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Leader (1850-1860), 29th June 1850, Edition Town of 1, Page 331, Untitled Article

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      Untitled Article

      serious and manly records of Samuel Bamford . Those who take up this book will recognize in it the same «« brawny" sense which arrested public attention in Passages from the Life of a Radical . We quote a passage or two from the introduction as a sample of that quality of thought which has suffered no decay in strength with the progress of years . Speaking of the improvements of dress and diction , consequent upon the new ideas originated by Arkwright ' s and Watt ' s invention , the author observes : — " If it were possible that we could live for the present and future only these things might be allowed to pass from human knowledge without regret , but we cannot so live . Our present and future course must be a continuation of the past , a bettering of it , a derivation from it , an improvement but not an abandonment ; we do not cut off the root of a tree that it may grow . Even if there were not such a thing as this natural adherence to what has been , there is in the human constitution an irrepressible tendency to refer to the past , in order the better to shape our future course to * Cast one longing , lingering look behind , ' that , seeing the way we have come , we may be the better enabled to pursue that which is before us . " There is also a pleasure in the contemplation , the remembrance , as it were , through history , of old people who have left the place we live in , who have quitted the ground we occupy , who have just , as it were , gone out and shut the door of the house after them , before we got in . We wish to recal them ; we would they had stayed a little longer ; that they had been there when we arrived . We go to the door and look for them ; up the street , down the lane , over the meadows ^ by the wood ; but the old folks are not to be seen high or low , far or near ; and we return to our room disappointed . We picture to ourselves the pleasant time we should have had were they beside us , how we should have seen the cut of their apparel , their broad hats and quaint lappels ; their buckles and shoon ; and heard their old tales and stories , and caught the tones of their voice , and the

      accent of their uncouth words . But it cannot be ; they are gone , and there is no return ; we have not seen them ; we never shall see them , and again we are saddened and disappointed . A book , however , in the midst of our regret , attracts our notice ; we open it , and therein we find , not only the portraiture of those we have been regretting , but their old stories , their uncouth words , and almost the tones of their voice are therein preserved for us . We sit down happy in the prize , and enjoy the mental pleasures it provides .

      ** Such a book would I place on the shelf of the old house ere I depart . It may be useful to some , and may , perhaps , afford amusement to others who tread these floors , and walk these green fields and brown moois of South Lancashire in after days . To me it seems that this district is destined to become the scene of important events . The persuasion haunts me , that these men , these Saxon Danes and Saxon Celts of Cambria and Caledon , with their thoughtful foreheads , reserved speech , knotted shoulders , and iron fists ; that these men , ¦ whose lives are familiar with the eyeless , earless , pulseless Cyclopes of steam : who ride on steam horses , and wield steam hammers , compared to which the hammer of Thor was a child ' s toy ; that these men , who , from morn to night , attend the beck , the knock , and the slightest motion of the great powers of water and fire ! that these men who , assisted by their demons , spin thread , weave cloths , hew coal , cut stone , melt iron , and saw wood ; who level hills , fill up valleys , turn back rivers , melt rocks , and rend the earth to her womb , until they have performed such deeds , and raised such mind-marks for the bettering of the condition of their race , as shall point them out to future generations .

      " Already there is a streak in the horizon of this dark north . Poetry , history , and the arts are beginning to embellish science , whilst science is leading us from wonder to wonder . History speaks of deeds and the people by whom they were performed ; poetry looks for words and the images which they portray ; the historian , the poet , and the painter may be benefitted by a perusal of this book . The historian will find the language of the personages whose actions he narrates ; the poet will find their speech and the romance of their life ; and the painter will discover a grouping and a series of individual character , neither of which have ever been described on canvass . "

      He who can write thus can produce a book of distinct interest upon any subject which engages his attention ; and Bamford ' s Tim Bobbin will take its place among the productions of local life , rarely produced and as rarely forgotten .

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      A SUNDAY IN LONDON . A Sunday in London . By J . M . Capes , M . A . Longman and Co . There is an apropos about this book , now that the folly of the Puritans has become rampant and achieved a success . It is a reprint of tales originally published in The Rambler , and has an admirable preface of some fifty pages , devoted to the argument of Sunday observance . The writing of a gentleman and a scholar , it also breathes the spirit of true piety and excellent sense . He says : —

