The Press. — London, England, 1857-10-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS, OCTOBER 31, 1857. Two lovers, soon after their happy union, are separated by death. How vivid is the faith of the survivor that they shall meet again' Surely somewhere they shall be reunited. Is there not space enough—ire there not stars enough in the wide heavens? And all they want is a little space to lave in—some foot•hohl given them in the creation. All the rest of their eternal joy they carry with them—such joy as it would surely be amazing waste and prodigality to let fall out of the universe. What if they had lived and loved a little longer on the earth? Perhaps the star would not have been wanted. If, however, we turn to the political conversa tions, we shall find some important questions discussed with great shrewdness and subtlety. For instance, the following logomachy on pro grees Clarence: As a man of science, you cannot deny that the history of our whole world manifests a process of de• velopment, and that the history of the human species does so in an especial and most remarkahle manner. As a man of science, you must allow that, if the same species continues to exist, it will continue to develop. Seckendoif : Ad infinitum—eh? But if you appeal to science, you must be bound by science. If you find that human nature develops itself from age to age, you have no right to conclude that it will develop itself in any other fashion or manner than it has hitherto done. Develop ment, accrlrding to your account, is the normal state of this creature. It puts forth a fuller and more varied life. Well, then, imagine in the future Of you can imagine what does not yet exist) It life still more complex, still more varied. But as you have hitherto had a simultaneous de velopment of good and evil (or what we are accustomed to call such), what other anticipation have you a right to form than that there will be still further development of both good and evil? A community in which there should be a still greeter variety in individual development, would lead us to anticipate still greater diversity of conduct, and of opinion on social and moral subjects. The path of progress is the path of life. If it has been rugged and tortuous hitherto, why should it not continue to be rugged and tortuous? War and conquest have been, and still are, the great agents in civilising the world. Famine has driven the race over the face of the earth, and is still doing so. The surplus population, as it is politely called, of the more advanced and prosperous nations are exterminating the weaker and less progressive races—red, black, tawny, yellow, and the like. Man does not put forth his blossoms exactly like the lily and the rose. What you call his development is a very turbulent business. The strea u of life runs broader, fuller—not purer or more peacefully. The last novelty, the last development that history will have to record of these our times is, that we have added to war and civil discord the charming variety of revolution. This is the last bud or blossom that you have to point to. Our tree of life has produced this amongst its other novelties. I ask you on what possible grounds can you predict a time when it is to put forth none but good fruit, or what you are pleased to call such ? Permit a physiologist to remark, that when we speak of the development of ens species, we do not imply a complete departure from the type. Clarence: But you have not grasped the truth that this progressive development is but the progressive manifestation of the Divine Idea, or the great whole. More and fuller life is a nearer approximation to the complete whole ; in which complete whole every part becomes itself more exalted by reason of the increased relationships it has. If I begin a sketch, and put down upor the paper a church here and a windmill there, they look crude enough ; except that they are on the same paper, they seem to have no relit. tionship to each other. But as I fill in the rest of the picture, not only do I put more objects on the paper, but my church and my windmill are related to all these new objects. and now harmonise together in a quite novel man ner. Fuller life is better life; development is progress, because that whole is being developed in whici, every part becomes raised, and exalted, and harmonious. Seckendorf : As development proceeds does diversity increase between man and man, and we ale now accus• tomed to say that the greatest of men shrink into littleness when placed beside Humanity. Now, this greater variety of individual character, brought about by the violet:: of arts. of occupation, of knowledge, points to a fuller lif e ; but how do you find in it any indication of that moral per fection of society, or that perfect whole, and that better life, that yon delight to prophesy? The very nature of things suggests a limit to moral progress. If you have few rules of conduct, and all men are agreed upon them, you have the maximum of obedience. The old Persisna, if indeed they limited their code to the virtue of telling