The Industrial Review, Social and Political. — 1878-06-22 (London, England)

INDUSTRIAL REVIEW  THE GERMAN EMPEROR.—The recovery of the Emperor of Germany from his wounds and their consequences is deemed to be far advanced and quite hopeful, but must be a work of time, and not without a considerable amount of acute suffering for many days to come. Of the state of the assassin Nobiling no accounts reach us; but in Berlin, there is a growing belief that he had no accomplices in his murderous attempt. The activity of the police, however, is unremitting, and the legal measures taken are ominously severe. A woman has been sentenced to four years' imprisonment for making a too free, nay, "treasonable," use of her "unruly member." The Imperial physicians have issued the following " complement " of previous bulletins:— "The undersigned consider themselves under an obligation to make the following declaration as a complement to the bulletins issued by them • respecting the health of the Emperor-King, with a view to counteracting various evasive and inaccurate versions of his Majesty's condition. By the merciful help of God, the course taken by the wounds, and the entire illness which his Majesty has suffered through this most deplorable occurrence, has been satisfactory almost beyond expectation. The various stages of the illness were noted in the bulletins which have been published. From this it is by many hopefully and joyfully inferred that his Majesty will very shortly be completely restored to health. Under present circumstances the fulfilment of this hope is certainly the desire which animates the hearts of all. But besides passing moments of pain, his Majesty also suffers much from helplessness through being unable to use either arm, and his complete recovery can only be effected after a long time, during which many obstacles may have to be encountered, which, with God's help, we hope may be overcome as happily as those that preceded them, but cannot fail to inflict much pain upon the august patient."  DR. JOHNSON'S QUALlTY.—Whatever Dr. Johnson did or declined to do, whatever he believed or rejected, he was always the first to avow it, and to assert himself as not only not ashamed, but eager to avow it, even though it were an act which he thought a blot on his own past life. It was this indomitable self-respect and dignity, in the higher sense, which gave not only much of the freshness and force to his conversation, but the grandeur to his life. His devotion to his wife and to his wife's memory—she was said by those who knew her to have been an affected woman, who painted herself, and took on her all the airs and graces of an elderly beauty, though she was fifteen years older than be was —his courage in carrying home a half-dying woman of bad character whom he found in the streets, and did his best to cure and to reform—his incessant, though rough, benevolence to his poor dependents, and indeed almost all the traits of his remarkable character, bespeak a man who was never ashamed of himself when he thought himself right, and was never ashamed to be publicly ashamed of himself when he thought himself wrong. It was this quality, almost as much as his great wit and strength of conversation, which made him the literary dictator of his time; and it is in this quality that our own day needs his example most. A day in which men are almost ashamed to be odd, and quite ashamed to be inconsistent—in which a singular life, even if the result of intelligent and intelligible purpose, is almost regarded as a sign of insanity, and in which society imposes its conventional assumptions and insincerities on almost everyone of us, is certainly a day when it will do more than usual good to revive the memory of that dangerous and yet tender literary bear who stood out amongst the men even of his day as one who, whatever else he was, was always true to himself, and that too in the most trying time of all, even when be had not been faithful to himself —a man who was more afraid of his conscience than of all the world's opinion—and who towers above our own generation, just because he had the courage to be what so few of us are—proudly independent of the opinion in the midst of which he lived.