      " Let us for a moment look this fact full in the face , that the poor , as a body , have no recreations . What are they in the cities and towns ? How is it that the working man spends his evenings when he has an hour that he can call his own , or on that blessed day of rest which Aas been given by a God of mercy to ft race doomed to

      labour for their sins ? What does he do with , himself * we ask , when he is not in in the public-house , or in some low haunt of vice or degradation . ? Does he read ?—with a few exceptions , far from it : his intellect was not cultivated in his youth ; he is too poor to buy books ; he is too much exhausted with his day ' s toils to be equal to anything but real hearty recreations . Does he pass an hour or two in sweet converse with the wife of his bosom and the children whom he loves ? Alas ! the want of early education has made conversation an impossibility to him , for he has nothing to converse about ; or his wife is busied with her own labours till the moment comes for lying down to rest ; or his children are far

      away , engaged in premature work , gaining a few pence by occupations in which their young hands should never be employed . Has he any in-door amusements to which to turn , if he should by chance have leisure and companions ? Has he the music , the singing , the dancing , the chess , the round game at cards , the books of prints , the drawing , the painting , with which we enliven our hours of rest , and recreate ourselves in preparation for the duties of the morrow ? Does he know the friendly interchange of visits , in which ' as iron sbarpeneth iron , so does the face of a man his friend ? ' Are there any harmless places of public assembly to which he may take his family without fear of corruption , or of

      meeting such abandoned characters as he would wish to avoid ? A few such , indeed , there may be ; but they are so few , and his means of availing himself of their attractions are so limited , that not one poor man out of a hundred is benefited by them . Where can he go out of doors , when a Sunday or a holiday , and the bright sun in the heavens , invite him to a brief season of liveliness and pleasure ? Two or three spots he may visit in London ; or he may join the crowds of men and women ( generally by no means from the really poor ) who flock into the suburbs , either for dull gaiety or uproarious mirth ; but even to those to whom this small measure of

      enjoyment is gran ted ,-there is little to enliven without vice , and to stimulate without leading to excess . A cold , shy , priggish stateliness rules around him : on one side stiffness and stupidity repel ; on the other , coarseness and revelry disgust ; the spirit of labour still is dominant : and even when all seems to conspire to make him happy for a while , he remains a stranger to that innocent mirth and simple merriment which animate the throngs who pour forth from continental towns , when the weekly Christian festival , or some extraordinary day of rest , invites all mankind to devotion , repose , and joy . "

      Properly observing that " Since that unhappy day when England assumed the garb of Puritanism , and the better-disposed portion of the community abstained from almost all the most innocent public diversions , the amusements of the nation have fallen into the- hands of the profligate and designing ; until those recreations , which were designed by a merciful Providence for the refreshment and strengthening of poor suffering man , became so utterly corrupted and empoisoned , that the only safety of the pure and conscientious consists in a flight from the atmosphere of pollution ; and the result has been , that tens and hundreds of thousands , being deprived of those amusements which were without sin , have been driven , through sheer exhaustion and misery , to fly to those , to taste of which is degradation to the mind and death to the soul . "

      And elsewhere" There is more gambling , more drinking , more swearing , more reading of the vile and blackguard portion of the periodical press , and more outrageous licentiousness , on the Lord ' s day in England , Scotland , and Wales , than in the whole week from Monday morning till Saturday night . The multitude are literally driven into what is unlawful , from the utter absence of every thing that is innocent . No galleries are opened ; no exhibitions , no museums , no public gardens , oner a place for quiet , intellectual , and refined recreation ; no music enlivens the airand bespeaks , while it strengthens , the

      , joyfulness of the day of rest ; people are taught to shut their eyes to books , which they are allowed to read on other days as much as they please ; a backgammonboard , or a chess-table , is esteemed ' the mark of the beast ; ' in short , while the thoughts run on uncontrolled , and a very moderate degree of restraint is laid upon the tongue ; the eyes , the hands , and the feet are subjected to a rigorous system of surveillance , which forces tens of thousands into the haunts of sin , and tempts multitudes to a secret , stealthy enjoyment of those pleasures which they believe to be harmless , but which are proscribed by a popular , cold-blooded Puritanism . "

      It is well said by Mr . Capes that " we become brutalized because we are morbidly afraid of being frivolous and of wasting our time . We sulk , ourselves into perdition , while the boast of solid piety is on our tongue . " We would gladly extract the whole of this preface did our limits permit ; in default we recommend the reader to read it in the work itself .

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      BOOKS ON OUR TABLE . Ellie Forresters . A novel in 3 vols . By John Brent , Esq . Author of The Battle Cross , " " The Sea Wolf , " &c . T . C . Ncwby . The author we take to be a much cleverer man than his book . He has hampered the ability he possesses by a careless disregard of invention , and contcntedness with the veriest commonplaces of fiction , and made his book unreadable from the very staleness of its materials . Read it , we did not ; in all candour let us confess so much ; in all truth , however , let us add that the fault lay with the author . He has considerable powers of expression , and a rhetorical affluence which will bo his ruin , unless he keep strict surveillance over it . Fatal facility is the most dangerous of gifts . It leads a writer—as in the present

      case—to indulge in fine writing for its own sake ; and there is nothing so wearisome or so purposeless . Extracts for Schools and Families ; in Aid qf Moral and 2 feligious Training . Selected by J . M . Morgan . C . Gilpin . This is a new volume of the Phoenix Library , and is well calculated for its purpose . The extracts are classified , and include a wide range of writings from Marcus Antoninus to the Athenesum and Spectator . Mr . Morgan has added a preface in defence of the Pestalozzian method .

