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Leader (1850-1860), 18th August 1860, Edition 2 of 2, Page 8, * A Century of Despotism in Sapl** and X...

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      Telegraphic Communication With A Me Rica...

      hope shortly to be in possession of a narrative as to the observations now making , and the facts gathered by those sent to make personal survey of the whole route , -which tvill show what extraordinary advantages would arise from this telegraphic line not 6 nly to commerce , but to science and civilization . ,

      736 The Saturday Analyst And Leader. [Au...

      736 The Saturday Analyst and Leader . [ Aug . 18 , I 860

      The Bourbons In Sicily. Female Talent In...

      THE BOURBONS IN SICILY . FEMALE talent in the present day is not diffident of its power * and shrinks from no subject however difficult . The female author shrinks not from politics , and has , indeed , of late been extraordinarily busy with the course of events now taking- place in Italy We read in this the natural sympathy of women with the principles of freedom and the deeds of valour . Miss Homer has devoted her pen to the story of a hundred years in the Two Sicilies , and the conduct of the Bourbons during that period . She candidly acknowledges her indebtedness to the history of Naples by General Pietro Collettarecently translated into English ; but we are not

      , aware of the amount of the matter thus imported into the little volume before us , nor what proportion belongs to its nominal author . Nor perhaps is it of importance to award to either a specific share of merit . If the book be a good compilation , as well as a succinct record ( which it undoubtedly is ) of events , it cannot be otherwise than acceptable . Of the importance of the events now passing , Miss Homer manifests a due sense . A revolution , she says , is now in progress , which , though for the present centred in Sicily and Naples , promises to be of greater magnitude and _ importance than any which have preceded it , and , if successful , it is hoped may prove the last . ' _ . ¦ " ' , , view of the nature of the le

      Miss Horner has a true struggnow impending . It is not alone , she rightly avers , the resistance of anyone oppressed nation agamst a despotic g ^^ of the principle of independence , justice , and a government formed by the many , and for the many , against despotism and legitimacy , or right ( miscaUed divine ) pf the few . The cause does not belong to one , but to all the European fainilies . Its champions are the educated middle classes , and the most enlightened portion of the aristocracy supported by the people , and led by moiiarchs who represent the democratic principle . This , we repeat , is a true view of ± he matter , and goes lair to . give us a certain degree of confidence in her book . " "" - ¦ ¦ ¦ ' . ' ' : ' ' ¦' ¦ ' ' ' . ' ¦¦ ¦ . ' . " ' : ' ' , " , ' ' ' ¦ '"' : ' - '

      Her researches into the history of Bourbon misrule for a century have convinced her that the system , so nefariously upheld , is merely " a ... decayed / system , propped up by superstition , soldiers , and police . ' Its present chainpion , Francis II ; , is a Iralf imbeeile youth , undei the guidance of an Austrian stepmother . The cause commands the active co operation of every true lover of liberty , and no true man will seek to isolate himself from its progress . Any notion of a compromise is idle . The treachery of Ferdinand II . will be repeated by his son , if the slightest degree of confidence should be placed in his promises . From the . day which had brought the news of the battle of Novara Ferdinand felt secure , and speedily threw off the mask of constitutionalism , which until then he had maintained . The city becanie at once a scene of arrests ' . and arbitrary violence . The Jesuits returned to Naples on a petition from the archbi § hcTJ 7 "atncl ~ the' kingreistored . "tor them the ~

      superiiitendence of all the schools and colleges . Then recommenced the trials by inquisition for political offences . " In the midst of the bitter misery caused by disappointed hopes , and of mourning families , ; deprived of fathers , husbands , and brothers , who were languishing in horrible dungeons , the King of Naples was rejoicingat the birth of a daughter , on which occasion the Pope presented him with the consecrated golden rose , a gift reserved for favoured sovereigns , or persons of exalted lineage . Thus did self-interest and fear unite men of opposite characters to rejoice together over the ruins of the countrywhichhad given them birth . " We concur with our authoress in the opinion that Europe should not give another opportunity for a similar triumph either to the despot or the pontiff .

      Biological Criticism. F F^ Kiticism In O...

      BIOLOGICAL CRITICISM . f f ^ KITICISM in our day takes every possible shape ; and the \ J reviewer confides to his periodical essay not merely his opinion on the work , which is its nominal subject , but the result of his own studies as an independent thinker . Mr . Arthur Lloyd Windsor is a critic of this sort ; and , as a contributor to the " British Quarterly Review , " enabled us to interpret the literary life of the age of Montaigne and De Foe , and to make a clear sweep of the ages by a comparison of ancient and modern oratory in three wellwritton essays , which are reproduced in a handsome volume recently published . But they appear not alone ; they are accompanied with

      other similar compositions , treating of Milton , Dryden , Pope , bwift , Bolingbroke , Harloy , Goldsmith , and the History of Prose Fiction in England . In connexion with De Foe , wo have likewise some ttecbi ^^ implies or expresses a principle , which he embodies in a proposition -, namely , that " the literary life of the past two centuries , like the social , * has a large element ot ' anecdoto in it , by the contemplation of which alone it Can be fullv realized . " He tells . us , that " stray waifs—straws in the intellectual atmosphere—not infrequently afford material for the moat efficacious mental characterization , where the formal facts of biography proper , though nt first sight

      more imposing , give a less authentic portraiture ; " and that in this work it has been his object . " to arrest these motes of intelligence , now fast eluding the ken of the present generation , and to winndw them on the threshing-floor of -biological criticism . " These two last words we have selected as the . title for this article , which means a sort of treatise on the literary life of the periods referred to , as symbolized in anecdotes . ¦ . There is something novel in this view of old subjects , and Mr . Lloyd Winter , in treating them , proceeds epically ; that is , he starts in media res . But we begin at the beginning—which happens to be at the end of his book—with his last chapter , in fact , on ancient and modern oratory . .-. ¦ ' . dwelt

