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Notes On Literature Science And Art.
and disorder hi thesocial fabric ; all is speedily falling back to chaos . Withniarvelloiis ^ hiconsistency , the manwhoseessuchgraceandgoodness in every form of human , worship—though its incense he the fume of passion and its rites the solemnisation of cruelty and lust—sees only gilded vice and unmitigated folly in every walk and institution of civilised life ! Falling from the mad prophetic rant of his former works , he is here exhibited , not as the Cassandra , but as the Thersites , of the age ; standing , in turn , over every silent group
of labourers in this earnest century and most earnest country , and voiding his unwholesome abuse equally over all . Iu these pages every time-honoured virtue that adorns humanity meets with indignant denial or scornful appreciation . Philantrophy is maudlin , and benevolence is weakness , and industry is avarice , and statesmanship is trickery , and liberty is a chimera , and religion cant 1 England is especially the target of Mr . Carlyle ' s scorn : the British constitution is the choicest specimen of folly which the sun 5
beholds in all this great * museum of absurdities , Indeed , almost the only preference of a positive kind which may be distinctly gathered from this hook , made up as it is for the most part of inexplicable hatreds and dislikes , is the author's hearty preference of a good , strong , iron despotism to the most elaborate and wellbalanced constitutional government . Nothing seems to irritate him so much as the words ' emancipation , ' * enfranchisement / 'liberty , ' 'voluntary principle . ' Prison-visiting and melioration very evidently disgust him ; and as to slavery , so cordial is his
regret for the decadence of thafc ancient institution , that he seems to emulate tbe zeal of poor Boswell , who declared that to abolish the slave trade would be to ' shut the gates of mercy on mankind 1 '" Sir John P . W . Herschel , Bart ., in his contributions to the new edition of the Fncyclopedia Britannica , says . " Hence , then , we come to perceive thafc the actual configuration of our continents and islands , the coast lines of our maps , the direction and elevation
of onr mountain chains , the courses of our rivers , and the soundings of our oceans , are not things primordially arranged in the construction of our globe , but results of successive and complex actions on a former state of things ; that again , of similar actions on another still more remote . . . . The revelations of geology assure us , further , that in each o f those successive submersions and . reconstructions of the continents , fresh corresponding races of animals ; and a new and different clothing of vegetation have been
introduced—the one perishing oft' as the others have come into existence ; nay , that even the denizens of the ocean itself- have hail no exemption from this great law of change—which , however , has not operated , either by a gradually progresive variation of species , nor by a sudden and total abolition of one race , and introduction of another entirely new , but by a series of overlapjiings , leaving the last portion of each in co-existence with the earlier members of the newer series . Higher forms of being , moreover , appear at every stage of the process , up to the final and culminating point of humanity , and the existing order of things . "
Sir Philip Egerton has been elected president of the Ray Society . Georges de Keroulee , attache to the French Embassy Extraordinary to China , in his Recollections of the Chinese Fxpedition , says : — " We must divide Chinese curiosities into several classes . These are : 1 , the jade ; 2 , the enamels : 3 , the lacquer work ; 4 , the porcelains ; 5 , the bronzes ; 6 , the carved woods ,- 7 , the carved ivory ; and S , the various objects which do not belong to any of
these classes . Speaking generally ( and I am content to declare my principles before giving this brief and insuflicient monograph on Chinese trinkets ) , I deny that any elevated idea , artistic taste , or sense of the beautiful exist among the Chinese . To prove this , I only require the porcelains of China , so well known in France . The colours may he inimitable , the paste and the grain of a peculiar form and purity—all this may he to the admiration of ceramic amateurs ; hut for the artist and the man of tastethe smallest
, Xiiece of Sevres biscuit , the tiniest Dresden figure , offer harmonious lines and graceful contours which these wretched pieces of pottery have never pretended to possess . Form is nothing to the Chinese ; the price of the raw material and the greater or lesser difficulty in working it , therein lies the whole value of the article With them the patience of the workman holds the place of grace and finish . They will carve inside an ivory ball three or four other hollow spheres , which move independently of each other
The most expensive and precious class of objects in China is the jade . The jade is a very hard non-transparent stone , which mineralogists class among tho silicates of chalk . Only a small quantity of it is obtained from the mountains of Hu-Nan ( a ' western province of China ) , where the quarries are now all hut unproductive . For the workmen , the carving of this stone is most difficult , and it is only to he polished with its own dust . As for the varieties of jade , they are very considerable in number , but they may be divided between two colours , of which the others are only varieties—the white and tbe green . Among the whites those
are most esteemed which—milky and opaline—present on their surface little marbled flame-coloured spots , which anywhere else would pass for defect . The green are all the more prized as their colour approaches that of verdigris ; but if in a white and very milky jade , with flame-coloured spots , there are some veins of this vegetable green , then the specimen is of considerable value . Thus I have seen a Chinese pay 400 piastres ( £ 96 ) for a jade ring of this
description found in the . Summer Palace ... . There are simple enamels on copper , and joined enamels , so culled because the coloured incrusted matter is always separated from that of another colour by a thread of copper . The simple enamels on copper are very numerous and of small price . A dozen tea-cups with the saucers do not cost more than sixty francs . As for the others , their price resembles that of the jades as objects precious in the eyes of the Chinese . ... A vase a foot hih will sell for 300 francs ..
