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Leader (1850-1860), 19th February 1859, Edition 2 of 2, Page 13

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      African Philology. The Library Of His Ex...

      habits language , reUgion , and food , are all , more or S , molt carefully noted in its pages .

      and the present , therefore , comes well recommended . . , . . ' . ' < Life and Books , " as its title intimates , is a eucite iciiuuig

      only love for the old thing in a new medium . The citizen ' s trip to Gravesend often aims at little more than the old glass ofbrandy and water , in a Gravesend frame .

      UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD . i University of B Oxford . — Examination Papers and r % 5 r - ^¦ "ttsszz & s ; The papers before us give very complete information about the manner rn which the New Examination Statute for Middle Class Schools has been SSied out , and the results which have attended its working . The subject has received so much partial discussion by correspondence in the daily Papers arid otherwise , that the public will gladly welcome a full and authoritative account of the whole matter . It was natural , and perhaps excusable that parents and schoolmasters , who were disappointed by the failure of their " spes gregis , should venture an attack upon the judgment ot the examiners , and endeavour to attribute to difficulty in the questions , and to the severe standard tnose unioitu

      record ot tnougnts u uj « . «« . v ^^* ' - tions , and the author has ventured on the most difficult of all modes , of conveying the results of his mental labour , namel y ^ that of bare and unadorned axioms and maxims . Such a style appeals but to a comparatively narrow class of readers ; for most persons like to have , indeed seem to require , a strong garnish of words to enable them to receive and digest a pure thought . To succeed in this style is therefore to acquire a place amongst the rarest writers ; and but a few names , either ancient or modern , have maintained their popularity by this style of book indeed we can easily run them off our tongue without burdening our memory . The ancient philosophers are more numerous , if not more successful than the modern , and the Reflexions of Antoninus , and the axioms of Epictetus and Seneca still maintain their position . The moderns are chiefly indebted to the 1 rench for this class of literature , and the name _ of t- » _ _ i . _ . £ - __ ,. i ^ i ;« < s + ; n + T 10 most , familiar and tiie j h — - —

      The title of hypocrite is easily earned , and readily applied very often where it is little deserved : irresolution receives it , and so even may sheer amiability , where a man pursues a double course of action ; one to please himself , and another hot openly to violate the feelings of those who are dear to him . * * . ' * * * . We could have selected more brilliant or less sensible remarks ; but the axioms , supported by aoreeable quotations and literary allusions , are too long for our columns and in all such matters the reader has a p leasure , like that of the truffle hunters , in rooting up the savoury morsels for himself . It is a book specially adapted for the railway carriage , for after reading a sentence or two the traveller will find his mind aroused , and he will have the pleasure of beguiling the time and the way with the reveries set afloat by the suggestive author . -

