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    mrm ™>^™ ™ a ^t^^,, THE Q^WR ?* AMEEICAN DISOBDER

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    ber of persons there are , in this country , at once happy and rich . Statistics do not represent them . Nothing represents them better than a ' glance at London . A prodigious city , lost amid its suburbs , with nearly evexy house inhabited and furnished , and . a large majority of the houses inhabited "by quiet and comfortable people . Beyond the suburbs , in every direction , are double Hues of luxurious villas ; . and still farther , grouped near the different railways , little towns , supported almost solely by pleasure-seekers—all indicative of prosperit y ^ , to some extent , of happiness .

    If you say that rich people leave town because to leave town is fashionable , that wearygirls seek restoration in the ccnintry from the dissipations of the long London carnival , that the gaiety of the sea-side is a social inoekery , —tliat may suit the tone of an opening chapter ; but go to a watering-place , dull as a -watering-place in 'England is , and Contradiction meets you on the parade . There are a thousand beauties there , with a flush , not hectic , on the cheeks ; there are crowds of individuals too well conditioned , in mind , body , and estate , to be miserable ; you may take it for granted life is not a

    burden to them—the stout gentlemen and the superb Cqn : ramA . s ; the conscious , confident faces are thpse of merry young people , who enjoy their rides , drives , and walks , and never think of cankers in roses , or hollow hearts that wear a ma sk , or anything else disagreeable . They come down by first-class , express , and they come down by the excursion train ; they may be seen at every pretty place on the coast , and when they are unable to strike from the metropolis as far as the sea , they haunt the pretty places on the river , or rejoice on the little hills that seem made for holiday-seekers round London .

    If we-did not think of these things from time to time , a false melancholy would come over us . All the divorce cases are recorded and repeated in the journals ; but with . happy marriages reporters have nothing to do . We hear of houses burnt , but if we go outside the door , we shall see London more immense than ever . So , in- every direction . The scum rises to the top , and we have dismal hints of the dregs that lie at the bottom , but there is a healthy , well-compounded body between , doing its daily work , suffering only a light average of human sorrow .

    If the vice , or the miser }' , that is obtruded upon our attention in particular exemplifications , were really working through the whole mass of humanity , if men were not in general honest , marriages in general happy , individuala in general only so far dissatisfied as to be stimulated in their careers , society could not hold together-. And if it could hold together it would not be -worth improving , and reformers and moralists would be the worst of tlie whole illusion .

    Mrm ™≫^™ ™ A ^T^^,, The Q^Wr ?* Ameeican Disobder

    pith , ever comes back with senile pertinacity , to mead or mar thai ; which has long since passed from under its fingers . Ueligion , and by religion I mean Christianity alone , tells a wholly different tale . It is the doctrine of a complete proportion or harmony between God . and man , between creator and creature . It denies that ¦ there is any superfluous Divine energy in the world , any energy which is not fully engrossed in the work of creation . It denies the temporal and spatial conception of the relation between God and the soul ,

    and affirms that this relation is exclusively spiritual , standing in the intensely human perfection of God on the one side , and the unselfish , dispositions which that perfection is sure to generate in the creature , on the other side . In this way Christianity prepared to sop up the Pagan or superstitious conception of God , as an idle and possibly mischievous power , by showing Him intent on developing Ms creature out of all merely personal or natural ties , up to the highest capacities of the human form , that is , into the love and fellowship of universal man .

    * THE ORDER IK AMERICAN DISOBDEB . ( To the Editor of the Leader . ) We Americans are doubtless very grateful for every attempt at a fair appreciation of our institutions made by Europeans , but it is not to be denied that our critics generally exhibit a profound lack of sympathy with -what constitutes the distinctively American mind and tendency- Our present America maybe called a purgatorial world . That is to say , it bears very much the same relation to Europe that the purgatorial world of the Papists bears to nature . For America is really the connecting link or transition point between , two -very distinct' stages of human culture ^ and unless it be viewed in this light , it is

    impossible , in my opinion , to formulate any reasonable or commanding doctrine on the subject . America connects the great past evolution of mankind , which has been ecclesiastical and political , with a much grander future evolution , which shall be pre-eminently social . Audi inasmuch as this past evolution of the human xaind has proceeded in a strictly literal manner , "being based upon the reverence due to certain institutions , so r consequently , the new evolution , which is a spiritual one , being based exclusively upon the reverence vhich is due to man as man , can hardly fail to bring ; / the most sacred institutions into desuetude , or , wliat is the same thing , vacate our existing morality .

