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Leader (1850-1860), 30th April 1859, Edition 2 of 2, Page 13

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      The Edinburgh Review. The Present Number...

      auction after the force of the change had spent ; SS but all men know it was Certain , though not a * first rapid > But the real causes of West India ! ju 7 are to be found in the utter withholding of camtal to encumbered estates by those who had fed them from this country , and the entire denial of forther credit to the owners here . The production of the estates as could procure working capital was Screasing in spite of the fall of price from 49 s , Shd . m 1840 to 23 s . 5 d . in 1848 ; but when the Competition of BrazU arid Cuba waslet inupon the planters the system exploded , and the old planting interest , falling with a crash , was gradually superseded by a new one . It eoon appeared that the new , furnished with money or credit , espe-^ 11 v if resident , could face every difficulty of the im

      situation . Under new energies the six years - portations of sugar have sprung from fourteen and a half million hundredweight before free trade to eighteen and a half in the period ending last year . And pointing to this , with the just pride of an old labourer in the good cause , our review remarks : — " Clearly sugar could not have gone on steadily and rapidly increasing in amount unless the producers of it found it answer ; . . ' . labour cannot have been so scarce and so costly , that ' no conceivable opulence of cane crop could cover it , ' or clearly the cane crops would have ceased to be grown . "

      that the Allies were arrayed in defence of the Ottoman rule , a thing infinitely more at variance with civilisation than the domination of Lombardy by Austria . To what but treaties do Belgium , Switzerland , and Piedmont owe their present existence ? But , while of these opinions , he yet ¦ admits that the violent and frequent cry from Lombardy " indicates a failure of policy or a vice of system on the part- of the dominant power ,

      which force cannot cure , and which it becomes a wise and prudent government to remove . The writer , who clearly foresaw the points , since made public , for a Congress to consider , and the necessity for a general disarmament as a preliminary , considers Count Cavour an incendiary ; the French Emperor an inscrutable and cunning despot ; Italian independence for the present a myth ; and her Majesty ' s ministers shameless triflers ( as regards their dissolving tactics ) with the public interests of this kingdom .

      The grand pother that has been made about the West India labour question is for the most part fallacious . Capit al , owned or borrowed , was ever needed to supply labour of slaves , and the same must be spent , only in another way , to supply that of free blacks . Any planter of the new regime , even now resident , can get on well with money : and he who can beat into his own head that a black , like a white labourer , is worth his hire—who will compete with the pleasant independence of _ a vagrant squatting existence , and who will forget , in feet , the old tradition of our islands , that the normal wages of the black are nothing a day and stripes—inay soon make the discovery that his land is not exhausted and that the labourer who , in a

      state of slavery , can understand nothing but the spade and hoe | can , when free , be taught the use of all appliances of improved agriculture . To the very . able essay above noticed , succeeds a charming one upon that interesting speck in the map of Europe—Montenegro . The writer ' s narrative of his trip , for it is clearly such , and written by one who has had opportunities , will , we fancy , draw many a lounger this autumn to the wondrous Austrian harbour of Cattaro and the patriarchal fastnesses of the Black Mountain and its tiny capital . The tales of the late Vladika ' s prowess , and the recent battle of Grahovo , are spirited , and the paper gives much information of interest and importance to political students . The author ' s plea for the recognition of the little republic by the European powers collectively is well worth notice .

      While all the sons pf Tubal Cain are hurrying to and fro , h'ke ants , from the forge to the patent office , and , vice versd , bent on schemes for facilitating the destruction of men , the article on " Rifled Guns and Modern Tactics , " which bdars the impress of an eminent virtuoso in military arts , must also prove attractive . The writer has had opportunities of seeing further into the Armstrong millstone than those who have merely read specifications and ordinary ' newspaper paragraphs , however clearly drawn up ; and his review of the destructive agencies that will be brought to bear in the next great contest is , we confess , somewhat appalling , NextMajor Hodson ' life is reviewed