      by which the answers were tested , - nate results which might obviously have originated in other and very different causes . _ The two volumes of papers which the University has now published will furnish , we think , the fullest answer to the friends of disappointed candidates . ' When we . learn how very easy the questions really were , and how tolerant the examiners' judgment of the answers , we cannot help feeling surprised that any boy who presented himself should have failed in obtaining a certificate . The report tells us , that many of the very numerous instances ot ill success must be attributed to the fact that this was the first examination . We are glad to think it was so ; and that want of nerve and want of acquaintance with the nature of the answers requu-ed , rather than a disgraceful i gnorance of the elements of grammar and geography , may be allowed to explain them . A full account is given of the nature of the proposed examination for 1859 ; so that it will be tke faults of the candidates themselves , or rather of those who ought to-.-prepare - them , if the Report of the ensuing year contains as long and painful a list of rejections . It is quite impossible to look over the questions . set , particularly those to the se nior candidates , without feeling the extreme value of the plan adopted by . the University—a good testing examination , so conducted as to encourage , not " cram ; " but thorough knowledge of a few things has long been needed " by our middle class schools . The education given at public schools is tested sufficiently by the success or failure of their scholars at the two Universities ; but there is no such test for those schoolmasters whose pupils do not go up to the Universities at all . The public has too long been deluded by the advertising system , and has been compelled chiefly to judge of the qualifications of those who set up as masters by the degree of impudence with which they assert then ? own merits , and the number of those who have already been foolish enough to believe them . There is room for hope that , in the course of a year or two , the test supplied by these examinations will enable every one to judge for himself of the value of the education which our various schools supply , and that the exortiqns of middle class schoolmasters will now be directed to satisfying examiners oompetejtvt to judge of their pupils' attainments , j- ^ - not to deceiving parents by the concoction and issue of captivating prospectuses . We recommend the Report and the Last of Examination Papers to our readers' most careful attention . It is of the first importance that the public should be properly informed upon the matters to which they relate . LIFE AND BOOKS . Life and Boohs , or Records of Thought and Heading . By J . F . Boyes . Boll and Daldy . This is the production of a ripe scholar , whom all lovers of our own early , and of the , Greek ilrnina must admire . It is now some years since he published two volumes , which proved that ho was equally vrott , acquainted with each sot of dramatists . Ilo yras not one of those vulgar scholars who imagine wherever there is a similarity of sontimont that , there must bo plagiarism ; but he almost Sroved from the copiousness of his illustrations 'om iEsohyiua and Sophocles , and from our great dramatists , that the like train of thought bogots in certain constituted minds pretty much the same expression . It was in every way a delightful work ,

      XvOcneiou . uuiin-1 . o *< jl" . " ***< »•» -- most esteemed . Mr . Helps' works and Lacon are those which have made most impression with us in more recent times , and with them Mr . Boyes collection may fairly rank . n . . . The style is careful but easy , and the offensive doo-matisin of such continued assertion is softened by the graceful utterance and entire absence o * pretentiousness . The remarks , are given for what they may be worth ; and the allusions and illustrations are so scholastic and fresh as to give a charm to the majority of them . There may on the whole be said to be more of wisdom than wit in _ them , and we should not suppose from these specimens that the author has much turn towardsi facetiousness . In the present over-funny age we consider this to be rather a recommendation than otherwise , as the continual effort to be smart has become exceeding wearisome . Of Jhe . morality , we may say it . is that of a pure and healthy mind , and is imbued with a genuine philanthropy . We oiye a few sentences as specimens , bricks from a stack being fair samples . If they excite even a contrariety of opinion to that maintained , they answer the end of axiomatic assertions , which are as valuable for the controversy they excite as from any fixed convictions they may create or confirm . * ' .. *'; * * * All life lies between the willow and . the elm . * ' . * * * * We constantly hear people debating about how long you may live with a person before you thoroughly know him or her . It is not so much a question of time as of circumstances . The time you may know a person without knowing him is quite unlimited , as long as the routine in whifch you live is not changed . * * * * . * . Those who are afflicted with the blindness of ignorance of the past are unfortunatel y the most likely to be afflicted also with the other blindness of prejudice as regards the present . * * * * * . Affronts are often quite invaluable things to the receiver , especially in those cases where one of them is alloM'ed to cancel fifty benefits . * * * * * . The old , when they triumph too gloriously over the young , may sometimes he reminded that they ofton loose in memory more than they gain in judgment ; and that the moro recent facts of their lives are often so slightly recorded as scarcely to add to their aggregate of experience , and that more is often lost in norvo than is gained in tact . * * ' * * H 1 It not unfrequently happens that people like a man whilst they make him , but rather change their feelings when they find they cannot unmake himthat is to say , when they eoaso to be the solo creators of his credit , or whon it has stretched beyond the point which they have chosen to accord , * * * * # ' Wo need not bo surprised that what is intensely ludicrous to one person is not in the least so to another , if wo admit , which 1 think we must do , that the ridiculous chiofly consists in bringing the groat and tho little together , in putting the low in the position of tho lofty , and tho lofty of tho lowbecause all depends on the preconceived idea of thu magnitude or insignificance of curtain objects , in which men , oven of equal souso , may occasionally disagree . 7 , ? * * * ? How much of our apparent lovo of novolty is

      No. 465, February 19, 1859.]

