The Press.
London, England, 1858-05-01 00:00:00

THE PRESS, MAY 1, 1853.

quests, subjugation of ancient and illustrious
races, revolutions in religion, science, and art,
had been going on then, as they have been
going on now, for immemorial ages ; and ►nan
was no nearer to paradisiacal innocence then
than he is now ; nay, he was not so near, for
then he had only a dim tradition of that pri-
mitive state, whereas now he has an historical
monument of it.

Is there not, then, a childlike simplicity
in the style of Homer which we do not
trace in later writers ? Certainly there
is ; but it is the childhood of the Greek
nation only, and not of the world, which
finds a voice in Homer. The same
childish simplicity reappears in the
" Niebelungen Lied " and the " Chansons de
Geste," which notwithstanding are modern,
compared, we do not say with Homer, but with
some of the most artificial writers who have
ever lived—with Plato and Cicero. The child-
hood of a nation does not in any manner
depend on the childhood of the world. A na-
tion divided by geographical barriers from
other nations, and wanting the means of trans-
mitting accurately to each succeeding age the
deeds of that which went before, if at last it
give signs of vitality, commonly exhibits in its
first movements this childlike innocence and
simplicity. For if the first settlers brought
with them any knowledge or enlightenment,
some of this, as it is perpetuated by no alpha-
bet, is lost in each generation, and what re-
mains is retained with a blind and unreason-
ing tenacity, so that when such a people takes
its place at last in the family of nations, it
shows like a Squire Western among the Lon-
doners—strong, simple, utterly ignorant, go-
verned iu action by impulse, and in belief by
tradition. Such, probably, are the Russian
peasantry at this day, nut less than the Greeks
of Homer's time ; such, more or less, are the
peasantry of every country. Their simplicity
may be more or less amiable and attractive,
according to the character of the nation; it
has no concern with the childhood of the
world, nor with the historical paradise, yet it
may in a very just sense be called paradisiacal,
inasmuch as it is often virtuous from habit
without any deliberate choice of virtue, and
truly wise without any knowledge of good and
evil.

Mr. Gladstone's assumption, therefore, that
Homer was likely to preserve some primeval
traditions because he lived in the childhood
of the world before the paradisiacal revela-
tions were forgotten, or the paradisiacal inno-
cence utterly corrupted, is unwarranted. In
Homer's time the world was old, and probably
at. least as corrupt as now; while, in the
absence of records, the sources of primitive
truth were probably further from him than
from us.

But what is the doctrine thus supposed to
have been handed down from Paradise ? It
is the doctrine of the Trinity, and of the
double nature of the Messiah. Mr. Gladstone
goes so far as to say that all the genealogical
and mythological details relating to Jupiter,
Minerva, and Apollo are so many rude
attempts to grasp the doctrine, " One alto.
" gether ; not by confusion of substance, but
" by unity of Person." We scarcely know how to
treat this easy, unhesitating assumption of the
truth of the extravagant theory of South, that
" Aristotle was but the rubbish of Adam, and
"Athens but the rudiments of Paradise" For
ourselves, it would seem quite sufficient to
observe—though we are conscious that such
an objection will seem of small account indeed
to a speculator of Mr. Gladstone's temper—
that this view of the paradisiacal state is alto-
gether unsustained by evidence ; that neither
in Scripture nor anywhere else is it hinted to
us that Adam was acquainted with the Athatia-
sian Creed ; that, on the contrary, the high doc-
trines in question are represented as being
revealed to men by very slow degrees, and as
only completely disclosed in the incarnation
of Christ. But. at any rate, it deserves notice
that, if Mr. Gladstone be fight, the Greeks
must be held to have preserved from Paradise
a greater amount of theological truth, if in a
less pure state, than the Jews recovered by
revelation from above. The germs of the doc-
trine of the Trinity may possibly be detected
in the Old Testament, but in the poems of
Homer, according to Mr. Gladstone, the doc-

