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    Untitled Article

    The Literature of the Hustings , with all its eruptive turbulence of platitudes , possesses all eyes and ears throughout this classic land of unlicensed printing at the present moment . Until this tyranny of brawling tongues be overpast

    the calmer and deeper voices may be content to hold their peace . Neither imagination , nor philosophy , nor science can be heard above the roar of the popular torrent , which is periodically supposed to renovate an exhausted Constitution . Upon , these rag-ing and somewhat muddy voters of contention our easy rulers float securely into the still waters of apathy and indifference again . So elastic is our system of political credit , that a pleasant Minister has only to accept bills drawn by a constituency of dupes , and though all these bills may be protested as they fall due ., he may go on not doing it for years to come , and be the man of the situation to his latest breath . It is well to caution the

    observant foreigner , regarding us / with a curious envy , from the vantage-ground of political annihilation , against inordinate enthusiasm . We read with pride his exclamations at the spectacle of a free nation , deciding its destinies for the next few years ; and , "viewed from a distance , n _ o doubt the spectacle is grand . But the observant foreigner ¦ will never thoroughly understand the working of our institutions until he has mastered the fact that a General Election is a general Auction , at which public opinion is exhibited to the best advantage , and knocked down to the highest bidder . They manage things better in France ; where , as a private letter informs us , M . Ha . vin , tie chief editor of the Siecle , recently paid a visit to M . Colxet Me ? gilet , whose peculiar function it is to watch over public spirit with a paternal vigilance , and politely

    moderates , and then of the reaction that obstructs : the latter , however is h , " t an unconscious preparation for the next awakening . Such an epoch and su ) an assembly of " unacknowledged legislators , " was the First Constituent of France , and such was the Convention . Forgetting for an instant the terrible reprisals which the men of the Great Revolution , impelled by what Mirabeau called the "tocsin of necessity " exercised against the survivors of the old society , and , later , a ^ aiast each other , let us not forget the immortal principles of legislation , and the gigantic labours which the illustrious men of those Assemblies worked out from the very agonies-and throes of the Revolution , with hostile armies at their frontiers , and in the thick of the terrible agitations of the Republic .

    "We are reminded of those labours by a remarkable article in the last number of the Revue de Paris , on "Public Instruction and the Schools durin ^ the Revolution . " It is very interesting to trace the leading principles of our own most advanced educational reformers of this year 1857 in the admirable reports of the Convention Committees . "Let us get rid for a moment " savs M . Eugene Maron , " of our spirit of scepticism and irony , and we shall learn to respect the high and noble ambitions of "those men who thought they were regenerating the world . " Certainly , we live in a disabused and disenchanted age , we see human liberty and intelligence eclipsed , hut it is impossible to recal even , the illusions of those devoted men without emotion " Are we the better , " asks M . Maeon , " for being delivered from enthusiasm ? " Certainly , with regard to public instruction , at least , the French Revolution deserves , as M . Mahok says , the gratitude of history . If it did not accomplish all it dreamed , it effected more than any succeeding regime has attempted . '

    It realized the absolute separation of civil and religious education without -which there can be no freedom of conscience / It proclaimed the principle of liberty of instruction , the equally important principles of gratuitous and of obligatory instruction , not only in the primary schools , tut in the central and special schools , even in the Polytechnic and Normal Schools . The writer of this article , alluding to the saying of Leibnitz , " Maitre tie I'enseignement , mmlredu genre humuiny" very justly remarks that the philosopher ' s apophthegm , even if applied to the whole course of education , is only partially true : — - If it were wholly true , the world would still be in subjection to theocratic teachers . Yet history shows us schism and heresy growing out of the schools of the Church , a generation of philosophers out of the Jesuit colleges and a revolutionary people out of ecclesiastical universities . And he profoundly adds : — -

    The truth is , that beside the teaching of childhood and of youth , there is another kind of instruction , which is given to manhood and to old age as well as to the child , and of -which the great writers , the men of science , the philosophers , the artists , not to speak of the events and lessons of history , are the sovereign dispensers . This ia that superior and final instruction which Schiller called the education of the human race . No doubt a vicious education may impede , but it cannot definitively arrest , the march of intelligence . Thank God ! man is not to that degree the master of his fellow-man .

    asked the reason of the warning which the Siecle had received . The reply of the imperial functionary -was nobly frank and explicit : " The Government undertakes to manipulate the elections , and needs no assistance from , the press . " Iiord Paxmeksto : n should thank M . C ollet Meygkei 1 for that word manipulate . The last words , by the way , of this private letter— -the letter of a man of studious and tranquil life , of perfect moderation in all his views , and a conspirator only in the sense that all virtue , and dignity , and morality conspire against the insolence of triumphant wrong—unconsciously as it were , and -without emphasis , reveal the situation of our nearest neighbours : " Eor the future , to prevent recognition in case of letters being intercepted , ce qui va devenir encore plusfrtq-uent , I shall sign , &c . "