      Untitled Article

      The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified tnthe BebguMU Development of the Greeks and Hebrews . By Bob . WxUiam Mackay . In 2 vols . John Chapman . Social Aspects . By John Stores Smith , Author of " Mirabeau ; a Life History . " John Chapman . L'Enseignment du People . ParE . Quinet . W . Jeffs . The Lyrical Dramas of JEschylus from the Greek . Tran slated into English verse by John Stuart Blackie , Professor of Latin . Literature in Marischal College , Aberdeen . In 2 vols . J . W . Parker . Elixa Cook ' s Journal . Part XIII . J . O . Clarke . Blacktvoodv . Carlyle . A Vindication . By a Carlylian . Effingham Wilson . The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe . By Joseph Kay , Esq ., M . A . Longman and Co .

      Untitled Article

      NOTES AND EXTRACTS . A Maxim for Social Reformers . —Every experiment , by multitudes or by individuals , that has a sensual and selfish aim , will fail . The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Napoleon ,. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property , of fences , of exclusiveness , it will be mocked by delusions . Our riches will leave us sick ; there will be bitterness , in our laughter ; and . our wine will burn our mouth . Only that good profits , which we can taste with all doors open , and which serves all men . —Emerson * s Representative Men . Association versus Competition . — The broad

      and determined tendency to association is an earnest that it will eventually reach the field where it is more particularly required ; that it will confront Competition and annihilate it . Competition has been the one idea for long enough now . It has done mighty things in breaking up all bonds of loyalty between man and master ; it has annihilated the kind and friendly relationship that once existed between master and servant ; it has strengthened and nurtured all the wolfish , selfish qualities of our nature , and has dwarfed its more generous gifts and impulses , and it is quite time that it should perish . How a new state of labour laws would get organized—in what precise fashion , nothing but time and laborious experience will demonstrate . Neither Fourierism , nor Cabotism , nor Proudhonism , nor

      Socialism , nor Communism , nor Louis Blancism , are what is precisely wanted . I do not advocate these ; but I do advocate that the inhuman principle ' of competition , — which says to the master , You shall huxter , and chaffer , and bid down human souls and bodies in the same manner and with the same spirit as you would stones and bricks ; and to the work-people , You shall join in one huge , insane , inhuman scramble for work and wages ; intent on self ; careless and callous as to who starves , so that it be not you , —I do advocate , I say , that this should be done away with , and that a principle of help and good feeling , loyalty , between man and man , between servant and master , which association in some measure expresses , be introduced . — 'Social Aspects by J . S . Smith .

      Symbolical Representation . —In every age and country religion has been taught , in the infancy of human mind , by the representation of material objects for conveying and impressing spiritual truths . Idolatry has , had no other origin than the natural deficiency of language among men in a rude and uncivilized state , the natural want of words , in such a state , to convey abstract ideas , and of any other means than images , representations , and physical objects to transmit from mind to mind the religious conceptions , which even spoken and written

      languages in the highest state of cultivation , and rich in words and expressions , delicate yet defined in meaning , are scarcely able to transmit among civilized and educated people . Ceremonies , processions , images , pictures , crucifixes , altars , and all the scenery of worship , were originally , in fact , a kind of language ; and , in the early ages of the Church , when Christianity was only listened to by the most ignorant classes and was repudiated by the educated , a very needful kind of language . Intelligence was wanting , and language was wanting , and the mind in such a social state received ideas and sentiments better

      by the eye than by the ear , or by the understanding of language . The senses had to be impressed by the material representation . The means were suited to the mental condition of society , and to the deficiency of the language of a rude uncultivated people . It is absurd in our missionary societies and missionaries to declaim , as they do , against the idol-worship and idols of the heathens , either in past or present times , without considering that the mental condition of these heathens , and their language which is the exponent of that condition , admit of no expressions of religious ideas or sentiment by words , possess no abstract ideas or equivalent words , and

      that they could have had no religion at all without first having had the impression through the medium of material objects , symbols , idols , and representation—theatrical representation in fact , or , at least , its principle . In a much more advanced state of society , of language , and of intellectual culture , we still find material objects , representations , and ceremonies resorted to , for conveying religious ideas , devotional feelings , and spiritual impressions . As education advances , mind is unfolded , language enriched , and the necessity , importance , and estimation of the material , ceremonial , and , as it may be called , histrionic prinoiple in religion decline , and the value and use of the purely spiritual principle in religion advance . —Lainy ' s Observations on Europe .

      Untitled Article

      June 29 , 1850 . ] ® ft * & ££ & *?? 331

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), June 29, 1850, page 331, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1844/page/19/