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    1294 THE LEADEE . fNo . 505 . JSTov . 26 , 1 S 5 9

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    iritii much respect that we examine into his opianons on the important subjects named in his title * a ge . We regret that these are stated in so ctesultory a manner , that we-find it difficult to jfijnn them into a system . Perhaps Mr . Barnes intended no system , but was contented to register Ms observations under each particiilar head , without attempting to gather them into a regular « cheme of doctrines . Yet siich is the task that must be accomplished if these data are to be applied to purposes of practical value .

    " We can perceive readily enough that the author is the stern advocate of the interests of labour ; nay , so much of an advocate , that he seems almost Mind to the advantages of machinery , whether to the individual or to society . Labour is the basis of capital with him , and the happy use of gold , not gold itself , the true wealth of a state . For example , he found that in 1852 three hundred pounds a year in Australia would only go as far as sixty , pounds in England . But now the state of things in Melbourne has improved , more labour being spent in the winning of true life-gear , and less in that of the hard metal . His meaning he illustrates by the following fable : —

    "If in an island , as , for instance , in Pitcairn Island , the people were all working for life-gear , and suddenly one-fifth of them left their winning of food for the winning of fossils , it is clear enough that with an , increase of fossils they would find a decrease of life-gear , unless , indeed , the four-fifths should increase their labour by one-fourth , which , if they bad heretofore done the fair work of their bodily strength , would be a physical evil . If , now ever ., the one-fifth that began to dig for fossils

    had therefore been wholly inactive , then their labours would make the community richer by their fossils , and so no community can be the more -wealthy by the digging of gold , Unless it is dug by liands hitherto unworking , or unless the finding of it stirs working blinds to greater labour . Spain is . none the more wealthy for the silver and gold she * lfew from America , and the wealth , of England in all kinds of life-gear and bandy work might be no less with less bullion than is the store we now iold .

    " . The Manchester and Salford water company have allowed a hogshead of water a day to a head , but water was at one time 3 s . a hogshead in Melbourne , so that the Manchester allowance of water -would have cost a guinea a , week . If the Israelites Siad found a gold-yielding creek in the wilderness , and a thousand of them had left the picking of manna for the digging of it , they would most likely have starved ; and more welcome to Robinson Crusoe would have been potatoes than nuggets of cold only a spit deep .

    •** It is true that men may ; win in Australia a fulness of good life-gear and the elements of true -wealth and happiness , if they seek them , rather than worse elements of wealth and vicious pleasure ; "but it was not fair or good that newspapers often misled so many working men by stating Australian wages in weight of gold , -without the truth of its commercial -value . The question for a working man migrating to another town or another land , is not what weight of gold , but what life-gear his week ' s work will win him . Labour in England may earn more gold than in Switzerland , and yet we may have among us as great a share of half-starved bodies as hare the Swiss ; and we may have as great a share of underfed bodies as could have been found by Captain Cook in the Tonga Islands , where there was no money . " ¦

    So far is clear enough . Nor are we disinclined to sftllow to the author his three elements of wealth :-r-l . The spiritual one of righteousness ; 2 . The bodily one of health } and , 8 . The sooial one of good government . Great inequality of -wealth renders states insecure . It is not well that " one class may be over rich to wanton luxury , while another is poor to naked hunger . " We likewise agree with him in the frequent evil reaction of wealth upon the mind , as instanced in some tales from the diffffiners , where its sudden

    Acquisition not seldom results in the maddest freaks . Wo know not ho ' w some of our political ^ economists will take many of Mr . Barnes' propositions . He holds with the cynics , that little more than food and raiment is worthy of our careful yearning . " The lave of money , be adds , *? undermines probity and freedom , as it breeds a ^ subserviency in vice , and a readiness to sell the * good of one ' s fatherland for gain . " Such are * wn « of Mr . Barnes * notions , ana they may servo * fc : # to e ow readers one m to the nature of his ^ volume .

