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Leader (1850-1860), 24th December 1853, Edition 2 of 2, Page 19

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      New Book On Australia. Victoria; Late Au...

      of S ^ ctoey , by attempting to set up a sort of brass-farthing Peerage , but by en abling the worth , substance , and manliness of the colonists , to get themse lves embodied in « the tissues of her ' political'frame . Meanwhile , as a country for the strong and indefatigable , the working-men of Great B ri tain * Australia still offers the best chances for the acquisition of independence , social status , and substant ^

      Pecembjsr 24, 1853.] The Leader, 1243

      pECEMBJSR 24 , 1853 . ] THE LEADER , 1243

      Children's Books. & Pile Of Books Lies B...

      CHILDREN'S BOOKS . & pile of books lies before us vividly recalling the days when Christmas broug ht to us not onlyniince pies , such as now are never made , and " presents " no one thinks of making , but also the eager possibility of exchanging those presents for the treasuresof Soho Bazaar . Among those treasures foremost sto B ooks , with apple-cheeked girls in blue frocks , and odious " good " boys , who made virtue hateful to the young rebellious mind . What a change since ' then ! ( we mean in the books ) . No such splendours awaited us as those which now await our children ; few such really good books , no such excellent pictures . Literature has become democratised ; colliers read

      Plato , and artisans of all kinds are not only omnivorous readers , but vigorous thinkers ; the railway stalls are richer now in thought and poetry than libraries werein those days ; and even the nursery has its " march of intellect . " A terrible juvenile in our own , announced his intention the other day of poisoning his nurse '¦ " with the fumes of sodium and mercury , " , in a milder mood , advised her not to drink too much filtered water , for the earthy ingredients of water were necessary to the perfect structure of her bones . If grandmothers have imperfect views of Ovology , it will not be the fault ofgrandsons ! As it has never been our wont to pretend to have read the books we have not read , and as it will be obvious that we have had much more pressing calls upon our time than the reading of a pile of children ' s books , you will please to understand that in the following remarks , we are , for the most part , guided by juvenile critics who have read them , and pronounced very unbiassed , if not very discriminating , verdicts .

      Messrs . Addey and Co ., send us the second volume of The Charm , a magazine for boys and girls , well-written , well-varied , and wellillustrated . We have on two or three occasions expressed ourselves on this charming work , and have only now to say that it keeps up to its original mark . The ' Picture Pleasure Book , for its cheapness as well as for its merits , deserves hearty commendation . ^ We have ^ seen children aged ten and two lingering over its pages with delight . It is simply a collection of engravings taken from the works published by Messrs . Adoley Miss Martineau ' Playfellow appears in a , new edition of four small volumes . Is there any reader of ours unacquainted with this work ? Let him buy it for Ms children or godchildren , and read it first himself . She has written

      nothing in the way of fiction to surpass Feats on tie Fiord ; and Miss Edgeworth has written nothing superior to The Crofton Boys . In All is not Gold that Glitters , we have a story by an American lady , in" which California is brought upon the youthful stage . Natural History in Stories is a pretty little book for pretty little children , abundantly illustrated by Harrison Weir . A book to be bought ! The Ice King and the Sweet South Wind , by Mrs . Caroline Butler , is a sort of German romance for older boys , pronounced " so stunning"by a fascinated critic , from whom it was with difficulty secured , for the purpose of notice . Pretty Poll is the autobiography of a parrot ; and Pretty Plate is the history of a bit of crockery , setting forth how honesty is the best policy . The Adventures of a Dog , and a Good Dog too , is a companion to a former volume , the Adventures of a Bear , illustrated by Harrison Weir .

      David Bogue sends us a real boys * delight in the spirited volume by Captain Mayne Reid , The Young Voyageurs ; or the Boy Hunters in the North , with twelve illustrations by Harvey . It is full of adventure , natural history , and American scenery . Emphatically to be recommended . The Footprints of Famous Men is a compact volume of biographies , " designed as incitements to intellectual industry , " by John Edgar . It comprises Men of Action , Men of Letters , Men of Art , and Men of Science . If , as Longfellow truly sings , " Lives of great men all remind us , We can live a life sublime , " then such books as these are influential as well as interesting .

      Nathaniel Codke gives us in the Illustrated Library , a new edition of that immortal work , White ' s Natural History of Selborne , with Sir William Jardine ' s notes , and seventy engravings , beautifully executed . Nor should Jacob AbbotCs Histories be passed over without a word of recommendation . In shilling volumes , separate yet serial , the lives of great men are popularly , engagingly written . " Alfred the Great , Pyrrhus , William the Conqueror , and Alexander the Great , have already appeared ; the series will extend to fourand-tvvent y . Flowers from the Garden of Knowledge is a collection of prose rhymes for very young children , with abundant illustrations . Messrs . Dean and . Son , great publishers of such books , have sent Beauty and the Beast , by Mibs Corner , which is to be tho first of a scries of Little A % s for Little Actors . It i . s the old fairy talc thrown into a dramatic form in rhyme , and illustrated by Alfred Crowquill . Messrs . Routledgo and Co ., among their endless enterprises , have not o mitted books for children . Tho Oriental Fairy Tales , - or Fancy s Wanderings in the East , has not only thirty-two illustrations by Harvey , but has a fascination of fiction which will keep a school-room of boys quiet . There are still some works on our table , but they arc of tho kind named r ' «" giou 8 , and of them wo are auspicious ; so , without speaking of them , wo close this ramble through nursery literature with tho Loves of an A pothecary ( Clarke , Beoton , and Co . ) , which is a story of more pretension , ttud addressed to older boys and girls . Not having read it , nor heard an ° Punon of it from our crimes , we must confine ourselves to this announcement .

