The Press.
London, England, 1853-09-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

His works, if they add little that is real to
human enlightenment—if they conduce but.
little that is fairly appreciable towards human
progress—contain, at least, the contribution of
a word to the vocabulary of transcendentalism,
and to the jargon of a certain school of critics,
—a word which Goethe, indeed, did not invent,
but which he raised into mysterious im
portance—the word " alitheties." He found this
word obscure, and he left it famous. Lucidity
was not Goalie's chief care. He defines
;esthetics to mean the science of taste; and, as
he freely applies testhetics to religion, it follows
that he considered religion a matter of taste.
Life, death, and immortality, are questions of
more and less elegance. The early Christian
martyrs were all out of the pale of hope;
C/144111* remembered the main thing, and died
;esthetically with his mantle flowing gracefully
around him. Goethe, with the aid of a Mlle.
von Klettenberg, founded a new religion ; but
unluckily it died before himself. if his own
works show that taste was not the province in
which, by pre-eminence, we would invite him
to legislate for mankind, a diminutive book,
called " Goethe's Opinions," by Otto Wenek-
stern—one of Goethe's most idolatrous ad-
mirers—is amply sufficient to prove how defi-
cient was the judgment of this eminent author
—how self-repugnant were his views—how in-
cessantly he coutnulicts himself—how inter-
esting a guesser—and how weak and helpless
a reasoner he was. We have already seen what
is his proper rank in literature, whether his
poetry or his prose be considered; and yet
this is the man who surpassed—according to
E. A. Bowriug, and Otto Wenckstern, and a
hundred other questionable authorities—all
writers, ancient or modern. He was at once a
second Plato, and a second Shakspeare—a
second Plato without a system, without the
" golden style " ! Pedestrian and " salop "—it
is his countrymen who say it—in his language,
confused and eternally self-convicted of contra-
diction in his theories, he who, in the midst
of the light of Christianity, groped about for
what alchemy, Miss Klettenberg, and mytho-
logy could teach, is the revived impersonation
of that divine and immortal Greek who, de-
prived linked of the advantage of revelation, has
yet, fiar thousands of years, excited the wonder of
the wisest by his philosophy, and the despair
of the most eloquent by his words. And
Shakspeare ! if nine-tenths of what Shak-
mpeare wrote were destroyed, the remaining
tenth would be cheaply preserved to the
world at the cost of all Goethe's works
together. and of all that such a mind could
have produced, had it laboured, not for seventy,
but for seventy times seventy, years. When
we read that " Goethe was the embodiment
of all human progress:" when we read of
" adhering to Nae Uoethian language, for
the sake ,t' preserving the tloethian meaning, and
being worthy if the Goethian era," we recognise
in such expressions the most helpless form of
literary imbecility—the very hysterics of criti-
cism—tho sobbings and idiotey of admirers
quite incapable of comparison or judgment,
and far beyond the reach of calm reasoning.
Goethe, though not the founder, was among
the founders of modern German literature.
Gottsched, Hegel, Schelling, Herder, Ernesti,
Gellert, and Klopstoek, were before him in
their labours ; and do such names count for
nothing ? Among his contemporaries, besides
those mentioned, were Schiller (a fax higher
genius), the Schlegels, Richter, Musaeus,
Oriesbateh, Paulus, Fichte, and Humboldt—all
his countrymen. During the same long era,
Montesquieu' Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot,
D'Alembert, Cuvier, Mme. de Stab', Château-
briaml, and others, figured in France. In
these islands the principal names reeal two
very different generations of our literature.
For—take them at random—David Hume,
Richardson. Smollett, Johnson, War-
burton, Collins, Akenside, Gray. Chesterfield,
Dyer, Watson, Mason, and Young ; Crabbe,
Burke, Anima, Goldsmith, Bunts, Cowper.
Scott, Miss Edgeworth, the Balthus. Southey.
Wordsworth, Moore and Byron. Campbell and
Rogers, and the illustrious mime t,f Bulwer
Lytton, bring us to our own day. Goethe.
Cuvier, anal Sir Walter Scott. died in the SIMI'
year : all three holding renowned names
among those of the various celebrated men
we have mentioned. The stupendous amount