g It is necessary , however , to examine these things closely before buying them . The Chinese , always artful , often have on hand old pieces , in which the enamel has started from its setting ; this they replace with coloured wax ; and the skill with which these repairs are executed is such , that the inexperienced eye cannot detect the fraud . The lacquer is of three kinds—of Canton , of Pekin , and of Fou-tcheou . The Canton is the black lacquer , so well known in Europeornamented with designs of astonishing durabilitand
, y fineness , when the lacquer itself is of good quality . ... The Pekin lacquer is red . There is old and modern . ... Two panels of old Pekin lacquer a yard square , cost 170 piasters ( £ 40 ) .. . The Foutcheou lacquer is a grey composition , very light , and seldom found among the merchants ; but , in spite of its rarity , it is in no great repute . . .. Porcelains begin to disappear in China . Old vases and plates fabricated in the times of the Mings , and which bear the seal of that dynasty on their reverse , become rarer and rarer , and
are sold at insane prices . Modern porcelain , from the manufactories , in the neighbourhood of Canton , and whose inappropriate and shocking colours become rapidly effaced , encumbers the shops of the toy-merchants . "
The following anecdotes are given by Dean Ramsay in the second series of his Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character , recently published -. — " In former days , when roads were bad and wheeled vehicleSE almost unknown , an old laird was returning from a supper 2 'arfcy ,. with his lady mounted behind him on horseback . On crossing theriver Urr , at a ford at a point where it joins fche sea , the old lady
dropped off , but was not missed till her husband reached his door ,, when , of course , there was an immediate search made . The party who were despatched in quest of her arrived just in time to find her remonstrating with the advancing tide , which trickled into her mouth , in these words , "No anither drap ; neither bet nor cauld . " At the sale of an antiquarian gentleman ' s effects in Roxhurgshire ,. which Sir Walter Scott happened to attendthere was one little
, article , a Roman patina , which occasioned a good deal of competition , and was eventually knocked down to the distinguished baronet at a high price . Sir Walter was excessively amused during the time of bidding , to observe , how much it excited the astonishment of an old woman , who had evidently come there to buy culinary utensils on a more economical principle . " If the iiarritch--pan . " she at last burst out— "if the parritch-pan gangs at that
, what will the kail-pat gang for ?" A new book has been published , entitled The 'Letters , Inisfail , and other poems ; from which we extract the following verses . They bear the Iniitials S . E . de "V .:
—AVinter , that hung around us as a cloud , Rolls slowly backward ; from her icy sleep Th' awaken'd earth starts up and shouts aloud , The waters leap From rock to rock with u tumultuous mirth , With Bacchanalian madness and loud song j From the fond bosom of the teeming earth
All young things throng ; And hopes rise bubbling from the deepest fountain Of mail ' s half frozen heart . Faith trustingly Rests its broad base on God , as doth a mountain Upon the sea . Affections pure , and human sympathies The summer sun of charity relumes
, That fire divine which charms and vivifies , But not consumes . Love , vernal music , charity , hope , faith , AVarm the cold earth , fair visions from on high , Teaching to scorn and trample fear of death ; For nought can die .