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      We, Should'do Our Utmost To Encourage Th...

      We , should'do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself . —Goethe .

      Dakk Is This Christmas—Dark On Every Qua...

      Dakk is this Christmas—dark on every quarter of the horizon , physically , socially , politically . The sun of prosperity which shone upon the summer , seems now , in looking back , only to have excited the passion of grasping in the masters , or hope in the men , to entail upon us the strife which is carried on into the winter of adversity . That movement which was the " rise o wages" in the sunny season , is now the bitter " strike , " which arouses bad passions in the wealthy , bitterness in the industrious ; threatening one side with the workhouse , and the other with some unannounced retribution . The poverty is aggravated in its suffering by a climate which , abates its rigours only to try the frame with . the incessant diversities of a pitiless sky . War is raging in the East , and our Government , professing to side with the weaker and with justice , permits the wrong of the stronger . We are beginning to doubt whether our rulers are strong enough , and wise enough , to resist that invasion of despotic * iniquity which is encroaching in Europe , and may , one day , come to fight the battle upon our own shores . _ And the wrong is done in the name of that faith which has its birthday at this season Some two thousand years ago , a scene is familiarly pictured to have occurred in the humblest of places . An event happened such as visits the home of the humblest of mortals—the birth of a little child . That Ifttle

      child was born of a parent flying from persecution , and the home in which he was born was beneath that which the humblest of English householders owns—he shared his , cradle with the ass and the ox . Strange , when we look back upon that scene , the fate of that little child . Before his birth and after it , events were as strange as those which attended his life . Before Mm came prophesies and persecutions—prophesies of his divine mission , and persecution for the sake of that mission . In order to suppress his life before it began , Herod—the Nicholas of that day—sent forth an order to put down the life of all the first-born in his lands—an Austrian edict ; a Russian

      ukase , But , for all the slaughter in the cities of Herod , there , m the manger , unharmed in its humility , embodied in the frailest shape which humanity can present , that divine spark of life came to worldly existence . Our painters now picture a light emanating from that cradle : whatever may have been seen by the eyes that then watched the dawning life , the light which arose from that tender couch has indeed spread throughout the whole globe , and has been seen by eyes century after century . Yet for all that certainty , descending to our own day , we are disputing , not only the truth embodied in that light , but the existence of the child . The light , say

      nice philosophers , who analyse it with their prisms , is not substantiated by legal evidence , and the Registrar-General of Births , Marriages , and Deaths cannot produce for you the certificate . It is an invention , says the philosopher ; as if he could produce in the whole round of fiction anything that could approach the stupendous idea of the divine principle which that little child came forth , to utter for the world ; any history that could , so thoroughly embody that principle , in itself , in , all that went beforejt , or in all thatcame after it ! Fiction is not capable of creation . To have invented the history of a Jesus , it would have needed a Jesus to be born to conceive , and to write it . It took more than humanity to create that history or to be it .

      Humbler men have told it in their rude and erring accents , and baser men have fallen to quibble upon the mistakes , instead of seizing the body of the light , and carrying it forward with siAple faith . The prism of pedantry may split the light into many rays , and one shall be of blood red . That is the light of Christianity which Russia is casting over the East \ and the same lurid glare of sectarianism conceals the truth of Christianity amongst ourselves , who arc fighting to convict each other of heresies , when we might unite to discover so much of the truth as it is in humanity to know . We cry out that we are in the dark , and in the dark we thicken the midnight

      by our own scuttling . The light still exists , and will exist for ever , for those who choose to turn to it . And they may so turn to it , whether they have knowledge or have it not ; whether they are taught or untaught . For those who speak in sectarian language , and tell you that truth can only reach you when you have grace in your heart , utter a great truth in the midst of their huge falsehood . The heart of grace is the gift of nature , or of that divine power which restores nature when it faints . It does not need book learning or dogmatic teaching to perceive the life which could survive the hurtling slaughter sent forth by Ilorod to destroy it ; as the wluch to

      snowdrop can rise to life through the . storm of the elements seem threaten its frail tenderness , but which form its native atmosphere . If neither Herod nor the orthodox Jews , Knox nor Calvin , Pope nor Czar , have been able to crush the ( lower which , seems so fniil , assuredly it ha . s a chartered life which belongs to centuries yet to come . Life is stronger than destruction . The darkest hour which we undergo at this moment la destined to burst upon a spring of vitality . If Turkey and Russia are now slaying each other on the Danube , the Bulgarian , who lies between the two , has caught tho idea of industry and education , and is at this moment roaring tho products of a fertile soil , and tho ideas of an awakening inind , which will one day possess the happy federation traversed by that great river , when Turk and Russian shall have passed away into the tomb of history . It is possible for the dread laws of nature sometimes to surprise us with gifts or blessings out of curses : thus tho eoniliet which is raging upon the Black Sea and the mud-impeled river , may be

      hastening the clearance of the day for that sunnier period . And so at home , we are perplexed by many troubles that press upon us for solutiou . Next door to us , a great practical philosopher has , with hia sword , presumed to cut tho Gorditm knot of representative government , and has given to his country government by gift " * ' dictator ; while our own Ministers , dallying with reform , are trying to discover how far it is safo to entrust tho freeborn Englishman with " tho franchise . Mastors and men aro lighting , in the battle of combination , the great problem of competition or co-oporation .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 24, 1853, page 19, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_24121853/page/19/