--------,__-
_.—
trine itself appears full blown, and is ex.
pounded, thougu in mythical forms, yet with
Athauasian accuracy. The double nature of
Christ appears to be darkly hinted at by the
Jewish prophets, but Homer, it seems, could
have passed au examination in the mystery
before Justinian and his bishops.
'We are very ready to admit the force of the
acute arguments by which Mr. Gladstone
establishes the generical difference and supe•
riority of the two deities Apollo and Pallas
Athene to the other Olympians. That dif-
ference is too conspicuous to be passed over
by the most superficial reader of Homer and
of the other Greek poets. Every one must bo
struck by the correspondence of the epithets
which they apply to Apollo to those which wo
apply to Christ. He is called zao;,vin or
Healer, wiaci,:crio; or Purifier, irio,i,cr;,; .I,i; or
Revealer of the will of Jove. Every one must
be struck by the sublime picture of Pallas
Athene in the Odyssey, acting as a present
Paraclete or Inspirer and Comforter to her
favoured hero :

or yri.i aov i";;Et 054; isvcipavia pt)Jurres;
xtiv# isvci+orS'm iraFicrTevro Ila:XXes;

Mr. Gladstone has shown how deeply felt
and how well sustained by the poet is this
character of either deity. 'We accept the fact
as we find it, but we do not refer it either with
some writers to an altogether conjectural and
unsupported connection between Greece and
Palestine, or with Mr. Gladstone to a still
more conjectural and unsupported communi.
cation between Greece and Paradise. Of the
origin of the tradition we neither know nor
can know anything ; but if we want a reason
why the Greek imagination clung to it with
so much more tenacity and religion than to
the rest of the Greek theology, it is surely
sufficient to observe that truth commonly
wears better than fiction ; is more credible ;
answers the facts better. Plain men, says
Aristotle, as a general rule hit the truth.
This maxim duly meditated may both give us
the reason we want, and may, on the other
hand, confirm our faith in orthodox Chris-
tianity, when we consider that plain men in
Greece, before St. Paul preached there, had
been in the habit of worshipping three Persons
united in will.

We have quarrelled long enough with Mr.
Gladstone, and must not take our leave of
him without commending more at length the
chaste eloquence of his style. We have been
particularly struck with the exquisitely hippy
metaphors which seem always at his com-
mand at those points where an inferior writer
would have been driven to laborious and un-
satisfactory circumlocutions. The following
are some examples of this peculiar skill

Take, for instance, time, ocean, earth, sun, moon, stars,
air; all these prime natural objects and agents are either
not personified at all in Homer, or so indistinctly and
mutely personified that they are the were zoophytes of his
supernatural world, of which the gorgeous life and brillitur.
movement .are sustained by a sepsrste set of characters.
Rarely indeed, in reflective and critical periods, does it
happen that mall can keep a log-book of wind, weather.
and progress for the mind, or tell from what qusrter of
the heavens have proceeded the gales that impel it on its
course.

Speaking of the exposition of Greek theology
attempted by the Neo-Platonists, he says :
Even that corrupt and wicked system had, as it were, its
epoch of death-bed repentance.
We have selected as a specimen of Mr.
Gladstone's usual manner the following pic-
ture of the best side of the manners of Homer's
time :

The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now
separated from the low, is educated under tutors in rev&
rence for his parents, and in desire to emulate tLeir fame;
he shares in manly and in graceful snorts, acquires the use
of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit, then of all others
the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts,
gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre.
Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets
himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or
how to drive the plough firm and straight down the
furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn. And wire n
scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe,
takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction
and by practice how to rule nisnkind through the nse. of
reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies,
attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For all this
time he has been in kindly and free relations,
bu
not only with
his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, t with
the attendants, although they are bat serfs, who have
known him from infancy on his father's domain.
He is indeed mistaught with reference to the strong
hand. Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild

