The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-29 00:00:00

THE

PRE S S, MAY 29, 1858.

seen in St. Barnabas, Pimlico ; St. Andrews, Wells-
street; St. Mary Magdalene, Munster-square ; All
Saints, Margaret street, Sze. (in which churches the
pews are all free and unappropriated), occupying
various parts of the c'intl2.ll, and often in company
with persons far below them in social p9sition, and
no person ever heard them complain of any loss of
dignity in consequence of having been seated next
to a shopkeeper or a housemaid. Be this, however,
as it may, one thing is certain—viz., that the parish
churches of London are the property of the pa-
rishioners, and that the rich have no right to appro-
priate them to their own almost exclusive use ; and
if they cannot, like their brethren of like degree in
foreign lands, make up their minds to pray in com-
mon with those below them in the social scale, let
them build for themselves chapels, where they may
perform their devotions after their own hearts and
in accordance with their own tastes. _

Having made these observations, I would in conclu-
sion make a few remarks on your plan. You say you
are "opposed to all systematic distinctions between
the rich and the poor ; but not
congregation and strangers." This distinction is,
strictly speaking, a very novel one, and utterly un-
known to the law. There are not, or there ought
not to be, any strangers in a parish, for all the
parishioners form, or are supposed to form, the con-
gregation of the church—all being supposed to be
present at Divine service. Strangers are only those
who intrude into churches which do not belong to the
parish wherein they live: these of course the church-
wardens have power to exclude. There are no other
strangers' than these ; they are all sheep belonging
to some pasturage, from which they have strayed, no
doubt, because it vas too small to contain them.
This is an argument for multiplying the folds, and
not for making distinctions between rich andjpoor, or
between a congregation and strangers. You say you
are much pleased with the arrangement in Boston
Church, where the " whole ' middle aisle,' as it is
absurdly called, was free : the side aisles were appro-
priated to the families of the town." If the " middle
aisle," why should not the side aisles be free also?
Why should the side aisles be the exclusive property
of the "families of the town"? Is not the whole
area of the parish church the common property of
the parishioners? And if the " families of the town "
should be absentees from church, or should be out
of town, why should not their seats be occupied by
other parishioners? And, besides, this plan which
you approve of is in direct opposition to your own
expressed disapprobation of "all systematic distinc-
tions (which Boston Church is an example) between
rich and poor." Once more,—you advise us to apply
ourselves "to raise funds, and to give a fair exem-
plification of our views," and you add "you feel no
doubt of our rapid success." This has been done,
not by the committee, but by many true and faithful
servants of the Church. I could point to St. Bar-
nabas, Pimlico; to St. Andrews, Wells-street; to St.
Mary Magdalene, Munster-square; to St. Matthias,
Stoke Newington ; to All Saints, Margaret-street
(temporary church), &c. &c., where all the pews are
free and unappropriated, and which are all, Sunda)
after Sunday, crowded to excess. These churches
have had a " rapid success ;" and a still more "rapid
success " will attend the " ministration of the Word
and Sacraments," amongst the people, as soon es the
hideous boxes in the London churches are pulled
down and new seats set up, in such a form as will,
by their being open and unexclusive, invite all who
come to church to take a seat, and that too without
the assistance or the interference of that most odious
of all church officials, the pew.opener.—Apologizing
for the length of my letter, I remain, yours, &c.,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE GENERAL COMMITTEE
ON THE PEW SYSTEM.

SINKING FUNDS.
No. 11.
TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS."

Sir,—ln yours of Saturday last, " Charles Aldrich"
maintains that the National Debt " ought more pro-
perly to be called the public ab►lity than the public
debt; being a vast ideal capital, the interest of which
is kept in constant circulation and actual use, instead
of being unproductively hoarded, by means of the
Funds." Not being versed in transcendental philo-
sophy, I confess I do not exactly understand this.
As a plain man, if I wished to speak antithetically,
I would have been inclined to call tile public debt
the public disability ; and if I could have reached
the climax of supposing debt an ideal capital, my
imagination could not have conjured any other than
an ideal interest, susceptible only of an ideal circu-
lation. Nor can I agree with Mr. Aldrich when he
says that " paying off a great part of the debt would
render the payment of the taxes that remained much
more an object of complaint than before," for I am
stupid enough to suppose that the difficulty of taxa-
tion bears some proportion to its magnitude.
But, although I cannot follow your correspondent
in his views, I should be happy to think they were
generally entertained, fur I could conceive nothing
more calculated to bring on the millennium than a
belief that the National Debt is an advantage to the

