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    , . . . i «»~_ . vMtiiMJi . -which Deople who know about these things Hi-SS rs ^^^ s So ^ nd amS r FamUy by Andrea del Sarto . hang aide by side in the Pitti . ThfnSeSecS ^ n of the latter is not so perfect , the Virgin has little , certainly of IeS « SS * e inexplicable , imperturbable , unaccountable content of the otheiStcan ^ Sy honest man deny that it reveals more varied intuitions _ and inaSSk flaeT glimpses into human nature , and richer and more poetic appreciation of S ^ ysterious union of the human and the infinite life , which all Chnsts , and Madonnas , and Holy Families are imperfectly meant to indicate ? In short , to tell the plain truth , there is only one of Raphael ' s works which ever gave me any ' very hieh idea of genuine power , a work little known , but when known called me Vision of EzeMel . " A majestic figure , like old Homer ' s , " with thunderous brows and lips intense , " is supported by an eagle , whose talons are fixed in a bull and a winged lion ; far beneath this group , and under the gathered clouds , lies the sleeping earth , alow , desolate , and mournful shore , in the distance the dimpled sea , in the foreground one solitary , forlorn , cheerless chesnut ; the whole forming a very grand . and noifle Homeric rendering of the Israelit e ' s vision of his God . Can the writer have pre-ent to his mind such marvels of art as the Triumph of Galatea , the Madonna di San Sisto , and the Cartoons ? The following we extract for its serious conclusion : — I love Raphael , and no one who has read his history can fail to do so . All honour to sweetness and purity , but sweetness and purity do not altogether constitute power and imagination . All honour to the kindly and gentle-hearted man , but genius is not merely goodness , and the best man is not always the best artist . So many sentimentalists in these days of rose-coloured cant would identify the two , that it is « very needful to maintain a sturdy protest against that emasculated system which refuseB to recognise the rough and mysterious , but poetic and divinely appointed , inequalities of our human nature and our social life . No better sign of the practical faithlessness and unbelief of the present generation could be desired , than the fastidious and effeminate anxiety of the orthodox to reconcile the undeniable and impracticable facts of life and conduct with certain preconceived notions and theories regarding the Divine Government Having no faith in the inherent truth and veracity of God ' s laws , they are forced to discover some excuse , extenuation , or palliation for them , under the cover of which they may , with a judicious reserve and qualification , provisionally consent to accept them . They will learn some day to their cost , with a certain astute pagan , that it is a matter of much indifference to the world whether they will believe in it or not . THE NEWCOMES . The tfeucomes . Memoirs of a Most Respectable Famih / . Edited by Arthur Pendennis , Esq . Bradbury and Evans . The Philosophical Novel is a very natural amusement of our Age , and there are signs , we think , of the likelihood of its influence increasing . Already , in Mr . Thackeray ' s hands , it has done much to supersede the Romance . The fact is inevitable , and-presents a phenomenon for which it is easy to account . Our modern life demands description « nd expression in Art , andour modern life is essentially different from the old life , the traditions of which ( changing in their aspect every age , but always surviving ) form the basis of the romantic ideas of Europe . What we call bur Civilisation has a life of its own ¦ quite distinct from the life that found expre . ~ sion in the stories which sup plied Shakspeare , and which only a generation ago had still a vitality for Scott . It must have its exponents , and its exponents must be more or less <) f its own colour—keen , calm , shrewd , cultivated , observant . It must have its fiction , and its fiction must be like itself—inquiring and practical . Romantic stories , we are happy to say , there must ever be ; but the old charm -of the " story" cannot be looked for in the scenes of " society" — or , at least , what is most characteristic of society is what it affords to the philosopher rather than to the story-teller . The child like pleasure of knowing " what becomes" of the story-teller ' s figures cannot be felt as vividly as if action were what action used to be in the old days . We watch them with a different kind of interest . The " Young Lochinvar" might find it as hard to win Miss Graham of Netherby as ever , but in what a different way he would go to work 1 Sir James would not receive him with " his hand on his sword , " though his hostility would perhaps be harder to bear than the old chief's . What worldly intrigue!—what plotting!—but it would all be carried on in drawing-rooms and dining-rooms , and Lochinvar would lay his plans at a club , and so forth . It would never do for a balhid . But in our complex and artificial life it would call into play emotions , and produce incidents , full of matter for observation . What it lost in romance it would gain in philosophy , and if Thackeray did nor- muke a wonderful " story" of it , he would make it deeply interestin j in his own way . That way is not the poetical or the romantic one , —and a novelist who possesses these tendencies usually in our days makes off to the Past , like Hawthorne with his Puritans , or to the ¦ ea , like Melville with his Mazdi , or ¦ to little nooks of country life nnd the haunts of unsophisticated poor people like most women—or to Chaos , like the mob of novelists—or somewhere , at least , out of the hearing of the roar of Charing-cross . But if you stay in town and paint professedly the every-day men and women , what are you to do ? Will you take the high Disraeli road , mid be biting und mysterious with moon-faced sybils , and young gentlemen who never talk but in epigrams P This last is a way of getting people to listen to your doctrines who would never buy them in , a pamphlet , and far be it from us in these times , to sneer at anything readable , But . we are talking , now , of novels as novels . The problem being to pitint English life—as it rides about , talks , speaks in parliament , and so forth—not subordinating life to a story , but making the story out . of the life—how are you to do itP The light of common day is to be full about you . Your page is to smack of the day on which it appears as fully as the Times newspaper . We say _ that you must do it like 1 hackeray ; that it ia because Thackeray does it with auch reality that . people listen to him—and that this is at once the reason why he in praised and why he is censured . He ia a novelist of the world . There is the . saine difference between a book of his and of Bulwer ' e , for instance , as there i » between a bail and a masquerade . The figures at the ball are good , reaTpeojyte ; at the 'masquerade there id life enough , and brilliancy und

