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    trusted. It would be unsafe to accept an...

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    LOGIC IN THEOLOGY, AND 6$HJ2R ESSAYS. By...

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  • 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.

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    Thing Couleur Derbse Because It Is Itali...

    all the Roman catacombs , and cannot be referred to a period of high antiquity . In these remains Gtod is never represented under a human fcwrtn ; ijor did any artist , fpr many ages after , allow himself to mark the presence of the Eternal by anything more than a hand issuing from a cloud . " In short , " to quote the author ' s words , " the Christian tombs , pictures , " mosaics , and bas-reliefs apprise us that the wretched idea of depicting the _ Deity in a work of art is modern ; that the traditional countenance of Jesus Christ was seldom drawn or even hinted at ; that the predominance since given to the Virgin was absolutely unknown ; that the Christians at first avoided the use of images , and when they adopted them , the first were symbols rather than effigies . " The question is ably discussed as to whether the Catholic Church lias really fostered art and protected and improved it to the degree held by many . It would be absurd to deny that Catholicism has rendered service to artists , were it only in the demand it makes on the productiveness of their talent ; but it is , no doubt , also the cause of great damage to the arts themselves . The Catholic worship and art have opposite interests ; their conditions of existence and of success exclude one another . What is indispensable to the one is often hurtful , sometimes fatal , to the other . ^ The subjects permitted by the Church are very limited , and have been , and are , treated over and over again with the most wearisome monotony . There are fifty-two Madonnas or Holy Families in existence ascribed to Raphael . In the Borghese Gallery the Virgin is in more than the proportion of one to every eleven pictures . In the Bai'berini Palace fourteen pictures out of thirty are of Mary . These numbers are much below the proportion of Madonnas now-a-days ordered , since the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception . It may well be asked , is this protecting or inspiring art ? Is it not rather smothering it under intolerable monotony ? Then , again , the treatment of subjects permitted , and sometimes demanded ,

    by 4 he clerical authorities , offers the greatest outrage to modesty , good taste , and refinement . Buonyiciho ' s Saint Lucy offering to God , upon a trencher , her own eyes torn from their sockets , and Saint Agatha presenting to him her severed breasts , ¦¦ are . cases in point . In the church of Sab Stefano Rotondo the eye meets nothing but scenes of martyrdom . The walls are covered with upwards of seventy representations of tortures , the most barbarous , the most hideous , embracing details of nudity quite insupportable . Such instances afford practical proof of the real incompatibility which exists between the claims of the Catholic religion and those of art . M . Coquerel avers , and with justice , that the Romish Church has aimed at an impossible alliance , and has thus seriously injured the fine arts while continually making indecent concessions to them .

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    Trusted. It Would Be Unsafe To Accept An...

    trusted . It would be unsafe to accept any statement as an authority . Even when true in substance and spirit , it 13 not accurate in the letter and words . As an example of what we mean , we quote a most amusing anecdote , illustrative of Coleridge , though not connected with him . To make the passage clear , we include the few introductory sentences : — - " For instance , what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge ? We dare say-that , because in bis version of the ' Wallenstein' there are some inaccuracies , those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in this particular pretension . But to a certain degree they will be wrong . Coleridge was not very

    accurate , in any tiling but in the use of logic . AH his philological attainments were imperfect . He did not talk German ; or so obscurely , —and , if he attempted to speak fast , so erroneously , — -that in his second sentence , when conversing with a German lady of rank , he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion she was a — - — - ¦ — . Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously ; but in fact the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better than she should be . Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a German , whose English education had been equally neglected . Having obtained an interview with an English lady , who , having recently lost her husband , must ( as he in his unwashed German condition took

    for granted ) be open to new offers , he opened his business thus : — ? Highborn madam , since your husband have lacked de buckets ' ' Sir ! ' interrupted the lady , astonished and displeased . Oh , pardon !—nine , ten tousand pardon ! Now I make new beginning- —quite oder beginning . Madam , since your husband , have Cut his stick -i—S It may be supposed that this did not mend matters ; and , reading so limch in the lady ' s countenance , the German drew out an octavo dictionary , and'said , perspiring , with shame at having a second time , missed fire , ' Madam , since your husband have gone to kingdom come ——— This he said beseechingly ; but the lady was past propitiation by this time , and rapidly moTed towards the door . Things had now reached a crisis ; and , if something were not done quickly , the game was

