Year: 1870

'LOtuulf'-A Mostefpiece oil imcSinaton


and Philosophy.


Aristotle gave the first place among works
of Imagination to tragedy, but that was in an
age when the stage dealt with the great social
religious and political problems which agitated
the lives OF nations. He did not prefer the
drama for its form, but for its spirit, for the
consequences and dignity of its themes, for its
intimate relation with the higher intellectual
growth OF suca ideas as seemed great in the
history Of their race. But since tragedy was
separated from that original purpose it has
gone downward in the scale. In this age
people will not consent to be narrowed by
woes with which they have no personal or
family sympathy and no deeper interest than
that of casual spectators. Intellectually we
are all Sybartes, and the stage is sham.
But the relation to popular life that anciently
vivifed tragedy has not departed from litera-
and it has changed it in accordance with the
conditions of our time This change has car
ried it into the novel. In an age of wide
spread and teeming populations the printing
press is to the masses what the stage was to
the far smaller communities Of antiquity and
thus when the poet appears he finds the
agencies ready adapted to enable him to get
a grander hearing than any Of which antiquity
could conceive


The use that may thus be made of the
g., >f act; TO-
pie is illustrated in 'sLothair." Here we see
great thinker, who can write novel without
dwinding to the level OF the novel writers in
purpose or form, because he has a higher,
grander view of his vocation and who can
treat the loftest themes of philosophy and
statecraft in the easy, graceful, acceptable
style that will not only carry them, but
make them current and familiar, in places
where the dry dispositions of the phi
losopher cannot enter and the formal
In ''Lothair' Mr.. Disraeli personifes all
the elements and forces of European society,
not only as they are but as they have been for
ages. In his pages we see the contest that
has rended every people of the Continent still
in progress. These are the natural human
longing for and tendency towards progress and
Improvement and its parasites, the professional
organizers of revolutions. There are also the
natural religious sentiment and the great in
stitution, the Church, that thrives and lives
upon it, also too much as parasite and there
is society drawn and repelled from one to
another, as each appears attractive or repul-
sive to its always colored and prejudiciaI
vision. All are introduced in their ancient
struggle. They struggle through the drama,
and the drama settles no point Of oil that they
struggle over, and leaves them struggling still,
because it is for the poet or the philo-
sophie historian to present to US his impress
sions of reality, to tell the great story and
not to take sides, since he cannot dive into the
secrets of fate to say who is right or who
wrong. He can tell US that he does not
always know who is the hero and who the vii
lain aud riddle 80 wisely that the parsons shall
thank him for discourse against Rome, while
Rome might as well thank him for the state
ment of her case against her vilifers; and
aristocracy shall be grateful for the exposure
of the revolution and the revolution rejoice in
his delincaton of the crumbling and weakness
of aristocracy.


The novel is certainly the great form of the
age for the teaching Of any grand lesson or
the delineation of any great character or
series Of characters in the religious, political
and social life of nations; and, in this view Of
it, how pitiful by comparison with such a
grand work of imagination as 'Lothair" are
the novels of men like Bulwer and Dickens
Bulwer has no more exalted vocation than tC
picture the snobs of British society, evidently
always supposing them to be gentlemen and
Dickens plods on forever, doing the same thing
for creatures that are either brutes or clowns,
according to the humor of the moment, becom-
ing, under the impulse of fury, common cut
throats, or melting in the warmth Of coarse
sensuality to all the varied comic phases pc
culiar to the greasiest vulgarity. But wha
are all the elegant fops who dawdle up ani
down the pages Of Bulwer, or all the kitcher
maids and thieves of Dickens taken together
with all their vanities, vices, passions and ap
petites, that men should care for them or hav'
patience over such pitiful pictures? The con
trast of ''Lothair," masterpiece Of imagina
tive working in the great themes that are vita
in every society, will set before the world at q
! proper value the books of authors without
theme or purpose, who draw marionnettes
rather than men.


A MORAL FOR THE RoUGHs.-In view Q
the history Of our police and the many case
| of arrogant insolence on their part that hav


been reported, it is not impossible that JUS
such case as the Fourth ward homicid


might occur to honest, reputable citizens, and
| therefore, it is not fair to condemn men a


once because they are in collision with tn
| police. But the men of this Fourth war
| firht are known for ruffians: and becaus