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    the sympathy with the poor , thebonhomie , the unbounded hopes , of the best actors in the extraordinary scenes now acting before the eyes of Europe in this present year iS-50 . As he himself could not construct as well as he could pull down , so neither do his countrymen , with all the goodness and greatness among them , appear to be less truly represented by him in that particular than in others ; but in pulling down he had the same vague desire of the best that could set up ; and when he was most thought to oppose Christianity itself , he only did it out of an impatient desire to see the law of love triumphant , and was only thought to be the adversary of its spirit because his revilers knew nothing of it themselves . " Voltaire , in an essay written by himself in the English language , has said of Milton , in a passage which

    would do honour to our best writers , that when the poet ¦* aw the Adamo of Andreini at Florence he « pierced through the absurdity of the plot to the hidden majesty of the subject . ' It may be said of himself that he pierced through the conventional majesty of a great many subjects to the hidden absurdity of the plot . He laid the axe to a heap of savage abuses ; pulled the corner-stones out of dungeons and inquisitions ; bowed and mocked the most tyrannical absurdities out of countenance ; _ and raised one prodigious peal of laughter at superstition from Naples to the Baltic . He was the first man who got the power of opinion and common sense openly recognised as a reigning authority ; and who made the acknowledgment of it a point of wit and cunning , even with those who had hitherto thought they had the world to themselves . "

    This amazing ignorance of Voltaire we can corroborate ; but it should also be added that an ignorance as great , toule proportion gar dee , exists in France respecting the works of this admirable writer . He has been so vilified by the one set , and sneered at as " superficial" by the other , that a man requires some courage to avow his admiration . Even such a writer as Philarete Chasles , who has undertaken the article •« Voltaire" for a recent Cyclopaedia , is afraid of " committing himself" by admiring Voltaire , and repeats the old stereotyped absurdities respecting him . There are many " confessions " in these volumes ; but here are two passages brought together worthy of attention from all public writers ( he is speaking

    of his first editorial grandeur , when the Examiner was started ) : — A . I / ESSOX FOR JOURNALISTS . " At other times , especially on serious occasions , I too often got into a declamatory vein , full of what I thought fine turns and Johnsonian antithesis . The new office of editor conspired with my success as a critic to turn my head . I wrote , though anonymously , in the first person , as if , in addition to my theatrical pretensions , I had suddenly become an oracle in politics ; the words philosophy , poetry , criticism , statesmanship , nay , even ethics and theology , all took a final tone in my lips ; and when I consider the virtue as well as knowledge which I demanded from everybody whom I had occasion to speak

    of , and of how much charity my own . juvenile errors ought to have considered themselves in need ( however they mi ^ ht have been warranted by conventional allowance ) , I will not say I was a hypocrite in the odious sense of the word , for it was all done out of a spirit of foppery and ' fine writing , ' and I never affected any formal virtues in private ; but when I consider all the nonsense and extravagance of those assumptions—all the harm they must have done me in discerning eyes , and all the reasonable amount of resentment which it was preparing for me with adversaries , I blush to think what a simpleton I was , and how much of the consequences I deserved . It is out of no * ostentation of candour' that I make this confession . It is extremely

    painful to me . " ***** " But with the inexperience and presumption of youth , I was too much in the habit of confounding difference of opinion with dishonest motives . I did not see ( and it is strange how people , not otherwise wanting in common sense or modesty , can pass whole lives without seeing ) that if I had a right to have good motives attributed to myself by those who differed with me in opinion , I was bound to reciprocate the concession . I did not reflect that political antagonists have generally been born and

    bred in a state of antagonism , and that for any one of them to demand identity of opinion from another on pain of his being thought a man of bad motives , was to demand that he should have had the antagonist ' s father and mother as well as his own—the same training , the same direction of conscience , the same predilections and very prejudices ; not to mention that good motives themselves might have induced a man to go counter to all those , even had hu been bred in them ; which , in one or two respects , was the case with , myself . "

    The history of the Examiner is given at some length , together with specimens of its articles , and the whole of the article for which ho and his brother were fined £ 1000 and sentenced to two years' imprisonment . It will amuse the modern reader to see what was considered " a firebrand" in those days . Still greater amusement is there in the account of his imprisonment , his jailer , and the visitors who came to see him—Ilazlitt , Shelley , Byron , Itanthain ( who found him playing at battledore , in which he took part , and , ¦ wit h his usual eye towards improvement , suggested an amendment in the constitution of shuttlecocks !)