SATURDAY,

of what Goethe has left written; the fact that
he was one of the earliest labourers in that
literary vineyard which had but just been
reopened in his country ; and then a merit,
which is certainly his, of having regarded
literature with great reverence, and of having
given conscientious and scrupulous pains to
the discharge of what he deemed his mission
(though we think he viewed that mission too
" (esthetically," held it as too independent,
too much apart from the great ends and duties
of life), ensure him deservedly a high place in
the remembrance of posterity. In an artistic
sense, he had more circumspection, more re-
gard for a certain predominating propriety of
place, and time, and manners, in his cuncep
Lion, than most writers whom we can call to
mind. His " Herman and Dorothea" is de-
signed to be pastoral, and it has an eminently
pastoral character ; " Iphigenia and Tauris
is integrally classic; " Giitz " is of a Gothic
spirit which cannot be mistaken ; and all that
he meant for Oriental poetry is, we are told,
Oriental, undeniably, in its entire temper and
tendency. None but a singularly placid, re
collected mind could have successfully at-
tempted undertakings so versatile. And Goethe
was cautious in maintaining this artistic
serenity undisturbed. The troubled water
reflects nothing. The mirror of his wail was
not to be dimmed by any event. When his
friend Schiller had breathed his last, Goethe
refused to look on the face of the dead—he
would not be agitated. When his own son
died, he immediately commenced his theory if
colours. He would remedy distraction by a
study which demanded and absorbed at-
tention. He pursued knowledge, and loved
the very image of it to the last. His
learning was great, his industry indefati-
gable ; his ambition was placid in its nature,
but boundless in its aims. His knowledge of
human nature, in the inclinations and tempta-
tions which are its portion, was deep ; but not
his knowledge of its victories, or of its noble-
ness. His egotism he carried into all his
writings ; but he could carry it—it hindered
him not in the movements of his mind. In
this, unlike Byron, all whose heroes are him-
self, Goethe's heroes are not all Goethe the
man ; but they all have a withered hand, or
some incurable touch, from Goethe the poet.
His attainments were gigantic, and the range
of his capacity was almost without limits ; but
his influence on his admirers is not elevating,
not ameliorating. And this marvellous
mind has been well termed, in figurative
language of no ordinary force and sublimity,
" a great cupola, liyhted from below."

The London Quarterly Review. No. I. London :
Partridge and Oakey.
QUARTERLIES multiply so fast that we can
hardly keep account of them, or understand
what principles they are specially desigmed to
represent. Each religious sect seems bent on
having an organ which, by its presumed
weight of metal, may compensate for the infre-
quency of its discharge ; and we suppose the
time is not far off when there will be one of these
heavy gnus at least to every "ism." The pre-
sent issue proceeds we believe from the Wes-
leyan body. It is a creditable production—
grave in tone, earnest in argument, enlight-
ened in general east of thought, and full
charged with information. Equipped rap-ti-
p►ied fin• spiritual combat, it fights secularise►
(which our fathers called infidelity) with one
hand and ultramontism (of old termed Popery)
with the other. It aims rather at soundness
than novelty ; so is profuse in details (each
article seeming intended for an encyclopedia-
treatise), but chary of independent views, or
of those rare things in our periodical liters•
ture,--original ideas. Plain, sensible, deco-
rous, fluent, well got up, it is just such a I►ub-
lication as we might expect to proceed from a
select I►arty of the respectable fraternity one
is accnsteu,r►l to see on the platform at a Wes-
leyan► festival. The liceent of the conventicle
110 W and then reminds one of the distinctive
principles of " the eouuexior►...

first artiele elaborately discusses the
present state of the Christian populations of
the Turkish empire. In European Turkey it
is estimated that there are about 1100,000

SEPTEMBER 17, 1853.

Greeks to 3,6:10,000 Mussulmen. The reviewer
assumes the extinction of Turkish rule to be
not far distant : he seems ignorant of the sage
aphorism of Montesquieu, that declining em.
pares live long from the jealousy of other
states contributing to their support. Ile is
puzzled to conjecture how the fall he antici-
pates will be brought about, or what is to
come after it. He trusts much to British in-
telligence and capital, (!) and is not without
hope that those influences may in time lead
t • Russia' being taught " Christianity more
perfeetly." In the next article Southey's
is Life of Wesley " meets with tardy criti-
cism and reluctant praise. The best part of
Southey's book is that which is most strongly
assailed. The followers of Wesley caunot bear
that doubt should be thrown on the " Expo.
rienee."—however frantic a shape it assumed,—
by which, if we understand the reviewer cor.
reedy, " God owned the labours of this great
evangelists as well as of his brother Charles and
Whitfield." A detailed notice of "Forbes's Ire
laud " is followed by an intelligent paper on
" Cryptogamic Vegetation ;" and then conies
an exposure of the " experience" of table-
turning and spirit-rapping, two of the monstrous
juggles which protest, by their success, against
the claim of our day to infallible intelligence,
and remind us that the nineteenth century
has, like other ages, delusions of its own, with
herds of fools to believe in, and knaves to
profit by, them. We find here a good para-
graph on the silliness which claims belief for
every extravagance on the ground that great
trutfts have .at one time been deemed extniva-
glint :

Mr. Spicer Fa spirit-rapping diw iplcl adopts the old
cuckoo-cry of Adv.)," and declares that " this new phi-
losophy, if it be thing at all, is a subject for the consi-
deration, not of en,inrS and chassis. but Of mankind,—a
question, not of nations, but of worlds;" and, " Let us at
least hope," he say,.;, " that the foul spirit of ignorance
I prejnaiee which put Galileo to the torture for a trim
disoweey, and in a later age nicknamed the first American
piteant-host Fulton'sfid/y,' is not to be resuscitated in en-
livldened Ibitain."