      , in precisely the same spirit as in our columns a while ago : we nood hardly , therefore , say we fully endorse the writer ' s opinions . The political article of the number is a masterly rebuke of the Napoleonic pamphlet of February upon Italian affairs , frpm which wo would gladly make lengthy extracts did space permit , auction by suction , the writer takes to pieces that extremely clevor production , and enters with vast political erudition into painful speculations on Italian liberation nationality , of which ho scgb no hopo , and on events which , probable when ho wrote , ai'Oj when wo write , imminent . His main argument is , that the

      honour of Europe demands the maintcnanco ol Austria in tho Lombard territory , which was forced upon her reluctant ruler by tho partios to tho Treaty of 1815 , as an oflbotivo moans of ox-Qluding Franco £ roin tho Peninsula . Treaties servo not alone , as is often shallowly and falsely alleged , for tho compression of tho weak , but also for their support . It was in virtue of such a treaty

      « I In Defence Of Theditional Methodand ...

      No . 475 , Ap « n > 30 , 1859 . 1 ? #% I . EAPER - 557

      The Oxford Museum. The Oxford Museum. By...

      THE OXFORD MUSEUM . The Oxford Museum . By Henry W . Acland , M . D . and John Ruskin , M . A . Smith , Elder and Co . The authors of this treatise are distinguished on the title-page as " Honorary Students of Christ Church . " ' One reason given for this is , that both were fellow-graduates at Christ Church , and sketched together ; after a lapse , too , of twenty years , they received on the same day the distinction now nr-knmvlpdored . These are the ties that bind

      together the Physician and the Art-critic ; and the former is solicitous to claim for himself the privilege of recreating himself with Art-subjects ; and on his own part , and in his own defence , declares " that though a man may be seduced from his duty , to his after misery , by any other absorbing interest , I yet believe that frequent intercourse with men engaged in other-. intellectual-pursuits , is , in ' my profession at least , almost necessary to . form a complete , professional mind . I a 2 > peal to history in confirmation . "

      It would extend our notice to too great ' a length to go fully into all the considerations that Mr . Ruskin starts ; but we" trust that those who have the bverseership of the works now in-progress will pay to them not less than thorough attention . His directions against parsimony should be most carefully and conscientiously observed .

      ditional method , and unbroken- accession of systematic power ; from its culminating point in the Sainte Chapelle , it faded through four hundrfed years of splendid decline ; now for two centuries it has lain dead—and more than so—buried ; and more than so , forgotten , as a dead man out of mind ; do you expect to revive it out of those retorts and furnaces of yours , as the cloud-spirit of the Arabian sea rose from beneath the seals of Solomon ? Perhaps I have been myself Jaultfully answerable for this too eager hope in your mind ( as well as in that of others ) by . what I have urged so often respecting the duty of bringing out the power of subordinate workmen in decorative design . But do you think I

      meant workmen trained ( or untrained ) in the way that ours have been until lately , and then cast loose on a sudden , into unassisted contention with unknown elements of style ? I meant the precise contrary of this ; I meant workmen as we have yet to create them : men inheriting the instincts of their craft through many generations , rigidly trained in every mechanical art that bears on their materials , and familiarised from infancy with every condition of their beautiful and perfect treatment ; informed and refined in manhood , by constant observation of all natural fact and form ; then classed , according to

      their proved capacities , in ordered companies , in which every man shall know his part , and take it calmly , and without effort or doubt—indisputably well—unaccusably accomplished—mailed and weaponed cap-a-pie for his place and function . Can you lay your hand on such men ? or do you think that mere natural good-will and good-feeling can at once supply their place ? 2 fot so—and the more faithful and earnest the minds you have to deal with , the more careful you should be not to urge them towards fields of eflbrt , in which , too early committed , they can only be put to unserviceable defeat . "