    a vague region of cloud and mist between twtt opposite shores . With this cautidni however , not to accept , nbtwithstahding all showing to the contrary , ithy of the amusing anecdotes and curious pieces of learning , for anything more than they are Worth— - but onl y as amusing inventions . to allure the reader to aim at understanding the transcendental and metaphysical lore which it is the secret mission of the author to teach—the works of Mir . De Quincey deserve not only to be diligently read , but deeply studied , —not so much for mere instruction and amusement , as for the student ' s education , properly so called , and distinguished from both ; that is , for the purpose of mental evolution arid spiritual development . s > ¦

    up . Now , therefore , taking a last hurried look at his dictionary , the . German flew after the lady , crying out , in a voice of despair , ' Madam , since your husband;—your most respected husband—your never-enoff-to-be-worshipped husband—have hopped de twig—— ' * This was his sheet anchor ; and , as this also canie home , of course . the poor man was totally wrecked . It turned out that the dictionary he had used ^ - ( Arnold ' s We think ) , a work of one hundred and fifty years hack , and , from mere . German ignorance , giving slang translations from Tom Brown , Ii'Estrange , and other jocular writers—had put down the verb sterben ( to die ) with the following worshipful series of equivalents : —\ . To kick the bucket ; 2 . To cut one ' s stick ; 3 . To go to kingdom come ; 4 . To hop the twig : to drop off the perch into Davy ' s locker . "

    "What can be more amusing than this ? And who would not think that the one , two , three , and four heads of meaning cited were , at any rate , to be found in the old German lexicon of Arnold ? Reading , however , the above passage , we happened to recollect that among our German lumber , we had the obsolete dictionary in question , and we indulged the whim , at some trouble , of looking out the word—i . e ., the verb— " storhen" ( to die ) , " Here it is :- <—" S > tevf ) ett , to dye , decease , depart , depart this life , starve , breathe your last , exspiro , give up the ghost , hick up your heels , tip off , tip over the pearch . " How different ; the fact from Mr . De Quincoy ' s reminiscence ! There is embellishment and amplification , with a vengeance ! But it will also bo seen that there is no approach in his statement to verbal accuracy , that the numeral division of the

    QUOTING FROM MEMOBY .-DE QUINCEY ON PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICISM . ( 1 ) Speculations Literary and Philosophic ; with German Tales and other Narrative Papers . By Thomas De Quincey . ( 2 ) Critical Suggestions on Style and Rhetoric ; with German Tales and other Narrative Papers . By Thomas Do Quincoy . James Hogg and Sons . These two volumes of collections , from the periodical compositions of Mr . De Quincey , ore remarkably brilliant . Among the papers in both arc splendid defences of Milton ana Coleridge . The former is protected against Dr . Johnson , whoso biography of the great poet is denounced as malignant , and against Mr . Landor in his colloquy with Mr . Southoy on the subject of the mighty bard . In

    these papers the power of treatment and expression is something wonderful . On Coleridge , Mr . De Quincoy still oxpatiatcs with impetuous enthusiasm . Ho writes , however , as a critic , and assumes a cortain superiority to his author , whom ho convicts of faults , from which wo _ avo led to imagine that the critic must bo ' free . That , howover , is not always the oaso . Mr . Coleridge was confessedly careless in regard to statistical data , and the matter of citations . But is Mr . De Quincey leas faulty in these particulars P On the contrary , Mr . Do Quinauy frequently quotes from memory , owns it , and , thus justified } without remorse proceeds to quote wrongly . Learned , fine , rhetorically powerful , full of illustration , anecdote , and , in the main , just criticism , as they are , these volumes contain nothing that can oo literally