    What Europe has done for man has been to lift him out of barbarism and give him citizenship , or turn him , from . a . mere puppet and plaything of the gods , into the member of a peaceful and orderly earthly community called the State . The barbaric conception of lift , out of which our existing civilization lias been gradually wrung , involves a doctrine of God and man , suggestive only of despair for the latter . Man is regarded only as the sport of the gods , while they themselves , instead of being wise and good beings , aie , to the last degree , childish and capricious , taking delight in whatever flatters their power , and intolerant of everything like constancy and dignity in human affairs . But even these gods themselves obey a deadlier despotism , for over all the

    early imagination of the race presides a diabolic doctrine of Fate , a fate which domineers gods and men alike , whicli laughs at tlie holiest affections , and lifts one to exalted heights onjy that it may precipitate him to an utter downfal . Before the coming of Christ the State liad no power to emerge from the womb of this gaunt and stifling superstition , because the Church , which alono fathers the Stated had thitlierto had only a formal or symbolic development , the Jew being as hopelessly superstitious as any of the Gentilo nations . The superior historic interest of Greece and Rome , to our imagination , will be found , on analysis , to refer itself to the fact that their growth exhibits a striking decline in the empire of superstition and fanaticism

    , or argues an approximation towards the scientific conception of the State . Good and wise men La those communities aspired to give stability to human affairs , but their aspirations- were fruitless , because , having merely the personal conception of God , or being destitute of the human conception which was revealed only in the Christ , they did not know how to shape the popular thought into harmony with the rational fact . Indeed , the best minds of that day were bound to run into infidelity , and mere infidelity , as all thoughtful men recognize , furnishes a very treacherous bottom for any permanent engineering . What was wanted Avas tho complete discrimination of religion from superstition , and this took place only in Chriatmnity .

    Superstition has been often defined , but its etymology tells tho Avliole story , It is the doctrine of a superfluous or unemployed divine forco in tho world , of a force which is not entirely worked into the ordinary woof of life , and which is liable therefore to an occasional mischievous determination ; for nothing is more essentially mischievous than idle or unemployed force . To the uninstructed mind God superstctt—stands above tho world , stands spatially aloof from his creation and sees it spin , giving it now a cuff and now a caress , as it suits his irresponsible pleasure . It is the doctrine of an essential disproportion behvecn tho creator and the creature , of such a disproportion aB makes it incumbent on the creature to do something more than reflect or image his creator , namely , to flatter him and give him . a certain portion of his time and substance . In short , superstition gives us a haunted world , a world haunted by tlie power wliich made it , and wIucIl , instead of engaging in new entcrnrizes of similar

    That" Christianity has so imperfectly , manifested her mission as yet has been owing to tlte fact that she has been , obliged to operate by such poor instrumentalities as bishops and priests . These persons have had so powerful a vested interest in maintaining the comparatively worthless Utter of her authority , that her divine arti universal spirit has been completely stifled in their bosoms . Still the practical influence of Christianity in Europe has ever been to secularize / the Churcli , or rather to consecrate the State : Its constant operation has been to take the relation of the soul to God out of'the custody of the priest , and make it the exclusive concern of the private conscience . The immense corruption it encountered in the Romish Church seems

    to have had no other effect tlian to inflame this tendency or bring it into clearer day . Nothing , accordingly , is more obvious in Protestantism than the ceaseless effort which the State , or secular element , makes to precipitate the Church , or vacate it as a present power over the life and liberty of the citizen . AH its energy goes to dignifythe citizen , or to ensure him an irreproachable character and an unchecked career , without the least reference to his ecclesiastical status . No one acquainted with Europe can help seeing that its ecclesiastical life is at its last gasp , and that the living tide of the divine influence tends ever more and more away from it ; to the evolving of an earthly state of man which shall be commensurate with , his heavenly one , and therefore

    znstirict wit / t an order of its own . The popular conscience feels the Church to be wholly dissociated with the religious life of the race . It is admitted to have been an admirable witness of the truth , when the truth itself was rationally latent , but science is now furnishing an embodiment to that truth so iuflnitely superior as to make the Church look comparatively imbecile and delirious . We treat it in short as we treat the aged and infirm .: we leave it to repose undisturbed in the chimney corner , and go about our business from Monday morning to Saturday night , without once remembering its maxims or heeding its complaints . Yours , &c ., n . J . Paris , August 30 th , 1856 .