nation—a capital, ideal or real, and not a burden. If
this were generally believed, the tax-gatherer would
be a public benefactor, and to be a Custom-house
officer would he the same as being a member of the
Evangelical Alliance. But I cannot believe my
countrymen so much more enlightened than myself,
and must claim for them and for myself the privi-
a debt a debt, and putting off the mil-
Ilegene ofniu eatntiillilntgaxes come to be agreeable.

I fear, then, that Mr. Aldrich's scheme for paying
off the National Debt, by calling it public ability and
an ideal capital, is premature, and that in the meantime
we must discuss more prosaic ways of meeting what
is generally supposed to be an evil.
The Economist of last Saturday observes that,
owing to the increasing difficulty of taxation, there
is an almost irresistible tendency to provide for extra-
ordinary expenditure by loan instead of by taxation ;
and that, since it is probable war will be ever recut ring, '
there is reason to fear that the National Debt, unless
some check be provided, will go on increasing. But,
having come to this conclusion, the Economist has
nothing better to suggest than the old remedy of a
sinking fund, desiderating only that it should be
maintained in its simplest shape—namely, the appli-
cation of a fixed sum every year to ►he extinction of
the debt, the sum so to be applied being provided
for every year in the Budget, or else by the issue of
Exchequer Bills, involving ar. undertaking on the
part of the nation to redeem them when they be-
come due.

All other varietiss of the " Pitt " Sinking Fund
the Economist considers inadmissible, as presenting
temptations of appropriation to succeeding Chan-
cellors of Exchequer which in practice have been
found irresistible. So far we agree with him; but
when be also declares against terminable annuities,
we think we can show he does so on insufficient
grounds. It is quite true, as he alleges, that large
sums cannot be raised by this method on an emer-
gency, and that terminable annuities are not
favourites on the Stock Exchange; but it does not
follow that large sums could not be raised in this
way, if raised deliberately and with sufficient time to
allow the public to understand the arithmetical ad-
vantages such schemes involve. Now, the scheme
which I had the honour to suggest in my last letter
contemplated such a deliberate operation ; for my
proposal was not to raise money in a hurry—for
which purpose the elegant simplicity of the Three
per Cents. is unequalled—but to deal with the eight
hundred millions of the National Debt by making
it the interest of the holders to accept terminable
annuities in place of consols--a scheme which does
not imply the raising of any money whatever, but
merely a transfer of securities, and which, being purely
voluntary, can only be successful if full time be
allowed the parties interested to master the calcula-
tions on which it is based.

As an illustration, I stated that inasmuch as an
annuity of three and a half per cent. for sixty-six
years is equivalent to three per cent. for ever, an
annual charge of four millions sterling—equivalent
to an income tax of fourpence in the pound —sub.
mated to fcr sixty.six years, would suffice to extin-
guish the whole National Debt. Still retaining for
precision's sake this illustration, I have now to point
out one most important advantage the method of ter-
minable annuities possesses over the sinking fund,
propounded by the Economist. The conversion of
the National Debt into terminable annuities makes
the public creditor a party to the arrangement, and
his claim for an increased annuity is one which the
national faith is pledged to redeem. Against such
a claim neither the patriotic cupidity of Chancellors
of Exchequer, nor the ignorant impatience of taxa-
tion on the part of the public, can he heard; for the
obligation to pay the annuity of three and a half per
cent. would be precisely the same as the obligation
to pay the present three per cent.—an obligation not
to be evaded, save by repudiation or bankruptcy.
Now, in the Economist scheme there is no jut
exigendi on the part of the creditor, but all is volun-
tary on the part of the debtor; and, so far as I can
see, it presents the same temptations to budget-
making and taxation-eschewing Chancellors as the
good old system of William Pitt ; for surely it will
always be more popular to apply a surplus
revenue to the reduction of next year's taxation
than to apply it to the benefit of posterity by paying
off an infinitesimal fraction of the National Debt
And, even supposing this temptation resisted, it
would be going against all experience to expect that
the country would long submit to this additional
impost, the continuance of which is so perftly
voluntary. As to Exchequer Bonds, we know very
well it is much more agreeable to renew than to pay
them.
On the whole, unless we can take Charles Aldi.ich's
view, or unless we can get over our superstitious
belief in the magic of compound interest—twoust th!ngs
I think equally unlikely—l consider myself j
in recommending my scheme for paying off the
National Debt, if not to the public, at least to I. once
ified
Posterity, who has a deep interest in the quesuon.
I am, Jce., J. A. G.

