on general grounds , deduced by abstrac t reasoning , that the Cotton Trade presents ample field for the philanthropist , the practical reformer , the political economist , and the general writer , that it affords no proper material for the veracious delineator of human life in a harmonious , interesting whole ; in a . word ,, for the writer of fictipn . And here , in North and South , we have an instance of the truth , of our theory . The book is interesting , but how "? By Thornton being made an untrue picture of a Lancashire millowner , by Higgins and the hands being made embodiments of Mrs . Gaskell ' s ideas of the workpeople ' s feelings , but not of their real feelings . Independent of this , so much of the book as relates to Lancashire is full of errors which it is inconceivable for a resident in

      Manchester to have made , and which none but a lady could have so made . Thornton is described as a very extensive spinner and manufacturer—trading to all parts of the globe , and known all over the kingdom , and he rents his mill on a lease . We will engage to say there are not two large concerns in Lancashire that rent their mills : except in small concerns , to own them being the invariable rule . Error number one . Thornton , again , is a merchant shipping to all quarters of the globe : this again is extremely exceptional . There are not ten concerns that so ship as a rule , and these ten are owned by millionnaires who deal in all manner of produce in the countries to which they ship . Only in times of great depression do manufacturers export on their own account , and this is the time when Thornton ceases shipping . Error number two . Again , Thornton has bills drawn on him for his cotton—cash payments in ten days being the immutable and to

      never invaded rule of Liverpool ; a fact that needy men wishing spin know to their cost . Error number three . Again , accounting for the necessity to keep wages lower , Thornton says , " The Americans are getting their yarn so into the general market , that our only chance is to beat them by producing at a lower rate . " We have heard all manner of reasons assigned for bad trade , but this is the first time any man , woman , or child found this out . American competition is altogether a bagatelle , and in yarn it is less than nothing . They cannot even supply themselves , with high protective duties . Error number four . Again . Thornton stocks heavily , and that after the strike . To stock at all is so much at variance with the custom of Lancashire manufacturers , as coupled with the fact of that stocking following on the strike , to make this Error ' number five . Again , when Thornton is in difficulties , Higgins stops to work after the mill has closed . To do this the engines must have run for the generous Higgins ' s two lobms , in which case , for every twopence / would lose

      his generosity gave Thornton , thatgentleman fivejpounds . Error number six . Again , Thornton gets into his difficulties partly by his stocks -falling one-half .- _ From October ,-1853 , to December , 1854 , . occurred the greatest fallTon record in the history of the cotton trade , and yet stocks never fell one-half , ^ nor one-quarter . Erroc number seven . Lastly , to crown all , comes the closing absurdity in two senses , in a trade sense and a literary sense . This gre ^ at millowiier , this extensive merchant , this man rich enough to stock heavily , when he has made a severe loss and his stocks have fallen one-half , can be set on his legs by what ?—by 18757 . ! Why , as many thousands would hardly- have done it . This is the trade absurdity . But this Thornton , who is in desperate love with Margaret Hale , and is firmly convinced that she dislikes him , when she in his difficulties—he in hers having been a sound friend—offers , out of her forty thousand pounds , to lend him this 1875 Z ., is so staggered with the munificence , that he construes it at once into a declaration of her love for him . This is the other

      absurdity . . If bur objections seem ^ too technical , we have to allege in excuse-that , we take so deep an interest in the questions that agitate Lancashire and its trade arrangements ; are so convinced that nothing but sound , strong , masculine , practical insight can aid their solution ; are so sure that in this , above all other social complications , sentimental yearnings and feverish idealisations only complicate matters ; are so certain that if there are two classes that should give trade and masters-and-men questions a wide berth , those classes are clergymen and women ; that we have taken especial pains to show , and it could only be shown by such technicalities , that our authoress knows too little of the Cotton Trade to be entitled to increase the confusion

      by writing about it . ' Apart from these things , we can heartily praise North and South , me tale is deeply interesting . And it has all that purity of style and true appreciation of character and skill in its delineation for which Mrs . Gaskell has hardly a rival among our lady novelists .

      Books On Our Table. The Crimea: With A V...

      BOOKS ON OUR TABLE . The Crimea : With a Visit td Odessa . By Charles W . Koch . G . Routledgo and Co . The World and its Beautiful Lights and Sympathies . By Jame $ Waymouth . James Blnckivooo . The Simple Truth : A Tract for Young Men . Bull , Himton and Co . The Vicar of Wakefield . Bv Oliver Goldsmith . ( With thirty-two Illustrations , oy William Mulready , R . A . " John Van Voorst . Westward Ho ! or , the Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh , Knight oj Vurrougn , in the County of Devon , in the Reign of her most Glorious Majesty Queen Jilizaocin Rendered into Modern English . By Charles Kingaley . 8 vols . Macmillan ana Co .

      Ireland ' s Recovery ; or Excessive Emigration and its Reparative Agencies »« r V ^ "' f ' An Essay , with ppendix . By John Locko , A . B . John W . Parker ™ ^ ° ' \ Natural Philosophy . First Treatise . Mechanics , inchuling the haws V j' "" : * ; " Motion , and Pyronomics , or the Laws of-Tleat , with Questions for bmmimtw-By Richard Green Parker , A . M . ( Parker ' s Education Course , New Jidition . i * Thomas Alninn and boo . The Works qf Virgil , closely rendered into English Ithj / thm , and Illustrated from Brttu Poets of the 16 th , 17 th , and 18 th centuries . Bytfio Rev . Robert ^ f ^ J ^ JJ , The citing if ° L Kingdom , a Series of Tracfs . By Jainea Douglas . ? ' Covow . NoJ Praylr and the War . Tlioinaa Const nbjo ftntl u > The Serf and the Cossack : a Sketch of the Condition of the Russian ^ ° PJt "J * r J " . Marx .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 14, 1855, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_14041855/page/20/