      No . 465 , February 19 , 1859 . ]

      THIj LEADER . ?® 7

      T\ ¦ ¦ ¦ A Handy Book Of The Law Of Priv...

      t \ ¦ ¦ ¦ A Handy Book of the Law of Private Trading Partnership . By J . W . Smith , Esq ., LL . D , Barristerat-Law Effingham Wilson , Royal Exchange . Theke is no branch of the law more difficult and complex than that of private trading partnership . The chain of losses and trouble into which persons are entrapped by the inducements too frequently held out to them to be associated in private mercantile or trading- firms is oftentimes so great as to warrant an all but universal rule to avoid so dangerous a connection . Nothing , indeed , less than a positive assurance of the perfect honour , honesty , and thoroughly business-like habits of all the partners and of their most : confidential employees should ever tempt an inexperienced person to encounter the risk which is inevitable to every such ah undert & lsiiiC' ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ' . . The Legislature has , by a recent Act , . removed some of the evils of public partnerships , where the liability of the members is limited by the statute , and where , too , the character of the company or copartnership is indicated in its title . The condition , however , of the law of private partnership , remains unchanged ; and the strict rules which , threequarters of a century ago , were laid down by Lord Elddn and other eminent jurists as to dormant or sleeping partners , still expose them to exactly the same liability as ostensible and active partners . The law , indeed , on this point , extensive and ramified as it now is , may be said to have been built upon the decisions in about half-a-dozen cases , settled about the year 1793 . _ Lord Eldon , in the case Exparte Hamper ( 17 Vesey , 403 ) , stated the rule , still prevailing , in the following terms , as to quasi or dormant partners : — " The cases have gone further to this nicety , upon a distinction so thin , that I cannot state it as established upon due consideration , that if a trader agrees to pay another person for his labour in the concern a sum of money even in proportion to the profits equal to a certain share , that will not make him a partner ; but , if he has a specific interest in the profits themselves , as such , he is a partner . . And again— , , , . ' . " The ground ( as to liability ) to third persons is this . It is clearly settled—though I regret it--t ; hat if a man stipulates , that as the reward of his labour he shall have , not a specific interest in the business , but a given sura of money , even in proportion to a given quantum of the profits , that will not make him a partner ; but , if he agrees for a part of the profits as such giving him a right to account , though having no property in the capital , he is , as to third persons , a partner 5 and in a question with third persons no stipulation can protect him from loss . Tho principal cases upon which Lord Eldon re lied , as establishing this rule , in Re Hamper , were probably Waugh v . Carr ( 2 H . Blaekstono , 2 Jfl ) j ana especially . Grovo v . Smith . In *»« lo" « case , Smith had been in partnership with Rob nson , who had retired , leaving us whole capital in tho concern as a debt with . interest , at 40 per cent , and an annuity of . * = 3 < x > , all of wh » ohho took a bond from Robinson , who became bankrupt , ami then Grace , a creditor of ilobuisoji , sought to . charge Smith iw a secret partnor under the . bond wWeh see " rod to him something moro than simply interest in his capital left in tlia business . Mr J W Smith ( the barrister , not the litigant of that nainoV in the " Handy Hook of tho Law of PriiaUTrading rurlnorphl , £ " has , In the readiest and most concise form , succinctly yot clearly troatod unon all the numerous points incidental to tho sub-XEt Ho has , indeed , rendered it ono of tho most useful and -popular manuals of commercial lnw ex- • an Wo wish , howqvor , that ho had gone a a top further , by citing the civsos , thy decisions upon wlUcU

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Feb. 19, 1859, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19021859/page/13/