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    Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of literature . They do no make laws —they interpret and try to enforce uhoui . —Edinburgh Review .

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    We are a great nation , there is no one disputes the fact ; but there are some things which we do not understand , and which it seems impossible for us to learn even with abundant examples before our eye * : *| jjfc do not understand how to produce a public building , how to conduct a war , or how to recognise and properly employ a man of genius . Great men we have had in abundance ; these great men have , for the most part , received their meed of applause and honour—when dead ; but how to fitly honour and employ their genius has been a problem above our powers . It is not that we are stupid , insensible to merit , or niggard with purse and praise ; but we don ' t know how to set about even the simplest plan of securing men of great faculties such opportunities for the development of their powers as shall best suit them and best reward us . Let a man of ability fall into distress , and at once a liberal " subscription" is made ; but the begging-box must go round before our sympathies are moved ; we are never prospective in charity .

    It is clear as daylight that the higher departments of Science and Literature are necessary to our social advancement , but are incapable of themselves securing remuneration , from a public which pays only for what it immediately uses and in proportion to its use . That the Principia is of quite infinite value to the world , compared with Uncle Tom's Cabin for example , is a proposition which even Mrs . Stowe would heartily accept . But if the author of the Principia is to be paid by the number of copies sold , and if his existence and the existence of his family happen to depend on the produce of the sale , this infinite value becomes almost infinitesimal . How are we to rectify this ? If all philosophers were rich , or only the rich were gifted with philosophical faculty ( neither of which hypothetical cases have much support from fact ) , the matter would be simple enough . But as it is , England says to the philosopher : Get rich—or starve ! The philosophers , for the most part , try the former alternative ; and when they succeed , it is at the expense of philosophy .

    Cuvier , than the curatorship of a museum belonging to one section of the Medical Profession . In my own case , indeed , the Council of the Surgeons' College have done me the honour to re-elect me annually , for some years past , to a professorship not previously held by the curator of their museum . But this position has none of that fixed ness and independence -which my brother professors of the same science on the Continent enjoy . Crreat is the pleasure with which I can state , that the shortcomings of our national arrangements for analogous cases have been well understood by the most illustrious personages and individuals of the State , who have generously endeavoured to remedy and compensate for them . The noble lord at the head of foreign affairs , in the most handsome terms , gave my son a clerkship in his office . Sir Robert Peel , in assigning to me , a short time before his lamented death , a pension of 200 / . a year , well appreciated the acceptability of such a provision in the ' exemption from anxiety flowing therefrom . I shall never cease to gratefully cherish the memory of the wise and benevolent statesman , who created for me the satisfaction of feeling that , whatever might possibly cause a termination of my present appointments , I do not thereby fall into utter destitution . Her Most Gracious Majesty , measuring my humble merits by the standard of her own greatness of mind , was pleased to offer me , as a residence , the mansion of the late King of Hanover , at Kew . On my respectfully representing to her illustrious consort , your gifted and philosophic president , the disproportion of my means to the fruition of that royal gift , he was pleased to suggest the assignment to my use of a beautiful cottage , in which the most healthful and delightful hours of my life have been spent , and which daily renews a grateful sense of the happiness and privilege we enjoy in the benign reign of Victoria . This is how England treats her greatest man in one department . Had Owen taken orders , and edited Greek plays , what would his position have been ? Had he eaten dinners in Lincoln ' Inn , and applied his marvellous faculties to Law , what would his income and title have been ? Would he even but keep within his own profession , and not To Molluscs give up what was meant for Mankindthat is to say , had he cared less about the laws of organisation , and more about Lady B . ' s u nerves" and Viscount C . ' s liver , what would his income have been ? Unwise Professor ! \ :

    We are led to touch upon this subject by observing that Mr . Hhywood has given notice of his intention to move next session for a Select Committee to inquire " What public measures can be adopted to advance science and improve the position of its cultivators . " Surely a very momentous inquiry ! It must embrace Literature as well as Science—for the cause of the two is one . But to confine ourselves for the present to cultivators of science , let us glance at the inevitable loss of power which our present indifference entails . If John Bull boldly said science is of no use—let it take care of itself , his present sjstem , or no system , would be perfectly wise . But he admits the importance of science—and still leaves it to shift for itself !

    A single illustration will best enforce our argument . In England a distinguished surgeon or physician finds no great diiliculty in making an income of three to five thousand a year , by practice ; but if this same man happen to bo gif ted ( or cursed ) with that order of mind which fits him and impels him to be a distinguished investigator of Science , he will be fortunate indeed if his labours secure him nn income of three to five hundred a year , and that precarious . It was but the other day that the friends of a distinguished comparative anatomist , Professor Grant , had to appeal to the sympathies of the public to compensate in some measure for the want of that reward which in Italy , Germany , and France would have been tenfold ; and at the lost meeting of the Society of Arts , in reference to the vc ' question we are mooting , the greatest comparative anatomist England has ever had—Hicuaro Owen—had thus to state his own case : —

    And finally , in reference to the topic touched ur . on by tho noble chairman , viz ., the social position , national relations , recognition , ami rewards of scientific merit in this country . What these wore of old—how they were onco viewed — wo see in tho provisions made in mediaeval times for the due dignity and independence of such masterminds as might achieve the higher posts at our I ' nivor . sitiea —such positions , for example , ns tho Deanery of Christchureh , Oxford , tho Mastership of Trinity College , Cambridge , which the wisdom of our ancestors established for those men who won renown in the sciences , which nlone were recognised in the time of the foundation of those and tho like independent and dignified offices . The human intellect has since extended its conquests over a wider range nnd diflorent fields ; more congenial , perhaps , to its true nima and powers than the scholastienl , logical , and theological studies