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Notes On Literature Science And Art.
and disorder hi thesocial fabric ; all is speedily falling back to chaos . Withniarvelloiis ^ hiconsistency , the manwhoseessuchgraceandgoodness in every form of human , worship—though its incense he the fume of passion and its rites the solemnisation of cruelty and lust—sees only gilded vice and unmitigated folly in every walk and institution of civilised life ! Falling from the mad prophetic rant of his former works , he is here exhibited , not as the Cassandra , but as the Thersites , of the age ; standing , in turn , over every silent group
of labourers in this earnest century and most earnest country , and voiding his unwholesome abuse equally over all . Iu these pages every time-honoured virtue that adorns humanity meets with indignant denial or scornful appreciation . Philantrophy is maudlin , and benevolence is weakness , and industry is avarice , and statesmanship is trickery , and liberty is a chimera , and religion cant 1 England is especially the target of Mr . Carlyle ' s scorn : the British constitution is the choicest specimen of folly which the sun 5
beholds in all this great * museum of absurdities , Indeed , almost the only preference of a positive kind which may be distinctly gathered from this hook , made up as it is for the most part of inexplicable hatreds and dislikes , is the author's hearty preference of a good , strong , iron despotism to the most elaborate and wellbalanced constitutional government . Nothing seems to irritate him so much as the words ' emancipation , ' * enfranchisement / 'liberty , ' 'voluntary principle . ' Prison-visiting and melioration very evidently disgust him ; and as to slavery , so cordial is his
regret for the decadence of thafc ancient institution , that he seems to emulate tbe zeal of poor Boswell , who declared that to abolish the slave trade would be to ' shut the gates of mercy on mankind 1 '" Sir John P . W . Herschel , Bart ., in his contributions to the new edition of the Fncyclopedia Britannica , says . " Hence , then , we come to perceive thafc the actual configuration of our continents and islands , the coast lines of our maps , the direction and elevation
of onr mountain chains , the courses of our rivers , and the soundings of our oceans , are not things primordially arranged in the construction of our globe , but results of successive and complex actions on a former state of things ; that again , of similar actions on another still more remote . . . . The revelations of geology assure us , further , that in each o f those successive submersions and . reconstructions of the continents , fresh corresponding races of animals ; and a new and different clothing of vegetation have been
introduced—the one perishing oft' as the others have come into existence ; nay , that even the denizens of the ocean itself- have hail no exemption from this great law of change—which , however , has not operated , either by a gradually progresive variation of species , nor by a sudden and total abolition of one race , and introduction of another entirely new , but by a series of overlapjiings , leaving the last portion of each in co-existence with the earlier members of the newer series . Higher forms of being , moreover , appear at every stage of the process , up to the final and culminating point of humanity , and the existing order of things . "
Sir Philip Egerton has been elected president of the Ray Society . Georges de Keroulee , attache to the French Embassy Extraordinary to China , in his Recollections of the Chinese Fxpedition , says : — " We must divide Chinese curiosities into several classes . These are : 1 , the jade ; 2 , the enamels : 3 , the lacquer work ; 4 , the porcelains ; 5 , the bronzes ; 6 , the carved woods ,- 7 , the carved ivory ; and S , the various objects which do not belong to any of
these classes . Speaking generally ( and I am content to declare my principles before giving this brief and insuflicient monograph on Chinese trinkets ) , I deny that any elevated idea , artistic taste , or sense of the beautiful exist among the Chinese . To prove this , I only require the porcelains of China , so well known in France . The colours may he inimitable , the paste and the grain of a peculiar form and purity—all this may he to the admiration of ceramic amateurs ; hut for the artist and the man of tastethe smallest
, Xiiece of Sevres biscuit , the tiniest Dresden figure , offer harmonious lines and graceful contours which these wretched pieces of pottery have never pretended to possess . Form is nothing to the Chinese ; the price of the raw material and the greater or lesser difficulty in working it , therein lies the whole value of the article With them the patience of the workman holds the place of grace and finish . They will carve inside an ivory ball three or four other hollow spheres , which move independently of each other
The most expensive and precious class of objects in China is the jade . The jade is a very hard non-transparent stone , which mineralogists class among tho silicates of chalk . Only a small quantity of it is obtained from the mountains of Hu-Nan ( a ' western province of China ) , where the quarries are now all hut unproductive . For the workmen , the carving of this stone is most difficult , and it is only to he polished with its own dust . As for the varieties of jade , they are very considerable in number , but they may be divided between two colours , of which the others are only varieties—the white and tbe green . Among the whites those
are most esteemed which—milky and opaline—present on their surface little marbled flame-coloured spots , which anywhere else would pass for defect . The green are all the more prized as their colour approaches that of verdigris ; but if in a white and very milky jade , with flame-coloured spots , there are some veins of this vegetable green , then the specimen is of considerable value . Thus I have seen a Chinese pay 400 piastres ( £ 96 ) for a jade ring of this
description found in the . Summer Palace ... . There are simple enamels on copper , and joined enamels , so culled because the coloured incrusted matter is always separated from that of another colour by a thread of copper . The simple enamels on copper are very numerous and of small price . A dozen tea-cups with the saucers do not cost more than sixty francs . As for the others , their price resembles that of the jades as objects precious in the eyes of the Chinese . ... A vase a foot hih will sell for 300 francs ..
