Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-03-24
BOOK REVIEW.


SHORT STUDIES os GREAT SUBJECTS. By James An |
thony Froude, NJ A New York Chas. Scr1b- |
ners Sons 1yol.; Syo. PIP. $40.
Any volume from the pen of Mr.. Froude Is |
certain of cordial welcome by the literary |
scholars of the era. The present volume con-
cludes Freuds's series of "Short Studies on
Great Subjects" These essays have been
written at intervals during the heavier labors
of the past thirty years which have engaged
the active brain of the historian. The volume
the Oxford ounter-reformation, Origen and
CELSIUS, a Cagliastro of the second century
(Apollonius of Tyrns), Cheneys and the
house of Russell. and A Siding at Railway
station.
In the first paper he considers the theory of
Beckett, that the church was the supreme adj
ministrator in this world, and perhaps in the
next. and that the secular as well as the spir-
itual sword had been delivered to Peter He
holds that the world which is incredulous Of
the right of Beckett to be viewed as an object
of alteration, may look with advantage upon
him from its own standpoint, and if uncon-
WINGED that he was q saint may still find in
struction in a study of his actions and his
fate. To carry out this purpose in a sketch
of Beckett, Mr. Froude considers the mental
condition of the times in which the
martyr of Canterbury lived. In this
analysis we cannot follow him. 1t is a
subtle and profoundly interesting study in
which he engages, and leads up by series of
brilliant pictures-for he holds that char.
acteristic incidents, particular things which
men representative of their age indisputably
did, convey clearer idea than any general
description-to the condition of the Church
Of England as drawn in work by Nigellus,
a contemporary of Beckett, and then to the
life and career of the subject of the essay
himself
The paper on the Oxford Counter-Reforma-
ton was published in Good Words in 1881,
and in it he tells the story of the expressions
and ideas now 80 familiar, and which once SO
agitated Epgiand-as he himself makes bold
to say without sympathy either way. In this
paper the Tractsrians, John Henry New
man, the consequences of Tract XC., and the
lives of the Saints, are considered.
Origen and CELSIUS is the most interest.
ing, as it certainly is the ablest,
of the papers. We cannot refrain from a
few extracts from the concluding pages of
this scholarly and profound analysis of the
m emorsble treatise of Adanantius Origen-
the son of the martyr elocutionist Leonides-
the author of the Hexapla and Oclapata and
the eigh. books Against CELSIUS" Fronde
says:
CELSIUS was in advance OF his age. He was on an
elevation from which he could survey the past and
current supersttions and detect the origin of most
Of them in ignorance and credulity. Origen
plies to him from the level of contemporary illu-
sions, from which he was as little free as the least
instructed of his catechumens. CELSIUS tells him
that not things, that names are but signs,
and that different words in different languages
mean the same object; that when the re-
ligious Greeks speak Of Zeus, and Latins
of Jupiter, and Persans of Dis, and Jews of Jeho-
vah they all mean the common Father OF mankind.
Origen answers that this cannot be, because if the
formH a of the God of Abraham, the God Of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, was properly pronounced,
miracles were every day uotoriously worked by it,
while the names of other gods had power at all.
The conjurers whom CELSIUS and Lueian
knew to be eharlatans and imposters, we're TO Or
igen encbanters, who had made compact with
Satan, or had gained power over them by magical
arts. CELSIUS understood the generation
Of human legends, and knew their worth
or w0rthlessness. Origen took what he
found. On the moral and spiritual
side origen was as completely victorious as CELSIUS
irresistible on the intellectual CELSIUS insisted
that Christianity was identical in character with
thousand other superstitions origen was able to
insist the extraordinary difference, that neither
the philosophy of the Schools the mysteries OF the
festivals, nor the rituals of the heather gods avaed
to check the impunity Of severity, to alleviate
the miseries of mankind and that vice and wretch
edness disappeared in every house into which the
gospel found an entrance. This true and it
was truth which outweighed a million fold the
skilifulest cavits of the intellect.
Have we then no security that the facts OF Script
ure history are literally and precisely true? The
question is less important than it seems The story
Of Newton ana the apple may be legend, yet none
the less Newton discovered and revealed the true
law Of gravitation. A true religion, it cannot be
too often repeated, is not history but declara-
ton Of the present relation which exists at all times
between Ged and man. So certainly the fathers Of
the church felt, or they would not have treated
Scripture facts with the freedom OF allegoric inter-
probation which we uniformly find in them
The Had is in form history the play Of Hamlet
is in form a history and doubtless some historical
facts lay at the basis OF both and the other But
the exact incidents which happened in the Troad
at Eisinore, irrelevant to the truth of the
Iliad, or the truth of I" Hamlet" History is true
or false, as 1t corresponds does not correspond
which once occurred and never literally repeat
themselves. play poem is true, il it contains
true picture of human nature; and it embodies
not single order of facts, the differences from
single order OF fscts but the faithful observation
OF all human phenomena Truth is thus Of more
kinds than one, and the truth which is OF most i'm
portance to mankind is not the truth of particular
fact which occurred once in time, but the truth
OF the eternal facts Of the constitution Of the uni
verse, the same yesterday, to-day and forever.
The remaining papers are historical and
critical, the last being an sllsgory of pleas
antly humorous character, in which the quail
tiles of the life work of group of people of
varied pursuits and positions, who happen to
be thrown together by accident at railroad
siding, are comparatively weighed.
1t is not necessary to remark upon the style
or the method of Mr.. Froude. That has been
done at length in these columns before but
it may be noted that because these are casual
papers, they are no less graceful in diction or
profound in treatment than the more ex-
tended works of the historian. The charac.
tiers he describes are finished studies Of varied
cadence and subtle ease. Froude's work is
never HSutiy uone' Wnie' however, IL IL
grave, and often to severity. it is also as often
musical with the rarest forms of rhetoric.
Whatever he writes stands like a noble CHS.
eled monument in its individuality, and its
speaking eloquence of the genius of the mas
ter VINO cut its lines.
TRANSFERS OF REAL ESTATE.
MONDAY, March 10, 1888.
January 16th-John B. Devillers to William Sales;
$500 e of S. E. / Sec. 8, 7. 8 N, R. E.
TUESDAY, March %, 1888.
March 13th-A. c. Freeman to c. Heisen; quit
clsim-N. 60 II. of W. lot 4, and j. Sixteenth and
Seventeenth streets, city.
February l9th-Eii Mayo to c. Hesen-Same as
last preceding
March Goth Jerome Madden to II. and B. u
Steinman; sl4,000-w. / Of E. ! and Z. J Of W.
lot 8, ] and X, Fourth aud Fifth streets, city.