      The symbolistic ' nature of early oratory is at first on ; presenting at once a complete fusion of imagination with reason . Physical objects are used to express metaphysical ideas , and accordingly the diction becomes poetic . Next , we have educated oratory , which reproduces with art what the Uneducated received from impulse . The earliest specimens of oratory have to be sought for in the historians , by whom they were , however , invented as the best imitations they could make of the speeches supposed to have been really delivered . But such historians were under no documentary restraint , and therefore became at will dramatic , personating their characters at pleasure . The Greek historians , says Quintilian , assume a licence almost equal to that of poets . The work of Herodotus is but a transition from the epic of history .

      The " Odyssey" and the " Clio" contain very much of the marvellous in common . Xerxes , as he is drawn by Herodotus , and as he is drawn by Diodprus Siculus , exactly describes the difference between the Henry IV . of Shakespeare , and the Henry IV . of Hume . In the ; latter case we have a dry catalogue of actions and qualities ; in the former , there is nothing less than a dramatic representation . After a while , history , ceasing to be dramatic , becomes oratorical . Set speeches in Herodotus are rare . Xenophoii becomes himself his own hero , and sets the pattern of an ideal orator . But Quintilian has given him more credit than he deserves for the oratorical portions of his work . He makes Persians . utter .. their sentiments in terms of Greek rhetoric . He is not a careful artist . In the first book of the ''Anabasis , " Cyrus is , while in the act of grasping the despotic crown of Persia , represented as depreciating his own future subjects as cowardly barbarians ^ arid haranguing the In thesixth book of Hellenics

      Greeks for Greece and liberty ^ ; the " , again , he tells us that Autocies was a skilful orator . He then puts into his mouth scarce a dozen sentences , and those sentences but little to the purpose ' ; while Callias , the torch-beai-er , ; speaks more , and far more rhetorically . Evidently he was a bad dramatist , biit the celebrated dying oration of Cyrus to his son demonstrates his skill as an orator . "Considered as a rhetorical display , it is undoubtedly one of the finest things of the kind in antiquity . Like the dialogue already alluded to , it would not have misbecome the lips of Socrates . But for this very reason , it is singularly but of place in the lips of the ancient Persian despot . " Xenophon , in Mr . Windsor's opinion , is an antique analogon of Boswell , and related to his herpes * as was that obsequious devotee to Dr . Johnson . Thucydides was , according to pur critic ' s judgment , far in advance of both Herodotus and Xenophon , though in order of time coining between them . He reminds us of Voltaire or Montaigne , and , like

      them , is inclined to incredulity . There is an unamiaBlejsopliistlcatcll estimate which interpenetrates all his composition , narrative as well as rhetorical . The speeches of his suppliants are the least supplicatory in style and manner to be met with in any author . ' There is no ' appeal to the feelings or the sympathies , none of the eloquent rhetoric of suffering and despair applying to the memory of past associations for aid . On the contrary , ' the sty le is hard and dry as a problem in Euclid . He shows great difficulty in ethical discrimination ; but herein he was as his time . He had passed his life amid the hardening scenes of amoral revohition , and had not escaped . the infection . He accordingly speaks with indifference of assassinations

      and massacres , and details the alternate fates of the Oorcyreans , Helots , and Scionians , without the manifestation of any " virtuous horror , or of the scevaindignatio of the moralist or the satirist . There is in his pages a " want of ethic portraiture . In this respect Thucydides presents a signal contrast to Tacitus , the Uoman histbrian , being as minute as a Dutch painter in his moral delineation . " However artificial in point of style , the speeches of Thucydides are admirably characteristic in point of matter . But they arc more palpably counterfeit than those of Herodotus or Xenophon . As debates , they are much more authentic than Johnson ' s Parliamentary reports , and aro quite as idiomatic . miner

      Wo have no space to continue our analysis , and must Sallust , Tacitus , Livy , and Dionysius to remain mere nnmes . The modern historian , with documentary resources , has n nnmilest advantage over the ancient . " His acquaintance with the defunct dynasties of his country , though less dramatically paraded , is J ' uv more intimate and special than that which HerodotuH had feigned with Croesus and Cambyses . Ho can realize tho motives , habits , and ^ yery _ Hneamonts-oOkG ^ of his race as vividly as ThueydideR did those of Pericles . And he is more familiar with its traitors and its scourges than Sallust wjis with Cataline . No dialogue in Xenophoii has ever commanded such credit as thoso few sentences which passed between tho victim and his executioner on the scaffold of More . No integral speech m Tacitus or Livy presents half such trustworthy claims as the shortest summary in Maeaulay or Hume . "

      Such is the value of anecdote , and such its usefulness . AVhon oratory became a separate profession , what it gained in qunlity jt lost in morality . The pursuit of eloquence became a pursuit of pom . lihetoricinn * hired out their services to factions . Democrats to-day ,

      * A Century Of Despotism In Sapl** And X...

      * A Century of Despotism in Sapl ** and Xtcilit . liy Susiin ilurnur . JCiluionston and Douglas . . t Xthicct ; or , CharacterUtlw of Men , Jlann > 'rt , ami Hooks . l » . v Arthur Lloyd "WiiuUor . Hinltli . Kliloi ' , and Co .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 18, 1860, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18081860/page/8/