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Leader (1850-1860), 18th December 1858, Edition 2 of 2, Page 12

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      J N T I « F J \ C F R C V \ G S R ] R \ ...

      been an incomplete book without a lion story , so we have more than one to choose from . Here is a tale of " a sociable lion : "—• TVo French soldiers set off one clay to proceed to El Aroucb , a settlement on the road between Philippeville and Constantine , to which there is a direct route from Jemappes , by a path through the bush . They , did not start together , and the one who commenced the journey first was much intoxicated . After proceeding some distance , in the course of doing which he lost his sword , he felt himself overcome with fatigue , and stretching himself on the grass , fell into a sound sleep . His companion , who was perfectly sober , following after him a time , picked up his sabre , and ' at-last found the . slumberer on the grass . He gave him a kick , and called to him to not the

      get up , when , to his horror , there rose up— man , but a huge lion , that lay couched by his side , which he had taken for part of the trunk of a tree covered with grass . The sober soldier instantly ran off , under the impression that his comrade had been destroyed by the animal , after losing his sword , in an unsuccessful combat with it ; but the lion , instead of pursuing him , resumed his place by the side of the still sleeping man . After a time , the latter awoke too , and got upon his legs , much astonished at discovering the company he had been keeping . The lion also again rose , but without any sign of ferocity ; and when the soldier set off on his route , accompanied him , walking close by his side for several miles , as far as the immediate neighbourhood of El Arouch , where , probably because the forest there ceases , he turned about , and sought his old haunt 3 ¦

      again . . In the pasticcio of hunting adventures called those of the Lieutenant Jules Gerard , we remember to have read of self-denying lions , but this last story Las certainly been , of late years , uuapproached . We Lad marked for extract a sketch outside the gate of Constantine peopled with Bedouins in white , tirailleurs indigenes in blue , and blind beggars chanting verses from the Koran . Our readers would have been charmed , too , with the landscape

      in the gorge of the Oued Jiummel , a stream on which Constantine sits astride . We midit have raised a smile by extracting " the perfectly happy man , " the major of the infant community of Fonduck , or the lively sketch of the extraordinary jugglers of Algiers , but that we are forbid by want of space . We must , however , squeeze in a pliotogram of a French colonist : — In the course of my ramble on the flanks of the Atlas I came upon a cantonnier , whose case will serve as a very fair specimen of the small African landholders . He had served in the army , and on quitting it , received an assignment of about ten acres of land , together with a . building which had been used aa a

      blockhouse . The land he made over to a Spaniard for three years as the price of clearing it ; " for you conceive , monsieur , " said he , " that I am so occupied heve , that I have no time to do that sort of thing myself . " I bad found him smoking his pipe on the ground about a mile up the hills on the Aumale road . Two enormous ruts a foot deep gaped hard by , and the tool which he had brought ostensibly for the performance of his duties was the common mattock , which is used for getting up the stumps of the brushwood . This was stuck by his side in the grass , and no doubt had been so ever since his

      arrival on the acene of hia labours . On my return by the same spot an hour later I found everything in statu quo , except that my friend was not smoking , but lying asleep on his back . ] Vlr . Blokesley seems of opinion that his cantonpier was a type of a class . It may be , and very probably is so ; but doubt may arise whether the learned and accurate writer did not pass the scene of the poor man ' s operations at I he beginning and end of iis lawful dinner hour . The evidence is insufficient for a general conviction j therefore , cantonniers and colonists must for the present have the benefit of the doubt .

      Wo have not half done with the author , nor have wo the slightest hope that , were the space at our disposal doubled , we could do justice to his interesting performance j but we must here part from him with a hearty recommendation to our readers .

      1380 Th K Leade I!/ [No. 456, December 1...

      1380 TH K LEADE I !/ [ No . 456 , December 18 , 1858 .

      Self-Made Men. Self-Made Men. By 0. C. B...