f ittraturt.

The Passionate Pilgrim; or, Eros and Anteros.

By Henry J. Thurstan. London :

and Hall.

Is old times, when men were in love and the
passion of celebration was str'ng upon them,
they could be content with a rough-hewn copy
of verses or with carving the beloved name in the
bark of an old tree. But the art of speech has
made great advances, and now Orlando publishes
his octavo volume. When he lived in the
Ardenne forest, he tagged his rhymes in honour
of his mistress, and not of himself. But he
writes differently now. The art of celebration
has been so much improved that Rosalind's name,
which appeared so absurdly often in her lover's first
essay, has almost disappeared in his latest effu-
sions, and if these have a fault, it is rather the
too frequent occurrence of Orlando's. He is also
much more analytical and philosophical than he
used to be, and in telling his love-tale takes oc-
casion to solve the mystery of existence by the
way. Moreover, he is so learned in the poets
that he has some ready-made dainty phrase from
one or other of them for every delicate thought
and fancy with which love can inspire him. In
Ardenne he had words of his own, but they were
much less refined; perhaps he loved as much, but
he did not so copiously describe it.
Mr. Thurstan does not himself pretend that he
has anything new to tell the world. He has
been in love, and has been disappointed. Before
he left the nursery he loved Desiree. Her image
made his childhood happy, and was the guardian
of his purity through all the temptations of
youth. When the time came, he put the deci-
sive question, and was refused. Since then he
has struggled with the crossness of his destiny,
with thoughts of suicide. This is the whole
story. It contains, he acknowledges, nothing of
which we have not heard before. To those who
asks, why he publishes it, he can only answer,
"tie fire burns." There was nothing new in
Dante's passion for Beatrice; the "In Memo-
riam" is a very old story. Mr. Thurstan does
not write for applause nor for the instruction of
the world, but to ease his heart—

To speak my grief is more than fame,
T utter love more sweet than praise.
This pleasure in utterance is no doubt natural
to one who feels that he possesses a precious
treasure of experience. Divitiis solum ineubuisse
repertis is not less selfish and criminal when the
treasure is spiritual than when it is material.
But can such treasures be communicated by
mere verbal utterance ? True love is proverbially
unutterable. It cannot be put into words, and
yet the man who has experienced it is for ever
unconsciously revealing it, even though he does
not speak of it ; perhaps it cannot be uttered in
words without being diminished. It seems to us,
therefore, that the impulse to talk about such a
passion as Mr. Thurstan describes should be
resisted. Men should not, as a general rule,
make a confidant of the public, nor squeeze their
hearts into octavo volumes. If " the fire burns,"
there are fire-engines.
Some rare men have feelings so strong and
deep that they can interpret the feelings of other
men to themselves, and hit upon words so apt
that other men find themselves constrained to
adopt them. Mankind itself gives an imprimatur
to such men's personal narratives. The general
prohibition is suspended for them. But Mr.
I hurstan is not one of this very small number.
Ile is a very intelligent man; a man of much
reading, much reflection, and some fancy. But
there is a certain weakness about him ; he
depends too much on other thinkers to follow in
the steps of Dante. In the " Divine Comedy " we
have the loves of a poet ; this volume contains
the loves of a dilettante. True poets have not
generally been great readers of poetry ; Coleridge
has said that it is injurious to them to be so. (in
the other hand, the constant and exclusive read-
ing of poetry inspires men who have no poetical
commission with a feeble, short-lived inspiration
which makes them seem to themselves to be
poets, or at least takes away the power of writing
prose. Such men, unable to attain to song, and
at the same time unable from habit to part with