    meanings is pure invention ; that the slang phrases alluded to aro in the dictionary itself , placed pi ' operl y in a secondary position , and that the proper equivalents are first given ; and that therefore the perplexed German could not , except from sheer perversity , have derived his errors from the sourco indicated . Nor aro the slang phrases identical . The whole is manifestly a loose recollection , on which , us on a sandy base , the alleged anecdote has boon built . Such is the ingenuity with whioh Mr . De Quinoey contrives to enliven his pages , by manufacturing for the nonce suitable parables in illustration or abstruse principles , in condescension to the weakness of the popular mind , without much caring whether the component materials aro true or false , or some phantom floating up from the unfaithful sea of memory , and hovoring uncertain in

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    Logic In Theology, And 6$Hj2r Essays. By...

    LOGIC IN THEOLOGY , AND 6 $ HJ 2 R ESSAYS . By ISaac Taylor . ' * Bell and Daldy . The writer of this volume has won for himself an enduring renown as a religious essayist and moral rhetorician . To the fact of his being so much of the latter may be due his dislike to the intermixture of logic with theology , and which dislike is elaborated into a theory in his initial essay . Such theory , of course , goes to prove—and cannot

    prove anything else—that the theo-logic is different from the merely rational or intellectual logic . The theme which Mr . Taylor selects for the application of his principle is the famous argument of Jonathan Edwards on Free Will . With this the public is already acquainted . The application is smartly and sharply « nade . The doctrine of fatalism is displayed as at once true and false—^ -true to the letter , but false to the feeling .

    It is the latter element that Mr . Taylor seeks to penetrate . In pursuit of this object , tJnitarianism lay in his way . Over its simple formulae he loudly triumphs , and points to its empty pews as a proof that reasoning is a poor substitute for sentiment . He prefers evidently the mysticism of the ascetic ages ; and , in illustration of its profound veracity " , notwithstanding its superficial errors , devotes four eloquent essays to the characters of Niius , Paula , Tlieodosius , and Julian . The first he entitles "The Christian Courtier in the Desert ; " and paints inost pathetically the state of religious feeling which could separate a pious > husband and a pious wife ; and subject to . the severest trials a pious son , in order to their consecration to the comtemplative life and its duties—in the desert and in the

    convent . The triumph of the tale he awards to the woman . While the father , on the presumed loss of his son , utters the wildest lamentations , the mother exults in the Christian victory that she presumes her offspring to have achieved . The widowed mother , arrayed in jewels and gay attire ^ lifted her hands to heaven , and addressed the Deity in language of thanksgiving . She claimed to share the glories and the rewards earned by her son by his sufferings . "He had endured extreme but brief tortures ; she , in thus vanquishing the maternal instinctsj had endured a worse pain . ' N " ot such a mother am I , ' said she , ' as are the multitude of

    women , who weep the death of a child , as if they were the mothers of bodies only ; 'tis not so With me . Am I not the mother of a soul P Happiest of mothers am I , who have borne so noble ah agonist , and have thus returned him whole and triumphant to God . '" The son , however , supposed dead , yet lived , and , when restored to his father , found himself devoted , like the daughter of Jephtho , to the service of the sanctuary . Nilus himself also took priest ' s orders , and became abbot of one of the religious houses , founded in the desert , westward * of the Nile , and in the neighbourhood of the Natron lakes . In the next character , which is female , Mr . Tftylor proceeds to exemplif y what he colls " high quality , and asceticism m the fourth century , ' . ' and lias the laudatory magniloquence of Jerome to doal With . Paula , the lady in question , wob one of those Christian women of quality with whom Jerome maintained constant correspondence . Pa « Ia was high-born and illustrious , and chronicled in the Romish and Eastern characters , as " saint , and widow , and abbess . " Her retirement from the world , however , does not scorn to have involved the surrender of her family revenues , whioh apparently oontinued to bo at her disposal , since to the last she was a builder of churohes and a founder of monasteries . She was possessed of a passion for pilgrimages . To grotiiy it she forsook her son , still young , with patrician heroism . " A young toother's eyes arc moistened with no tears while she looks

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 28, 1859, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_28051859/page/13/