    THE BOOKE OF THE PtLGREMAGE OF THE SOWXrE . Translated 'flroiri the Freliclr of Gruillaume de Guileville . Edited by Katherine Isabella Oust . —BaBil Montagu Pickering . This " "booke , " "was printed by William Caxton , anno 1483 , and is here reprinted , with illuminations taken from the MS . copy in the British Museum . It is one of the numerous allegories on the progress of the soul which preceded Bunyan ' s extraordinary work . Some persons have sought , on this account , to question Bunyan ' s originality . But suoh an attempt can only demonstrate an ignorance of the real state of the question . The Bunyans , the Dantes , and the Spensers , who showed such a fondness for illustrating allegorically

    this favourite subject , and thus endeavoured to make "A Sunshine in the Shady Place , " wrote in the spirit of the age in which they flourished , and followed the current of the general mind . The present work follows the dogmas of the Church of Rome'in its argument , and is supposed to have been translated by Lydgate , from the French , in 1413 , who seems to have added to it some poetry in seven-lined stanzas , and to have repeated in the thirty-fourth chapter a portion of his metrical life of the Virgin Mary . The complete work is not here reprinted , but the publishers have omitted whatever relates to Mariolatry , and purgatory , and also some metaphysical dogmas which have been deemed too abstruse or otherwise

    objectionable . Itis preceded by a preface written by the Rev . Edward Poleharnpton , M . A ., and the Rev . Thomas S . Polehampton , M . A ., Fellows of Pembroke College , Oxford . These preface writers have done their work reverentially , if not in an altogether and absolutely satisfactory manner . They appear to think that allegories like these proceed from our curiosity to learn something of the world after death . Surely this is an error . The attempt is clearly to interpret the mystery of our present life , and the growth of religion in the soul . VW ^* ^^» ^^^ m ^ m ^^ tf ^ i ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ Wf ^^ ^^^ ^—^^ m ^ ' ^ v ^ v - ^ » — ^ h ^

    One of the motives stated for this publication is the fact that John Bunyan ' s works have acquired more notice lately than formerly—are indeed growing , not only in popularity , but in that fame . which lives in the opinion of the wise and good from age to age . He is taking high rank among the intelligences of the world—those " rule our spirits from their urns . " Let us trace , with the aid of the Messrs . Polehampton , the course of De Guileville ' s pilgrimage . The Pilgrim inquires his way to the Celestial City ; the lady Grace-Dieu undertakes to be his guide , and leads him , by the way of baptism , to . the church . The official of the house of Grace-Dieu

    receives him , and shows him many wonders . He is then led through many dangers , trials , and sorrows , until he meets with Old Age , Infirmity , and Death . Satan then claims the soul as his own ; and complains that the fair Dame Grace-Dieu has unfairly deprived him of his bargain . Its guardian angel remonstrates with Satan ; and the case is finally laid before Michael . The poor soul having no merit to plead , throws itself wholly on the judge's , mercy , and appeals to Jesu . Justice refuses to listen to either repentance or prayer ; Conscience likewise testifies against the soul , and Reason concludes the argument . Its merits and

    its sins are then weighed in the balance , and the result is against the soul . Then Mercy flics to heaven , and brings down a charter of pardon , sealed with the Kedeemer ' s blood . Whereupon the soul \ b permitted to go into Purgatory * , in order finally to be admitted to Eternal Bliss . After Purgatory the soul is led by its guardian angel to heaven . Amidst all this 'allegorising , wo sometimes have a pleasing touch of the natural . Reference is made to larks who sing in the air , " Nothing else saying but ever , 'Jesu , Jesu !" These , it is addod , "be the birds that God

    Almighty made to that intent , that mortal folk should take their oxample . Those be called larks , which in Latin have the name of praising and worshipping , and be called ' alaudce , ' not without oause . For why P They rise and mount far from the earth , and spread their wings , praising God with their merry song , and all their disport and play is to sing " JosuT " Such passages na these are , however , rare ; and if we were to leave the reader to Suppose that many suoh , abound , or that De Guileville ' s Pilgrimage has anything that can compare with the poetic spirit , the dramatic oharaoter , and the moral sentiments of Bunyan ' s Pilgrim , we should be misleading the public , and doing great injustice to

    honest John . We see no traces of genius , whethe r literary or religious in the earlier work , but merely conventional piety , and a technical dealing with authorised dogmas . In the latter we are enabled to appreciate the thinking man , the mind struggling for light , and making the most of that already granted . Bunyan ' s originality shines out in beautiful contrast with the timid copvinirs of Dp G-uileville .