    Our men of letters are conspicuously absent from , the list of candidates at the forthcoming elections , and we rejoice in their silence amidst the vulgar din . Macaulay will do more for England and the world , and for his own fame , by his self-imposed retreat than by the most splendid oratorical exereitations in favour of a party which he could not elevate ; , of a policy which he ought to condemn , of a caste which would treat him as a proselyte , and of a Ministry which his head might have to serve while his heart despised . Cakltub would be as much at home in the Commons as Pbomethetjs . Dickens , the most eminently popular man in the kingdom , might have represented a large constituency long ago ; perhaps we should say he might have' made his choice of constituencies , had not that strong , calm , practical good sense which

    preserves the equal balance of his genius enabled him to possess his soul in patience as one of the unacknowledged legislators of humanity . With his immense force of will , his rare administrative energy , liis long habit of exact and patient investigation of social wrongs , his practical insight and profound sympathy , who can doubt that he would , even among that miscellaneous assemblage of gossips , and jobbers , and place-hunters , leave his mark , and make true courage and honesty felt and feared ? Besides , he is known to be a capital speaker , quite capable of addressing the House in the sort of language it likes best—terse , simple , and direct . Still , not forgetting all these rave qualifications , who would not rather he should write immortal books , and enrich the world with the warmth and light of his genius , than break his heart in trying to roll

    the stone of political and social justice up the Sisyphaian liill of prejudice and obstruction ? Another of our great names in literature has been talked of for a seat in Parliament , and who can deny that TiTACKEKAr would adorn the Opposition bench , and cast a lustre upon tlic division list P But would any position in the House add lustre to the name of the author of Vanity Fair ? No , no ; let the dead bury their dead . There aro names connected with Htorature , no doubt , in the House , but they arc cither men who have dallied with literature as an epicurean recreation , or who have justified their capacity for office by the compilation of volumes of unreadable erudition and monumental dulncsa . It is thus that a Chancellor of the Exchequer ' s literary efforts may themselves

    present to us in the shape of a tax upon the " butter they enclose ! JNoverthcless , there are moments in the history of nations , epochs of renovation nnd ot hope , when all the living forces of a people ' s life seem to be concentred into a focus of light . There arc momenta of heroism , of grandeur , of enthusiasm , when large liearts and strong brains arc permitted to construct a fabric of now W out of the thoughts of philosophers and the dreams of poets . It b . then that the " unacknowledged legislators" of apathetic times take their seats ltdZI ™ f 1 Mll J ™ «>«> ^ che 3 from wbich the jobbers , ami patters , SJ IhT ? T . Sell rV ° bGCU eX P cllcd " Sl 1 ^ " ^ cnts occur but seldom bat they do the work of centuries . Indeed , the long intervals between arc , for the moat par t , uitwriOsof reaction ; first , of the reaction t ) uit , preserves and

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    HAIR , PAT , AN"D NAILS . The Constitution of the Animal Creation as expressed in Structural Appendages . By G . Calverfc Holland , M . D . " Churchill . Dr . Hoixaud has written a very interesting worlc , whielithe general public , no less than the scientific public , will read with pleasure and profit . We wish we could also say that Dr . Holland has succeeded in the main purpose of his work , namely , the physiological explanation of the origin and use of such c appendages' as hair , fat , nails , horns , &c . ; but while applauding the style and temper of this treatise we cannot give the smallest assent to the principles it lays down . " Aristotle , " says Bacon , in the Sylva Si / loarum , " giveth the cause , vainly , why tlie feathers of birds are of more lively colours than the hairs of beasts ; for no beast hath any fine azure , or carnation , or green hair . He saith it is

    because birds are more in the beams of the sun than beasts ; but . that is manifestly untrue ; for cattlo are more in the sun than birds that live commonly in the woods , or in some covert . The true cause is , that the excrementitious moisture of living creatures , which innkelli as well the feathers in birds as the hair in beasts , passeth in birds through a finer and more delicate strainer than it doth in beasts : for feathers pass through quills , and hair through skin . " Both Aristotle and Bacon give explanations sufficiently absurd to console Dr . Holland in his failure . Instead of agreeing with comparative anatomists that hair , nails , &a , are remnants of the exoslceleton —an idea Dr . Holland seems never for a moment to have entertained—lie propounds the novel hypothesis that they axa the residue of nervous activity in such places as admit of no other outlet for the waste matter .

    JLho operations of the mind can scarcely bo viowod as creating any resume or useless matter , either in degree or kind analogous to what is consequent on the exercise of the abdominal viscera . The cerebral actions , instrumental to thought ami feeling , will deprive tlio blood and nervous substance of certain elements . They must occasion the escape of something- , otherwise the train would not be enfeebled by severe or uninterrupted , exertion . As already stated , every vital action implies waste , and , in reference to tl \ o cerebrum , this is evidently great . The immense mans of nervous tissue appropriated to the mental faculties , und tho large nmoimt of blood transmitted to it , aro conditions which may justly ho considered as a measure of the demands made upon the brain .

    It was in the course of the physiological investigations alluded to , establishing the distinction between tho two classes of organs , in respect of tho nature of their operations , nnd the changes they effect in the constitution of the blood , that the important uso of tho hair in the animul economy suggested itself . Again : — Tlio office of tho brain is not to create a palpable fluid , with tho exception of that , insignificant in quantity , which perlinpn nlways exists in itn ventricles . This secretion does not constitute the function of tlio organ , nor is it in amount commensurate with tho extensive operations curried , on , if the production of it were alone , to bo taken

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    . —;— + Critics are not the legislators , but the judges and police of liter at vne . They donot make laws—they interpret and try to enforce them . —Edinburgh Heview .

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    280 THE lEADEB . ¦ * , [ No . 365 3 Saturday

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), March 21, 1857, page 280, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2185/page/16/