and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel
over some childish game with his friend, into taking it
sway. find even so throughout his life, should some occa•
'ion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a
wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his
humanity for a while, until reason has re established her
control. Short however of such a desperate crisis, though
he would not for the world rob his friend or his
neighbour, yet he might not be unwilling to triumph
over him in
his
°cost, for the sake hostile exercise
of signal ingenuity; while from a tube or
a foreign shore, or from the individual who has
become his enemy, he will acquire by ratio force what he
can, nor will he scruple to intlia on him by stratagem
even deadly injury. He must, however, give liberally to
those who are in need ; to the wayfarer, the poor, the
suppliant. who begs from him shelter and protection.
On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the
liberrl and openhanded contributions of his neighbours
will not be wanting to replace them.
His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding
social excess in rogue, or the opportunities of it staring in
his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly
known; drunkenness is marked only by its degrading
character and the evil consequences that flow so straight
from it, and is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of
meals, and rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered
in his father's ball, enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine
mantles in the cup. .Foi then they listen to the strains
of the minstrel who celebrates before them the newest and
dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse
their manly resolution to be worthy in their turn of their
eountry and their country's heroes. He joins the dance
in the festivals of religion, the maiden's hand upon his
wnst,and the gilded knife glancing from his belt, as they
course from point to point, or wheel in round on round.
That maiden, some Nausicaa or some Hermione of a
neighbouring ilistrict, in due time he weds, amidst the
rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish
her, "from the flower to the ripeness of the grape," with
respect, fidelity, and love."

1848. Historical Revelations. Inscribed to
Lord Normanby. By Louis Blanc. Lon-
don : Chapman and Hall.

THIS volume does not come up to its title.
M. Louis Blanc deals in " refutations " rather
than " revelations ;" there are few disclosures
in its pages, and those no► of high importance.
The work is nubli,hed in self-defence by its
author against the charges more or less freely
stated by the Marquis of Normanby. The noble
lord published his rapid jottings at the time of
the fall of Louis Philippe. They were very
entertaining, but any one might see that only
the impressions of the hour were set down by
the English Ambassador We will not deny
that M. Louis Blanc had a right, if he felt
aggrieved by Lord Normanby's assertions, to
enter publicly on the task of refuting them.

But this object has not been carried out
thoroughly by M. Louis Blanc. He diverges
into speculative and purely theoretical sub-
jects. His disquisitions on Socialism are out
of place ; and there is a half-apologetic air in
the volume which gives it an inconclusiveness
Recollecting the former successes of the an-
thor's pen, we expected more from this book,
and we have read it with some disappoint-
ment. Controversial disputations on the
character and conduct cf individuals in a
foreign country are rarely interesting. But
even the French democratic party will not be
likely to accept this work as a triumphant
testimony to the practicability of their prin•
ciples, or to the purity of their course.
In another point of view, also, we have been
disappointed in this volume. We thought
that it might throw some light on the future
of France, or reveal some of the motives ac-
tually agitating the French movement party :
but, beyond the aspersions on the character
and conduct of the Emperor, there is little of
a present or a prospective nature in the pages
of the work. The assertions of Lord Nor-
manby, made while writing on the spur of the
moment, are answered by Louis Blanc in a
positive manner. Yet it would not be difficult
In some instances to make out a plausible ease
for the Marquis. For example, Lord Nor-
manby asserted that Mli Marrast, Flocon,
Louis Blanc, and Albert were at first only
secretaries, and afterwards " crept up" into
the Provisional Government. In a rather
lengthy refutation of this assertion, M. Louis
Blanc writes (the italics are our own) :
„Be this as it may, the decrees which appeared in the
11"7"fur 01 the 2.5 th of February, led the public naturally
think that the position of MM. Marrast, Flocon, Louis
and Albert, was one of a subordinate character.
The fact vas viewed is the light of a wtanizarre by the most
ardent :tepnblicana. The workmen grey. indignant at the
g!lPposnim that their will, so clearly expressed, had been
distegaraidi and that underhand attempts were already