We 4I weary of this lialileo-cry. Because 4 :Mile° mu-
claimed a truth. athl wet with the fate of all great teachers.
every noodle who vonceives r new extntraganee.--every in-
ventor who eonstriiets even a new cetfee-pot.—instantly
moths himself beside Galileo, if his extravagance or his
cotreepot be not instantly adopted by a " persecuting
world." It is One to stifle inquiry, anti persecute
the in ; smother thing, to confront new schemes with
the light of reason. or—if need be—ridicule.
A groat master of human motive writes :
Ititlivialan acrd
Furtium se 10,11nristisbigures plerumque west res.

Ridicule is often the best weapon than can be
employed against the delusions of imposture
and the cant of hypocrisy. Among the recent
converts to spirit-rapping we find Mr. Robert
Owen, who thinks it more credible that tables
should speak, and mean float in the air, than
that the Christian evidences should be true.
The reports of the Registrar-General supply
the text of a paper on hygienic laws : " chairs
of hygiene," it is tather oddly said, should be
introduced in our schools, and sanitary im
provement be inculcated as a Christian duty.
The next article, " Secularism," grapples with
the subtle theorists who would set natural
against revealed religion. The great work of
Butler furnishes the reviewer with the ground
work of his well-reasoned and convincing
paper. The Pantheists must always find it
impossible to get over their own argument
pushed to its legitimate conclusion :

Mt, Holyoake insists that there are two Christs in the
New Testament, beesum, our Lord unites in himself quail •
tications appmently opposite : and, on the very foolish
sumption that Christ did nothing, or should him'. diver
nothing, but what we may imitate, asks, with great apla•
rent simplicity, " Which of the two are we to imitate, the
mild or the severe ?"

Were Our fieotlarist apostle to believe in • Ood, he
must, on the prineiple that he astierts the existence of two
Christi. in the New Testament, maintain that there are
two Gods in nature.-4 ;tal the gentle, and tiool the
aus-
tere. He must say, " I could not trust Him who is said
to he love, and to make his sun to rise on the evil and on
the good ; while 1 thought of Him inflicting, in his provi-
dence, such judgments on men and nations." Even on
the supposition of the truthfulness of his own dogma. that
the nature we know is the (hod we seek, still there are the
two aspects,—notittv the gentle, and nature the austere.—
nature invested with sunlight, and shedding down benig-
nant gifts on the children of men, and nature wrapped in
moms. and scattering desolation over the earth.
lit the paper on " Public Education " the
principle of combining religious with secular
lubtruction its firmly iusibted on. " Ultramon.

THE PRESS.

tanism," in a kindred tone. manifests some
alarm at the progress of Romish power in
modern day. The priests of Rome are active
even in educational labours. " The cane of
" the master," says the Abbe tianme, the
" sceptre of the world." Great regret is ex-
pressed that in Ireland " the feeble govern-
" meta of Lord St. Germans, too timid to take
" a decided course," should have permitted
WHO., and his party to virtually break up the
educational system, which was working so
well. "The official twople." says the re% it`WiT.
" assure us that the system will go on as
" before ;" but he pertinently asks, " Are we
" to trust to a Ministry wind' has been so
" vacillating hitherto?" The number con-
cludes with a somewhat pomlerens risstme of
English rule in India, and with a crowd of
brief notices of recent publications.
The &Heir altogether strikes as rather ex
Wilting the influence which popular tmuden-
cies are exercising over Wesleyanism, than
any power of impressing the age possessed by
Wesleyanimm itself. The best educated part
of the body seems willing to float with the
current of general opinion. and to be in want
of those decided principles which are neees.
nary to a propagating sect.

Stray Thoughts on the Olden and Modern Times.
By an Old Tory.

WHoEvEit the " Ind Tory " 1118 y he, he is plainly a
seholar and a gentleman. His rhymes have a rough
vigour and Iludihrastic ring about them, which, in
this age of tame feeling and unmeaning polish, plea
singly remind us that manly, uncompted thought
and sterling sense are yet In be found in many an
English manse and manor. Though too braid ler
a lawyer, he puts before us a plain issue :
Disguise thf• trlllh as last you may,
11 ear what an honest haul will say—
Then' Is a mildest how Is•g1111.
'IV hid* in its issue, lost fin w"11,
I 'wolves old England's Pllt sire glu•)
or—shall she only live iu sba 1 !
Shall landlonls gild the him
cotton lords and M anehester ?

In this spirit are the " Stray 'Fininglds " penned,
the verse fitly embodying the indignant rentituent4
and hearty aineerity of the writer.