    • which represented science before ( Jalileo and Uncon . Has England continued to choriah ftnd foster in tho same Hpirit the new and fruitful Natural Sciences , as she honoured herself and manifested her wisdom by doing , in relation to the older forms of human knowledge ? What , for . instance , at the present period of her unexampled "wealth , due mainly to the application of the abstract discoveries of science—what is tho national relation of her Faraday ? What is my own ? Are wo labouring , lecturing , in national institutions in Ji . red positions ? absolutely ( . rempt from the annoyance of individual interference or caprice , in the- peace-giving certitude of the continuance of hardlii-earned emoluments , with tho cheering conviction of a

    suitable retiring provision when tho wearied brain begins to fail in Us wonted and expected efforts ? As working men in our lino , with bread to earn by tho work we . do , Kngland owns us not ; she ignores us in the senso in which she recognised and provided for her modiuwal teachers . Wo are merely tho servants of particular chartered bodies . Ah ft comparative anatomist , indeed , 1 deem myself fortunate among my fellow-workers in tho place 1 hold , but it needs only that a majority of the Council of the College of Surgeons should so will and vote it , and q / ter nigh thirty yaws' service T must begin the world afresh . My masters are . irrorfponniblo , or only remotely responsible , to public opinion ! Hitherto England has devised no other or bettor position for tho man wham aho may delight to honour by calling " her

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    Travellers write upon Timbuctoo , but disdain the Netherlands . The manners and customs of Peru or Pekin are sketched in uncountable volumes , but we do not remember any detailed account of the Dutch . Yet surely our Dutch neighbours are a specific and singular people . M . Esquibos , in the Revue des Deux Mondes , gives us a very p leasant sketch of them , which , in default of better , may be read with interest . He is , it is true , a Frenchman , and Frenchmen are the liveliest , but not the most trustworthy pencillers of national peculiarities . The Gaul is , of course , perplexed by the placidity of the Hollander . He cannot understand the want of vivacity , and the insensibility to ennui which the Hollander manifests . Above all , he is amazed at Dutch cleanliness . "In Belgium , " he says , " for some

    years past they have established Prizes for cleanliness ; in Holland , people are clean without knowing it r et sans qu ' aucun Montkyon s ' en mile . " The days of schoonmaking ( cleaning days ) are Wednesday , Friday , and Saturday ; on these days the houses are en grande toilette . The mop is in possession ' of the street . Red-armed domestics swarm into the streets , and you see them dashing their pails of water against the walls with a sort of exaltation astounding in a race usually so phlegmatic , and ( to use the phrase of picturesque amazement extorted from M . Esquibos ) they " look like the Bacchantes of cleanliness . " " En Hollande on brosse le mur comme ailleurs on brosse son habit . La facade et l'interieur des maisons , tout est lave , frotte " , dcurc avec nn soin impitoyable . "

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    HEINE'S POEMS . Pictures of Travel . Translated from the German of Henry Heine . By Charles G . Lcland . Triibner and Co . Nature one day resolved to make a witty German . But as this supreme paradox was not to be achieved all at once , it happened that in the ardour of a Treat purpose she mistook Hebrew blood for German , and while she was busv nddin" the wit , allowed the best moral qualities of the German to slip out " of her hands . So , instead of the witty Teuton she intended , she would have produced merely a Voltairian Jew speaking the German language , if she had not , perceiving her mistake before it was too late , superadded , as some compensation for the want of morale , a passionate heart blending its emotions with the most delicate and imaginative sensibility to the beauties of earth and sky , and a supreme lyrical genius , which could weave the wit , and the passion , and the imagination into songs light and lovely

    as the rainbows on the spray of the summer torrent . Thus it came to pass that we have that wonderful human compound Heinncn Heine , a writer who is master of a German prose as light and subtle and needle-pointed as Voltaire ' s French , and of a poetical style as crystalline , as graceful , and as musical as that of Goethe ' s best lyrics ; but a writer who is destitute of the distinct moral conviction which often inspired Voltaire , and still more utterly destitute of the profound wisdom and the depth of love nnd reverence which roll like a deep river under the sparkling , dimpling surface of Goethe ' s song . Indeed , we know nothing more likely to impress than ot

    a reader with the grander elements of Goethe ' s mind a comparison his lyrics with Heine ' s , for tho very reason that Heine quite equals < ? £ in nil the charms of mere song , nnd has one quality mingling itselt ww > m ; lyrical power which Goethe had not—namely , wit ; or rather , to oxpre * s ^ b more specifically , French esprit . For , alien as this quality ™ B ™ £ *™ ™ passionate love-songs nnd thrilling legendary pictures , such as to majority of lleine ' s ^ poems it is , nevertheless , nlnio * t cvo » £ ^ XTp giving your rising tears the aocon . pnn . ment oU l «^ , ; irresistibly Save lost the cold shudder at his spectral v , s , o . a , W' ^ AmOpicaJ to your . sense of fun . . We cannot agree wt » £ £ y IIe cert « inly has traiiHlntor that t tumour is Homo ' * grand < ' ^ 1 ™ u 9 ftS a humouristhumour- perhnps even enoug h to sot « P »» 'f ^ f / proso and most of but ayc think it will bo found that hi * greatest oiiccis i ,

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    September 1 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . g $ 3

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 1, 1855, page 843, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2104/page/15/