truth, would very rigidly enforce this rale amongst them selves. He who did not tell truth would be at once stig matised. But if there is a very complex life. and many rules of conduct, you have-1, Diversity of judgment weakening the force of opinion ; and, 2, You have many rules of conduct to enforce. and the man who has broken one may yet have obeyed others. Men are now of very mixed characters : their faults get pardoned for their vie• tees, and the opprobrium of public op nion no longer falls with the same pitiless decision. That very complexity of human society which constitutes your progress is limiting and restricting that force of opinion on which you are counting for a perfect morality. Briefly this. In speaking of development from analogy we must not forget that evil is developed as well as good. Perhaps ; but de velopment, by perfecting the proportions and relations of society, tends, ex vi terminoruni, to the extinction of such evil. No; for there is a counteracting element in the increased diversity of opinion which must inevitably Thorndale ; or, the Conflict of Opinions. By William Smith. London : Blackwoods. WE presume from the position of Mr. Smith's name upon the titlepago of this work that he is the veritable author, and that the whole story about the invalid and the deserted villa is the coinage of his own imagination. We cannot see the necessity for such a device. Nobody will be thereby induced to absolve Mr. Smith from the many silly things which the book contains ; while they will perhaps be provoked by this unnecessary mystery into saying harsher things of him than he deserves. We entertain a hearty dislike for all these pasteboard contrivances. If a man has any thing to say on Life, or the Universe, or the Beautiful, on social progress or individual folly, let him say it straight out, in the good old fashion of Paley, and Butler, and Hume. Why dregs it up with these claptrap appen dages? Such, in our opinion, was the leading defect of the otherwise admirable and eloquent " Friends in Council." If by these means we escape from the formality, pomposity, or dry ness of a set essay, we find too often what is in our opinion infinitely worse,—an offensive affectation of sprightliness, clumsy personali ties intended to be friendly banter, and all the quackeries of grave men affecting the character of wits. When we take up an argument in politics or morals, we like it to be as lean and muscular as a well-trained animal—no super fluous flesh, no decorations. Argument is like beauty—when unadorned, adorned the most. The symmetry of a close logical state ment is sufficient ornament unto itself, and we care not to be interrupted in the middle of it by silly pleasantries which break the tr•►iu of thought without refreshing the faculties. The framework of " Thorndale " is as fol lows :—A young Englishman named Charles Thorndalc, cursed with a competency (a phrase we detest), and more cursed by an nnrestrain able craviog after " the truths of the Universe," is the ostensible writer of these papers. As such an appetite is just about as easy to gratify as a longing for the apples of the Hesperides, no wonder the hero becomes melancholy in mind and attenuated in person. To add to his wretchedness, his heart becomes a prey to unsuccessful love and his lungs to an only too successful malady. In this disas trous plight he takes refuge in a delicious villa near Naples, where he pens these MSS., and where after his death they are discovered under the parlour table by Mr. Smith and his fellow-tourists. They contain a broken and discursive biography of the deceased—a re cord of his impressions and observations on various moral, metaphysical, and religious subjects—a series of conversations upon topics principally of a social and political character — and, finally, "The Confessions of an Eclectic and Utopian Philosopher, A.D. 1ti50." These various portions of the work are of very unequal merit. The autobiography is not without interest, but the reflections are mawkish, commonplace, and shallow. Witness the two cr three following : I have been sitting here. I kn trt not how long, watching this beautiful sea bird. I saw it sail up from the far horizon, steadily up towards the zenith, and there pause— the slight centre, for a time, of one whole hemisphere. I n this clear sky and universal calm, I could watch, I could almost feel, each soft stroke of its wing —soft, measured, strong. Oh, what a pulse of health and joy seemed beating through the wide air ! With what con scious power it soared, and then poised itself motionless on its secure and outstretched wings ! There it still hangs—calm and alone, one little speck of life, one sentient breathing thing, suspended in this dome of heaven, and over this illimitable sea. There it. hangs, alone, fearless, calm, in all this world of light, and beauty, and omnipo tence. Vain, beautiful bird! were the wish of mortal man to live in such peace as thine. It is not the buoyant wing he wants ; not even, or altogether, the buoyant h - tart. It is thy single-thnughted