    not to mention the Lambs and other intimates . Here is a picture of A POET IX PRISON 1 . " I papered the walls with a trellis of roses ; I had the ceiling coloured with clouds and sky ; the barred windows I screened with Venetian blinds ; and when my bookcases were set up with their busts , and flowers and a pianoforte made their appearance , perhaps there was not a handsomer room on that side the water . I took a pleasure , when a stranger knocked at the door , to see him come in and stare about him . The surprise on issuing from the Borough , and passing through the avenues of a jail , was dramatic . Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room , except in a fairy tale .

    " But I possessed another surprise , which was a garden . There was a little yard outside the room , railed off from another belonging to the neighbouring ward . This yard I shut in with green palings , adorned it wtth a trellis , bordered it with a thick bed of earth from a nursery , and even contrived to have a grass-plot . The earth I filled with flowers and young trees . There was an apple-tree , from which we managed to get a pudding the second year . As to my flowers , they were allowed to be perfect . Thomas Moore , who came to see me with Lord Byron , told me he had seen no such heart ' s-ease . I bought the " Parnaso Italiano " while in prison , and used often to think of a passage in it , while looking at this miniature piece of horticulture : —

    " Mio picciol orto , A me sei vigna , e camyo , e selva , e prato . " Bald i . " My little garden , To me thou ' rt vineyard , field , and meadow , and wood . " Here I wrote and read in fine weather , sometimes under an awning . In autumn , my trellises were hung with scarlet runners , which added to the flowery investment . I used to shut my eyes in my arm-chair , and affected to think myself hundreds of miles off .

    " But my triumph was in issuing forth of a morning . A wicket out of the garden led into the large one belonging to the prison . The latter was only for vegetables ; but it contained a cherry-tree , which I saw twice in blossom . I parcelled out the ground in my imagination into favourite districts . I made a point of dressing myself as if for a long walk ; and then , putting on my gloves , and taking my book under my arm , stepped forth , requesting my wife not to wait dinner if I was too late .

    My eldest little boy , to whom Lamb addressed some charming verses on the occasion , was my constant companion , and we used to play all sorts of juvenile games together . It was , probably , in dreaming of one of these games ( but the words had a more touching effect on my ear ) that he exclaimed one nisht in his sleep , No : I'm not lost ; I ' m found . ' Neither he nor I were very strong at that , time ; but I have lived to see him a man of forty ; and wherever he is found , a generous hand and a great understanding will be found together . "

    A father may be excused from saying more than that , parental eulogies not being received with unlimited confidence , but the present writer cannot resist saying that , in that " man of forty , " there is more love , more benevolence , more tmaffected sympathy with suffering and error wherever it may be found , more of the great stoical virtue of endurance combined -with a gentleness and generosity the Stoics never thought of , more of the chivalrous spirit , more of the true gentleman according to to the highest ideal we can frame , and consequently a greater power of inspiring unbounded attachment than in any man we ever met with . There are but few persons who will understand to whom this allusion is made ; nor is it

    made for their peculiar information ; it is rather the irrepressible utterance of a feeling which has animated the writer for many years . Some few will shake hands with us over the passage , and exclaim , " That ' s true ! " The others may read on and wonder , as they would in some old palimpsest , where , between the lines of a monkish homily , appear the faint traces of an ancient hymn to friendship . To return to the Autobiography . A circumstantial account of the journey to Italy , and his connection with Lord Uyron ( robbed of all the asperity which was visible in the famous " Lord Byron and his Contemporaries" ) is followed by a somewhat

    scrambling review of his life since then , written against the grain , and very much less interesting than the other portions . On the whole , we find in these three volumes rather what may be called " paspages from the Life of Leigh Hunt" than any regular autobiography . Perhaps no man can write his own life well , with the consciousness that it is to be published while he is still moving amidst the scenes . But , such as it is , with its glimpses of the author's life , and its reminiscences of such men as West , Coleridge , Wordsworth , Lamb , Ilazlitt , Keats , Byron , Shelley , and others , it forms a charming book to be read , and reread , and reread again .