      SELF-MADE MEN . Self-Made Men . By 0 . C . B . Seymour . New York : Harper Brothers . London : Sampson Low and Co . A . book that is no book ; made with the scissors , and not well made ; scraps of biogunphy taken without sifting , from' cyolopcodiaa , biographical aiotionaries , newspapers , and the " Merchant ' s Majgassinoi" England , Italy , Germany , Denmark , and America , bouig the only countries which have been honoured by appearing tjirough their repreaentative celebrities ; and sixty-two small lives being the whole number considered worthy of ranking under the general and false title of " self-made men "—such is the substance of the volume before

      us . No object can be gamed by such a publication * or rather re-publication , except to create a hothouse kind of ambition in the minds of ordinary schoolboys . The title sometimes means nothing at all , and at other times means too much . " What is a " self-made man ? " Certainly , not Burns , Andersen , Dickens , or any other great creative genius , who does his work without labour , -effort , or preparation . No father of such sons has the power , if he has the capital and the will , ' of saying as he draws a cheque fora certain sum , "Go , my child , to the host university in the land , and write the

      world a poem or a novel that shall live . " Heady money can do a great deal , but it cannot accomplish this . To give such men the credit of making themselves , is Tike telling them they have had an influence in forming the shape of their noses or the colour of their eyes . If men of great industry and perseverance , like William Gilford , are to be erected as models of " self-made men , " why not an army of scholars who have studied to wood purpose in the very heat

      of college life ? If the cobbler who rose to be editor of the Quarterly Rerietc had started with rich friends , and an overflowing purse , it is possible he might have been swamped by the many temptations that beset a youth with large means at the universities . It may be that young gentlemen , of fortune , who resist the many pleasures within their reach , and store their minds with piles of sterling knowledge , are more entitled to praise as " selfmade men , " than shoemakers and blacksmiths , whose books have been their only attainable

      amusements . The last have been strong , because never tempted ; but the former have been stronger , because often tempted . The cant about " self-made men" is popular and long-lived . The natural appetite for the wonderful creates a demand for miraculous histories , and the demand produces a supply . . In proportion as a celebrated writer , thinker , or man of action has risen in after-life , so are his birth and ¦ parentage depressed . If he was born in a small house in-the suburbs , it at once becomes a " low , mean hovel ;" if his parents . were struggling respectably upon

      somewhat straitened means , ' they arc represented as " sunk in the most abject state of poverty ; ' * and if the young genius starts in life as a junior clerk to a warehouseman , it is most probable his early position will be described as " common shopboy to a shopkeeper . " At a time when the great traditions of history are crumbling , one by one , under an earnest and honest investigation , it is more than doubtful if the incidents of the most recent literary biography would stand unshakeu under the light of unromantic research . The book before us is not a very reliable guide , for while the date of the present year stands on the title-page , and in the space devoted to Mr . Charles

      Dickens , we arc treated with a gossiping newspaper paragraph upon recent domestic events ; we are told that he still ' lives in a house in Devonsliirctcrracc which he left nearly ten years ago . Most of the sketches are disfigured by criticisms and idle speculations , while the individuality of the subject-man is lost sight of , or is not stamped upon the page . Each biography is ornamented with a very rudely executed portrait ; Mr . Dickens being depicted , as he never was , at the age of seventeen ; and Amos Whitteincrc , the American inventor of the card machine , being handed down to posterity as a bloated Jack Shcppard who has grown too large for his cell .

      The Foster-Brothers. The Foster-Brothers...

      THE FOSTER-BROTHERS . The Foster-Brothers ; or , a History of the School and College Life of Two Young Men , ^ Hall , Virtue , and Co . This is another work ' on our educational systemembracing private schools and colleges—thrpwn into tlio form of a novel . Two lads , one the son of the hiyh-born Adolphus Henry Plnntngcnot Brooks Hollis , of Bulbul-squnro , hiir to a peerage , tho other the son of coachman Hirt , of Uulbul-mows , were born exactly nt tho same time . Tlio coachbirth to the

      man s wile , Sarah Uirt , dies after giving boy , and a kind soul , the wife of a democratic tailor named Groves , who has just lost her own baby , takes charge of the little orphan , Tlio high-born Indy—who is blessed or rather cursed with a contemptible tyrunt of a , husband , depleted according to tlio pattern so much in favour with certain popular writers of tho day , that is to say , with all tlio insolence and selfishness of riches and high life—being somewhat delioato in health , Ir induced by tlio family doctor , Sir Toby Ruffles , to have a wot nurse for ttor child . Mrs . Groves is engaged , but not until she has made

      a stipulation that the two babes shall be brough t Z together in Hulbul-square-a stipulation whieh Mr ? Hollis readily complies with , as the mother , sS Birt i was once her favourite waituig-jrotnin 'p distinguish the plebeian from the aristocrat a DL ! tape is tied on the arm of the latter , and « further , distinguishing mark the plcb is born wit ) mole under hia left foot . The infancy of the nV passes without much to note , and nothing neon ? until the period for going to school . Young Hom ! first enters a proprietary school kept by Mass PrU . cilla Campbell , where lie . profits so little that he h taken away and sent to the establishment of " Dionysius Dickson , A . C . P ., who received a limited number of the sons of noblemen and gentlemen onlv to prepare for public schools and universities " Her