spirit that floats thee fearless and peaceful over these illuminated solitudes. Man hopes too much, and knows too little. In all this blaze of light he looks be3ontl the sun. For myself, I am very little interested in these debates about the material or immaterial substance. My organic frame, or one like it, can, if it please the Creator, be recon structed in any part of the universe. So that if you insist upon the necessity of an organic frame to my thinking, even this would not render impossible the perpetuity of my consciousness. There is no necessity to suppose that we take anything oat of the world material or immaterial. The creation is where God is. S • 1065 accompany the development of the " parts " of society. There would then ever be a grow ing instead of a decreasing disparity between the standards of right and wrong current in the world; whereas, nothing but a gradually increasing uniformity would realise the visions of the progressionist. There is real thought and great argu mentative skill here evinced both in attack and defence ; but the subject is of course too extensive to enter upon in these columns. We cannot lift the veil of futurity, and in default of that have nothing but the evidence of the past to guide us. Now, people will never be brought to weigh this in the scales of pure reason Either an unconquer able innate leaning will sway a man to the one side or the other, or education or associa tion will have done its work in determining his choice. We have the facts before us. Certain virtues and certain vices are charac teristics of a rude age—certain others of a civilised age. Which we may consider the better and th 3 worse depends on a variety of causes over which reason has little control. Who shall determine whether the shopkeeper's serf of the nineteenth century is or is not an improvement on the gentleman's serf of the thirteenth century? Who shall decide be t oveen Robin Hood and Leopold Redpath ? If one was charitable, so was the other; if ono was hospitable, so was the other—" he gave " excellent dinners," said a nobleman. If one was brave, so after his own fashion was the other. The lawyer will prefer Mr. Glossin, and the soldier will prefer Dirk Hatteraick, to the end of time. We 'cannot help fancying that the happiness of the world in the aggre gate has been pretty much the same in all ages; and that the painful contrasts between classes —generating as they do envy, discontent, and vice—the rupture of sympathies between em ployers and employed—arid the physical horrors attendant upon over-crowded cities— are, to say the least, a fair set-off against the sufferings of the poor in former times, whether from pestilence, famine, or oppression. The concluding section of this volume is ingenious and readable, but to discuss it at any length would draw us beyond the limits within which we are necessarily confined. The Atlantic Telegraph. A Descriptive History, published by Order of the Directors of the Company. London : Jerrold and Son. A SHORT time previous to the late attempt to lay a telegraph cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. the directors of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, formed to carry out this gigantic undertaking, sanctioned the prepara tion of the pamphlet ab we named, which we recommend CO our readers as explaining in detail the various difficulties encountered, and to some extent overcome, in the recent at tempt to connect England and America by the electric chain. Throughout the whole pam phlet the reader must, of course, bear in mind that it is written by the advocates of a com mercial enterprise, who are naturally enthu siastic about it, and record their impressions as they receive them—that is to say, with all points favourable to their views in relief. The first question to be decided was the practicability of sending an electric current through an insulated wire upwards of 2,000 miles in length. The cables manufactured in 1855 for Newfoundland and the Mediterra nean—both afterwards lost—furnished an opportunity for trying experiments through 1,146 miles. The time occupied by the trans mission of the electrical influence had to be measured, and for this purpose Mr. White house invented a most ingenious instru ment : The basis of this scrutinising instrument is a ribbon of chemically-prepared paper (like the one already described), unrolled from a drum by clockwork ;—receiving instru• ments which make local batteries print on the ribbon by short circuits when magnetically directed to do so;—and seconds pendulum vibrating in such a manner that it sends an electrical current opposite ways along the wire under examination at each beat, or half vibration, a result which is brought about by the following arrangement. The pen dulum itself hangs upon a pivot, which is one of the poles of au electrical battery, but is prolonged upwards into a sort of crest, that touches a spring right and left as it sways to and fro. The springs, when at rest, press upon a pillar lying between them, ichich is the other pole of the