g It is necessary , however , to examine these things closely before buying them . The Chinese , always artful , often have on hand old pieces , in which the enamel has started from its setting ; this they replace with coloured wax ; and the skill with which these repairs are executed is such , that the inexperienced eye cannot detect the fraud . The lacquer is of three kinds—of Canton , of Pekin , and of Fou-tcheou . The Canton is the black lacquer , so well known in Europeornamented with designs of astonishing durabilitand
, y fineness , when the lacquer itself is of good quality . ... The Pekin lacquer is red . There is old and modern . ... Two panels of old Pekin lacquer a yard square , cost 170 piasters ( £ 40 ) .. . The Foutcheou lacquer is a grey composition , very light , and seldom found among the merchants ; but , in spite of its rarity , it is in no great repute . . .. Porcelains begin to disappear in China . Old vases and plates fabricated in the times of the Mings , and which bear the seal of that dynasty on their reverse , become rarer and rarer , and
are sold at insane prices . Modern porcelain , from the manufactories , in the neighbourhood of Canton , and whose inappropriate and shocking colours become rapidly effaced , encumbers the shops of the toy-merchants . "
The following anecdotes are given by Dean Ramsay in the second series of his Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character , recently published -. — " In former days , when roads were bad and wheeled vehicleSE almost unknown , an old laird was returning from a supper 2 'arfcy ,. with his lady mounted behind him on horseback . On crossing theriver Urr , at a ford at a point where it joins fche sea , the old lady
dropped off , but was not missed till her husband reached his door ,, when , of course , there was an immediate search made . The party who were despatched in quest of her arrived just in time to find her remonstrating with the advancing tide , which trickled into her mouth , in these words , "No anither drap ; neither bet nor cauld . " At the sale of an antiquarian gentleman ' s effects in Roxhurgshire ,. which Sir Walter Scott happened to attendthere was one little
, article , a Roman patina , which occasioned a good deal of competition , and was eventually knocked down to the distinguished baronet at a high price . Sir Walter was excessively amused during the time of bidding , to observe , how much it excited the astonishment of an old woman , who had evidently come there to buy culinary utensils on a more economical principle . " If the iiarritch--pan . " she at last burst out— "if the parritch-pan gangs at that
, what will the kail-pat gang for ?" A new book has been published , entitled The 'Letters , Inisfail , and other poems ; from which we extract the following verses . They bear the Iniitials S . E . de "V .:
—AVinter , that hung around us as a cloud , Rolls slowly backward ; from her icy sleep Th' awaken'd earth starts up and shouts aloud , The waters leap From rock to rock with u tumultuous mirth , With Bacchanalian madness and loud song j From the fond bosom of the teeming earth
All young things throng ; And hopes rise bubbling from the deepest fountain Of mail ' s half frozen heart . Faith trustingly Rests its broad base on God , as doth a mountain Upon the sea . Affections pure , and human sympathies The summer sun of charity relumes
, That fire divine which charms and vivifies , But not consumes . Love , vernal music , charity , hope , faith , AVarm the cold earth , fair visions from on high , Teaching to scorn and trample fear of death ; For nought can die .