The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-13 00:00:00

* Madame de Tencin, dater of the Cardinal-Archbishop
of 'Tow

rising sculptors of the day, though he may not yet
have obtained celebrity; is one who declares that his
mind was first turned towards the fine arts by wood-
cuts in the Penny Magazine. An affecting instance
of the same good result from our labours was related
by one of our colleagues, Lieut. Drummond, after-
wards Under-Secretary in Ireland, and inventor of
the celebrated light which bears his name. When
employed as Boundary Commissioner at Manchester,
by the Government of 1832, he found in one of the
lowest abodes of misery four families existing,
rather than living, in a single room. Of these un-
happy creatures one was an old woman, with her
grandson, a boy ten years old, who had, from the
vilest prints which alone he had seen, gained a
certain taste for such things ; and when the fine
cuts of the Penny Magazine came out, he was so
delighted with their superiority that he and another
boy, his friend, formed a partnership to join in tak-
ing a copy of the paper ; he set himself to draw,
and, getting a few colours of the roughest kind,
contrived to sell his little drawings ; so that Mr.
Drummond found he had actually. made 12s. by
them, and was so much pleased with the poor lad
that he recommended him to a great cotton printer,
who placed him in his designing room. What
became of liim D.'s death soon after prevents us
from knowing ; but that he throve and rose in his
vocation there can be little doubt. Such is the use
of those helps which make us say self-educa-
tion is altogether changed. But, though absolute
self-education, that is, education without
any help—is fortunately no longer to be discoursed
of, that which with the helps afforded becomes
more easy and more effectual has still all the ad-
vantages, and they are very great, of self-instruc-
tion. It gives the inestimable benefit of self-
reliance ; it unfolds, or at least exercises, faculties
wl}ich more regular training leaves either latent or
little tried ; it draws forth original genius ; and
confers on him who only discovers what others had
found out before, all the praise, became he has all
the merit of the invention ; as D'Alembert, when
he sighed to find in his unassisted studies how often
he had been anticipated without knowing it, yet
felt the conscious pride of his achievements, and
gained, too, the more solid advantage of greatly
increasing his analytical powers. A survey of the
moral world, individual and social, is fitted to raise
the same emotions which inspire us in casting our
eyes over the solar system ; the movements, the
proportions, the action of attractive, repulsive, and
disturbing forces, all at first sight little to be com-
prehended, and apparently without arrangement or
plan, but all, when deeply considered and carefully
compared, reducible to certain rules, and fixed,
unchangeable order. As new bedies are discovered
in the heavens by marking their mutual attraction
with those before known, the attractions of science
and of letters will disclose to the just and learned
observer genius already existing, but now first drawn
forth to the view. But the nebula occupy the largest
share in both firmaments ; and in the moral their
importance is unspeakably greater than that of
either the more shming or the greater luminaries.
The benefits are beyond all price which the bulk
of the community derive from their influence,
and from the assistance of popular literature ;
nor can anything be more unreflecting than
the doubts which have been raised of its bene-
ficial tendency. We may begin with the broad
fact of the harmless character, to say the very
least 'of the amusement which it affords. While
we admit it to be certain that a considerable
portion of these works is devoted chiefly to enter-
tainments, this is certainly of an altogether inno-
cent kind. But it has come in the place of
a different class of publications. When Mr. Hill
proposed the Penny Magazine, the first of the
kind now so happily established in the confidence
of the people, C. Knight brought him a list of no
less than nine weekly papers devoted to the circu-
lation of the most abominable matter, morally
scandalous and obscene, religiously not simply
.in-
fidel, but scoffing and ribald ; politically preacamg
anarchy, hardly even confined to the crazy dreams
of socialism, but as if the editor were that boy
become a man, who, when the Sovereign went to
meet his Parliament, had been arrested for bawling
out, " No King ! no church ! no lords ! no commons !
no nothing !" The Penny Magazine drove the vile
publications absolutely out of existence. A most
feeble progeny alone was left to succ2cd them ; it
skulked in corners, and ever since has scarcely
been heard of. It was like the effect of the
Society's Almanack, which put an end to the dis-
reputable fortune-telling tracts before published by
the Stationers' Company and abandoned by them,
other and rational year-books being substituted in
their place, perhaps immediately, certainly as soon
as the illustrious statesman and warrior at the head
of the Government, without any application on our
part, gave directions that the Society's Almanack
should be used at all the offices. But it is not only
irreligious, immoral, and fraudulent publications
that have been supplanted ; the far less hurtful, yet
by no means commendable -works, which study to
give the mere excitement of horror by dealing in
accounts of brutal murder and cruel seductions,
and in romances abounding in such descriptions,
together with ghost stories. These, once so
greedily pored over, now find but little acceptation,
and have ceased to be in demand. It is most satis-
factory to find that the natural preference of the
people is for the better kind of writings. At times
of political or religious excitement those of a worse
cast may have some success, but it is temporary.