      This is wisely-stated . Dr . Acland forms a true appreciation of the significance of Art ; and wonders that so many have to " learn'the apparently simple truth , that to an artist his Art is his means of probation in this life . " " With such elevated views we may confide in the Doctor ' intelligent sympathy with his subject . The inscriptions that he suggests for the building are excellent ; e . g . : — " Several offers have been made to place inscriptions in carving or in colour on the walls of the corridors , in the libraries , or in the several departments . How curiously instructive some of these might be ! Take two-lbr example , in the Meuieat Department—this , quaint saying and pregnant rebuke

      recorded by Stoba ? us : — ' Trouhilus tho physician bcinff asked who is a perfect physician , gave answer , 'He who distinguishes between Whnt enn , and what canuot be done . ' " Then the weighty , but half-known words with which Hippocrates solemnly begins his instructions— " ' L , uVis short : but Art long ; Opportunities fleeting' j Experience deceitt ' nl ; . True judgment dilllcult . * " Or , in yet more lofty strain , the words of Sir Thomas Brown'Nature is the Aut of God . ' " And who cannot add , from the best benefactors of mankind , similar terse greetings for tljo threshold of every avenue to natural knowledge ?" The contributions ' of Mr . Ruskin to the volume consist of two letters—one on the question whether the Gothic is fit for secular , buildings , which ho answers in tho aflinnative . Ho complains , however , that the principles of Gothio decoration are not likely to bo carried out , being generally misunderstood . Ornamentation is most valuable and beautiful when founded on tho most extended knowledge of natural forms , and " continually conveys such knowledge to the spectator . In his second letter , ho states that , in decorating , any cdbrt to infcroduoo classical types of form into these laboratories and museums must have ended in ludicrous discomfiture . . - Tho following paragraph ia prcgnunt with reflections : — " D <> you suppose Gothic decoration is an easy thing , or that it is to bo enroled out with a certainty of success at'tlio first trial under now and dUHoult conditions ? Tho system of tho Gothic docoratlons took eight hundred years to mature , gathering Its power by undivided Inheritance of tra-

      An Indian Widow's Stout. A Lady's Escape...

      AN INDIAN WIDOW ' S STOUT . A Lady ' s Escape from Gwalior , and Life in the Fort of Agra . By K . M . Cooplarid , Widow of the Rev . George William Coox > land , M . A . On the 17 th of November , 1856 , Mrs . Coopland reached Calcutta with her husband— -an East India Company ' s chaplain— -and soon afterwards they repaired to Gwalior , which was designated as the scene of his future labours . In the April following the first rumours of the intended outbreak disturbed their placid way . On the 13 th of May they heard of the massacre at Meerut . On the 14 th of June the chaplain was foully murdered , with other military residents at Gwalior ; and his widow , with other English women and children , were turned igribnriiuously out of the station by tho Sepoys . After an afflicting journey , the incidents of which Mrs . Coopland relates with evidently simple fidelity , the fugitives reached the fort of Agra , then in a state of siege , thoug h not actually besieged . This " fort" occupies an immense extent of ground , and the many buildings within it—some for pomp , some lor defence—are the

      as various and curious as those encircled by walls of the Moscow Kremlin . Its marble halls , and towers , and kiosks—its terraces and balconies , and even its casemates , were , under the painful circumstances of tho time , used without distinction for the shelter of the English attached to the station , and of refUgccs from all parts . A system of " Blocks , " distinguished by letters , was organised , temporary partitions erected , and here garrison and strangers were pent up in imminent peril from the Gwulior andIndorc mutineers , until relieved by a Bullicient force after tho fall of Delhi and Lucknow . Mrs . Cooplniul ' ti descriptions of the Fort lile arc peculiarly intumstiny md freshly written . The miseries of tho situation were , us may be supposed , chequered by gleams of mirth and pleasantness . There were dancing , dressing , flirting , and marrying , as well us inourning ; nmlvo could extract , had wo room , a groat many amusing fragments from our authoress a chronicle . After tliu reliqf slio passed to Delhi , and of course a lady ' s-observations on sights ami people there at the period » ro refreshing alter tho numberless military records we have lmU occasion to read . Wo must quote tho following brief passaue about the ex-Urand Mogul and his better liiiMl who , guarded by a little Ghoorka , and in ohnme of a young civilian , were then " oh show

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), April 30, 1859, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_30041859/page/13/