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    THE WAY OF THE WORLD . By Alison Reid . 3 vols . — Hurst and Blackett . " The Way of the World" is a good novel , and one that gives great promise for the writer ' s future works . As a novelist he gives evidence of great talents , talents that only require cultivation to ensure great success for the writer in the branch of literature in which he has made his debut in the world of letters ^ We , who have passed through tlie better half of the " seven stages " allotted by tie immortal " Bard of Avon " to man , looked upon life in much the same manner as Mr . Reid ' s hero , until like him we found out the difference

    between the shady and the sunny side of the road , and were able to judge for ourselves what was good and what was bad in this work-a-day world of ours . Experience teaches some people much more than others . When a person is well-to-do , or he is supposed to be doing well , which is the same tiling , all the world smiles on him ,, and life is , to the successful , pleasant enough ; but when reverses come , what a difference there is in those friends who have smiled on us in our prosperity . Mr , Reid has worked out his plot and

    developed his characters in such a manner as would do credit to the most experienced novelist . He has not attempted to paint the world , or the people in it , perfection : he takes them under his consideration as they are , and delineates theni most truthfully , showing how people do , think , talk , and act , and in such a manner that leads us to predict for him great success as a novelist . On the whole , we are inclined to Mr . Reid ' s descriptions of the ways of the world . His work might have been improved with a little curtailing , but , as it is , it falls little short of being a first-rate novel .

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    THE HABITS OF GOOD SOCIETY : A HANDBOOK OF ETIQUETTE FOR LADIES AND G ENTLE 3 IEN . —James Hogg and Soria * The " Man in the Club Window , " who writes the preface to this book , is a weaver of sentences , a coiner of saws , and an utterer of instances , that group themselves in pictui'esque confusion , and serve to perplex the reader sufficiently to induce him to take an interest in the book that follows . There is a second preface also , ostensibly written

    by a lady , but evidently masculine in style . At leugth we come to the book , and dotcct a different hand altogether . Let us > however , do justice to the writer . This book of etiquette is not onu of tbose silly productions fit for the meridian of China , that give positive rules concerning proper behaviour . On the contrary , the remarks arc remarkably sensible , and deal rather with the spirit than with the forms of good manners . We doubt , indeed , whether it should not rather be regarded as a treatise on morals .

    In treating of the composition and manners oi Good Society , the writer relates the riso and present position of the middle class , as having a considerable bearing both on its elements and its external arrangements . The circle * , as he truly states , widens daily . Men who have risen from the cottage and the workshop , without training for , and without experience of , fashionable life , are now repeatedly admitted . It is difficult , under such circumstances , to construct a code of manners . mtuviuuiuiv

    Scope must be left for tbo play oi and the manifestation of character , Jhardly permissible in the old times of strict etiquette . Nor will the writer admit the old motives- —a desire to shine , or an ambition to riso in tho world . Jiixcluuive society , he warns us , is not often agreeable society , and not necessarily good , Thoso conditions of tho subject will , wo fear , bo rather disappointing to some who may resort to this book lor Instruction in thq art of pushing their way , ana making a flood appearance < in ranKs to which tuey

    are not accustomed . Should the work before us not exactly snuare wttn the notions of tho self-interested , it will , uowover , proportionately please a bettor class oi readers , TThey will not learn from it either to bo snobs or . flunkies . Neither Beau BruiamoU nor

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 26, 1859, page 1294, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2322/page/10/