    pleasure , but everything is somehow unreal . Sir Edward ( for whom we have nothing but kindness , and whom we honour as a real man of letters—a class not increasing , we fear ) seems to be coming round to our opinion . In his latest works he is much more real and truthful , and he has given his reputation a fresh lease in consequence . Let us not be rat't , hereabouts , by a cry to the effect that there is romance everywhere if you look for it , and by some vague nonsense about the Ideal . Thank God . there is romance still extant—the human heart being still here , and the planet bowling along in safety . But is our public life beautiful ? Look into its speeches and despatches , talk to its members , nnd then ask whether the Fairy Queen or Vanity Fa ' e ' r be the most natural result of its inspiration . Take up the last Blue-book , and compare it with the Elizabethan documents in Murdin or Haynes ; look at the faces from the " Strangers' gallery , " and compare them with the faces in the folios of Lodge ' s Portraits . You will see , then , what is meant by one age being more prosaic than another . A man must paint what he sees . Our society is prosaic , and requires a satirical painter . After all , Truth is the noblest thing ; and as Lite is , so must Art be . The value of Thackeray's writings is in their truthfulness , so that one studies the persons introduced as parts of the age in which we live . In short , reality is his characteristic , and though we undoubtedly purchase it by the loss of some qualities which attract us in other writers , yet it is so very important a point that we are content to pay the price . It is a point of great moral importance—since the influence of fiction is in proportion to the credibility it carries with it . What matter how lofty , pure , spotless a being you profess to make your ideal character , if the reader does not believe in his existence ? He will make no permanent impression on your reader ' s mind but in proportion as he thinks him a real personage . Hence it is that most children ' s books are so ineffably useless : the little reader seeing that " the good boy" is a supernatural character , finds his humanity unimpressed by him , and does not consider himself bound by his laws . Nunquam aliud Natura aliud Sapientia dicet , is a line of old Juvenal ' s which every novelist ought to cherish as the motto of his order . But now for The Newcome " . It is not so good a story , not so exciting a narrative as Vanity Fair , nor do we think it probable that any novel of the writer ' s will equal that one in story . There is a boldness , too , about Vanity Fair which we miss here . The writer seems to be conscious of his i ¦ creased fame and responsibility , and to be somewhat more subdued and quiet . The satire is less prominent and conspicuous . We might say of the satirical element : — And pray how was the Devil drest ? Oh , he was dressed in his Sunday ' s best . The crack of the flagellum is not heard , though the implement is by no means thrown away . The whole picture is of a quieter and more decent kind of life . The Bohemians ( though honourably represented by the portly and jolly figure of Fred . Bayham ) play no great part in the work . Instead of a wicked grandee we have a foolish one—and so on . It is a deliberate and designed representation of " respectable * ' life—of that kind of lite which discharges all the social and conventional duties according to the traditions of England , —which has its moral defence to make for even its selfishness—Which pays its debts , believes , and says its prayers . We cannot therefore , expect the dramatic excitement of a book with BeckieB and Rawdon Craw leys in it ; but . what we lose in drama we gain in analysis . Mr . Thackeray is a great artist , and knows that the story should grow out of the characters , and that to fit your characters to a story is to imitate the art of a street Punch . A little artificial fellow tumbles his puppets through a score of gambols , and thinks that we shall be so dizzy with the movement as to forget that they are made of wood . We are interested in what Hamlet does , because he is Hamlet . Our modern life curries on its loves , and hates , and schemes—its tragedies and its destinies- —in drawing-rooms and back parlours , in " chambers , " and in broughams . Do you expect from its doings the kind of excitement which you have in the stories of the Cid , of the Crusaders , of the Scots ballads , of Burgei- ' s Leonora ? Be it distinctly understood that plot is not required by the philosophical novel . What is the plot of Don Quixote ? The Newcomes then takes up that life which , of all lives ever led on this earth , is outwardly the most commonplace , and makes it glow with human interest . Here ia the genius of Thackeray ; for in nothing i » genius shown so much as in making what seems the most ordinary material assume the living attraction of novelty in the form of art . His object here has been to exhibit the moral character and social quality of the best English mi idle class and upper life , without a trace of improbable invention or a single undue stimulant . That he has succeeded in this as completely as ever we are happy to be assured Let us now indicate the points of likeness , or unlikeness , in The Newcomes to his other works ; and first let us inquire ( with due gravity ) what ia the moral ? Hero we must fall back on our remark about the sturdy realism of the man . Poor Colonel Newcome , sans peur et sans reproche—the generous gentleman—the kind father and firm friend—dies a pauper . The central young persons of the book , Clive and Ethel , suffer great misery , and though at lust we are permitted to believe they marry and are happy , the hope is held out to us in a vague way , und the triumph is dashed by puinlul recollections . Barnes is successful , as fur its worldly success goes , to the last . Kew disappears early into a not very happy marriage , though hia generous character deserved a better fate . Well , what should have become of them all P Adela dries her swollen eyes afler the " double number" at the end , and passionately bewaita the Colonel and his destiny . And we tell that young woman that those tears are better for her heart and for her moral nature , than all the pretty joyful tenderness which would have stirred her , if the Colonel had driven oft out of the story in a coach-and-six . When all ends " happily , " und a direct connexion is established between good behaviour and thu three per contB ., a maudlin pleasure is produced , which is rather a mean and immoral , u

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    ™^ T H E li EADEB . [ Ko . 285 , Sattcruay ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 8, 1855, page 870, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2105/page/18/