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    smith ' s social aspects . Social slspccts . B y John Stores Smith , Author of " Mirabeau ; a I-ifo History . " John Chapman . We have high expectations of Mr . Smith . He will , we are persuaded , play a distinguished part in the

    ¦ world . Whoever remembers his extraordinary boyish , venture , " Mirabeau , " which it was difficult to read , owing to the detestable mimicry of Carlyle , and amazing juvenility and crudity of views , and which , nevertheless , did carry you on by its force , its vivacity , and its narrative power—whoever remembers that audacious production , and reads the serious earnest book now issued , will agree with us that so rapid an advance in intellectual breadth , vigor , and independence indicates a mind capable of maturing into something remarkable . Traces of juvenility

    there are ; traces of deficient experience suggesting hasty generalizations ; traces o f the author ' s not having lived enough to be able to get beneath the surface of some subjects , not having thought enough to be able to utter anything new upon these old familiar themes . But , viewed absolutely , it is no commonplace book , and viewed relatively , it is adr mirable . Carlyle is still the prophet to whose eloquence Mr . Smith reverently listens ; but he has rid himself of all mockery of Carlyle's manner . He has taken up Carlyle ' s ideas , assimilated them into his own mind , and reproduced them in an honest

    manner . The idea of the book is this : All nations decay because they overrefine > and lose in comforts , luxuries , pomps , shows , and effeminacies , the manliness which alone can animate an empire . The cause of , national decay , he says ;—" The cause of all national decay , as of all national prosperity , originates in the social condition of the people themselves ; and that , therefore , the most insignificant domestic , social , and religious tendencies are intrinsically of more importance than wars and orations , and

    senatorial conflicts , which are , indeed , but the weather- , cocks , and not the wind . To this the practice of England is one huge denial . Almost the whole of the energy and the intelligence of the country are concentrated upon politics , to the total neglect of social advancement . Week after week in every newspaper are three or four articles on some political movement , frequently quite an , unimportant one ; now lamenting a retrogression , now indignantly exposing an imposture , or loudly calling attention to a dangerous manifestation ; but when was there seen an article calling the like attention to any

    such social manifestation ? But rarely . The social interference of newspapers is , for the most part , confined to the salaries of town clerks and the election of beadles . See , also , with what might and determination the whole intelligence of the nation set itself to repeal the cornlaws ; what perseverance , energy , and earnest devotion were expended to gain that end ; and now that that end is gained , have we not the same perseverance and devotedness called into play for other political causes ? Men leave their homes of an evening , and rush excited to large halls and meeting rooms , to strain their throats

    and expend their energies in effecting the saving to themselves of a f » w annual pence ; but to ameliorate the social condition of England , to discover its evils and its evil tendencies , and to veform them , and to elevate the tone of thought and living , there are but few orators parading the land , few monster gatherings , or bushels of pamphlets or expended energies . Surely , this is very monstrous . I do not seek to disparage the political reformer ; I acknowledge his importance , and take him

    to heart as a true and judicious labourer in the good cause ; but 1 do say that it is monstrous that well nigh all the intellect and the action of the country should be turned upon legislative matters , especially when social affairs are the more vitally important . The two reforms should always go hand in hand . Let those whose genius prompts them to political action begin at once and follow it up as fully and as bravely as they can ; but do let us have at least an . equal amount of thought and intellect directed to observing our social manifestations , and suggesting remedies where they find them to be wrong . "

    He , therefore , undertakes to examine our present Social Aspects . He is wearied of the perpetual selfglorification which goes on in public . Leaving to others the easy task of trumpeting the glories of our day he proposes to confine himself to an enunciation of its evil features . lie will not content himself with bare comparison ; he will test the age by absolute standards . He stands up , therefore , as a Cato the Censor on a small scale . An octavo Jeremiah , outraged by Manchester . In the first of these Social Aspects he discovers our domestic tendencies to be all vicious , inasmuch as we put sho w for substance : —

    • ' Plain living and high thinking' are no more . " Wo set our hopes upon " party giving" and " largo circle of acquaintances , " There is considerable truth in his strictures , mixed , however , with too much of the Circulating Library view of life ; but we entirely sympathize with the spirit of his criticism . In that on Immorality" he touches upon but a part of the question ; in the chapter on tho education and position of woman there ia little but worn out declamation and superficial views . In that on the Aristocracy of Mammon , Carlyle ' s voice is heard energetically denouncing this " monster evil . " There

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    Joir e , I 860 . ] W $ t ' * , * € ** % * ' 353

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), July 6, 1850, page 353, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1845/page/17/