The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-21 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MR. WARREN'S NEW WORK.
The Intellectual and Moral Development of the
Present Age. By Samuel Warren, F.R.S.
Blackwood and Sons.

A cordial welcome is due to this noble little vo-
ume, elevating the mind of every attentive reader,
as it cannot fail to do, by lifting up his heart to
the loftiest regions of contemplation. Its text is
the Sursum Gorda of the Christian Philosopher.
Brief though the dissertation is, its brevity results
neither from a paucity of ideas, nor from. a narrow-
ness of purpose, but from its laborious and really
masterly condensation. Compressed within a few
pages, the essay here presented to the public con-
stitutes, in fact, if we may so express it, a veritable
microcosm. It appears under no pretentious cha-
racter—coming to us simply as the reprint of a lec-
ture delivered before the Hull Literary and Phi-
losophical Society on the evening of Tues-
day, the 28th- of last December. How- Mr.
Warren came to deliver that lecture may be
very readily understood, bearing in recollection the
judicial functions now exercised by him in that
ancient borough, and the very natural desire ex-
pressed by those who may be called the intellectual
representatives of the local population, that they
might in this manner become more intimately ac-
quainted with one whose name had been so long
and deservedly distinguished in our popular litera-
ture. October witnessed the transmission of this
request, and December itsThilfilment. Permitted
to select his own subject, Mr. Warren chose that
very splendid one which is expressed upon the title
page of the book now submitted to miscellaneous
criticism, and by defining " The Intellectual and
Moral Development of the Present Age," evidenced
his interest in the progress of civilisation, and his
homage for the divine and beautiful truths of
Christianity. It is because we have not failed to
recognise the scope of this thoughtful and compre-
hensive dissertation, that we have designated by a
rather arresting title, what was at first nothing
more than a lecture delivered in a provincial town
before the members of a literary institution. We
have acted thus, therefore advisedly. We have
spoken of the brief essay before us in regard to the
present age in its moral and intellectual develop-
ment as a new work from the hand of an old fa-
vourite—because, we perceive in it an achievement
honourable to him at once as a lover of nature,
and as a worshipper of the Divinity—an effusion,
consequently, that cannot do otherwise than mate-
rially enhance his already large and ripened repu-
tation. Honestly we take this essay to be quite
as much of an achievement as the delineation of au ,
astute intellect, like that of Oily Gammon,
or of a gentle heart like that of Kate
Aubrey—quite as much, indeed, as the pen-
ning a masterpiece of fiction like " Ten Thou-
sand a Year," or of enthralling and impassioned
narratives like those collected together in the
" Diary of a Late nysician." Admiring those
two very admirable works with the warmth of an
earnest appreciation, we nevertheless do not hesi-
tate to speak thus of what, if size alone be considered,
must, when taken into comparison, appears a very
trivial performance. Inferior, however, though it
may be in mere dimensions, it will be found on
perusal to be loftier in its purpose, profounder in
its reason, and to a considerable extent too, let us
add, more daring and ambitious in its character.
Within the comparatively brief interval elapsing
between the commencement of the perusal
of this essay and its conclusion, the stu-
dent will find that our author has traversed
almost every one of the various departments of
human learning. Herein he may be said to have
sounded the whole gamut of knowledge—from its
diapason upwards—and always, no matter what may
be the theme of his inquiries, with a reverent sense
of the awful beauty of creation, and of the inscrut-
able and ineffable mystery of Omnipotence. It is
impossible, we believe, for any thoughtful man to
read these few pages without feeling better under
an influence at once so very humbling and so very
elevating. From the few words of his " Preface"
we learn on Mr. Warren's own assurance, that the
paper there subjoined " treats of subjects which
have occupied his thoughts for many years"—
though the work itself, we conceive, might have
rendered such an intimation superfluous. He re-
lates a variety of topics that might have bewildered
any man who had not for a very considerable period
meditated upon their relation to each other, and
upon their natural and symmetrical, though neither
obvious nor easily discoverable arrangement. As
lecturer to a popular audience, Mr. Warren thus
pleasantly introduced his argument to their con-
sideration—remarking, after a few preliminary and
appropriate allusions to the season, then imme-
diately associated with the festivities of, Christ-
mas :