Istory of France. By Etnilo dN Bouneeliose.
Translated by William Robson. London : Rout-
ledge and Co.

EIIMMES, as Mr. MUM has well observed, are
chiefly useful at the beginning and end of the study
of a particular subject; at first liar the sake of intro-
ductory analysis, and afterwards as a mnemonic
exercise. The remark applies to all those books of
which this thick and well-printed octavo volume is a
favourable specimen. The work of M. de Ihemeele•se
has been approved in France by the Council of
Public Instruction, and it is a handbook at the
Military College of St. Cyr. It is a good chart of
French history, considered, of coarse, from the
French point of view. The author has made skilful
use of the works of Sismondi, Thierry, and others of
the modem French school of historians. It might
be greatly improvml in a future edition by the inser-
tion of chronological tables of contetnporary
monarchs, and liy a couple of chapters treating of
the growth of French literature. On all military
matters the cpitemist is intensely national. On
religious questions his tone is Christian.

Percy Effingham ; or the Gcrnt of the World'it Esteem.
By Henry Cockton. London : Routledge and Co.
THERE is more refinement in this el than in other
works from the same pen, but there is also more
tameness. On perusing it, we RIP convinced that,
even if his career had been prolonged, the late Mr.
Cockton could never have taken a high rank amongst
novelists. Ile had a certain amount of mechanical
dexterity in constructing a plot, but he was deficient
in analysim of character, and the glowing warmth of
a poetical imagination never gave vitality to his por-
traitures. " Percy Effingham " 'professes to he a
domestic novel, but, unluckily, the characters belong
principally to " high lift.," with which the author had
no acquaintance ; and. as the incidents are common-
place, we miss both truth of portraiture and exciting
narrative.

Adams's Parliamentary Ilandbank. Secotal Edition.

Smith, Elder, and Co.
Tur farts of "second edition," along %jilt ti„e
pectahle puhlishere names on the titlepalie of thim
mail) izot-up work, are premimptive proof% that it
merit. attention, latt w•e :mist decline to say more
until w•e lime hail on opportuuity of thoroughly
examining it.

475

Notes. Expianditory and Praetieol, oit the Book of
Daniel. By the Rev. Albert Barnes. London :
Routledge and
Tins is a most valuable, exegetical contribution to
theology, and sill raise still higher the reputation
acquired by the author's " Notes on the hook of
Revelation." He is profoundly read in divinity. and
is successful in expounding critical prineiples with
breadth of logic, and in illustrating points ot disputed
scholarship with great variety of learning. Th., wit
uC oniin4 is connnoinsi on in a series of elaborate
dissertations that merit the attention of theologians.
It is with pleasure that we receive this work front an
American divine ; and we have no doubt of its point
tar acceptation in this country.

be !trams.

DRURY LANE THEATRE.

MR. iißoolit: kits PolltflbllWl with solves% his per-
formatiee% at this theatre, oecasionally playing /ago
to the Othello 44 Mr. Davenport, when not himself
performing the latter character. Ili% limp) I' no
turally free from .oua• of the thifeei.4 of hill ()thew,
and. together with Mr. M►cready Mr. Cherie%
Kean. Mr. Brooke has the merit of eschewing the
stage villain VOllOOl4Oll, and of playing tl►e cl►arw•ter
with that amount of SOOIIIIIIII frankness and botikinm
one which rendeni the Wi11t111.404 the Moor noire
easily to he accounted for. Mr. Brooke has alimi per
toru►ed the character of Si► tides Overreach, a part
in which he certainly iihintst. A% yet, ha has nut
undertaken iniy new character.

OLYMPIC
Mr. F. Itousoa, the actor whose original iityla of
burlesque, in Shyloek, as well as some broadly hu-
morous Is•rt'ormauees in low eons...ly, has made linu
the talk ibf the town, playe.l on the ►ccasion of his
benefit a new part in the once favourite piece b:x
chang• no Robbery. His performanee bids fair to
show that the reputation he has enjoyed as a bur
lesque act►rr will not he ephemeral, hut that 1W will
exeel in characters of a more " legitimate "

AST LEN'S AM NI I TII
Tit►: new and ',Whited inatiager of this attractive
theatre has struek out a new style of piece• in the
shale• of sill equ►strian burlesque, of which Phaeton
furnishes the theme and the name. The /wilittary
features of the modern burlesque prevail in this new
it not Very admirable style of drautatie
writing. The novelty consists in the introduistion of
horses. The fall of Phaeton $lllll Ills 5te4,414 iM 111111 N 1•
isellent piece of stage illusion. The miscues in the
circle aro snore than usually good, and the perfor-
matives of Misty Kniily eimike, a chill remarkably
fearless am a rider, tread closely on the exploits of
the insist celebrated heroines of this equestriat► ring.