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    w ClN THIS DEPARTMENT , KS AU OPINIONS , HOWEVER EXTREME , ARE ALLOWED AN EXPSESSIOJT , TUB EDIIOJi NEC £ 33 ABU , y HOLDS HISISE 1 P BESPOXSUJLE POIt NONE . ]

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    There is no learned man but will confess he hath mucb . profited by reading controversies , bis senses awakened , and his judgment sharpened . If , then , it be profitable for him to read , why should it not , at least , be tolerable fot his adversary to wxite 1—Mnxoir .

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    A Poet and a Patriot . —Mr . J . Bronterro O'Brien lias published an « Elegy on tho Death of Robespierre , ' witli a modest preface confessing that a few lines are copied literally from tho ' Lycidas' of Milton , witli " one or two exquisito passages , applicable to tho ' situation . ' " Tho first- four lines aro appropriated , and spoiled ; then follows a parody down to " Tho meed of some melodious tear . " Two or three stanzas arc interposed , and wo then resume "Begin , yo sisters of tho sacred , well . "

    From " Yq valleys low" fifteen lines arc copied , and so for th , no marka being used to indicate which is which , whether it ia Milton or O'Brien thut sings . This exposure may show to tho reliquary band that atill clings to the old class of Chartist orators , what aro tlio capacities and what the scruples , of tho individual who pretend to lead them . Not a line in tho Elegy or in the two Odes that accompany it , ia readable , except Buttons . A Stud Farm . —A joint-stock company of a novel character ia in course of formation at Newmarket n company for tho breed of horses . It ineludos some high aruLariatocratical names among its committee .

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    September 18 , 1856 . j THE L E APE K . 879

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    The Church Difficulties at Clkkkenwkll . — Fresh difficulties have arisen in the parish , of St . James ' s , Clerkcnwell , in reference to tho election of a minister for that district . Acting upon the opinion of Sir Fitzroy Kelly , that the right of the parishioners to elect has passed from them to the ne ^ w vestry , the vestry have claimed the right of nomination , and have announced that they will receive applications from clergymen wishing to become candidates , until . Monday next , the loth inst . The now difficulties which have arisen are in connexion with the appointment to another church in . the same district , and which tlie Bishop of London has formally sequestrated . During the incumbency of the Rev . "W . E . li . Faulkner , the lato minister , St . James ' Chapel , Pentonville , was converted into a perpetual curacy , an ecclesiastical district was assigned to it , and theltev . Dr . Anthony Lofroy Courtcnxy , chaplain , to the Eatl of

    Hardwicko , was appointed to tho incumbency . Dr . Courtenay repudiates tho sequestration . Sir Fitzroy Kelly having been applied to for an opinion , writes : — " It is clear that the chapol , which seerne to bo of considerable pecuniary value , has been dealt with in an unauthorized manner , and that tho trustees who hold the property in it for tho bcneQt of the parishioners of Clerkenwell , ought to have interposed long ago to check the proceeding said to havo been adopted by Dr . Courtcnay , and that they ought now to recover that propertj for the . benefit of tho body of parishioners whom thej represent . " Dr . Courtonay intends to resist any Interference with hia rights , while it is understood that th < parishioners generally will apply to tho Queen ' s Bencl to restrain tho vestry from appointing an incumbent ti tho parish , inasmuch as they contend tliat tho electioi ought to bo in the hands of the ratepayers .

    Madkmoisism . k Johanna Waqnek . —Tho Pressc , o Brussels , states that Mademoiselle Johanna Wuguor the celebrated singer , was married , on Saturday last , t M . Jochmann , tha son of a millionnoirc of TihshV

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 13, 1856, page 879, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2158/page/15/