The works of Carlisle and Paine have long ceased
to attract readers, the people falling back upon
papers which combine harmless recreation with some
instruction; and the tendency of public prosecution
to give them an interest which they had not natu-
rally was found so manifest, that the Government
has long taken the safer course of letting them alone.
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that
the benefits of the popular press are negative only.
The tales composed for the working-men's hours of
relaxation are of a kind that address themselves
both to the understanding and the heart—at once
giving lessons of instruction and fostering the kindly
affections. Nor can anything be more groundless
than the charges that have been brought against it.
Two of these may be at once stated and disposed of.
First, we are told that the stories given relate to
persons and scenes in high life, and that none other
interest the working classes. This is certainly con-
trary-to the fact. That these classes wish occa-
sionally to know what passes among their superiors
is true, yet not more true than that their superiors
desire to dwell upon the actions and the sufferings
of each other; but what most powerfully excites
the humbler classes and most deeply imprints itself
on their memory is the story of the actions and the
sufferings, the good and evil fortune of their brethren
and equals. They delight to dwell on the struggles
of heroism, the endurance of privation, the agonies
of anxiety-, the resignation under sorrow, of the
humbler classes, their own brothers and sisters. He
who vividly, above all feelingly, portrays a noble
heart throbbing under a fustaian jacket or a cotton
gown, records the tears shed for the untimely loss
of the young, or the removal of the protection made
habitual and venerable by the lapse of years is sure
to find eager and sympathising readers. Nor will
he less awaken their minds, though to emotion of a
different kind, who describes the anxious fears of
conscious but undetected guilt, the ever wakeful
remorse when discovery is not dreaded, and the
worthless to secure happiness of vicious though
successful courses. Characters thus taken from
humble life, and scenes laid in its haunts, most
strongly rivet the attention of the working men and
their families. And wherefore this ? Because the
case may be their own. The fiction of to-day may
to-morrow be the sad or the happy reality of their
own lot. That the narratives and the descriptions
which thus • attract and thus move them are fitted
to affect others as well may be safely affirmed,
It is from experience, no less than from the
relation of others in the higher classes, that we
describe it as impossible to read some of these
stories with a dry eye. It must not, however, be
supposed that none of the romances, favourites of
the great, are thus made conducive to the enter-
tainment of the poor. Some of Sir Walter Scott's
have been given in these publications, and it is only
to be wished that they had been accompanied with
warnings against the perversion of history as well
as the false and indeed obsolete political opinions
in which some of that great writer's tales abound.
But next it is alleged that what is termed the new
—it should rather be called the improved—litera-
ture of the people supplants more solid and more
useful works, and the multitude of the readers is
given as a proof of this. It is assumed—most falsely
assumed—that these are withdrawn from the peru-
sal of other publications. On the very contrary,
they are added to the body of former readers' and
their numbers prove it to demonstration. Take
three instances—Cassel?
tlllustrated Family Paper
began this year with a sale of 300,000, and the
Family Herald issues 200,000. The London Jour-
nal is asserted to have had a circulation of 500,000,
but its present actual sale is from 320,000 to
350,000. What papers and other periodical works
did these 800,000 purchasers take, and what did
the 2,000,000 who in the whole peruse these three
papers read before they were brought out ? It is
quite manifest that this is, if not wholly, yet in a
very great proportion, a clear addition to the num-
ber of persons who formerly saved from their earn-
ings a pcnny weekly, and laid it out in purchasing
what would help them to pass an hour or two of
rest without the weary sense of unoccupied time,
or the pernicious resource of drinking. The provi-
sion is only made for such as before had none. A
new food has been presented to the mind. They
who fancy that it comes in the place of other and
more wholesome fare would have objected to the
potato being cultivated, because it lessened the
gains from the growth of wheat, whereas it only
produced a supply for those who else were