      we have several " interiors" from the pen of Master Hollis , who , if capable of writing such accounts at twelve years of age as are attributed to him in . the novel , certainly was a Crichton-like phenomenon of worldly precocity and satirical observation . These " interiors , " though sufficiently graphic , will hardly be considered sufficiently truthful- to pass . with the world as examples of what is to be found among boys in similar establishments . From this school young Hollis goes to Win ton ( the author disguises under feigned names public schools of well-knowa reputation ) , and here the boy of twelve writes home letters that would not disgrace a man of twenty-one , giving by no means flattering descriptions of the scholastic system to which lie is made amenable

      From Win ton- he removes to Dimbledou , in order to qualify for admission to Sandhurst . Here , after undergoing incredible brutalities on the bullying system , he is initiated into scenes and abominations which we trust are mainly imaginary , lie nearly concludes his experiences of Dimbledon by manslaughter , for in a lit of exasperation , on getting the head bully into a retired place , he , as he firmly believes , leaves -him on the ground with his brains dashed put . Fortunately the youth escapes this misadventure , but , after a short period , certain delinquencies are found out , and he is obliged to quit the " cramming" school at Dimbledon . The

      university is his next step , and young Hollis enters with all the advantages of high birth , liberal allowance , and large expectations . In the mean time the education of the pleb ltobort Birt has beeii progressing ' , through a presentation to . 1 public school—Senbury School—where acertain number of boys receive board and education gratis . We will not describe the foul and repulsive doings within the walls of tliis splendid and abused charity . We fear the writer has viewed school-life with a jaundiced eye ; it must suffice to say that after a few days of inhuman torture Birt , on being sent at midnight by his tormentor to get a skull from a neighbouring churchyard , executes his task , but on his way back to his dormitory he passes the clothes room , he places the skull on a of the foundation

      heap of clothes , he divests himself uniform , resumes his own clothes , and makes Ins escape over the wall . The young tyrant , too impatient nt the delay of his victim , creeps down to the clothes room , sees tho skull in the dim raysjjf the moon , believes that B irt hus ^ hanged hunsef , falls into a fit from pure fright , and is found shortly afterwards with the skull in his hand , a o " strong effects . " Uirt makes his wny in the world in rather a romantic manner , and at last finds him-^ r %£ tik zLrX ? J ^ « f tfc « u ,,, , w-. r tmi t . lwmsnm . " but still well disposes

      towards his less fortunate fellow mortal . Wnwo many collcgo scenes , and many phases of' couefij life , with much truth mixed up with ™ ro «* JgS , tion . Tho two young men—youths no log Jg on in their respective ways ; Hlrt ^ ' ^^ progressive , Hollis , more dashing in » s ™™ fi " m ment and position , but still , making h *» J « « J humanities . Tho examination day cc , ' * ^ and Hollis are among the candidate * . Im h « b » The < luy before tlio examiners 'V ( f 'USicn . startling secret is communicated to l jo > W " stunting Buurub ia wiiih »< " > - - - ,. - , . i \ vycr duitlituUU u *

      Mrs . Groves , just before her . , » ° > . that she changed the children from m <]« j « j ™ thing said by tho Hon . Adoluhus Hollis — t \» f ^ ySung the aristocrat and Hollli tho PM *™ Alf $£ FU men receive tho nnnouncomcu « lt" V ,, « a aueaia * Inffi-Hollts is overwhelmed , »> ri cool " . ouojj her . When tho examiners "'""^'" jjXIUOusly Birt is first , Hollis Hooond . «' rt /»^ * | ib 1 > 6 refuses to avail himself of tho socrc t-ho jttl own comparative iiiaigniucunt position , ft « ^ KoUlsto koop Ills elovntod «»» k -. r * , Ji Jjf violent from this reatimd tlmt tho author « ^"' i ^ lwor , contrast . Ho has a fair show of devu r ptivo ^ and can write with taste ami focli «• J noncw good qualities aro soinowhnt marred by a i > w ^ d to exaggeration . Tlio d « l "cations of sohoo » collogo life aro sufficient to boar us out in our cism .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 18, 1858, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_18121858/page/12/