THE PRESS, MAY 29, 1858.

measures, rhythms, and poetical embellishments'
fall into an ungraceful and wearisome sing-song,
which is sometimes ridiculous, at all times un-
pleasing, and in some cases, particularly where
close reasoning or a sober statement of facts is
required by the subject, toositively offensive and
odious. Mr. Thurstan belongs to this class. He
is devotedly fond of poetry. His ear drinks in
verbal felicities and rhythmical melodies with an
insatiable delight. Nor is his taste less pure than
it is strong. lie has studied the greatest poets
with the greatest ardour. He quotes the
poets of antiquity with no pedantic spirit :
his reverence for them, we are sure, is
genuine ; his acquaintance with them is
not superficial. The poets of Italy and
Germany are not strange to him ; those who
have honoured our own tongue, and who are
honoured by those who speak it, have no more
ardent admirer and no more diligent student
than Mr. Thurstan. Nor is his reading entirely
confined to the poets. A few philosophers and
moralists, who have written an eloquent and
musical style, receive a share of his attention.
But, on the whole, the literature he cultivates is
the literature of excitement and enthusiasm.
Ile is always struggling, always revolving the
weightiest questions, never at rest. And as he
never rests, so he seems never to work with all
his might. his philosophical investigations are
carried on in a luxurious manner, and then he
wonders that they end in disappointment. He
is captivated by the sublime sound of some well-
turned maxim, attempts to practise it, discovers
it to be untrue, and then is plunged into the
deepest despair. Ile labours to follow the poets
in their flights, striving anxiously, like Words-
worth, to commune with nature, and to ascend
the heavens like Dante; meanwhile, the com-
mon life of men, those familiar things which are
not written in books, escape his notice. Ile
forgets to live, in labouring to dream.
It is possible to be too serious in this world.
The questions which Mr. Thurstan propounds to
us are very solemn, and ought by all means to
be answered. But the man who should not
suffer them, as Mr. Thurstan does, to absorb
him, but should dare to be merry and happy in
the midst of such awful mysteries, would, it
seems to us, be likely to bring much more
vigour, a freshness more unimpaired, a more un-
dimmed discernment to the investigation of
them. Those who cannot rest can seldom work
to any purpose; those who are always serious,
always solving the mystery of life, seldom make
much progress towards their goal. We like to
think how cheerily Shakespeare, " prince of
f,ood fellows," laughed at these heavy Dr.
aunts
:-
I'll tell thee what, Gratiano,

There is a sort oimen whose visages
Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond.
Luther, too, when assailed by any of these
solemn men, used to say, "Don't you think the
" subject might be discussed to more advantage
" over a pot of beer ?"—" the devil being a
" proud spirit," he used to give as his reason,
" who can bear anything better than being
" laughed at."
Such a reply would, indeed, be merely inso-
lent, if the questioner were really in earnest.
But we cannot persuade ourselves that Mr.
Thurstan, with his profusion of vague language,
rhetorical argumentation, and glittering imagery,
is properly in earnest. He has that impulsive-
ness which keeps out earnestness by persona-
ting it.
His sorrow, only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
These verses ought not literally to be applied to
Mr. Thurstan, for there is no reason to question
the sincerity of the sorrow which he lays before
the public in this volume, but we are strongly
reminded of them by some of his drowsy and
highflown disquisitions on fate, and Providence,
and human life.

The misfortune of having no vocabulary but
a poetical one, cannot be better illustrated than
by the following wonderful description of the
effect of Aristotle's Ethics upon a boy :

A translation of Aristotle's " Nikomachean Ethics,"
drawn forth one morning from a corner of my father's
library, first broke these clouds a little. That great, lor.lly
morality, presented in a form so severe and dissimilar,
even from Cicero's treatment, impressed the boy with a
vague same of incomprehensible awe : a blind reverence.

511

Among these Titanic shapes of Virtue and of Vice, ranked
in vast series by Aristotle's scientific method, and converg•
ing to the high vision of Theoretic Happiness, I felt like a
child wandering through the Sphinx avenue of Thebes
and putting questions to Memnon.