" Let me conceive myself to have been installed your
Chancellor of the Exchequer intellectual ; and here, at your
service, is my Budget ; but it will be forced to deal very
summarily with the Income and Expenditure of THOUGHT
—its Resources—its Ways and Means—and the circulating
medium of that thought--which is language or literature.
I cannot, alas ! hold out the hopes of taking off any taxes,
but, on the contrary, must impose a somewhat heavy one
on your attention P

Thereupon he entered upon a serious considera-
tion of the avowed subject of his discourse, the
intellectual and moral development of the age,
showing by progressive steps the advances made
by man in the examination of the wonders of the
universe, and his own signal elevation in know-
ledge. It is exquisitely disclaimed by our author,
however, at the very outset of this daring adven-
ture, that his purpose is far from being any attempt
at an ostentatious display of man's doings and dis-
coveries—but rather to demonstrate the more clearly
that Newton was right when he compared him-
self to a child on the shore of the great ocean of
Truth picking up shells and pebbles. Indeed, after
reviewing the bulk of the intellectual achievements
of the human race here enumerated with so much
lucidity, we feel our mind humbled before the still
impenetrable veil of ignorance shutting us out from
the comprehension of an inexplicable infinitude.
With all our extraordinary triumphs through the
aid of natural philosophy—with all our revelations
drawn from the minute by the microscope, and
from the vast and remote by the telescope—with all
the light thrown by our researches into the crust of
the earth through geology, and into the abysses of
space through astronomy—we still stand, the wisest
of us still stand, baffled before a countless series of
phenomena defying anything like a rational expla-
nation. It is actually in this respect as though we
required new senses to admit of our extending our
knowledge by the recognition of one fact in thesemys-
tical directions. We have carried our proficiencyin
the physical sciences solar that we have our streets
lighted by gas, and our seas traversed by steam-
boats, and our lands threaded by railroads, and the
press everywhere, and thought flashing to and fro
over continents and from shore to shore, trailed
along the bed of the ocean, communicating visibly
and audibly with the rapidity of lightning, with
people hundreds of miles away, by means of the
electric telegraph. We have accomplished all this
and more—we have enabled ourselves to grow cop-
per from a transparent solution, to sketch one
another's portraits by the sunbeam, to weigh the
sun and the planets as we would weigh any other
substance by avoirdupois—nay, we have measured
the distance of those heavenly bodies from this
earth as we world measure one of the gravel walks
' of our garden with a two-foot rule—and yet, with
all this, what do we know of the phenomenon of
existence ?—how far have we advanced towards the
establishment of a single truth of metaphysics ?
During the course of the masterly dissertation be-
fore us, Mr. Warren contrasts in a startling man-
ner this ignorance and this knowledge, this weak-
ness and this strength, this capacity and incapacity,
which make up the disordered force of the human
intellect. Throughout all this, moreover, he brings
the whole energy of his nature, the whole earnestness
of his convictions, the whole power of his logic, and
all the persuasion of his eloquence, to bear upon
that evil phantom of infidelity which has latterly

been tricked out in obsolete sophistries to frighten
the weak minds and craven hearts of the grown
children of our generation. This alone was a ma-
jestic purpose to hold before him in the course of
his dissertation, and nobly, and bravely, and fer-
vently has it been sustained by him throughout.
Among the more entertaining passages in the essay
are those in which the writer surveys the various
departments of science and of literature in refer-
ence to their present state of development. About
the finest passage in the volume is that expressly
dedicated to the vindication (if one may dare to say
so without impiety) of the truth of the Holy Scrip-
tures, and of the beneficence of Christianity. We
could willingly gratify ourselves with quotation
after quotation, but that even one of any length
would be scarcely fair in regard to a dissertation so
brief and well-ordered. Nothing remains to be
added, therefore, to our foregoing remarks but
that while in this lecture Mr. Warren has afforded
the world a new illustration of his abilities, he has
given Hull fresh cause to be proud of her Recorder,
and benefited the community by a novel and ele•
vating contribution to our popular liti.brature.