It is with such tawdry embellishments that a
dream-fed imagination decks a very trivial inci-
dent. The boy dawdled among the bookcases,
and looked into the old translation, in which
he saw the names of the virtues and vices
printed with capital letters, as if they were
persons. They interested him for a moment,
but he soon found that the book had little
amusement for a dawdler, and threw it down.
Such a very natural feeling becomes in poetical
phraseology " a vague sense of incomprehensible
" awe : a blind reverence." This same blind
and distant reverence is the highest and most
poetical feeling, we imagine, which Mr. Thurstan
can manage to entertain t'or books whidi, like
Aristotle, require close and methodical study,
and aftbrd no pleasure to the ear or the fancy.
Lectionern sine delectatione negligo is, we fancy,
Mr. Thurstan's maxim.

We have spoken chiefly in dispraise of this
book, because, as we read it, disapprobation
decidedly preponderates in our minds. The dis-
tinction between poetry and prose is disregarded
in it, and that distinction we consider to be
founded in the nature of things. This great
error betrays Mr. Thurstan sometimes into
ridiculous magniloquence, as when he talks of
the " expectant silence of the central cricket-
field " ; sometimes into odious affectation, as
when he finds the word "worthiness" too
common, and must needs say " worthihood "; or
when he writes " childly" for "childlike." Yet
he is, beyond doubt, an accomplished man, and if
he could have told his history in simple lan-
guage, it would have been deeply interesting.
There are passages of genuine eloquence, in
which his deep veneration for great authors,
which seems to us a more deeply-seated passion
in him than his love for Desiree, finds vigorous
expression :

I have spoken (he says) of the master-writers as sove-
reigns each over his own separate star. But we may con-
ceive them also a glorious company, such as Dante met in
the emerald meadow—tueu of more than our stature, and
bearing on their faces the calm of an immortal sadness,
and the acailes of eternal delight. Below the high rock
on a hich, as one of themselves long ago sang, they stand
around excellence, they see meu contending in the unpro-
fi!able strife, or traversing the dusty highways of earth ;
but sometimes a few, and chiefly the young, strike off from
the crowd and climb the high rock, and are nut checked
by the "soul-corroding labour," but gain the summit, and
the holy throng stands there and reaches them friendly
hands, and each accepts the welcome from that master-
spirit with whom his own soul is most in communion,
and speaks with him awhile apart, and goes down towards
the other labourers on the meadow of life strengthened,
and perhaps wi!h new aims for the labour from the inter-
course with the immortal ; and some great sentence of
wisdom or melcalioas counsel that he has learned above is
on his lips as he leaps down the crag; and the many
smile as he joins them on the highway, and he is silent,
but carries with him an inner music in his heart to his
labour. And then, if the youth finds or meets the Desired,
his lips are again unsealed, and he teaches her what he
had learned on that lofty place, and she repeats it to him,
and he fails to know the words again, they come so changed
from her lips, deepened in their wisdom, more musical in
their melody, sweeter iu their sweetness.

There are some Platonic touches in this
vision, while the phrase "melodious counsel"
curiously marks the author's weakness. lie de-
pends too much upon the " holy poets ;" it is
strange that he should fall into this error, since
he himself has undergone so much passion and
has travelled through life, as he tells us, under a
sun and stars of his own, under the blue heaven
of Love and the constellations of Love. Men

commonly care for poets less when they have
been themselves initiated into poets' lore.
"Every man who has loved," says Arthur Helps,
" thinks that nothing but conceits and pretty
" words have been said about love by other
" people." Mr. Thurstan greatly injures the
effect of his love-tale by importing so many
foreign phrases to describe it. Alas for the man
who must needs borrow words to describe his
mistress ! His billets-doux will be plagiarized,
or he will court by proxy. Our dilletante is fur
too learned a lover. We might paraphrase the
dissenting preacher's triumphant appeal to St.
Paul against learned preachers, and ask, What
does Cupid know of Greek ? We can hardly
wonder at Mr. Thurstan's ill-success with
Desir6e. He is almost capable of proposing in
Latin verse.